Yawning, he asked, “May I depart now, my lord?”
Sedgewick shook his head. “You must begin immediately, or you will forfeit this opportunity.”
It took great effort on Christopher’s part to bite back his retort. The agency would learn soon enough that he danced to no one’s tune but his own. “Leave the details to me. You wish me to pursue both personal and professional relations with Lady Winter, and I shall.”
Christopher stood and casually adjusted his coat. “However, she is a woman who seeks the secure financial prospects of marriage, which makes it impossible for a bachelor such as myself to woo her first and then progress from the bed outward. We will instead have to start with business and seal our association with sex. It is how these things are done.”
“You are a frightening individual,” Sedgewick said dryly.
Christopher glanced over his shoulder as he pushed the black curtain aside. “It would be wise of you to remember that.”
The sensation of being studied with predatory intent caused the hair at Maria’s nape to rise. Turning her head, she studied every box across from her but saw nothing untoward. Still, her instincts were what kept her alive, and she trusted them implicitly.
Someone’s interest was more than mere curiosity.
The low tone of men’s voices in the gallery behind her drew her attention away from the fruitless visual search. Most would hear nothing over the rabble in the pit below and the carrying notes of the singer, but she was a hunter, her senses fine-tuned.
“The Wintry Widow’s box.”
“Ah…” a man murmured knowingly. “Worth the risk for a few hours in that fancy piece. She is incomparable, a goddess among women.”
Maria snorted. A curse, that.
The girlish pleasure she had once felt for having uncommon beauty died the day her stepfather leered and said, “You shall fetch me a fortune, my pet.”
It was only one of many deaths in her short life.
The first was her beloved father. She remembered him as unrestrained and vital, a dashing man who laughed often and adored her Spanish mother. Then he fell ill and wasted away. Later, Maria would become intimately familiar with the signs of poison. At the time, however, she knew only fear and confusion, which worsened when her mother introduced her to a dark-haired, beautiful man who was to replace her father.
“Maria, child,” her mother had said in her softly accented voice. “This is Viscount Welton. He and I plan to wed.”
She had heard the name before. Her father’s closest friend. Why her mother wished to remarry was beyond her immature comprehension. Had her father meant so little?
“He wishes to send you to the best academies,” was the explanation. “You will have the future your father wished for you.”
Sent away. That was all she heard.
The wedding took place and Lord Welton took over, whisking them to the moors to a house that resembled a medieval castle. Maria hated it. It was cold, drafty, and scary, so very far removed from the golden-bricked home they had lived in before.
Welton begat a daughter on his new wife and then promptly left them. Maria went to school, and he went to Town where he drank, whored, and gambled her father’s money to his heart’s content. Her mother grew paler, thinner; her hair began to fall out. The illness was hidden from Maria until the last possible moment.
She was sent for only when the end was near and assured. Returning to her stepfather’s home, she found the Viscountess Welton a ghost of the woman she had been only months before, her vibrancy depleting along with their coffers.
“Maria, my darling,” her mother whispered on her deathbed, her dark eyes pleading. “Forgive me. Welton was so kind after your father passed. I-I did not see beyond the façade.”
“All will be well, Mama,” she had lied. “Your health will improve and we can leave him.”
“No. You must-”
“Please do not say any more. You need rest.”
Her mother’s grip was surprisingly strong for a woman so wan, a physical manifestation of her urgency. “You must protect your sister from him. He cares not at all that she is his own blood. He will use her, as he has used me. As he intends to use you. Amelia is not strong like you. She has none of the strength of your father’s blood.”
She had stared at her mother in dismay. In the decade of the Welton marriage, Maria had learned many things, but most of all she had learned that beneath Lord Welton’s incomparably handsome face, Mephistopheles dwelled.
“I am not old enough,” she breathed, the tears falling. She spent most of her time at school, training to become a woman Welton could exploit. But on her occasional visits, she watched the way the viscount belittled her mother with razor-sharp barbs. The servants told her of raucous voices and pained screams. Bruises. Blood. Bed rest for weeks after he left.
Seven-year-old Amelia remained in her rooms when her father was in residence, frightened and alone. No governess would stay long with them.
“Yes, you are,” Cecille whispered, her lips white, her eyes red. “When I go, I will give what strength I have to you. You will feel me, my sweet Maria, and your father. We will support you.”
Those words were her only anchor in the years that followed.
“Is she dead?” Welton had asked flatly when Maria emerged from the room. His bright green eyes held no emotion at all.
“Yes.” She waited with bated breath and shaking hands.
“Make whatever arrangements you desire.”
Nodding, she turned away, the swishing of her heavy silk skirts loud in the deathly silence of the house.
“Maria.” The soft drawl floated ominously after her.
She paused and faced him again, studying her stepfather with new appreciation of his evil, absently noting the broad shoulders, trim hips, and long legs that so many women found appealing. Despite the coldness within him, his green eyes, dark hair, and rakish smile made him the handsomest man she had ever seen. The devil’s gift for his black-as-sin soul.
“Tell Amelia about Cecille’s passing, will you? I am running late and do not have the time.”
Amelia.
Maria was devastated at the thought of the task ahead. Added to the near-crippling pain of her mother’s loss, she almost sank to the floor, crushed beneath her stepfather’s heel. But the strength her mother promised her stiffened her spine and lifted her chin.
Welton laughed at her bravado. “I knew you would be perfect. Worth the trouble your mother gave me.” She watched him turn on his heel and take the stairs to the main floor, disregarding his wife completely.
What could she say to her sister to ease the blow? Amelia had none of the happy memories that sustained Maria. Now the child was orphaned, for her father might as well have been dead for all the attention he paid to her.
“Hello, poppet,” Maria greeted softly as she entered her sibling’s room, bracing herself to absorb the impact of the small body hurtling toward her.
“Maria!”
Clutching her sister close, Maria moved them toward the bed draped in dark blue silk that contrasted gently with the pale blue of the damask-covered walls. She rocked the sobbing child in her arms and cried silent tears. They had only each other now.
“What will we do?” Amelia asked in her precious voice.
“Survive,” Maria said quietly. “And stay together. I will protect you. Never doubt that.”
They fell asleep and when she woke, she found Amelia gone.
And her life had changed forever.
Suddenly eager to be productive in some manner, Maria rose to her feet. She pushed the curtain aside and stepped out to the gallery. The two footmen who stood on either side to keep the ambitiously amorous away snapped to attention. “My carriage,” she said to one. He hurried away.