To Sin With A Stranger (15 page)

Siusan cleared her throat. “Thirteen, dear sister.”

“
Thirteen
dishes!” She smiled, doing her utmost to appear to have the uncomfortable situation in hand.

Lord Elgin bowed to her. “Thank you, Lady Ivy.”

“Do excuse us, please.” Sterling leveled a hard gaze upon Mr. Carington before extending his hand and guiding Lord Elgin from the dining room.

His parting glance was at Isobel, and he hoped she took his meaning when he silently asked her to stay.

What a miserable thing life is: you’re living in clover, only the clover isn’t good enough.

Brecht

Burlington House
The shed

This street is Piccadilly, not Leicester Square. Lord Blackburn, you promised you would see me home.” Isobel looked up at the imposing structure visible through the window. Why were they here at all?

After Lord Elgin’s confession, the evening declined quickly. Isobel’s father became sick with worry that the committee he’d been charged by Parliament to form, to assess the viability of acquiring the Elgin marbles for the British Museum, was doomed to fail. His coloring became as green as the pea soup, and he left the Sinclair home early with nothing more than a request that someone escort Isobel home to Leicester Square.

Of course, after emerging from his long discussion with Lord Elgin, Lord Blackburn volunteered for the honor.

“Why are we here…Sterling?” A wand of moonlight illuminated naught but his pale eyes.

When the carriage came to a wobbling halt at the farthest edge of Burlington House, Sterling opened the door and leaped out before the hackney driver had even called their destination.

He stood in the bright moonlight and raised his hand to her. “I want to show you something. Something amazing.”

Warily, Isobel slid to the edge of the seat, then grasped his hand and stepped down from the hackney.

Sterling looked up at the hackney driver. “I bid you to stay here, sirrah, even if we do not emerge until daybreak.”

Daybreak?
Just what was he intending? Isobel looked at the huge, dark castle of a house. “Is anyone at home?” she asked hesitantly.

“Nay. The house has been sold.” He took her hand and walked to the tall gate in the fence surrounding the property. From his waistcoat pocket he withdrew a key and set it into the iron lock that securely barred entry into the gardens at the rear of the house.

“Then why are we here? What do you wish to show me?” Isobel felt her body tense. Not from fear, but from the knowledge that she was alone with him, a wicked fantasy that had pestered her mind and caused sleepless nights since the very first day they had crossed each other’s paths at the Pugilistic Club.

The gate was nearly twice his height, but a doorway set into the left gate made it possible for Sterling to gain their entry. He swung the door wide and ducked through, then ushered Isobel forward, closing it behind them.

The yard was bright given the illumination of the near full moon, and it took but a moment for her eyes to adjust and see the amazing scene before them.

Marble pediment sculptures, column bases, and figures fenced a huge coal shed in a wall of luminous silvery blue.

It took Isobel several moments to realize what she was truly seeing. “These are not…Elgin’s Parthenon marbles?”

She knew the answer already, and she shivered in amazement.

“They are.” Sterling neared her, hesitantly at first. “You’re cold, lass.”

She shook her head, but moved into his embrace regardless. “Elgin has left the marbles here, out of doors, in the dampness of London?”

He shook his head. “Not all. Come. Elgin lent me the keys.” Sterling separated from her and took her hand and led her to the doorway of the wooden shed.

It was no ordinary coal shed. Even in the moon-touched darkness, she could see that the structure was at the very least as large as her home on Leicester Square.

Sterling withdrew a very small key from his waistcoat pocket and inserted it through the rusted escutcheon and into a lock. He looked at her, and she nodded expectantly, then he turned the key and pushed the door open.

They stood together in the open doorway for several moments, waiting for their eyes to adjust to the dimness. Though two great windows on the large gables of the shed’s roof admitted rectangles of moonlight, it was still very dark inside.

“It is too dim to appreciate the marbles.” Sterling looked at Isobel. “I apologize. I truly wished to show you something extraordinary.”

“You’ve seen them then?” Isobel asked.

