One Little Sin by Liz Carlyle Read Free Book Online

“I decided I wanted to go home,” he said. “Especially since I was already better than halfway there. And I hadn’t so much as my valet with me.”
    “Good God, what is your point?” snapped Merrick.
    “That no one save Quin and Devellyn are apt to remember I went within a hundred miles of Scotland that year—or any other recent year.”
    “I still say you must get rid of her, Alasdair,” his brother warned. “Thus far, you’ve admitted no real responsibility—and even if you had, there’s nothing this bit of baggage could do about it.”
    “God knows I don’t fancy having a brat about the house, Merrick,” said Alasdair darkly. “But I’m damned if I’ll let the chit starve on my account. I remember too well what it was like to feel unwanted as a child.”
    “Father was strict, aye,” said Merrick. “But we were never starved, Alasdair.”
    “Speak for yourself,” his brother snapped. “There are many kinds of starvation.”
    “Well, best put her up in an inn, at the very least, until all this sorts out,” said Quin, as if to forestall a quarrel.
    Alasdair shook his head. “I haven’t the heart,” he admitted. “The bairn is barely past infancy, and Miss Hamilton is little more than a child herself. She seems so callow and tenderhearted. I rather doubt the chit’s been south of Inverness in the whole of her life.”
    “A likely story,” said Merrick. “You’re a fool if you don’t send the little jade and her child packing. Besides, Uncle Angus can tell you nothing. They sailed in April for the Malay Peninsula.”
    “Did they, by God?” asked Alasdair. “I’d forgotten.”
    “What does it matter?” challenged Merrick. “He’d likely tell you this Lady Achanalt is little better than a common tart, and that there is no way they can prove the babe is yours.”
    Alasdair pushed away his plate. “There, dear brother, is where you just might be wrong,” he returned. “And I begin to resent your attitude.” On impulse, he rang for one of the footmen, but the butler himself came back into the room.
    “Yes, sir?”
    “Is Miss Hamilton awake yet, Wellings?”
    The butler’s eyes widened. “Indeed, sir,” he answered. “She rose before dawn and asked for a sheet of letter paper.”
    “Letter paper?” Alasdair echoed.
    Wellings nodded. “She had a piece of correspondence she particularly wished to go out on the first mail coach to Bournemouth this morning,” he answered. “I believe she is now in the schoolroom.”
    Ah, yes. Her retired colonel in Bournemouth. So she really was staying, then. Alasdair relaxed into his chair. “Fetch her down here, please,” he said. “And tell her to bring the child.”
    A taut silence held sway over the dining room whilst they waited, but in just a few minutes, a soft knock sounded at the dining room door. Miss Hamilton came into the room looking even smaller than she had the evening before. The luminescent green eyes filled half her face, which was oval, and finely boned. Today she wore a brown wool dress which should have looked drab, but instead looked graceful. The shade perfectly matched her hair, which was twisted into a loose arrangement. The combination somehow emphasized her fine ivory complexion, and for the first time Alasdair realized that the girl was not plain at all. Instead, she possessed an elegant, subtle beauty—and it was a woman’s beauty, not a girl’s. The knowledge was a tad unsettling.
    “Do come in, Miss Hamilton,” he managed, as the gentleman rose.
    She sketched an awkward curtsey and led the child forward into the room. This morning, the little girl wore a lacy frock over pantaloons gathered at the ankle with blue ribbons. She toddled forward unhesitatingly, pointing and chortling at something beyond the window.
    “Miss Hamilton, my brother, Merrick MacLachlan,” said Alasdair. “And this is the Earl of Wynwood. They wish to see the child. Would you be so kind as to show her to my brother,