To Sin With A Stranger (12 page)

“No accident,” Isobel replied, then tugged at Christiana’s arm to propel her into a forward gait. “I think the reason for the gathering is quite deliberate.”

Christiana looked quizzically at Isobel. “What, other than some sort of accident, could bring such an odd collection of people together?” She raised a finger beyond the protection of the umbrella until a large, cold raindrop plopped atop it and disappeared far beneath her sleeve, causing her to wiggle and shake for an instant. “A chimney-sweep, a shopkeeper, a general, I think…two maids, and, my word, my father’s physician!”

“Oh, they all have reason to be standing on the corner in the rain,” Isobel confided. “They are here to place a bet—on me, well, and Lord Blackburn as well.” She suddenly stopped and pulled Christiana back against a building. “We cannot go any closer, for I do not wish to be observed.”

“Do you mean all of these people, from all parts of London, are here to enter in the wager at White’s?” Christiana shook her head. “Impossible. Look at that gathering. I do not see one possible member of White’s.”

“As of last evening, apparently, membership is no longer a requirement to place a bet on this one particular wager.” Isobel tilted the umbrella back again, sending a sheet of water over Christiana’s backside.

“Oh! Issy, watch what you are doing!” Christiana reached behind herself and grasped a handful of her calico skirt to squeeze the water from it. “Why are we here if you already knew of this?”

“Because I wanted to see for myself,” Isobel muttered. “Somehow I had nearly convinced myself that it was not true. That our maid had been mistaken.”

Isobel peered at the two gentlemen standing in the center of the crowd. A bear of a liveried footman stood exposed to rain while holding an ivory-handled wide umbrella over a squat man writing in a heavy book.

By happenstance, at that very moment, the shorter gentleman turned his head just enough that Isobel was able to discern his distinctive profile. It was Mr. Raggett, the master of the house at White’s. She had attended a dinner party at which she clearly recalled being introduced to him. He was brusque and not the sort someone would easily forget. Isobel brought her hand to her mouth. If the man on the corner was Mr. Raggett, then the book he held could not be anything other than White’s infamous betting book.

She watched Mr. Raggett work for several moments. He listened briefly to each person, one by one, jotted something in the book, and then turned the book to the bettor for a signature or mark if that was all the bettor could provide.

Suddenly a hackney cab turned the corner, but instead of continuing onto Piccadilly Street, it stopped abruptly as the driver reined in the horses toward the pavers.

“Someone does not want to miss out on the chance to enter this wager,” Christiana said. “Lud, if we’d been standing nearer the street, we might have been run down.”

No one disembarked; however, Isobel heard her name being called through the partially opened window. “Miss Carington. Good day! Miss Carington.”

Isobel glanced confusedly at Christiana, and warily the two young women walked over to where the hackney had stopped.

The window snapped down farther, and though Isobel tried to see who was inside, it was too dark. “You should get in” came a young woman’s voice from the interior—a voice marked by a distinctive Scottish burr.
Oh God.
The woman was certainly a Sinclair.

“Miss Carington, you and Miss Whitebeard are getting wet,” the woman called out to them.

“We have an umbrella,” Isobel replied softly. “It will suffice.”

“Och, just get in and hear me out. If you still wish to squish your way home to Leicester Square in soggy boots, you may do so. At least show me the courtesy of listening to what I have to say.” A face appeared on the other side of the foggy window. Isobel could see that gloved fingers struggled with the latches, but the window would not be opened any farther. “Gads,” the voice ground out, before swinging the door to the cab open.

Inside sat a tall, beautiful woman with silky red hair.

Christiana leaned her mouth to Isobel’s ear. “It is Lady Ivy—one of the
Sinclairs
.” A muted squeal of excitement slipped through her lips.

Isobel swallowed nervously, all too aware that her surreptitious arrival was likely no coincidence at all. Had Lady Ivy followed them from Leicester Square? “Good day, Lady Ivy. May I ask what you wish to discuss?”

“Nay, you cannot. Just get in.” She beckoned and slid across the leather bench.

My, Isobel thought, aside from their commanding height, the trait every Sinclair she’d chanced to meet shared was extreme confidence.

Christiana wasted not an instant boarding the carriage. “It is dry in here, Issy. Stop being a stubborn goose. Get in.”

