Wicked Temptation (Regency Sinners 6)(12)

These were the last words, the very last, Titus had expected Pru to say to him once she recovered from his having spanked and then pleasured her. “You are not angry with me?”

“Well, I would not go so far as to say that.” Dry humor could be heard in her voice. “But let us say I am less angry with you than I was.”

Titus pulled back slightly so he could look at Pru. Her eyes looked sore from crying so many tears, her nose was slightly reddened, her cheeks flushed, and her lips puffy. In normal circumstances, he would have offered her his handkerchief to dry her cheeks, but decided he had better not as he had last used it to wipe her pleasure juices from his fingers.

“Less angry enough to listen to what I wished to tell you the last time we met, and which you said you have now come to hear?” he prompted huskily.

Pru tensed. Listening to what Titus had to say about the accident was the reason she had come to see him today. The… The other had merely been a digression from that purpose.

Merely?

There was nothing slight or meaningless about the intimacies she and Titus had just shared.

And Pru did not feel in the least embarrassed by them.

Instead, she now felt completely freed from the numbing guilt she had been living with for so long. The guilt of living while her sister died.

How could Pru not feel that way when she was totally aware of the sting and heat of her bottom cheeks and between her thighs still throbbed from her many releases? The former, she realized, was almost as pleasurable as the latter.

“Yes.” She rose to her feet before turning to face him. “Yes, I am now ready to hear whatever it is you wish to tell me.”

Titus was not sure he wished to tell Pru any of these things, only knew that he should. Because, despite what Stonewell may feel to the contrary, Titus believed Pru had a right to know the real reason Priscilla had died.





Chapter 5


“I would appreciate it if you would sit down while I talk.” Titus rose restlessly to his feet to begin pacing the library. Pru settled herself on the edge of the chaise he had just vacated. “You may ask me any questions you like, but some I might not be able to answer,” he warned.

“That hardly seems fair.”

His jaw tightened. “None of this is fair. And some of what I am about to tell you, I should not be telling you at all,” he added with a frown.

Pru had no idea what Titus wished to reveal to her, but something told her she was not going to like most of it.

Nor did she understand it’s relevance to her, as Titus began to talk of a traitor to the Crown, someone guilty of many betrayals to England, including aiding in Napoleon’s escape from Elba earlier this year and the battles that followed.

She felt even more puzzled than she had before he began talking. “What does that have to do our carriage accident?”

“I will get to that in a moment,” Titus bit out. “The Sinners, as you may or may not have guessed, are all agents for the Crown, and the Duke of Stonewell is our spymaster.”

Her brows rose; she had not known. “Is this one of the things you should not be telling me?”

“Yes.”

Pru nodded. “You have my word I shall never reveal that knowledge to another living soul.”

The viscount’s smile was bleak. “I advise you do not make any rash promises until I have finished speaking.”

She eyed him warily. “Very well.”

At any other time, Titus might have found Pru’s agreement amusing, even arousing, following so quickly after their recent intimacies. But he could find nothing in the least amusing about any of their present situation.

He resumed his pacing as he gathered his thoughts. “The investigation had narrowed down to eight suspects, and as there are—were eight Sinners,” he corrected himself gruffly, “we were tasked with singling out and proving this traitor’s guilt.”

She nodded. “That seems logical.”

It had, at the time. Several months later, with Priscilla Germaine and Worthington both dead, that logic seemed severely flawed, primarily in the fact they had not taken into account that whoever the traitor was would become suspicious of The Sinners’ behavior, realize the net was closing in on them, and subsequently attempt to eliminate some of them as a diversion. In Worthington’s case, they had succeeded.

But Titus was getting ahead of himself.

He drew in a deep breath through his nose before continuing. “These eight suspects were all women of Society. Ones who were able to meet with and pass information on to their contact during the usual melee of Society functions, in this case specifically at six balls given throughout this past Season.”

Pru realized, as her stomach began to churn, that she had been justified in her earlier unease regarding the things Titus wished to tell her. She was still unsure as to why, only knew this was somehow connected to those feelings of danger that had entered her own and Cilla’s life at the same time Romney and Worthington had.

“Five of these women were Lady Beatrix Hanwell, Lady Isabella Aston, Miss Alys Newcomb, Lady Heather Smythe, Lady Jocelyn Forbes—”

“Jocey would never betray her country!” Pru defended indignantly, only to frown as another thought occurred to her. “The ladies you have named are now married to five of The Sinners.”

“Yes.”