The Most Wicked Of Sins (16 page)

While Siusan and Priscilla gazed out over the lush garden, Ivy was leaning against the marble balcony rail. Her arms were folded over her chest as she stared back into the house.

Dominic was surrounded by a circle of matrons, and judging from their periodic laughter and playful raps with their collapsed fans, he was being his usual diverting and utterly charming self.

Miss Feeney was sitting in the first row of chairs set up for the concert. From her fine-featured profile, Ivy could see Miss Feeney was looking rather out of sorts. She was sure the fish gelatin tart was not still to blame. In her situation, any woman would be—especially when the man of her dreams (or so Ivy hoped) was standing only two strides away. And the man of the moment, Tinsdale, was standing like a sentry behind her, his hand set possessively on her shoulder.

Ivy felt a little sorry for her. But only a very little. This was the course Miss Feeney had chosen for herself. One that Ivy hoped to reverse. Soon.

“He needs to be speaking with Miss Feeney, not all of the ladies of the
ton,”
Ivy huffed. “That’s the true reason we are here. I do not care a groat if he is accepted in Society.”

“Dear, it is not as if he has a choice in the matter,” Priscilla argued. “The moment he was announced, he was encircled by hopeful mamas.”

Ivy exhaled her frustration. “But he needs to focus his charms on Miss Feeney—else I shall never win Lord Tinsdale back from her.”

“Why, pray, are you so set upon reclaiming the thoroughly uninteresting Viscount Tinsdale, whose sole mission seemed to be to squeeze the exuberant nature from you and bring you into formation?” Siusan probed.

Ivy turned around and leaned her hips against the railing and peered up at the crescent moon.

“Why, Ivy? Why, when your Lord Counterton adores everything about you. It is so plain in his eyes. How can you not see it—feel it!”

“And…good heavens,” Priscilla added, “just look at the man.” She looked over her shoulder and exaggerated a dreamy sigh. “Were I you, Ivy, I would be scheming to find a way to see him into my bed, not into someone else’s.”

“Priscilla!” Ivy thumped her sister with her fan.

“What? You know it’s true.” Priscilla lifted a single eyebrow at Siusan. “Or it should be, eh?”

“There are two very good reasons why Dominic and I can never be together but I am not going to explain them to the two of you.” Ivy spun around and started toward the French windows of the drawing room. “Suffice it to say, Tinsdale is my match, and I would like it very much if you both supported my efforts—as you promised—to take him back from Miss Feeney.”

A few minutes later, the musicians assembled, and, for an hour, the Winthrop aubergine drawing room was filled with song…and thirty-nine guests who were trying their best to keep their eyelids propped open.

Only Lord and Lady Winthrop, and one other, seemed to be immune to the lulling effect of music in the crowded, stuffy room.

That one other was Lord Tinsdale, but then, he wasn’t truly paying attention to the musicians. Not at all, in fact. His full notice was upon Ivy, and Lord Counterton, who was whispering in her ear and making her shoulders bounce in silent laughter.

He didn’t much care for her behavior, but he knew that she was not truly the one at fault. It was Lord Counterton.

Tinsdale had heard all about him. His penchant for seducing women, then tossing them aside. And now, Ivy had fallen under Counterton’s spell. And he knew he was wholly to blame.

Being a motherless Scot, she had looked to him for guidance regarding proper behavior in Society. It was something she’d said her father valued above all else. And something he was quite willing to teach her. It just hadn’t been as easy as he’d thought it would it be. His teaching methods were sound. But Ivy was like a young filly, still wild and untamed. She had yet to be broken, but Tinsdale was actually looking forward to that undertaking with great excitement.

Until he met Miss Feeney. She was everything Lady Ivy was not. She did not challenge him on the issues of the day. She did not call undue attention to herself, except by virtue of her great beauty, which of course, she could not help. She was gentle and sweet, and sought after by every unmarried man in Society. And somehow, he’d won her. And all of London had taken notice of his spectacular conquest.

Only now, he was growing rather bored with his lovely doll.