Isobel collapsed her umbrella, then with a parting look at the crowd beyond, she stepped up into the hackney.

“You really were being a goose,” Lady Ivy said bluntly.

“I beg your pardon?” Why did it surprise Isobel that a female Sinclair would be no more mannered than Lord Blackburn? Lady Ivy, like her brother, seemed to have no reluctance to say exactly what entered her mind at the very moment.

Lady Ivy swapped her place for the rear facing seat and rapped with her knuckles upon the cab wall. The hackney driver snapped a whip, and the cab lurched forward. “You
were
being so daft! What were you thinking?” Lady Ivy shook her head at the two of them and gave them a most disappointed look. “I was merely passing by, and I saw the two of you lurking near the bookmaker’s. You both make very poor spies, I tell you that. Why, another moment and someone else might have recognized you as well—an
on dit
columnist perhaps. How would that have been, eh? Or do you enjoy seeing your exploits reported in the newspaper?”

Judging by the sheepish expression on her face, Christiana seemed almost embarrassed for Isobel. “She is correct, Issy. It might have looked like
you
were wishing to place a bet on the corner.”

“But I wasn’t!” She turned her head to face Lady Ivy next to her. “Lady Ivy, I tell you, I wasn’t. I only wanted to see for myself that it was true—that the wager has been opened to all of London.”

Lady Ivy smirked. “Och, it is true. The wager is open to the world. My brothers heard about it last night at the ball. Sterling was so angered by it that he ordered all of us to leave the ball at once before the
ton
learned of it—who knows what games they might have played with you both had we not quit the ball.”

Isobel’s mouth fell open and remained that way until Christiana reached across their laps and, with the tips of her fingers, forced it closed again. Isobel blinked. “So I didn’t do anything to offend your brother—to cause him to leave Partridge House.”

Lady Ivy chuckled. “Why would you have thought that?”

“Well,” Christiana offered, “the newspaper column said so.”

Lady Ivy clapped her hand over her mouth to stifle an uproarious laugh. “Och, you are very innocent, aren’t you both? We Sinclairs never pay any heed to what the
on dit
columns print about us. The columnists are much more interested in entertaining than reporting anything remotely approaching the truth. The sooner you learn this, the better.”

Isobel and Christiana traded shocked stares, unable to respond.

The hackney jerked to a halt. “Ah, here we are, Grosvenor Square,” Lady Ivy announced.

The door of the hackney opened, and a gray-haired manservant hurried from the house and offered Isobel a hand.

Isobel flashed her eyes at Lady Ivy. “Wh-where are we?”

Lady Ivy rose from the seat and moved past Isobel to take the old man’s hand to step down. “My home. Won’t you come inside and dry off? We can take our tea in the fore-parlor by the fire. Come now.”

Christiana grinned. “Well, I’m going with her. You can sit here and wait if you like, Issy, but a fire and tea sounds delightful to me just now.” Christiana leaped up and stepped from the hackney.

A little squeak of a voice in Isobel’s head told her to walk to Leicester Square if she must, but as she often seemed to do, she ignored the warning.

She too climbed down the steps to the carriage and followed Lady Ivy into No. 1 Grosvenor Square.

It never even once occurred to her that a long-nosed columnist might have been standing beneath an umbrella on the corner.

Nor that he might have observed her entering the home of the man half of Society thought she would marry—Lord Blackburn.

Thousands upon thousands are yearly brought into a state of real poverty by their great anxiety not to be thought of as poor.

Mallett

Sterling had just reached the landing of the first floor when dulcet female voices, drifting like perfume up the staircase, met his ears. His pulse quickened, and he paused to listen. These were not the familiar Scottish tones of his sisters. Nor did the soft words belong to Mrs. Wimpole.

He crept as quietly as he could down to the ground floor, but the old stair treads groaned under his feet just the same. The voices stopped before he reached the passage. Resting his back against the wall, he remained still and listened.

“I should greatly enjoy meeting such a…well, I will say it, such an infamous gentleman as Lord Elgin,” said a voice that was not unknown to Sterling, but he could not dress it with a name. “Certainly I have heard about the Parthenon marbles, but have not had the opportunity to actually view them for myself. It would be most diverting to have the opportunity to discuss their acquisition with Lord Elgin.”

