Wicked Temptation (Regency Sinners 6)(2)

Never during any of those years had Pru or Cilla felt or been in the least danger from anyone or anything. Within weeks of Romney’s and Covington’s initial attentions to them, Cilla was dead and Pru left devastated by the loss of her twin.

Was it any wonder she had no wish to see or speak with Romney ever again, or that she had done everything possible to ensure it did not happen?

Except today, when she could not refuse Jocey’s entreaties for Pru to attend her wedding to the Marquis of Wessex, the gentleman who had previously been Jocey’s guardian and whom Pru knew her friend loved dearly.

Pru valued Jocey’s friendship more than ever now that she had lost her twin. Indeed, the only times she had left Germaine House since Cilla’s funeral had been to pay several visits to Jocey, who had been struck down with illness almost five weeks ago and unable to leave her guardian’s house.

Today’s wedding was bittersweet for Pru. She was pleased for Jocey that she was marrying the man she loved, but at the same time, she knew her twin would have loved to attend the celebrations. In the normal way of things, the two of them would have spent weeks poring over patterns and fabrics for the gowns they would wear for the occasion.

Instead, Pru was wearing an austere black gown, one that had been delivered to the house by her seamstress along with several other suitably dark gowns, all without Pru so much as seeing them. A mourning gown was exactly that, and her sense of loss ran far too deep to care whether she was wearing a fashionable silk gown or a burlap sack.

Nor did she care for the fact Romney had taken advantage of her presence today in order to speak to her when her previous refusals had shown she no longer wished to continue their acquaintance. Merely looking at him, seeing those livid scars upon his cheek and throat, and knowing why and how he’d acquired them, brought Pru’s feelings of inner despair crashing down upon her like a heavy weight.

She also suffered an uneasy feeling that Romney knew more about her sister’s and Worthington’s deaths than anyone but perhaps his close friends, the other six remaining Sinners.

It made no sense for Pru to have such thoughts when Romney had been severely burned during the accident and also suffered a great personal loss. One had only to be in the company of Worthington and Romney for a few minutes to realize their almost lifelong friendship had made them as close as brothers.

Nevertheless, the feeling of Romney’s involvement in the accident persisted, and there was nothing Pru could do to push those dark thoughts from her mind.

“No, thank you,” she now answered him coolly. “I have my own carriage, along with my maid.” She nodded to where Mary stood a short distance away. “Nor do I have plans to attend the wedding breakfast.”

It took every effort of Titus’s considerable will to restrain the frustration he felt at Prudence Germaine’s obvious dismissal of him. A viscount and a powerful member of the House, as well as a valued agent for the Crown, he was unaccustomed to being dismissed by anyone, least of all a chit fifteen years his junior.

Except the changes he could see in this particular chit from when he had last seen Prudence showed she was in deep mourning for her twin.

Well…possibly not the changes since the last time he had seen her, because that had been directly after the carriage accident which had resulted in the death of her sister and one of his closest friends. On that occasion, Prudence had been covered in blood and black smoke, her face deathly white.

Whenever Titus had seen Lady Prudence before that night, she had been full of fun and laughter and always appeared in a richness of different-colored gowns, obviously chosen to complement her blonde-haired, blue-eyed beauty.

That golden hair was pulled back in a severe style today and covered by a black bonnet secured beneath her chin with a black ribbon. Her face was snow-white and far thinner than previously. It was a pallor that emphasized the beauty of her darkly shadowed blue eyes.

The black gown was obviously worn out of deep mourning for her twin, and yet there was a beauty to be seen even in that austerity of appearance. One Titus was sure Prudence was completely unaware of. The tightness of the bodice revealed the fragility of the pale skin at her throat and across her clavicle, and emphasized the fullness of the breasts below.

He and Worthington had initially balked at the mission given to them by the Crown once they learned the two ladies they were to investigate for being suspected of treason were the Germaine twins. Two sillier young ladies it had never been their misfortune to meet, and it was near to impossible to ever believe either of them could have been involved not only in Napoleon’s escape from Elba earlier this year, but have also been a traitor to England for some time before and since the escape of the deposed emperor.

Earlier investigations had revealed that it was one of eight particular ladies in Society who was that traitor. Titus and the other seven Sinners, all of them agents for the Crown, had been chosen to carry out the mission of discovering which of those ladies was guilty. Five of them had already been declared innocent of any misdeed.

As Titus was to investigate Priscilla Germaine and Worthington her twin, Prudence, and as the sisters were never seen one without the other, the two gentlemen had decided to carry out their investigation together.

Closer acquaintance with the sisters had revealed them as not being quite as silly as he and Worthington had thought they were. That the twins were not only beautiful and entertaining but, unlike so many young ladies of the ton, they never had a bad word or criticism to say about anyone. Titus had come to like them both, in spite of himself, and he knew Worthington had felt the same.