Free Lady of Sin by Madeline Hunter Page B

at supper.”
    Mardenford lifted the drowsy boy. Despite his passive expression, Nathaniel smelled his resentment that he would be dismissed because of the boy, while another man would stay.
    Charlotte seemed oblivious to the bad humor her brother-in-law exuded as he walked to the door. She held out her hand. Nathaniel helped her to stand.
    “You caught me unawares, Mr. Knightridge. Normally I do not receive callers on Thursdays, since that is when Ambrose comes.”
    “I did not realize that. You should have sent me away.”
    Charlotte sat in the chair that James had just vacated.
    Knightridge was correct. She should have sent him away. When she had resolved to avoid him, however, she had not expected him to turn up at her house. He had truly caught her unawares, and refusing to receive him seemed very cowardly.
    She was also curious about the reason for his visit. Receiving him had been a little perverse, much like poking one’s tongue at a sore tooth.
    “If I had sent you away, would you have returned another day?”
    He settled down on the sofa. “I think so, yes.”
    Good heavens, had he decided to
pursue
her? He had insinuated that he might the last time they were in this drawing room, but when he had walked away . . .
    Her better sense scolded her that she was playing with fire. The attentions of a man who thought she was promiscuous were insulting, not flattering. However, she could not pretend she was not intrigued. She had never been truly pursued before. Not for love and not for an affair. Philip had just been there from the first when she came out, available and amiable and . . . safe.
    After she was widowed, no man had tried to woo her either. Just as well. She had not been interested in such things. High in her tower, she had considered the turmoil of the flirtations and romance that she observed below distasteful and exhausting.
    And dangerous. In her own family she had witnessed the joy great passion could bring, but she had also seen its devastations. The year before she came out, her sister Penelope, estranged from her husband, had taken a lover. Not the lover she had now, but a different one, who betrayed her. She remembered her brother Dante solemnly entering Pen’s chamber one day, and then the low rumble of his private conversation in there. She could still hear her sister’s pitiable sobbing during the hours that followed. Pen’s grief and humiliation remained unabated in the weeks ahead.
    Yes, passion was dangerous. It could rob you of yourself, and leave you alone when it ended, with nothing of substance inside you.
    She looked at Nathaniel, with whom she had shared such a passion. Did he know? Nothing in his demeanor indicated he did. Her fears that he did might have been nightmares, or her conscience trying to sully her dream. She still hoped that she had been a stranger to him. There was a type of safety in that. She had been able to taste the power, but not be owned by it.
    And yet . . . the passion beckoned still, in all its dangerous glory. He did too, and affected her just by sitting nearby.
    “I have been thinking about your petition,” he said. “I am curious how you intend to collect signatures in the counties.”
    She explained her plans to make a circuit in the Southeast come fair weather, and the promise of her friend Sophia, Duchess of Everdon, to do the same in the West.
    “That still leaves a lot of Britain,” he said.
    “I intend to find others to take up the banner in other regions.”
    “If we put our heads together, I am sure we can identify those who will help us.”
    “‘Us’? Are you saying that you are willing to join our cause yourself, Mr. Knightridge?”
    “I already have, no? I even played the dancing dog. You do not have to look so skeptical. We have been allies before.”
    He was not referring to her cause, but to a trial last autumn where he defended. She had gone to him in the early dawn one day, to advise him to search for certain evidence. “We were