And the appeal of breaking Lady Ivy was growing. He hadn’t realized, until he saw her with the scoundrel Counterton, how desirable she was. How intelligent, and, though not a classical beauty like Miss Feeney, she was moderately attractive. But most importantly, she was the daughter of a duke—the most wealthy peer in all of Scotland.

There was only one flaw in her that he could see—but it was also one he would relish correcting.

But to do that, he’d have to do something about the Marquess of Counterton. Seeing him press her against a tree and kiss her like that, well, it was too much. Had anyone else witnessed their intimacy, Lady Ivy would have been ruined in the eyes of Polite Society.

And then, it would be too late to exert his will over her. To transform her into a proper lady.

No, he knew he had to separate her from the Marquess of Counterton. And soon.

Miss Fiona Feeney adored music, but not the sort the Winthrops had chosen for the entertainment this night. Her tastes in notes were a little more…passionate. Give her the sounds of a fiddle and drum, and she would be dancing in the clouds in heaven.

That’s how she remembered Inis Thiar, where she grew up, a rocky emerald green island off the west coat of Ireland. Life was hard, and you had to be passionate about it if you were to survive long enough to put a penny in your pocket.

Fiona was a great beauty though, and she knew she wasn’t meant to live out her days on the wee cropping of land framed by the sea. And her mother knew it too, which was why when she had the chance to pack Fiona off to London to become the charge of her wealthy yet ailing great-aunt, Mrs. Cavanaugh, she did just that.

But London was so foreign to Fiona, with all its rules of propriety, that within six months she was writing to her mother every day begging to return to the simplicity of Inis Thiar.

And once a month her mother would write back, telling her to wait, for as the charge and sole heir of Mrs. Cavanaugh, she would one day become the great lady she was destined to become. Until one gray misty day, another letter arrived from Inis Thiar, telling Fiona that her mother had died of a fever. Fiona was alone, except for her great-aunt, who grew weaker every day.

Fiona knew what she must do. She had to find a wealthy husband, a titled husband before her great-aunt passed and her connection with Society withered with it.

And so it came to pass that Mrs. Murphy, a friend of her great-aunt’s and an ancient fixture of the
ton,
had been tapped to promote Fiona within Society when Mrs. Cavanaugh could no longer do so. And she did so with great success.

The black-haired beauty quickly nudged out vibrant Lady Ivy Sinclair as the toast of the
ton,
and that attention brought her the enviable gift of being free to choose a favorite from more than a dozen of London’s most eligible bachelors.

And the one she selected from this glittering pool was the best by far. She knew this because one of the Sinclair heiresses, Lady Ivy, had already chosen him for herself—Viscount Tinsdale.

Of course, Fiona reveled in her success. Tinsdale seemed entirely devoted to her. So smitten was he with her that within two weeks of knowing her, Tinsdale had already acquired a special license, and she knew he’d ask for her hand soon.

But now that Lady Ivy reemerged into Society with a knee-weakeningly handsome marquess on her arm, Fiona began to doubt her choice. She wondered if Lord Tinsdale really was the best selection after all. What was worse was that her great-aunt’s condition was worsening every day. She didn’t have time to investigate Counterton’s suitability, but neither could she simply walk away from him and be content with Tinsdale.

Fiona pretended to drop her fan so that she could steal a glance at Counterton, who was sitting behind her at the musicale. His gaze met hers briefly, and he bent down and retrieved her fan for her.

She gave him a shy smile of thanks, then faced forward again.

Oh, she couldn’t concentrate on the music being played. It was as dreary and predictable as Tinsdale. While Lord Counterton…well, he made her heart pound with all of the fierce passion of a
bodhrán
drum.

The night air was soft and the sky clear enough that the crescent moon above lit the square as efficiently as a gaslight. And so Ivy decided that rather than join her sisters in the carriage to return directly to Grosvenor Square, she would take the air and walk with Dominic.

It was just a short distance around Berkeley Square to Lord Counterton’s town house, and there, as long as she was not observed entering his residence, they could privately discuss their progress with the plan that evening.

Siusan and Priscilla, whose primary goal that Season was to be accepted fully in proper Society, agreed to Ivy’s proposal—only if she would permit them to follow behind. They would act as chaperones of sorts, at least until they were all obscured by trees and shrubbery on the square’s green.

