The Most Wicked Of Sins (20 page)

Killian agreed, and the group split into three sets.

“What do you suppose Siusan meant by our having plans of our own?” Dominic asked Ivy, as the other four disappeared into the crowd in opposite directions.

“I did not speak a single word to her in the carriage. I think she knows to give us some time alone to allow us to…finish our discussion.” She glanced sidelong at him.

Dominic grinned wickedly, but Ivy would have none of it and thumped him playfully with her reticule. “I mean it, Dominic, we have much to discuss.”

“Do you?” came a male voice from just behind them.

Ivy turned, knowing whence it came. “Tinsdale,” she said, smiling when she saw another gentleman at his side.

“Lady Ivy, such a surprise to encounter you here,” Tinsdale replied.

“Really? We had discussed the event several times. I believe you even suggested we attend the fête together; but then, that was more than a month past, and so much has occurred since then.” Ivy shrugged.

“I do beg your pardon, Lady Ivy, I had quite forgotten, I’m afraid.” Tinsdale bent and, without leave to do so, lifted her hand and kissed it. “The Marquess of Counterton.” Tinsdale turned to the man at his side. “May I make known to you both Lord Rhys-Dean?”

Rhys-Dean barely glanced at Ivy but tipped his hat somewhat politely in her general direction. Now he was peering queerly at Dominic. “Sheridan?”

Dominic stared blankly back at him. “Yes, Dominic Sheridan. Counterton now. I recently inherited the Counterton title from my late uncle, the fourth marquess.”

“Damn me,” Rhys-Dean uttered, with no concern that a lady was present. “You’ve changed. I would not have recognized you.”

Dominic’s eyes grew wide. “Rhys-Dean…why you are—” He paused then, raising a finger as though the answer were on the tip of his tongue.

But Ivy knew it was not. This man obviously knew the real Counterton.
Oh dear God.
Dominic was going to be exposed—and in the presence of Tinsdale!

“Do you not remember me? We were at Shrewsbury together.” He set his hand on Dominic’s shoulder. “Only, you do not look at all the way you did. You were so thin and pale, and I am sure I would have remembered your substantial height—”

Dominic slapped his hand on Rhys-Dean’s back, knocking the man’s hand from his shoulder. “Rhys-Dean, of course I remember you. We were caught for”—he tossed a glance over his shoulder at Ivy—“well,
you
remember.” He winked.

La, Dominic was a clever actor.

Rhys-Dean laughed heartily. “Indeed I do.” He turned to Ivy. “Do not worry, Lady Ivy. Our offense was not so egregious.” He elbowed Dominic. “We were allowed to finish out at Shrewsbury after all, were we not?”

Tinsdale gazed at Dominic, as if appraising him. “You knew each other at Shrewsbury, then?”

Rhys-Dean nodded. “But damn if you haven’t changed, Sheridan.”

“As have you,” Dominic interjected, clearly before the man could expound on just how he’d changed. “Lucky for us both, eh?”

Everyone laughed, but it seemed that only one of the circle of four was amused.

“Have you seen your mother’s brother yet?” Rhys-Dean asked.

“M-my…uncle?” Dominic managed.

“Yes, yes. Pittance. Ran into him down at Carlyle House just this morn. We’re both in town for just the week. My wife can’t stand the ridiculous rain in Somerset of late and begged me to take her to London,” Rhys-Dean rambled. “I was damned lucky I ran into Tinsdale on Pall Mall earlier, else I would be spending this night with my sister-in-law. Not that she is not a charming woman, you understand.” He looked at Ivy, sheepishly.

“It was lovely to meet you, Lord Rhys-Dean.” Ivy grasped the moment for escape. “Lord Tinsdale. Do give Miss Feeney my best. I assume she did not wish to intrude on your evening with Lord Rhys-Dean.”

“You’ve got that right,” the other man said, “just the menfolk tonight.”

“Well, then we should not impose on your time any longer. Good night, Lord Tinsdale, Lord Rhys-Dean.” She smiled and even dipped into a curtsy.

Dominic made a halfhearted promise to remain in contact with Rhys-Dean, then he and Ivy lunged into the crowd and left the two men behind.

They trudged through the dried grasses until they nearly crossed the commons dedicated to the Thimbletweed fête before stopping for breath.

“My God, Dominic, we’re going to be exposed!” Ivy clutched frantically at his shoulders.

