To Sin With A Stranger (14 page)

Priscilla could not wrench her gaze from Lord Elgin’s plastered nose, or what would have been a nose. The usual protrusion was all but gone, and no amount of plaster could hide that. “Sterling.” She dragged him aside and stood near the rear festooned window so Lord Elgin would not overhear her. “What happened to his nose? I dare not ask, but I cannot stop observing him until I know his affliction. Was it an accident? Nay, he was attacked in Athens, wasn’t he, while trying to take the marbles?”

Sterling fashioned a scowl for her. “It is not polite to inquire about one’s infirmities or sensational past.”

Priscilla sank her elbow discreetly into his side. “
Sterling
.”

He grinned at her. “I will trade the information you seek for some bit of knowledge I require.”

“Very well. I have no secrets.”

“Nay?” Sterling glanced across the room at Ivy. “But our sister does.”

Priscilla groaned softly. “You wish to know where she obtained the money to fund the soirée.”

“Aye. She said she will not divulge her source until every guest had departed.” He waited, rocking slowly back and forth on his feet.

“You could throttle it out of her. I know I should like to,” Priscilla said. “Do you see that she is wearing my burgundy ribbon? She didn’t even think to ask me first.”

“I could, but that wouldn’t be gentlemanly…or I could simply ask you.” He was getting impatient.

“I might as well say. It is not as if I am to blame—at all.” Priscilla opened her mouth and smiled brightly at Ivy, while she spoke through her teeth. “From beneath your floorboards.”

Sterling sucked in his breath. “You had best be playing at something, Priscilla, for if you are not, I am liable to off your sister this very night.”

“No folly. She did it.” She shook her head. “Och, don’t be so surprised. We all knew the money was there. Every time you pry up the board the entire house creaks.”

“But I would have noticed.” Sterling’s gaze scanned the finely appointed drawing room, until he spied her standing between Killian and a blue damask–lined wall.

“Ivy dropped a few metal skirt weights into the bag to match the weight of the coins we took—so you wouldn’t know the money was missing until she’d already spent it.”

Ivy turned her head and became snared by his gaze. Sterling narrowed his eyes. Her own golden-green eyes widened as she realized she’d been found out, and with a silent gasp, she scurried to stand beside Lord Elgin.

Priscilla skewered Sterling’s side with her thumb. “Your turn. You can deal with Ivy later.”

Sterling led Priscilla to a marble refreshment table. “I have this on good authority, but like anything else, it mayn’t be the complete truth.”

“Go
on
.” Priscilla glanced nervously over her shoulder. “We havena much time.”

“After the marbles were crated and set upon the warships bound for England, Lord Elgin decided to take advantage of a fleeting peace between England and France and travel overland rather than by sea. It was a mistake that would cost him his nose…and his wife.”

“What do you mean?” Priscilla asked. “The French hacked his nose off?”

Sterling shook his head. “He was captured and held as hostage for years. When he was finally released, he returned to England to find his wife had left him for another, he had lost his seat in the House of Lords, and his finances were in as much a state of ruin as his diplomatic career.”

Ivy’s gaze flitted to Lord Elgin. “But his
face
. Why, he resembles those marble statues missing their noses.”

Sterling rolled his eyes. “Word is that while he was in Constantinople, he contracted a severe skin disease beginning on his nose, which later became inflamed and ulcerated while he was imprisoned. Ultimately the sore caused his nose to rot and to fall off.”

Priscilla turned and stared at Lord Elgin in horror. “How does he remain so jovial? I should have wanted to leap from a bridge if my life had disintegrated so horribly.”

“I expect his spirits are raised because Parliament may approve the purchase of Elgin’s Parthenon marbles for the people of England.”

Priscilla shuddered. “But his
nose
…how terrible. How does he endure it?”

Sterling gave her a parting look of disappointment, then turned to find Ivy and his stolen coins.

Just then, Poplin’s raspy voice called into the drawing room. “…and Miss Isobel Carington.”

Sterling’s body tightened and his heart quickened as he turned to see Isobel and her father enter the drawing room.

Isobel stood alongside her father, who was unrepentantly scanning the large drawing room for Lord Elgin. She spied the man before her father did. He seemed to be involved in a lively conversation. He gestured animatedly and his eyes were bright with the excitement of the tale he seemed to be recounting for Lady Ivy and two of the others, who clearly were Sinclairs, judging by their height and muscular forms.

