Free One Little Sin by Liz Carlyle Page B

if you know what I mean.”
    “Oh, too well!” she said sympathetically. “But Alasdair, you do so many wicked things, it could have been something else altogether.”
    He shook his head. “The child is the very image of my brother Merrick.”
    Julia made a clucking sound. “And this young woman, the sister. What of her?”
    Alasdair groaned. “She is little more than a child herself.”
    “Indeed? How old?”
    “Oh, seventeen perhaps? No, wait. Twenty-two, she said.”
    Julia laughed. “Heavens, Alasdair! She is a grown woman!”
    “Hardly. The chit wouldn’t weigh seven stone were she soaked to the skin, and she’s as green as a girl from the Highlands could possibly be.”
    Julia shrugged. “My dear boy, by the time I was twenty-two I’d buried one husband and cast off two protectors,” she said. “And as to naïveté, appearances can be deceiving. Now, I really must say my piece, Alasdair.”
    Alasdair waved his glass. “By all means. My life could scarce be more confusing.”
    But he was to be proven wrong on that score. Julia sat up very straight, set aside her whisky, and folded her hands in her lap rather primly. “This is quite shocking news, my boy,” she warned. “You are not old enough to have an apoplexy are you?”
    Alasdair scowled. “I am six-and-thirty, as you well know. Out with it.”
    Julia leaned across to kiss his cheek. “Alasdair, my dear—” She paused and drew an unsteady breath. “—I am… enceinte.”
    Alasdair dropped his glass. It landed on the carpet with a soft thud. “Oh, God, Julia.” He squeezed his eyes shut. “You cannot possibly mean this. No. Have mercy.”
    She laid her warm hand on his knee. “I am not jesting, love,” she said quietly. “I am stunned, of course, and my physician is still abed, recovering from the shock. But Alasdair, the babe is not yours.”
    He made some sort of choking sound and opened one eye. “Not… mine?”
    Julia frowned at him. “Alasdair, my dear, we promised one another nothing save friendship,” she answered. “Indeed, we go weeks without even seeing one another. Have you been faithful to me?”
    He cleared his throat roughly. “I—well, I would have to say…that I am not perfectly…”
    The grip on his knee tightened. “Alasdair, let me be blunt,” Julia interjected. “I know all about Inga Karlsson and her little flat in Long Acre.”
    “Come, Julia! It was just a loan! I swear to God. We are just friends.”
    “As we are just friends?” she suggested slyly. “And we won’t even talk about Lord Feald’s wife. Or that tavern maid in Wapping. Or that French dancer. I know you can’t help it. I know women adore you. Indeed, I don’t know why you trouble yourself to hide any of it from me.”
    Alasdair swallowed. “I don’t hide it,” he lied.
    Julia laughed. “You do hide it, my dear,” she said. “You prevaricate reflexively, like some eight-year-old scamp when one asks him what he is doing, and in his first breath he says, ‘Why, nothing at all!’ And says it with such charm and innocence, one knows immediately he is up to some sort of wickedness.”
    “It just never crossed my mind, that is all,” he swore. “How could I even think of Inga when I am with you?”
    “Because Inga is blond, buxom, beautiful, and so thin she slinks like a cat when she walks?” Julia suggested. “Besides, she’s at least two decades younger than I.”
    “I rarely go for that sort,” said Alasdair truthfully. “Besides, Julia, what we have is something…special.”
    “Yes, I’m old enough to be your mother,” she said dryly. “That’s frightfully special.”
    He seized her by the arm. “You certainly are not,” he responded. Then he looked at her with grave concern. “But you are a little old, Julia, to be with child. Good Lord. Who is the father? What are you going to do?”
    “Pray,” she said with a muted smile. “And the father is Henrietta’s brother. We have been dear friends for twenty