Engaged in Sin by Sharon Page Page A

simple things that had so pleased her grandfather? Would they help him heal? Was it not worth a try?
    “What if I could help you in other ways?” Anne whispered. She spied the rectangle of white gripped in his right hand. “I can begin by reading your letter to you, Your Grace.”
    Before Devon could say a word, the letter was plucked from his fingers.
    He reached out to retrieve it, but to no avail. “You can read?”
    “Of course,” Cerise said briskly, sounding much more like a governess than a saucy courtesan. “It is from the—the Duchess of March.” There came a soft crinkling of paper. Her voice faltered as she asked, “Do you have a wife, Your Grace?”
    He had turned to the mantelpiece, his hands braced on the crisp edge of the marble. “No, angel. I have a mother.”
    “Thank heaven.”
    “It is a relief to you to learn I have a mother?” He had to admit, he was a fortunate man where his mother was concerned. She had been loving, gentle, and had finally lost her temper with him only when he’d dumped himself into scandal over another man’s fiancée.
    “I just mean I would have felt terrible, having been your lover, if you’d had a wife.”
    Her genuine relief and the gentle way she spoke told him she would have been plagued with guilt—a sensation he was familiar with. It surprised him, though. “Angel, explain how you could be so softhearted after working in a brothel.”
    “I—I did not have many clients. I was very exclusive.” Now she spoke in a fast, nervous tone. “I always assumed they came to me because they weren’t yet married.”
    Her naïveté astonished him. How had she stayed so ingenuous?
    “Certainly I never asked any of my … clients about themselves,” she whispered. “They obviously did not want to have conversations of that sort.”
    That brought a wry laugh to Devon’s lips.
    Anne shivered as the duke gave a low chuckle. She didn’t believe she had revealed anything dangerous, but she had to take more care. She could not let him find out who she truly was. Distracting him was her best plan.
    “Wait, Your Grace, I must open the letter.”
    On a small escritoire positioned in front of one of the floor-to-ceiling windows, she’d spotted a letter opener. As Anne snapped it up, she couldn’t help but look outside. Beyond the library lay a half-circle terrace of smooth flagstones, edged by a stone balustrade. Other terraces lined the sides of the building. Raindrops ran down the glass, and the rainy day deepened the green of the neat grass and lush, ordered gardens. Color still bloomed despite the approach of fall, flowers of gold and scarlet.
    It was lovely. It was so much like Longsworth.
    With shaky fingers, she slit the seal with the opener, then set it down—it was heavy, silver, and decorated with two exquisite and surely priceless sapphires. How easy it would be to take this. She could sell it for a fortune.
    No. She couldn’t. Her mother had clung to pride, to propriety, even as she slipped down one rung after another, first working as a seamstress, then once, only once, letting a man buy the night. But to steal—that was to fall from the ladder completely and drop into hell.
    Anne opened the crisply folded pages. There were two, and the letter was dated two days before. Clearing her throat, she began to read aloud.
“ ‘My dearest son …’ ”
Goodness, just that brought a little tug deep in her throat. She swallowed hard and continued.
    “It seems there is no emotion you have not brought forth in me, Devon. For three years, I’ve known worry and fear, praying you stayed safe during war
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Then frustration when you sent missives to tell us you would not come home yet and would make no plans to visit. I cannot think of you without knowing love, hope, and happiness, without smiling at memories of you as the stubborn, clever boy I adored
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    “But now, dear boy, you have been giving me a grand lesson in despair
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    “You cannot possibly believe we