“Rhys-Dean seemed to believe me well enough, so don’t fret, Ivy.” Dominic started to wrap her in his arms, but then, thinking of the crowd half-filled with members of the
ton,
guided her behind a row of red-and-green tents. He climbed up the three short steps to the door of a wooden caravan and knocked. “No answer.” He opened the door and peered inside, then finding it empty, reached down and grabbed Ivy’s hand and pulled her up with him

“Why did you bring me in here?”

“So we can talk without running into Tinsdale, or Lord knows who else.” Dominic squeezed her hand and gestured to the floor in the same gallant manner he might urge her to sit on a silk ottoman.

The caravan was filled with straw and smelled strongly of livestock, but the bedding seemed fresh, so Ivy warily sat down.

“Truly, Ivy, we have nothing to fear from Rhys-Dean. I know it.”

“Perhaps not from him, but did you see the way Tinsdale was watching the two of you? He knows something is not as it seems, and I do not doubt he will go to great lengths to discover just what that inconsistency is. You did not see him in the garden earlier.”

Dominic set his arms around Ivy’s shoulder and drew her against him. “What could he possibly do?”

Ivy sat straight up, knocking Dominic’s arms from her. “Expose us both. If my father hears the details of my plan to win back Tinsdale, the lengths to which I have gone, he will disown me forever!” She sat up on her knees. “And Dominic, he could make it worse for you. Impersonating a peer is illegal. All Tinsdale would need to do is to speak to some of his cronies at the courts, and you could be thrown into Newgate! Dominic, we have to stop now. You have to leave London. Disappear. It’s the only way I know you will be safe!”

“I can’t.” Dominic reached out and pulled Ivy against him. “I can’t leave you—ever. I love you. I have no fear of Tinsdale and his connections at all.”

“But I do! Please, Dominic, pack your bag, go—and leave me to the future that is expected of a proper Sinclair.”

“No. Ivy, trust me. Trust your heart. Forget everything else because it doesn’t matter. Trust me.”

She stared up him, wanting to believe him, needing to trust him. Her fingers caressed his cheek as she opened her mouth to reply when Dominic suddenly tumbled her back onto the bed of straw and leaned over her mouth and kissed her.

Ivy moaned with pleasure. It was so easy for him to make her forget the rest of the world…the complicated lives she’d foolishly constructed for them. But she didn’t regret anything she’d done. For had she been more responsible, less audacious and daring, she would have never met Dominic.

But then, a set of rusty hinges screamed behind them, and the caravan’s plank door opened wide.

They sat up, their eyes blinking and burning as their vision adjusted to the bright torchlight in front of the door.

“Who’s in there? Ah, a couple of lovers, eh?” The old man standing on the top stair of the caravan was nearly toothless. His clothes were colorful but nearly threadbare, and he smelled strongly of drink. “Well, I’m not rentin’ a love nest. This is Ginger’s bed, so get your bleedin’ selves out!”

Ivy stared, stunned, as a huge Tamworth pig trod up the stairs behind the old man and peered into the caravan. Ginger, the pig, squealed loudly, startling Ivy to her feet in an instant.

As Ivy and Dominic moved forward, the pig charged straight in. They leaped to the side to give her room as she angled herself, then flopped down heavily on her side.

Ivy and Dominic squeezed past the old man and descended the steps. They both stared at each other mutely in astonishment, until Dominic pointed at the painted side of the caravan.

Ginger, the learned pig

Ivy cupped her hand over her mouth, but neither she nor Dominic could stifle their laughter as they walked around to the front of the row of brightly colored tents.

“Ivy, look this way!” Priscilla called out to them. Ivy glanced about until she noticed Siusan beside the elephant ring, pointing into its center.

“Gorblimey!” Ivy slipped her hand into the crook of Dominic’s arm and hurried them both to the ring. Priscilla was perched atop the huge elephant, seated on a satin mat as though she were riding a palfrey. She waved down to them, giggling, then looked suddenly worried and grabbed at the harness with both hands to maintain her balance. “Lud, I cannot believe she spent an entire guinea to ride an elephant around a ring.”

Siusan reached over and exaggeratedly plucked two pieces of straw from Ivy’s hair. “Some of us spend what little we have on elephant rides. Others”—she brushed a tangle of straw from Dominic’s shoulder and looked back at Ivy—“on lovers.”

