The Sweetest Revenge (31 page)

They’d written to her. Because they cared about her. She wouldn’t let anyone take that away from her. Never again.

She gathered them to her breast. “I’ll be thanking you to never touch my correspondence in the future.”

Aunt Una’s gaunt fingers snaked out, trying to snatch the papers away, but Isabelle was faster.

“You will no longer be allowed to receive correspondence of any kind,” Uncle Ewan said.

She hugged the sheaf to her chest. “I’ll be going to read these now. I will speak with you later.”

“You will
not
read them.” Her uncle took a step forward, clearly fighting for control. He looked as if he wanted to choke her. She wasn’t afraid.

“You will throw those into the fire,” he growled. “And then you will go upstairs for yer birching.”

She was not concerned about his threats. All that concerned her were the letters she had rescued. Her only regret was that one page had gone up in flames. She held his gaze fearlessly. “Nay.”

“Oh Lord,” Aunt Una simpered. “No modesty, no shame. Och, the devil’s got into her.”

Uncle Ewan looked awestruck. “I think he has, Una.”

“I will read my letters now,” Isabelle said softly.

Her uncle was speechless. She supposed her flagrant disobedience shocked him. She never contradicted him, much less disobeyed him. But today he had sought to take her only lifeline away. She would not allow it.

She turned and, with a straight back, marched out of the room and down the corridor.

“Isabelle, come back here this instant!” Aunt Una screeched. “Come back!”

She grabbed her cloak from its hook.

“Isabelle!”

She opened the front door.

“Return at once, Isabelle!”

Head high, she stepped outside, down the path, and onto the road, sheltering her precious letters in the woolen folds of her cloak.

Only when she was beyond view of the house did it hit her what she had done. A shudder began in the center of her belly and spread through her limbs. She stumbled off the road, sloshed through a puddle. Cold water seeped through her shoes and stockings. She sank down onto the stone wall bordering her uncle’s lands, clutching the letters, shaking all over.

The air was thick with rain. Mist shrouded the distant, green, rolling hills. Sodden sheep speckled the landscape, standing dumbly about, paying her no heed. The pages rustled against her body. Her breath hitched, sounding loud and irregular in her ears.

She had no money, no way of going back to England to solicit Susan’s or Great-Aunt Mary’s assistance. That left her with two options. She could make her way to Inverness and beg, or she could return to Uncle Ewan’s.

Nobody in Inverness would help her. Why would they? She would end up on the streets.

But if she went back, Uncle Ewan would beat her and burn all her letters. He would force her to stay inside and wouldn’t allow her to correspond with her only friends in the world.

Susan was right. She should have stayed in London. If only she were there, if only she had a chance to make the decision all over again, she would never have come back here. She would do whatever anyone asked of her to keep her life there.

She had behaved like such a martyr, sacrificing any hope of happiness for dreams of impossible love and a life of loneliness and despair.

She was a fool. A stupid, stupid woman.

Nay, she wouldn’t go back to her uncle. If her time in London had taught her anything, it had taught her that living with Uncle Ewan was not living. She would return to London, to the people she loved and who loved her in return. Somehow she would find her way back.

But first, her letters. Withdrawing the papers from her cloak, Isabelle straightened them with still-shaking fingers, trying to prevent the ink from running. Everything was wet. Wetness blurred her vision, then streamed down her face.

Giving up on organizing the letters, she clutched them to her chest again to keep them dry, rocked back and forth on the hard stone wall, and cried.

She cried all her weakness away, all her pain. She cried away Leo—what he had done to her and what she had done to him. With each salty drop that slipped down her face, she felt the evils of the past seven years drain from her body.

She was a grown woman, a strong woman, a woman with friends. She would find a way.

Somewhere in the distance, she heard a scraping and rattling. It grew louder. She looked up, blinking through her tears. A black form emerged from the mist. A carriage, bumping over the potholes in the uneven road, approached from the direction of town, heading toward her uncle’s house.

The old Isabelle might have cowered behind the wall, but the new Isabelle stared boldly at the carriage as it passed, knowing she looked wild and unkempt, knowing tears made streaks down her face.