“Nay.” Sterling reached out his hand and ran it along the sculpted neck of a marble horse. He smiled. “Tonight Lord Elgin asked me to purchase the marbles. It is why he came to the house this eve.”

“What?” Isobel was astounded at this. “A-and did you agree?”

Sterling laughed, but it was a soft, sad sound. “I wish that I could. There is no other collection like it in the world, but I do not have that sort of coin…yet.”

Isobel scrunched her brow. “What do you mean?”

Sterling left her side and began to feel his way through the marbles inside the dark coal shed. “Lord Elgin is not the greedy collector so many suppose him to be.”

“There are some who may argue that position,” Isobel countered. She listened for his reply, and when he spoke, let her hearing guide her.

“Until tonight, I might have been one of that number. But no longer.” He passed beneath a wedge of moonlight. “Elgin’s original thought was only to make plaster casts of some of the greatest marble sculptures known to mankind before they were destroyed.”

“What changed his mission?”

“The Acropolis was being used as a Turkish fortress, and already pieces of the marble were being used for hovels or crushed, then burned, to make lime to whitewash other buildings. Elgin’s artisans worked quickly to make the casts, but because the governor of the fortress would not allow them to erect scaffolds, after one year only a few pediments had been cast.”

“But…these are not casts.” Isobel touched the marble folds of a woman’s garment, marveling at the realism and artistry of the sculpture. “These are works of art.”

Sterling was nearby, his voice told her so, but she could not see him unless he passed beneath one of the bright windows above. “A chaplain of the British Embassy, who was passionate for antiquities, petitioned Constantinople for permission for Elgin to remove any sculptures that did not interfere with the walls of the citadel. The timing was perfect, Nelson had just won the Battle of the Nile, and the British were on the rise in the Mediterranean. Permission was granted.”

Isobel considered the story. “And so Elgin’s belief is that by removing the marbles, he saved them from being destroyed.”

“Aye. The collection is a gift to mankind that must be protected.”

Isobel did not wish to be alone in the darkness. She raised her hands and felt her way toward Sterling’s voice. “Then why does Lord Elgin seek to sell the marbles?”

When Sterling spoke, she felt the heat of his breath, and honed in on him.

“Because he cannot afford to keep them,” Sterling replied. “And his reason for acquiring them in the first place no longer exists.”

“But at dinner, he mentioned bringing the marbles to Scotland,” Isobel reminded him. She stilled and listened for his voice.

“Aye, it was his grand hope, but he assumed my means are much greater than they truly are. I cannot help him, though I wish that I could.”

She was near now, her heart pounding with anticipation of finding him in the darkness. “But why Scotland? I understand that it is his homeland, but he resides here now, in London.”

Sterling sighed, and she hurried toward the sound of his breath. “Elgin was taken captive by the French when he returned to England overland, while the marbles were being transported to England by sea. His wife, to whom he’d promised to bring the grace of Greece to Scotland, left him for the man who supposedly worked to obtain his freedom from France. You see, illness had rotted and took his face, and sadness over losing his beloved wife stole his heart.”

Isobel knew Sterling was close. She stepped into the light from the window in the gable above and raised her hands in the air to him. “But my father, he and Parliament will save the marbles. Place them somewhere safe and protect them from the elements here.”

“Or will Parliament follow the ideas of others who claim Elgin robbed Greece of her culture?” He exhaled. “I don’t know. And neither does Lord Elgin. To hear him, the government sides with popular opinion. He believes Parliament would rather let them disintegrate here than to buy them for only what he paid for his workmen and for the marbles’ transport to London.”

“My father will not allow that,” Isobel claimed, but in her heart she did not know for certain that her words were true.

Seeking Sterling’s heat, she moved forward until she felt his chest against her. She inclined her head and rested it upon his shoulder, and felt the welcoming warmth of his arms encircling her.

They held each other for some time, for no reason other than want of each other. But at length, Sterling broke their embrace. “Even though we cannot see the true beauty and art of these sculptures, we cannot lay waste to this opportunity. We may never have it again.”