Ivy begrudgingly accepted this condition, but the moment they were blocked from the view of any guest who might be leaving the Winthrops’ palatial home, she raised her hand and summoned the carriage driver who’d been stalking them around the square.

“We will send the carriage back for you,” Siusan told her, “and I urge you to make use of it before the sun rises in a few hours. Wouldn’t want anyone to get the wrong notion.”

Priscilla leaned her head before the window. “Or
would
we?” She tossed a wink at Ivy and Dominic, then leaned back into the darkness of the carriage. They could hear her wicked sisters laughing even as the carriage turned from the square.

“Lady Siusan is right, Ivy. You are risking quite a lot by being alone with me right now. We arrived with one another and were seen leaving together.”

“We left in the company of my sisters.” Ivy plucked a tiny leaf from a boxwood hedge and rolled it between her thumb and index finger. “Remember, I am a Sinclair. No one expects one of the Seven Deadly Sins to follow the rules…precisely. Though, I am trying. Really, I am.”

“Nevertheless, Ivy”—Dominic laced his fingers behind his back as he walked—“Society does have certain expectations. Scoff at those, and there are doors that will never open to you—
or Tinsdale
—again.”

Ivy stilled her step, then turned and looked at Dominic. She hadn’t realized it, but she hadn’t thought to learn if Tinsdale had yet left Winthrops’ House or not.

That was very silly of her, wasn’t it?

She’d entirely forgotten about Tinsdale the moment he was no longer in sight. She had been more interested in convincing her sisters to return home so that she could talk with Dominic about the plan.

And yet, she’d forgotten the whole point of the ruse and the primary reason for even coming to the musicale this night—to win back Tinsdale from Miss Feeney.

“How extraordinary.”

“What was that?” Dominic asked, stopping at the steps of Counterton House.

In the moonlight, his features were even more chiseled, perfect and, Lord above, the way he was looking at her was making her remember the hardness of him as he had pressed her against the tree beside the Serpentine.

Unexplainably, she found herself wanting to feel his lips on hers again, his tongue on her mouth. And more.

And that too was extraordinary. He was…an actor, for God’s sake. He no more wanted her than…than she wanted Tinsdale.

Without realizing it, she licked her full lips, drawing Nick’s attention to her mouth. He wanted to taste her again, wanted to feel her body softening beneath his.

He wanted to caress her, touch her silken naked skin, and press the hardness of himself into her softest, most intimate of places.

Her breath was coming fast. Her eyes were impossibly wide.

And in those eyes, damn it all, he could see it.

She wanted him, too.

Barely contained desire crackled between them, closing the distance between their bodies.

He ached for her. Needed to be with her, to make love to her now.

To let his touch prove to her what she could not allow herself to believe. That he loved her. Already, he loved her.

No longer able to endure this game, Nick took a step toward her, reaching out his hand to her.

Without hesitation, she slid her slippers forward a stride and grasped his hand with a sureness that surprised him.

Pulling her to him, he settled his hands on her hips. Her face was a breath away from his.

But there was a question to be asked, and so he posed it with his eyes, and she nodded, silently.

His chest swelled with emotion as he bent and brushed his lips against hers, then took her hand again and gently led her to the door.

There would be no retreat now.

Envy consists in seeing things never in themselves, but only in their relations.

Bertrand Russell

The passage was dark as they stepped inside the house, and Dominic latched the door behind them. No servant stirred, and the only sound Ivy could hear was the creak of floorboards beneath their shifting feet.
p. Her mind whirled, and impossible thoughts crowded her mind. Dominic grasped her shoulders and, without a word, walked her back against the wall and pressed his body firmly against hers.

His hardness wedged urgently against her pelvis, and Ivy wrapped her arms around his neck and wriggled against him. She rose on her toes and raised a knee slightly, centering him in a softer place between her legs.

With a groan, Dominic slid a palm down her waist to her hips and caught her knee, then leaned more fully into her as he trailed hot kisses along her throat.

Ivy moaned and squeezed his shoulders with her fingers, trying to steady herself, but her heart slammed against her ribs, and her body trembled with anticipation like a new leaf in the wind.