If He's Sinful

She smiled faintly when she saw how shocked the men looked. “I keep informed of all that is going on in my house through a few of the servants and, I blush to admit, eavesdropping. The house has a great many little nooks and passages the Hutton-Moores know nothing about. For reasons she never explained to me, my mother never told her husband about them and ordered me to keep them secret as well

“S’truth, none of us can recall seeing you anywhere,” added Lord Mallam. “At not one society function.”
“Have never even heard you mentioned of by the Hutton-Moores,” said Baron Fisherton. “Yet you are a Hutton-Moore.”
“Only in name,” Penelope said, realizing that these men had obviously gone ahunting for information about her. “Only because the old baron felt it would make it easier for him to get his hands on all my father left behind if he adopted me. The pretense that I was one of them died a swift death when the old baron and my mother were buried. I was banished to the attics and nearly forgotten

Penelope decided the men did not need to know that she stayed because she feared it was the only way to be certain she could still claim that house when it legally became hers. Nor did they need to know that the will said when she was five and twenty or married. As far as she knew, the house her stepbrother and sister claimed for themselves was all that was left of the riches her mother had brought to her second marriage

Ashton felt a chill go down his spine and not because of Brant’s bleak portrayal of his future. In his head he could hear Penelope say, Someone died in this bed. Poor Faith. He firmly told himself not to be a superstitious fool. It helped only a little, as did reminding himself that Faith was not such an uncommon name, and even if Penelope could sense such things, it did not mean she had seen Brant’s Faith

Aunt Olympia had always said that those born of Wherlocke blood were passionate

Nick me! Penelope thought; she was looking at a naked man. Even more astonishing, she was looking at a naked Lord Radmoor. She had been infatuated with the man from the moment she had first set eyes on him, but not once in all her silly romantic little dreams had she imagined him naked

This was lust, he realized; that blinding sort of lust he had just decided he would never experience

There was no denying that hard, cold truth. His forthcoming union with Clarissa Hutton-Moore was no love match, not that he particularly believed in love, anyway. It was a union based upon the usual need for an heir and a nearly desperate need for money. Clarissa had the appropriate bloodlines, was beautiful, and had a very impressive dowry. She would be an excellent hostess, which was also important now that he was a viscount. She moved about in society far more comfortably than he ever had. She was a perfect choice for a wife

My name is Faith and I was taken, as you have been. My life was stolen. My love is lost. I was torn from heaven and plunged into hell. Now I lie below.
“Below? Below what? Where?”
Below. I am covered in sin. But I am not alone

The potion Mrs. Cratchitt had forced down her throat was rapidly depleting her strength and all her ability to shut out the cacophony of the world, the world of the living as well as that of the dead