To Sin With A Stranger (22 page)

“St-Sterling?” she stammered. “
Please
. Tell my father you are wrongly accused!”

“Darling,” her father finally said, “he cannot answer, because he
is
responsible for the wager—the largest wager in White’s history.”

Isobel moved slowly from her chair and came to stand directly before Sterling.
No, this is impossible. I do not believe it.
Hot tears filled her eyes. Why would he not say something, anything, to defend himself from this accusation?

“Do you not understand, Miss Carington?” Payne Knight asked. “He does not wish to marry you. He doesn’t love you. He
used
you to win the wager.” He smirked at Sterling. “What did you expect? He is a Sinclair, after all.”

“Sterling?” Her voice broke. “It’s not true. It cannot be. Say it is not so!” Streams of tears coursed down her cheeks and dripped from her jaw as she pleaded with him. Droplets like rain speckled the lapels of her crimson walking dress.

Sterling grasped her shoulders. His eyes welled with emotion. “I am sorry, Isobel. It is true. I am the source of the anonymous wager at White’s.”

Isobel gasped, and her knees buckled beneath her.

Sterling caught her and held her, crumpled in his arms as she was, staring, pleading for another word that might redeem him. “After you slapped me at Almack’s, I knew no one would ever believe that you would come to…love me. No one would ever believe that you would wish to marry a brute like me.”

Her father gestured to Mr. Leake, who leaped from his chair and removed Isobel from Sterling’s arms and settled her in his own chair beside Sir Richard Payne Knight. Sterling looked wholly stunned as her father then grabbed his muscular arm and led him into the passage. “Lord Blackburn, I beg you to leave now, before you cause my daughter any further distress.”

Alton, the manservant, opened the front door and assisted the master of the house in escorting Sterling outside and down to the pavers.

“But I must explain myself! Isobel, you must listen!” came Sterling’s voice from the front walk. “Isobel, please!” The front door slammed closed, and she heard the metallic click of the lock moving into place.

Her father entered the library looking all too pleased with himself.

Isobel pushed up from the chair in which Leake had placed her and started from the library. Her limbs felt weighted and her heart pounded in her ears.

Her father followed her into the passageway, and when her hand reached the newel post at the bottom of the stairs, he reached a hand out to her. “Isobel, please understand. He would only bring us more embarrassment. I have my career to consider.”

She pulled away from him, dislodging the last remaining tear from her lashes, dispatching it down her cheek. “Why do you hate me so much, Father?” she asked. His features suddenly went lax, but he did not say a word to dispel her notion.

Without looking back, Isobel ascended the dark stairs. Her heart was void of happiness, filled instead with an unbearable level of despair.

For the first time, Isobel understood the existence of a sadness so great that her mother might have wished to take her own life rather than live with the horrible pain of loss.

But Isobel was not her mother.

And it was not as though she had not learned to live without love. She had. A long time ago.

And she would do it again.

All earthly joy begins pleasantly, but at the end it gnaws and kills.

Thomas à Kempis

[_The next morning _
The Sinclair residence
Grosvenor Square

The door of Sterling’s garret crashed open, waking him from a whisky-induced sleep. Then he heard the pound of boots stalking heavily across the room toward him. The breaking of glass, the spin of a bottle on the bare floor.

“Damn it to Hades!” came Grant’s voice.

He whisked the curtains wide, and bolts of white light seemed to cut into Sterling’s brain.

“Get up, Sterling! Get up and tell me what the hell you’ve done.” Grant tore the threadbare coverlet off Sterling’s back and thrust his boot to the pallet support, knocking Sterling from the bed to the floor.

Sterling crawled up onto his hands and knees, and growled. “Get out of here, Grant, before I make you regret ever being born.”

Grant slapped Sterling’s chest with his palms. “Do you think you are in any shape to take me on, Sterling? Well, come on. I would welcome a good reason to knock some sense into you.”

Sterling reached out for the pallet and pulled up to sit upon it. He ran his hands over his throbbing head, then rubbed an index finger and a thumb over his eyes. Opening his lids, he looked at the broken glass on the floor, and the empty bottle. “We’re down to six short glasses now. Since you broke the glass, Grant, you will be the one forced to wait until the rest of us have finished our drinks before taking a nip yourself.”

