If He's Sinful by Hannah Howell Page A

hurt, thinking that I did not care to include them in such a momentous decision. They knew I was courting Clarissa, but they would expect me to have at least warned them that I was about to propose and that I was betrothed before the announcement appeared in the paper. They live close enough to the city that they will hear the news soon.”
    “And you must find a ring. I may be able to help you there.”
    “You carry betrothal rings around with you?” Ashton teased.
    Brant ignored that remark. “A small token I intended to give my last mistress before I caught her abed with her butler.” He smiled faintly when Ashton laughed. “I felt I was gracious by allowing her to remain in the house at my expense for two more months. ‘Twas gift enough. It is a pretty little diamond and sapphire ring.”
    “That is very kind of you, but—”
    “Ashton, do not waste what little blunt you have on this sly chit. Swallow your damn pride. I have a ring. Take it. Give it back to me later.”
    “You do not think I will marry her.”
    “I do not want you to, especially after this trickery. But if you do, I know you will eventually give her the Radmoor emerald. If you do not, you will get this back from her. If neither occurs, it is still nothing to worry about. Consider it a gift since the last one I tried to give you did not work out and I got my money back.”
    That surprised Ashton. “All of it?” Mrs. Cratchitt did not seem the type of woman to bow to that demand.
    “Down to the last hapenny. You were too angry, perhaps, to ask about all I had been doing while you took the lady home.”
    “I still think Mrs. Cratchitt ought to be put out of business.”
    “She will be. For little Penelope’s sake, the full truth of what happened cannot be told, but little by little, dark rumors will choke off the flow of clients that bitch needs to survive.”
    Ashton was a little surprised by the depth of the anger he heard in Brant’s voice. He shared it, but it was all tangled up with the fact that it had been Penelope who had been taken and nearly forced into that life. It had begun to drown out the sinful part of him that wished her rescue had not come until he had satisfied that fierce desire she had stirred in him. The anger had grown stronger over the past two days as he continued to recall the things she had said and all the clues he had previously missed or ignored that indicated she was an innocent. Yet surely some of what she had said could not possibly be true, could it?
    “Do you think Penelope was a complete innocent?” he asked Brant.
    “You mean do I think you were about to break in a virgin for that old crow?” Brant nodded. “There is a part of me, a large part, that does believe that despite the brief time I was with her. Only the cynic doubts, and not too strongly.” He smiled faintly at Ashton’s look of dismay. “Do not look so appalled. Sad to say, it happens. Not every woman in a brothel came there already taught the hard lesson, shall we say. Nor do they all step into the life willingly.”
    “That is what she said. She said, ‘Did you think a woman woke up one day and said I think I shall become a whore.’ ”
    Brant chuckled but quickly grew serious. “I had thought the places such as Mrs. Cratchitt’s were different, that the ones who catered most specifically to the gentry did not indulge in that sort of, er, recruitment. I was wrong. Perhaps even naïve.”
    “God rot it, now I begin to fear that everything Penelope said was true. I have not been able to shake her words out of my head. After all, she was an innocent, though I had thought her but new at her work. We know she was kidnapped, and she was drugged. Yet how could she be the daughter of a marquis?” he finished in a distracted mutter.
    Brant choked on the coffee he was drinking and needed a moment to still his coughing before he asked in a hoarse voice, “She said what?”
    “If I recall correctly, at one point she said she was not