A few yards past her, the carriage jolted to a stop. The door opened, and then one shiny black boot appeared, then another.

Leo
, her heart cried out, reaching, hoping.
Leo!

Philip Sutherland emerged from the carriage.

Of course it wasn’t Leo. She had wasted a third of her life pining for that man. But he hadn’t come. He wasn’t real.

Phil Sutherland was real. He strode toward her with purposeful steps, allowing his perfectly clean, perfectly shiny boots to become soiled so he could reach her.

He
had come for her.

He stopped in front of her. Bravely, she gazed up at his handsome face. His eyes were wide, his mouth agape. His expression transformed from concern to rage, and back to concern again.

“Isabelle. Good God, Isabelle, what have they done to you?”

“Phil.” She burst into fresh tears and walked into his open arms, still clutching the letters to her chest.

***

Isabelle didn’t want to go to her uncle’s to fetch her things, so she and Phil left with nothing but her letters and the ragged clothing on her back. The letters were her most valuable possessions, and beyond those, as Uncle Ewan had said, nothing truly belonged to her.

Isabelle sat mutely all the way to Inverness. Phil left her alone, staring out the window at the rain, seemingly occupied by his own thoughts. They arrived in the center of the bustling town late in the afternoon. The carriage stopped in the yard of a pretty inn with blue eaves and shutters.

Phil rented two rooms across the hall from each other and accompanied her to the door of hers. Taking her hand, he pressed the key into it, closed her fist, and brought it to his mouth and kissed it softly.

“I have some things to attend to,” he said. “I trust you find the lodgings satisfactory?”

She nodded, not having the first idea how to express her thanks.

“May I request your presence at dinner?”

“Of course,” she murmured.

“Six o’clock in the dining room?”

“That would be…fine.” She wondered idly how she could possibly make herself presentable by then.

He nodded, kissed her closed fist again, then released it, turned and walked down the hall.

Once ensconced in her chamber, a fresh-smelling place with a neatly made sleigh bed covered with warm plaids, a comfortable, chintz-upholstered chair, and trim, clean fireplace—the best room in the house, the innkeeper had proclaimed—she spread the pages of the coveted letters over the bed and put them in order.

Anna wrote that she and Lord Archer were as happy as clams. She wrote of all the exciting places she had gone with her lover. She said if only Isabelle was in London, life would be perfection.

Susan wrote that she and Pierre had stopped arguing and her nights with him had become very pleasurable indeed. She described the slow return of the old camaraderie she shared with Lord Archer, who spent more and more evenings with Anna at her house. She wrote about her son Harry, who would be traveling to London for Christmas. The missing page was from Susan, and as far as Isabelle could determine, it had contained gossip about the goings-on in Town.

Isabelle set the letters on the table near the upholstered armchair and wished she had some means to respond. It wasn’t necessary, really. She would be back in London soon enough. That knowledge sent a shiver down her spine, a combined sensation of terror and excitement.

She looked down at herself. Mud covered her shoes and stockings, well up her shins. Her dress fit her like a sack, drab in color and ill-made. Her hair had come down around her shoulders. It was amazing they had let her into this establishment looking as she did. It was amazing Phil hadn’t turned tail and fled right back to London after setting eyes on her.

But Phil hadn’t turned tail. He had behaved like a gentleman from the moment she joined him in the carriage. He seemed to have interpreted her needs and adhered to them. He did not try to kiss her or touch her in an inappropriate fashion—he had hardly spoken to her at all. If he had, she surely would not have known what to say or how to express her thanks.

Actually, Isabelle reflected, any touching he decided to engage in would at this point be appropriate, considering what he had done for her.

Still, he hadn’t tried, and her esteem for him grew by the hour. Only providence could have caused him to appear when he did. Surely it held a deeper meaning. Perhaps it meant that in the end, they were destined for each other.

A knock on the door heralded the entry of a reedy, red-haired, and freckled lass, primly dressed in an apron and a white frock with a white cap placed squarely upon her blazing curls. “I’m Ailis, miss. Mr. Sutherland’s hired me on as yer lady’s maid. I’m to be at yer beck and call until ye’re safely arrived in London.”