Lady Ivy, seeing them arrive, excused herself and greeted Isobel and her father at the doorway. She ushered them into the room, and when Minister Carington excitedly requested an introduction to Lord Elgin, she promptly led him away to do just that.

Sterling strode purposefully over to Isobel, lifted her gloved hand, and pressed a gentlemanly kiss atop it. Even through the kidskin, she could feel the warmth of his mouth on her hand, making her wish with all her being that he would move his lips to her mouth.

And kiss her…not the way it had been in the Partridge House garden…by accident. But purposely.

Her eyes suddenly felt lazy, her body as though she’d taken a wine, but she had not. The elixir that had drugged her was simply the presence of Lord Blackburn.

He released her hand then, and smiled, almost embarrassedly. Could he be feeling what she felt?

“I see you are able to wear your gloves again. I trust your hands have healed?” Isobel cringed inwardly at her pale conversation. But her mind had been wiped of all thoughts the moment he kissed her hand.

He chuckled at her comment. “A fighter’s hands are never completely healed, but the swelling is gone, and so, aye, I can wear my gloves again.”

Isobel stared up into his eyes, and her heart quickened. She comprehended only a few of the words he spoke, but from those she gathered that, like her inane comment about his gloves, his reply was unimportant. His gaze was locked with hers, and what they were communicating to each other, most unintentionally, had nothing to do with gloves.

“Ah, there we are!” Lord Grant appeared beside them and set a palm on Isobel’s right shoulder and Sterling’s left. “So, how is London’s favorite couple this night? Set a date for the wedding yet?” He chuckled, volleying his glance between both of them as if they might suddenly join in his laughter.

Sterling groaned at Grant’s quips. “Miss Isobel, if you have yet to make the acquaintance of the poorest jester in all of England, this is he, my brother Lord Grant.”

Isobel gave a hardly serviceable curtsy to Lord Grant and greeted him. Her mind was too distracted by Sterling, who stood a little too close, looked a little too magnificent in his dark blue cutaway coat and close-fitting breeches.

Giving his brother a quick glance, Sterling took Isobel’s hand, without requesting leave to do so, and then set it upon his arm, littering the air between them with some words to the effect that he wished to make her known to their esteemed guest Lord Elgin.

As he took command of her and led her across the room, for the first time in her life, Isobel felt the impulsive, clumsy miss who could do nothing right suddenly disappear—and in her place walked a strong, confident, and passionate woman.

Her eyes began to blink back the heat rising into them. This queer feeling—of transformation, for the all-consuming sensation could be nothing less—shook her to her very center.

It unnerved her like nothing she had ever known, and for an instant, Isobel wondered if she would recognize her own reflection if she looked in the gilt-framed mirror as they passed it by.

Why, suddenly, did she feel this way; so full, so complete?

Strangely, it was as if the simple act of being near Sterling somehow awakened a strength that had always lay hidden deep inside her, buried and protected from spiteful words, ridicule, and the judgment of others.

It was as if he somehow shared his own courage, his great confidence, with her.

She wondered then what gave Sterling the strength to care so little about what others thought. Such freedom that gave him! He seemed to do what he wished and followed his heart rather than the rules. He was fearless.

She cocked her head and through her lashes peered up at him, admiring him. The hint of a smile appeared on his lips, and he tightened his grip, drawing her closer against him.

Isobel smiled too, even as Sterling interrupted her own father to introduce her to Lord Elgin. For as long as Sterling was beside her, his strength and courage infusing her, she knew for certain that she was at last becoming the woman she was meant to be.

An hour later, the guests had assembled around the dining table and a liveried footman, hired from a neighbor, began to serve the soup.

This event worried Sterling, who recalled all too vividly Mrs. Wimpole’s fish potage—and the need for every member of the Sinclair family to quit the house to avoid being poisoned by the cook’s mother’s favorite receipt.

His stomach turned as he watched Isobel lift her spoon and dip it into the green soup. The world seemed to slow, and he knew he had to stop her from tasting it, even though preventing her from being poisoned would horrify his sister Ivy.

