One Wicked Sin. Nicola Cornick

after her husband had thrown her from the Grosvenor Square house and the divorce had ground its way scandalously through the courts. He had assumed that her life would have gone on much as before, which was naive, now he thought about it. With little money, abandoned by friends and family, denounced as a wanton and vilified if she stepped outside the door, what could she have done?

      “I ate cake and pastries, biscuits and ice cream,” Lottie said, “until I was sick. I read copies of the Ladies’ Magazine and ate and slept all day.” She reached again for the sheet and this time Ethan did not stop her. “I suppose,” she added, “that should I fall into even greater penury I could live off my fat, like a camel.”

      “Camels store water in their humps,” Ethan said, “not fat.”

      “It is the same principle,” Lottie said. She sighed. “Please let me dress.”

      “A moment.” Ethan put out a hand and touched her wrist lightly. “You did not seem self-conscious before,” he said.

      “I forget,” Lottie said simply. “I feel the same inside. Then I see myself in the mirror—” she nodded toward the pier glass on the wall “—and it shocks me.”

      Ethan raised a hand and smoothed her hair away from her face. “I like it,” he said. “You are not thin but I like that. You look very pretty to me.”

      Her eyes opened wide. “Pretty?”

      “Delightfully curved. Voluptuous.” He leaned forward and kissed her. She returned the kiss hesitantly, almost innocently. “We must make love in front of that mirror,” he said, against her lips, “and then you can see how beautiful you look.”

      She blushed. “Beautiful now,” she said dryly. “How you flatter me, my lord.”

      “Your body is divine,” Ethan said. “Something else of which I must convince you?”

      “Later,” a delicious smile lit her eyes. “I really must wash and dress.”

      Ethan rang for hot water and fresh towels whilst Lottie wrapped the sheet about her and started to rummage through the bandbox she had brought with her.

      “What do you do today?” She was kneeling on the floor, looking up at him as he dressed. She was barefoot and tousled and once again Ethan felt that strange pang of emotion as he looked at her, the tug at his heart. He could imagine her, alone in her exile, sending a maid out for pastry and cake and cream, whilst in the outside world her husband destroyed her reputation and dragged her name through the gutter. A harsh anger gripped him. Whatever Lottie had done, he thought, Gregory Cummings’s behavior had been disproportionate and unforgivable, taking a hammer to crush a butterfly.

      “I have business to attend to,” he said, a little abruptly. He wanted to escape the warm intimacy of the room. He needed to break the spell, to refocus his mind upon the urgent plans that had brought him to London.

      “Of course,” Lottie said. She got to her feet and shook out the one respectable gown she had brought with her. “This gown needs pressing,” she added, “if I am not to parade about Town tricked out like one of Mrs. Tong’s harlots.”

      “Go and buy some new clothes,” Ethan said. “I want you to have something suitable to drive with me later in the park and an evening gown for the theater tonight.”

      Her gaze flickered to meet his and he sensed her unease. “We are to go out in public later?”

      “Of course,” Ethan said. “If I wished to sit quietly at home reading then I would have stayed in Wantage.” There was a tap at the door and a manservant brought in a steaming jug of water. The man shot Lottie a look, glanced at the tangled bedclothes, and went out smirking.

      “Yes, I see.” Lottie sounded subdued, her head bent, but Ethan could see her frown. “I thought—” She started, stopped. “I did not realize that you would wish to—”

      “To flaunt you in public?”

      She looked up, troubled. “Yes, I suppose so. The fashionable crowd were my acquaintances when I was married. It is awkward—”

      Ethan shrugged, once again repressing that wayward sympathy. There was no room for sentiment and he knew it; he had a very particular purpose for her. She had satisfied his physical needs, for the time being at least, and now she would play another role, that of the ostentatious mistress about town. He was intent on creating as much gossip as he possibly could, diverting the attention of the authorities from his true interests and activities. Lottie’s part in his plan was to act as an eye-catching diversion.

      “I understand that,” he said. “But you have a different role now. Besides, you will not be obliged to speak to any of your previous acquaintances, merely to be seen by them.”

      “Of course,” Lottie said. Her voice was bland but her mouth turned down at the implication of his words, that she must display herself before her previous acquaintances marked out as his mistress. Ethan knew she was struggling to repress her protests. Lottie Palliser did not take easily to the role of accommodating Cyprian, he thought.

      “You will be with me,” he said. “That will protect you from any discourtesy.”

      “I am sure it will.” She could not quite erase the sharpness from her tone. “No man of sense would wish to find your sword at his throat.”

      “Then that is settled,” Ethan said. He put out a hand and drew her toward him. He felt a moment’s hesitation in her but she came to him easily enough. He kissed her, long, hard and deep, a claim, an imprint, a statement of possession.

      “You’re with me now,” he repeated softly when he let her go, and he felt a powerful flare of possessiveness. He kissed her again until he felt her relax and respond to him and then his desire caught like a flame again. He was breathing hard when he let her go and he felt shaken.

      What the hell was wrong with him?

      She sat looking at him, a luminous light in her brown eyes, soft hair falling gently about her bare shoulders, her body pure temptation beneath the twisted sheet.

      Ethan stood up, wanting to be gone yet wanting to stay with her, too. The conflict in him puzzled and disturbed him.

      “I have left you some money to buy the gowns,” he said brusquely, gesturing to the bag of guineas on the table. “Buy something suitable. I don’t want you looking like a debutante.”

      Her gaze was very clear as she held his. “I know what you want from me.”

      Swearing under his breath, Ethan went out, down the stairs two at a time, out into the street. He lengthened his stride, putting physical distance between himself and Lottie as though trying to outrun the emotions of the previous night. He felt a sense of relief to have escaped something he could not put a name to but which felt infinitely dangerous.

      LOTTIE HAD SEEN Ethan’s relief when he left. It had been in the haste with which he had gone out of the bedchamber; it had been in the tense line of his shoulders and the briskness of his departure and the fact that he had not looked back. She sighed a little as she gathered together the clothes she needed for the day. The intimacy of the night that she and Ethan had spent together had been illusory. She knew that. Physical closeness meant nothing. They were still essentially two strangers who were bound together for as long as Ethan paid for their association to continue. That was their relationship, no more. The previous night she had determined not to become emotionally involved with him and make the same mistakes that she had in the past. He could give her nothing of himself. He did not wish to, nor should she wish it. Her future was as a professional courtesan for as long as she had the looks to sustain the role. She would be particularly bad at her new job if she tumbled into love with every protector who crossed her path.

      In truth, there was little to look forward to in Ethan’s plans for the day, Lottie thought. They would bring the horrible social embarrassment of displaying herself in public for the first time since her divorce. She shuddered. Everyone would point and gossip as though she