“Well, it is settled then.” He recognized the lilting voice as Ivy’s. Sterling smiled, withholding the urge to chuckle. His clever sister had actually convinced someone it was safe enough to call upon the Sinclairs.

He straightened his waistcoat and moved to the doorway to greet her guests as any hospitable head of the household should. “And you will join us as well, Miss Carington?” Ivy added.

At the mention of her name, Sterling’s lungs seized. His throat felt as though it was closing upon itself, and he started to choke. He coiled his fingers and brought his hand to his mouth, but a hail of coughs assailed him, making his presence instantly known to the ladies.

Before he could form a word, Isobel’s huge doe eyes turned upon him, and her pink lips parted, moving as though she too grasped for words.

The memory of her soft kiss, the one she’d so wished to pretend had not happened in the garden, fixed in his mind. Unbidden, his gaze went to her lips.

Ivy smiled delightedly. “Och, ladies, look there, it is my dear brother Sterling.” She settled her teacup on the small table before the flickering fire, then rose and approached him. “Sterling, I did not know that you had returned from Gentleman Jackson’s saloon. I thought you were sparring until this evening to prepare for the battle at Fives Court.”

She glanced at Isobel and the other young woman, as if to be sure that they understood that she did not expect him to be at home.

But Sterling had never planned to spar this day, and Ivy had no reason to expect that he would. As his coughing subsided, he lifted an eyebrow at Ivy, to let her, if not the others in the room, know that she was not half so clever as she thought herself to be in bringing Miss Carington and him together once again.

The ladies hurried to their feet. Sterling stepped into the doorway of the fore-parlor and bowed, his eyes never once leaving Isobel’s own. “Miss Carington.” An urge to go to her charged unexpectedly through his body, but his mind’s counsel won his favor. He remained standing in the doorway.

Isobel tipped her head and honored him with a graceful curtsy.

He turned to the other young lady. “I do apologize for my lack of formality, but other than knowing that Miss Carington calls you Christiana, I do not know how to address you properly.”

Ivy stepped quickly into the breach. “Sterling, may I present to you Miss Christiana Whitebeard?”

The young woman’s lashes fluttered as she nervously pushed a lock of reddish-gold hair over her ear. “My lord.” She stepped away from her gilt chair, bowed her head, and curtsied.

“It is so kind of you to call upon my sister,” he managed to utter before his gaze drifted to Isobel once more.

The tenseness in the small fore-parlor was palpable to all, but only Ivy had the audacity and pluck to seek to disperse it. “Actually, Sterling, I found our dear friends here drowning in the rain on the corner of St. James’s and Piccadilly. It was my duty to rescue them and bring them here for tea and a fire to set their skirts to dry.” She grinned meaningfully at him.

“The corner of St. James’s and Piccadilly, you say?”
Christ
. Isobel obviously had heard that the wager had been thrown wide to the public. Why, though, would she have gone to the betting corner? “The lure of shopping must have been great to draw the two of you out on such a miserable, wet day at this one.”

“Oh, look at us all standing about like palace guards when there is hyson tea to be had. Please, let us all sit down…so our necks will not get crooks from having to look all the way up at my tall brother.” Lady Ivy gestured for everyone to be seated again. She patted madly on a fourth chair, but Sterling did not sit down.

Christiana folded her hands atop her lap. “Actually, my lord, we did not venture into a single shop—if you can believe it.”

Isobel’s eyes went impossibly wide, and hot color suffused her cheeks.

Sterling did not miss Isobel’s heightened reaction, and furrowed his brow. He was about to press Miss Whitebeard into explaining herself when Isobel leaped into the awkward breach in conversation.

“N-no, we didn’t manage to shop at all. The rain ended our day of shopping before it even began, I fear.” Her eyes darted between Sterling and the cup of steaming tea she held in her hands. “Thankfully, Lady Ivy spied us from a hackney. Else we might have been washed all the way to the Thames.” The weak smile she managed to foist to her mouth quivered, and she bit into her lower lip as if to fix it into place.

He could not bring himself to look away from Isobel, though he was firmly aware that his mere presence in the house completely unnerved her. His gaze was distracted by a droplet of water clinging to the ringlet of her golden hair. As she seemed to become more aware of his attention, her breathing quickened again, making the bulb of water quiver and roll until it dangled from a single hair.