knew she was lying. He could hear it. He also knew she would not tell him the truth. Not now, not yet, if ever. Lottie Palliser had been badly hurt and that damage had made her draw her defenses so tight no one would ever come close to hurting her again. He understood that. He had been doing something similar since he was fifteen years old.
“You have an interesting concept of loyalty to your friends,” he said now.
“I have no concept of loyalty.” She sounded tired. “And it was not even worth it. He had a tiny penis and was only concerned for his own pleasure in bed.”
Ethan laughed. “How disappointing to lose a friend and gain so little in return.”
A small smile lifted the corner of her mouth. “That was the least of my betrayals. I deceived Joanna several times over.” She sighed. “Even so, I think she would have helped me, but she has been out of the country for over a year, in Scandinavia and Russia, or somewhere equally far-flung. I forget. I wrote to her but the letter probably went astray. Geography is not my strong suit.” She gave an irritable little shrug. “Must we speak of this?” He could feel her gaze resting on him. “There is no need for us to talk, is there, least of all about me?”
“Not if you do not wish.” Ethan was amused. For as long as he could remember he had had women desperate to tell him their life stories. He had been the one trying to escape the intimacy.
Lottie shifted on the seat and he caught a faint scent of her jasmine perfume, fresh and sweet. The hunger gripped him again, as razor-sharp as it had been in the brothel. It was a very long time since he had had a woman. As a prisoner of war he had had little opportunity to satisfy his lusts and had grown accustomed to ignoring them. Instead he had focused all his energies on the long, dangerous, treasonable game he was playing. Yet now it seemed that Lottie Palliser’s intriguing combination of reticence and experience was proving a great deal more seductive than he had ever imagined.
At first he had thought she was acting the prude to titillate the jaded palates of Mrs. Tong’s clientele. An experienced woman playing the virgin was not unusual, but in Lottie’s case it would have been pointless since everyone knew her history. And at no point had she attempted to deny her promiscuity or the infidelity that had led to her downfall. That honesty interested Ethan. Not a single woman of his acquaintance would have been as open as Lottie had been with him, and he admired her for that unflinching truthfulness.
She moved slightly on the hackney carriage seat and he heard the rustle of her silk skirts.
“How did you come to this?” she asked, turning his question back on him. “Since you seem so anxious to speak to me, you can tell me how you came to be a prisoner of war.”
“I was captured at the battle of Fuentes de Onoro in Portugal,” Ethan said. “When Wellington discovered who I was, he sent me back to England as a prisoner.”
“How careless of you to be caught.” Her voice was cool. “The British must have been delighted to lay hands on you when you have been a very public affront to your noble father for so many years. In fact—” her voice changed, became thoughtful “—I am surprised that they let you loose.”
“They kept me locked in a prison hulk at Chatham for a year.” Ethan spoke lightly, dismissively, even as he clenched his muscles with repudiation of every memory the words conjured, memories of the Black Hole, a prison a mere six-foot square at the bottom of the hold, with no light and barely any air. Men had been driven mad in there and begged to die. Men had been clapped in irons, half starved, flogged until they could not stand. He felt as though he could still smell the stench of the hulks, feel the filth on his skin beneath the fine lawn of his shirt and hear the cries of those who had run mad. He would never forget it.
“That must have been vile.” Lottie’s voice was soft, as though for all his apparent unconcern she could feel his hatred seeping through.
“It was.” He shut his mouth tightly.
“Why did you fight for the French?” He could feel her watching him in the darkness of the carriage. “Do you hate the British so much that their enemy is your friend?”
Ethan laughed. “I don’t hate the British. Why should I?”
There were about a hundred answers to that one but he was not going to supply them. Like her, he would always hold back to protect himself.
“Then are you a mercenary, no more than a soldier of fortune, taking the Emperor’s money?”
Lottie Palliser certainly knew how to provoke a man, Ethan thought ruefully. Perhaps silence would have been preferable after all.
“I am no mercenary soldier,” he said stiffly. “I fought for Napoleon because I have principles. I believe in what he is doing.”
“Principles.” Lottie said the word as though it were foreign to her. “How extraordinary.” He saw her smile. “Most men I know are unprincipled bastards. So you believe in—” she hesitated, “—liberty, fraternity and. the other one?”
“Equality,” Ethan said. “Yes, those are the beliefs of the revolution.”
“An odd sort of equality that sets one man up as an Emperor over the others,” Lottie said. “But then, I have never had much interest in politics so perhaps I am missing some crucial point. I fear that affairs of state bore me.” She yawned.
“Fortunately I have no desire to talk politics with you,” Ethan said. “I did not buy you for that.”
The air in the carriage cooled as though a breath of frost had blown through. Ethan saw that he had angered her with the blunt reminder of her situation. She still had plenty of pride. She turned her face away from him, her expression haughty. The carriage had slowed down at the meeting of two streets; it jerked forward and Lottie lost her balance, putting a hand out to steady herself against the door frame. As she moved, Ethan heard the unmistakable chink of coin, and expensive coin at that. Guineas. There could be only one place she had got those from. Their eyes met and in that moment he realized what she was about to do.
She was going to cheat him and run away.
Lottie had a hand on the door, already had it half-open with the noise and lamplight spilling in from the street outside the carriage. Ethan made a grab for her arm, felt the velvet of her cloak slip and slither between his fingers and caught her about the waist a second before she jumped.
“Not so fast.”
DAMN HIM. HE STILL sounded unperturbed. Was there nothing that could ruffle this man’s calm?
Lottie half sat, half lay across Ethan’s lap, breathing quickly and feeling as trapped and furious as a cornered cat. Ethan’s arm was as unyielding as a steel band about her waist. She shifted a little, trying to ease his grip, and immediately the bag of guineas she had stolen from him bumped heavily against his thigh. He slanted a look down at her. His lips turned up in a grim smile as he extracted the purse from the pocket of her cloak.
“I thought so. When did you lift that from me?” He sounded mildly interested, as though the pickpocket-ing habit of a society lady-turned-whore was a matter for careful consideration. Lottie felt her temper tighten further.
“I took it whilst you were negotiating with Mrs. Tong,” she snapped. “You weren’t paying attention to me.”
He nodded. “I underestimated