Coils of steam curled up, reaching for his nose. He held his breath. He could not allow Isobel to do it. He couldn’t. He shot his hand out and grabbed hers, steadying it over her soup dish. “Wait—”

Isobel turned her confused eyes up at him, and she carefully lowered the spoon until he released her.

Everyone at the table sat silently staring at him. He opened his mouth to explain himself, when a tendril of pea-flavored steam slipped into his mouth.

“Pea soup,” he said under his breath, wholly surprised. Damned if it didn’t look exactly like Mrs. Wimpole’s potage. The consistency was identical, but…“It’s pea soup.”

“Aye.” Ivy blinked slowly. She sucked her lips into her mouth, then relaxed them into a slow smile. “Delicious.” She pinned Sterling in her sight. “Don’t fash, Sterling. The steam rising off the soup is deceiving, I know, but I promise you, it isn’t too hot for our guests.” Once she finished speaking and the dinner guests transferred their attentions to Sterling for his reply, Ivy pinned him with a barely veiled glare.

Siusan, who sat opposite Isobel, scooped some soup into her spoon, and hastened it to her mouth. She swallowed, then addressed Isobel. “The soup is perfect, just right. My sister hired a cook for this event who, until her mother fell ill, had been engaged for years by the Duchess of Devonshire.” She looked pointedly at Sterling, then gave him a prodding nod to try his soup.

Sterling exhaled and tasted his pea soup. Priscilla brought her serviette to her mouth to cover her silent laughter.

“Lord Elgin”—Mr. Carington thankfully drew the attention of the guests to the other end of the table—“we are all so fortunate that Lady Ivy thought to bring us together this night.”

Isobel, who had started to lift her spoon, replaced it in her dish, and looked wholly startled. “Yes, Lady Ivy, I agree.” Her demeanor changed abruptly, and she flashed her hostess a bright smile.

“Though you could not have known this, since the appointment was quite recent, my father—”

Mr. Carington’s eyes widened, and he raised a hand to interrupt Isobel. “Oh, allow me, my dear.
Please
.” He turned his attention to Lord Elgin once more. “I was recently appointed by the trustees of the British Museum to form a committee to consider the purchase of the Parthenon marbles. So, as you can imagine, Lord Elgin, that you and I were both invited to Lady Ivy’s debut soirée is quite a coincidence indeed!” He forced a delighted chuckle.

Lord Elgin lifted his dark eyebrows. “But Minister,” he said, addressing Isobel’s father, “I—I was not invited to the soirée this night.”

Ivy gasped, and her pallor closely replicated the green hue of the pea soup. “Och, Lord Elgin, you
were
. In fact, you are our guest of honor.” She looked helplessly at Siusan, then at Sterling as well.

“Certainly you received my sister’s invitation. Our runner confirmed its delivery to”—Siusan looked back at Ivy, waiting for her to insert the direction of Lord Elgin’s house, but Ivy widened her eyes for an instant, making clear to Siusan she could not assist—“your home.”

Lord Elgin lifted his linen and dabbed the edges of his lips in embarrassment, “I did not see the invitation, though you may be assured I would have come.”

Sterling leaned inward over the table. “But…you did come to the soirée, Elgin.”

Lord Elgin glanced around the table and saw that every eye was centered on him. He laughed. “Oh, dear me, I can see how I have confused everyone.” He spoke directly to Sterling. “I confess, this is all rather embarrassing to me, but it is not as though the newspapers have not reported my circumstance.”

“Lord Elgin, you needn’t concern yourself with appearances in this house,” Grant interjected. “We are Scots, like you,
brothers
.”

Lord Elgin lowered his head, and when he raised it again, his eyes welled. “I came to this house this night not to be celebrated, but to ask for your help, Lord Blackburn, to see the marbles to Scotland, which had from the start been my intention.”

“What?” Mr. Carington began coughing into his serviette. “But what of the British Museum? I know for certain that you requested that Parliament consider buying the marbles—”

Sterling leaped to his feet and crossed to Lord Elgin. “Dear man, please come with me and we will discuss this privately.”

Lord Elgin’s eyes were full of emotion. “I do not wish to disrupt—”

Ivy came to her feet. “Och, you aren’t disrupting anything. Please,
go
and talk. There is plenty of food to be had.” She smiled almost coquettishly. “In fact, my lord, we shall be dining for hours. There are twenty-three dishes to be served.”