“And are
you
finished drinking now, Sterling?” Grant snapped. “Or are you going to be like Father and hunt down another bottle to see you through the day?”

Rage boiled up inside Sterling. He lunged toward Grant, but his brother simply stepped out of the way. Sterling stumbled, just managing to catch himself by snagging the open door of the clothing cabinet.

“Look, man, I don’t know exactly what happened last evening, but the newspaper column is reporting”—Grant pulled a folded newspaper from inside his coat—“that ‘Mr. Cornelius C. of Leicester Square has announced that his daughter, Miss C., will not marry, and has never truthfully considered marrying, the Scottish marquess, Lord B.’”

“That’s a damned lie.” He pushed himself to a wobbly stand.

Grant raised a quieting hand. “There is more. ‘Furthermore, Lord B. has confided to a member of the Society of Dilettanti that an agent, acting in his stead and under his expressed order, is in truth the originating source of the popular wager concerning a late summer wedding between himself and Miss C.’”

Sterling coughed up a laugh. “Well, they got that part right, except the bit about confiding in that pompous Sir Richard Payne Knight. He just happened to be one who was given the pleasure of revealing my involvement in the wager—while Isobel was in the room.”

“Well, that’s it then.” Grant sighed. “It’s all over now. It is only a matter of time until White’s closes the betting on the marriage wager, and allows those already made to be withdrawn if the bettor requests it. Hell, the money we escrowed to secure the wager will likely have to be forfeited. And we’d have no way to pay our bills. Face the morn, Sterling. We are as good as paupers.”

Sterling looked up. “I never said I would forfeit the battle at Fives Court. There is still the victor’s purse if I win.”

“And one less mouth to feed if you are killed during the prizefight. Aye, it’s win, win, all right.” Grant clapped his hands to his head and shoved his hands through his hair in utter frustration. “Are you still completely foxed, Sterling? You cannot fight that man. He’s already killed two people, and you are hardly more than a lucky amateur.”

“I need the money.” A cool stillness draped over Sterling, and his skin began to feel a little clammy. “I am going to fight.”

“Sterling, we
all
need the money, but it’s not worth risking your bluidy life. We’ll find another way.” Grant walked over to Sterling and shook him, but Sterling crumpled to the floor, and there he sat, knees bent beneath him.

“Nay, there isn’t.”

“Christ, there is no talking sense into you.” Grant stared down at Sterling in disgust, then turned around and stomped out of the garret.

When the sound of Grant’s footfall all but disappeared from his ears, Sterling crawled to the loose floorboard and pried it up with his fingernails. He reached deep inside the opening, fumbling around until he felt the crumpled pamphlet between his fingers. He slowly withdrew it from the hiding place, then peered down at it earnestly.

“I
need
the money,” he said softly to himself. “And I will get it…for her.”

At the same morning hour
Isobel’s bedchamber

Isobel lay curled on her side on the tester bed, her arms wrapped around her feather pillow as Bluebell sat on the edge of mattress, patting her back, trying to soothe and calm her. But her efforts did no good.

She still wore her crimson walking dress, not having moved from the bed to which she had retreated last night. Her tears had long since run dry, but her heart still ached miserably.

“How could I have been so entirely wrong about him?” she asked more of herself than of Bluebell.

“Were you wrong? About what, may I ask, miss?” Bluebell grasped Isobel’s shoulder and abruptly pulled her over to face her. “About the wager?”

“Well, yes. He was responsible for placing the wager; he admitted as much.” She covered her eyes with her hands. “He was only using me to win an obscene wager. How blind I was.”

Bluebell scoffed at that. “I—I don’t quite understand, miss. Does admitting to one convict him of the other?”

Isobel whisked her hands away. “Shouldn’t it?”

“Not the way I see it.” She took Isobel’s nearer hand and squeezed it. “Miss Isobel, you always see the good in people. Didn’t you see it in the Scotsman?”