Crossing her arms over her skinny chest, she looked Isabelle up and down, turned on her heel, and returned moments later with two men hauling a bathtub.

While she scrubbed Isabelle’s hair until her scalp tingled, Ailis said Mr. Sutherland was paying her right fine and covering her expenses all the way back to Inverness, but maybe she wouldn’t come home to Inverness after all; maybe she’d take all that fine money Mr. Sutherland was paying her and see what she could make of herself in London.

Isabelle, exhausted beyond reason, managed to work up enough energy to convince the lass, who was only fifteen, for heaven’s sake, to consider returning to her family in Inverness. When the bath was over, she fell into the warm bed, asking Ailis to wake her at half past five.

Ailis did as she was told and came in at the appointed hour, rousing Isabelle with her singsong voice. “Now would ye look at this, Miss Frasier, yer man has brung ye the finest gowns in all of Scotland, he has.”

Dropping her armful of parcels to the chair, she opened one, took out a spotted white muslin, and shook it out, holding it before her. Rubbing her eyes, Isabelle rose to sit on the edge of the bed.

Ailis moved right and left, pinned the gown to Isabelle’s shoulders, and whistled through her teeth. “Sure now, this’ll fit as if it were made for ye.”

Half an hour later, Isabelle descended to the dining room, her hair up in a loose twist, wearing the gown over a new petticoat, new stays, new chemise, new stockings, new shoes. A new pearl necklace hung around her throat, with matching pearl earrings clasped to her ears. Phil had generously purchased it all, and she had not asked for any of it.

Philip Sutherland had bought her. All Isabelle could wonder now was when he’d choose to collect the goods.

She entered the boisterous dining room. Scots, some with wives and children, ate their supper, laughing over whiskey and ale. Phil was seated at a table in the far corner of the room. He stood out from the lively crowd. Nobody else was as well dressed, as put together, as contained as he. He rose from his chair as she approached and reached out his hand. She took it, that old shyness heating her cheeks as she gazed downward.

His gaze wandered over her body. “Lovely.”

“Thank you.” She gestured at herself. “For all of this. It wasn’t necessary.”

It was a ridiculous thing to say, since of course it
was
necessary, if she wished to be seen with him.

He pulled out a chair for her and ordered their food. They waited in silence, though his questioning gaze spoke volumes.

Once the wine, chestnut-stuffed quails, and beef rolls arrived, he placed his hands flat on the table and said in a very soft voice, “Isabelle, I want you to be with me…I want you to be
mine
…when we return to London.”

She looked down at her lap, feeling so broken she could hardly breathe. “Aye, Phil. I will be…happy to have you. I am sorry I…I refused you before. I assure you it will not happen again.”

It wouldn’t, she resolved. She would be his mistress. She would give herself to him as generously as he had given to her. It did not matter that she did not love him. She liked him, and that was a gift in itself.

“I am relieved.” He twirled the stem of his wineglass between his fingers. “I am quite…taken with you, you see. I know you have not reciprocated my feelings but I hope, in time…”

As his voice trailed off, she looked past his shoulder for a long moment. A jovial-looking man with a tall thatch of curly black hair caught her eye and winked broadly.

“I am very fond of you, Phil.” She met his eyes but could not hold them. She dipped her gaze to her food.

“You’re distraught.” He reached across the table and opened his palm.

She clasped his offered hand. Anyone who saw them would think they were lovers. She didn’t care.

“I’ll wait, Isabelle. I’ll wait until we’re in London.”

She swallowed hard. “That is most kind of you.”

“I know you dislike it here. You are unhappy. When we are together, I want it to be special.”

She was clearly deranged. Any woman in her right mind would be head over heels in love with this man. “You are the kindest, most generous person I have ever known.”

“In London, though, I want you to be mine and mine alone.”

He also had the ability to be quite direct. Blushing like a virgin, she nodded.

“I will rent you a house when we get home. Somewhere close to my own.”

“Thank you,” she said softly. “I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve all your kindnesses. I am truly overwhelmed.”