Ivy flushed. “Though some would say certain guineas were better spent.” She glanced up at Dominic through her lashes, and a tiny smile budded on her lips.

The envious man thinks that if his neighbor breaks a leg, he will be able to walk better himself.

Helmut Schoeck

The next morning
The Sinclair residence
Grosvenor Square

Thunder woke Ivy early the next day, well before the Sinclairs’ usual time to rise—just before their noon-hour breakfast. Yawning, she started to open her eyes, but had to squeeze them shut again against the bright daylight…which seemed rather odd given the volume of the thunder. She opened one eyelid. Sun was shining through her window and a robin chirped on the branch just outside. She opened the other eye, then sat up.
p. The sound of thunder rolled through the house, upstairs perhaps, and she could hear her brothers shouting frantically to one another.

There was a rumble of footsteps on the staircase, then someone pounded on her door. And then across the passage on Siusan’s and Priscilla’s too. She leaped from her pallet, ran to the door, and flung it open.

Poplin stood in the center of the passage, as if he were waiting for all three doors to open. “Your father. He sent a footman with a card—he is in London and will be here—at noon!” His hands shook nervously, shaking tiny dust clouds from the featherduster in his grip.

“Da is coming?” Priscilla, her face blanching, tore back inside her room.

“Lord Grant sent me to rouse everyone. It is already half past eleven.” Poplin spun around and hurried back down the passage muttering something about Mrs. Wimpole and the baker.

Siusan stared mutely at Ivy, then they both raced into their bedchambers to prepare themselves for their father’s arrival.

The Duke of Sinclair had mentioned that he had an agent who provided him with weekly reports about the goings-on at the Sinclairs’ Grosvenor Square residence. Neither Ivy nor her brothers or sisters knew who this agent was, or how information was collected. It was for this reason that the Sinclair family shared very little with anyone outside the house, and yet, even so, the detail of events echoed in their father’s letters was often startlingly precise.

For a time, they pointed accusing fingers at one another. That is, until it was pointed out by Sterling, before he accidentally ingratiated himself with his father, that the reports painted them all with an equally harsh brush of truth.

Ivy and her two sisters sat rigidly on the blue settee while their brothers stood shoulder to shoulder before the window, waiting for their father to speak. He sat in a small chair beside a cold hearth, which clearly aggravated him even though the day was quite mild.

The Duke of Sinclair looked at each of his children with an air of disappointment…until his eyes fell upon Ivy. And then, to everyone’s astonishment, he smiled warmly at her.

Ivy’s shoulders relaxed. Clearly, he did not know about her ruse, else he’d be marching her to the street just now.

He raised his hand and summoned one of his three liveried footmen to his side. The footman withdrew a letter from a leather pouch and handed it to the duke.

Grant, who, like Ivy, was probably worried that their father was about to read aloud from another dreaded report, gave her a quizzical glance. She replied with an almost imperceptible shrug.

The duke cleared his throat, then shook open the letter and set his spectacles atop his nose. “I received a missive, penned nearly a month ago, from Viscount Tinsdale.” He looked over the bridge of his spectacles at Ivy as if waiting for her to tell everyone what the letter said. But she had absolutely no idea. If Tinsdale sent the letter a month ago, it might have been either before Miss Feeney stole his fancy—or after. She felt her back stiffening again.

“He requested an interview with me at my earliest convenience, which was not until now, to discuss his suitability as a husband for my daughter, Ivy.” He peered at her again.

Ivy could do naught but swallow and peer back. This was a complete surprise. Tinsdale had not said a word about petitioning her father for her hand.

“I must say, he is of fine stock, a solid, respectable, landed family. I wish I could say his financial standing was as solid, but your generous portion will be more than adequate to sustain his properties both in Town and out.”

“M-my portion?” Ivy stood. “I have no portion—anymore.”

“But you will again, assuming this Tinsdale fellow is as suitable as my agent believes. I sent a card to Lord Tinsdale this morn, and he had agreed to meet with me here at one of the clock.” He tipped his spectacles and studied Ivy’s appearance. “Do change into something more appropriate for the daughter of a duke, Ivy.” He looked at her sisters. “I would greatly appreciate it if the two of you assisted her. You might learn something from Ivy.”

“Learn something?” Priscilla came to her feet and Ivy shook with fear that her sister was going to tell their father all about Ivy’s outrageous ruse.