“Certainly I did,” she said. “Why else would I have given my heart to him?” Isobel’s question was sincere; already she was beginning to understand her error in judging Sterling’s heart when it was only the wager at White’s he had admitted.

“Forgive me for saying so, miss, but the talk from the above stairs ladies is that he looked at you with love in his eyes.”

Isobel sat up and stared at Bluebell.

“But I never listen much to gossip that makes its way to the kitchens.” Bluebell’s countenance suddenly appeared very serious. “I would believe you, though, Miss Isobel. So, please, tell me what your heart knows for certain. Was it love you saw when you looked into his eyes—or deceit?”

“It was…love.” Isobel was thoroughly stunned by what she knew now to be the truth.

“I knew it.” Bluebell smiled and reached down and pinched Isobel’s cheek. “I just wanted to be sure you did too!”

Isobel rubbed her cheek. “That doesn’t excuse the fact that he placed the wager that has been the bane of my life for weeks now.”

Bluebell rose from the edge of the tester bed and headed for the door. “Miss Isobel, that he was to blame for all the excitement of the wager don’t really matter. The wager wasn’t what brought the tears on—was it?”

“N-no.” Isobel swallowed the tears that had drained into her throat all night long. “It was…that I thought he didn’t love me.”

The maid pressed down the latch and opened the door. “Well, that was just silliness, wasn’t it?”

Isobel nodded. It was. How could she have been such a fool? He loved her. She was sure of it.

Bluebell stepped into the passageway. “So what are you still doing in bed?” She gave a parting smile, then closed the bedchamber door behind her.

What indeed?
A whisper of a smile touched Isobel’s mouth, for now she had the one thing she did not own an hour before. Hope.

Three days later
Wenton Inn Square

Isobel’s father had not ventured out of the house in days. She supposed his purpose was to guard her, more or less, in the event Lord Blackburn attempted to call upon her. But he didn’t. Why would he, when she had been so willing to believe the worst of him? This seemed to imbue her father with enough confidence to believe Isobel’s heart no longer lay with Blackburn. So this morning he had returned to his duties in the House of Commons.

But he had been wrong. Isobel’s plan was to simply lie low until London Society grew weary of waiting for reports that either Sterling or she had tried to reach the other, to reconcile, perhaps. It would be difficult. She risked Sterling believing that she no longer loved him. But she knew too that if he only listened to his own heart, he would know that her love for him was far too substantial to be doused by a wager. Still, this was her only option. If she sent him a message, it might be intercepted by a greedy member of the Sinclair house staff, eager to collect a few coins from gossipmongers. If she tried to seek him out, an
on dit
columnist might report it, and her father, and Society, would quickly learn of it.

All she could do was hold on until the time was right, then go to him and hope that he understood why she had delayed in reassuring him of her love.

In the meanwhile, she had matters of her charity to occupy her time.

This morning, after her father left the house, Isobel had sent a card to Christiana requesting that her friend call as soon as she might and join her in taking a walk to escape the confinement of the house.

Their stroll took them down the usual streets and through the usual parks, until they reached Weston Inn Square, where Isobel’s dream for the widows and orphans of Corunna had lain for some months.

Isobel stood peering up at the old inn wistfully. “It is going to be sold.”

“You’ve known that for weeks,” Christiana said. “Give up your hopes on this place. You haven’t near enough to buy it, and I am sorry to say it, but you likely never will.”

“I only thought I had more time to raise the money. It would have been the perfect lodging for the widows and orphans, until they find their own way.”

“No one has purchased the old inn yet,” Christiana countered. “There may still be time. You managed to interest several ladies of the Quality in supporting your charity already. Perhaps you can convince others.”

“I doubt that very much,” Isobel said sadly. “The swirl about the wager is over, and so now too is my ability to draw sizable donations.”

“What are you talking about, Issy? The wager is not finished. In fact, I heard my father tell Lord Buntree that the column that reported your refusal to marry the likes of Lord Blackburn has
revived
the interest of the men in London. When the two of you seemed smitten, the wager lost interest for them. Now that it seems that you are infuriated with Lord Blackburn for using you in a gambling plot, their interest in betting against Lord Blackburn is at an all-time high. Isn’t that diverting?”