Isobel looked up, to where his face would be, only darkness obscured. “What do you mean?”

She felt his hand on hers, moving it through the air until it met with the cool stone of a marble sculpture.

“We will feel the mastery with our hands,” he told her. “We will learn through touch.”

Isobel slid her hand down the marble sculpture, his hand atop hers, moving it, slowly.

“Magnificent, is it not?” Sterling stood behind her, his mouth just above her ear. She closed her eyes and let her fingertips see the smooth, cool muscle and sinew of a man’s leg, and imagined, so wickedly, that it was not marble she touched, but Sterling. That instead of guiding her hand, he was running his hand over her body.

And in the next moment, to her great surprise…he was.

He’d moved directly behind her; his free hand slid around her waist, his thumb gently tracing the slope of a rib.

A profound silence filled the musty air of the shed. She felt his hardness pressed against the Y where her back met her buttocks. For some seconds neither of them moved, as though each of them waited for the other to break away from the carnal threat building steadily in the stillness.

Isobel wrapped her fingers around the hand poised on her ribs. She drew in a shaky breath as she ran his hand up to her breast and cupped her hand around his until he held her there.

“Isobel?” The sound of her name riding his breath was deep and raspy, and it sent a vibration through her, making her quiver against him. His tone did not question what she was doing; she knew this. He was asking her if she wanted to tread farther.

And she did. What happened beyond this night was of no consequence. She was destined to remain unmarried, her father told her that oft enough, and she knew he was right.

This wager was but a game that brought two mismatched people together, but she knew their time was fixed. By the end of the Season, their paths would veer and part forever. She would die a miss, but not a maid.

She wanted him, wanted to know what it was like to merge her body with his. To feel desire and experience it fully. She wanted a night to remember for the rest of her lonely life. One night, with this beautiful Greek sculpture of a man.

And so she let the courage he infused her with fill her, and she turned slowly around, until she was standing pinned between the reclining male pediment sculpture and Sterling, who felt as hard and unyielding as the marble.

She raised her lips and he kissed deeply, stealing her breath away. Dizziness stole her balance, and her hands came down behind her. The open knees of the statue bumped her shoulders from behind, imprisoning her on either side. Sterling stepped into the breach, not allowing her to right herself. And so she hoisted herself back along the statue’s torso until she rested on his chest.

In the dimness she had the impression that Sterling was smiling, but she did not know for certain. She leaned up and caught the lapel of his coat and began to drag him over her, but he resisted.

She had been too bold, too brazen. A flush of humiliation rushed up from her chest and filled her cheeks. Lying back down atop the statue’s ancient stone torso, she covered her eyes and willed back any tears.

One night, it was all she wanted. She had used all the courage she had, and he had rejected her.

Suddenly a weight covered her for an instant. Sterling’s warm lips were kissing hers. His lips opening her mouth to his, his tongue probing the flesh inside.

She raised her hands and felt that the stone-hard muscles of his chest were bare. She slipped her hands down over his chest, feeling a crisp mat of hair between the great mounds of muscle. A sigh slipped softly from her mouth.

His kisses grew harder. He threaded the pins from her locks, then, casting them aside, slid his fingers through her hair, as he plundered her mouth with intimate kisses, so passionate that they both stunned and made her need more. Much more.

His hands raced over her body as he fed on her mouth. His breath came in pants, so shallow that she almost didn’t hear him. “Are you sure of this, Isobel?”

She caught his cheeks with her palms and pulled him back just far enough that he could see her in the blue dimness. “Yes, I want you.”

“But, lass, you are—”

She laid a single finger across his lips. “—a woman who finally realizes that she has been living a half-life. But no more. I want you. I don’t care about tomorrow. I want you more than you’ll ever know.”

In a slash of moonlight, she saw his silver eyes peering down at her. She knew what she was asking of him this night probably made no sense to him, but she was more certain that she wanted him to make love to her than she had ever been about anything in her life. She peered back up at him, then smiled.

He closed his eyes, then tilted his head up and muttered something in Gaelic, something she could not understand. And then he kissed her, long and deep.