To Sin With A Stranger (23 page)

“Not in the least,” Isobel muttered. “All that matters is acquiring this inn for the widows and children.”

And being with Sterling…forever
.

Love is all give.

Unknown

A sennight later

It was not yet dawn when Sterling rose from bed and packed the last of his personal belongings in his trunk…just in case he did not return from Fives Court.

His brothers and sisters had all tried to dissuade him from the battle, to no avail. Sterling simply did not care anymore whether he lived or died. The simple fact that the woman he loved believed he had used her solely as a pawn in his gamble pained him.

He didn’t quite understand his feeling so. It was not as if he had never used someone to assuage his own greed. He had. But this was not one of those times. This time he was innocent, for since the moment he had contrived the idea of the wager, he had fully intended on marrying Miss Carington. True, he might not have loved her then, but he was not even convinced of this. He just had not yet named the swirl of emotion he felt from the moment he had first met her.

He glanced around the bare garret, and then, after ensuring nothing had been left lying about, he knelt down and pried up the loose floorboard. Sinking his hand down until the floor pressed against his armpit, Sterling reached the small leather bag and the crumpled pamphlet Isobel had been waving at the Pugilistic Club the night they first met. He lifted the two items from the opening in the floor, then replaced the board and stood.

His eyes began to burn and he rubbed his hand over his mouth, as the hard reality that he might never see Isobel again wrapped him like a shroud.

“Poplin,” he called out softly, not wanting to wake anyone or let them hear the ragged emotion in his voice.

“Coming, my lord,” the old man called quietly up the staircase.

While Sterling was waiting, he folded and rolled up the old pamphlet and slipped it into the leather pouch. He twisted the Sinclair diamond ring from his finger and added that to the bag.

Poplin shuffled into the room just then. “Gentleman Jackson’s carriage has arrived. Shall I wake your family to let them know you are leaving, my lord?”

Sterling shook his head. He looked at the leather pouch in his palm, then, with a sad smile stinging his lips, pressed it into Poplin’s hand. “I want you, in the event anything happens to me, to see that Miss Isobel Carington receives this donation for her charity…I would like for her to purchase Wenton Inn if possible.” He swallowed deeply. “Do you understand?”

“Not quite, my lord,” Poplin admitted. “I do not know what you mean by ‘in the event anything happens to me.’”

Sterling just shook his head. “Just please see that she receives this.”

Poplin nodded his head. “Would you like assistance carrying anything to the carriage?”

Sterling started for the door to the stairway. He raised his fists and conjured a smile. “Nay, I believe all I shall require are these this day.”

“What do you mean he has already gone?” Lachlan yelled at Poplin. “He hadn’t spoken about the prizefight with Dooney for several days. I assumed he had finally given up the notion of fighting the Irishman.”

Ivy, who sat upon the settee, burst into tears. “Grant was supposed to stop him, and if he couldn’t, you and Killian were supposed to restrain him.”

“He’ll be killed.” Siusan wrung her hands frantically as she paced the parlor floor. “One death-blow, that’s all it takes the Irishman. And we will be wholly to blame!”

Priscilla sat in a gilt chair beside the cold hearth. She was shaking. Killian walked over to his twin and eased his hands over her shoulders.

“Lord Grant left only an hour after Lord Sterling,” Poplin told them hopefully. “He will reach him in time, will he not?”

Killian nodded. “He should. God, I hope he does.”

“We
made
him do this,” Siusan suddenly interjected. “He’s always felt responsible for us all. We could have existed on the small portion Father provided, but we didn’t. We insisted on maintaining the appearance that we were rich. That money meant nothing to us.”

“It was our pride,” Priscilla said.

Ivy nodded and sniffed back her tears. “The battle is madness. Is he
trying
to kill himself?”

Lachlan shook his head, and though the hour was yet early, he poured himself a sip of whisky. “He would never give himself over to death, but for the right wager he might risk his life.”

“He’s lost Miss Carington. He doesn’t care about anything anymore,” Priscilla said.

“That isn’t true,” Siusan said, setting her hands on her hips. “He cares about us and our future.”

Her comment propelled Killian across the parlor toward the passage.

“Where are you going?” Priscilla called out to him. She leaped from her chair and ran after him.

“If we find a hackney willing to trek to Tethersley, we may make the start of the fight. We may stop him yet.” Killian raced out the front door and into the square, followed by Priscilla.

Siusan glanced up at Ivy and Lachlan, and then they too rushed from the parlor into the passage, and then out the door to the square.

The Carington Residence
No. 9 Leicester Square

Isobel had just finished taking her afternoon tea when her father came into the parlor seeking her out. The look on his face was confused. He was clearly disturbed. “What is it, Father? Are you unwell?”

He shook his head, but she could see that he was growing pale when he sat down at the table next to her.

“Isobel, I have been troubled since the night you learned about Lord Blackburn’s involvement in the wager.”

She peered uneasily down into her empty cup. No conversation that ever began in this fashion turned out to be a happy one.

“You accused me of hating you.” She felt his eyes upon her and knew she must meet his gaze.

Tilting her empty teacup to her mouth, she pretended to drink, if only to gain purchase on a few more moments before being required to speak.

How many times over the years had she rehearsed such a reply in her head? How many instances, when he cursed her vexing existence in this world, had she wished to tell him that if she could have been the one who had died, instead of her brother and mother, she would have chosen that fate rather than live as nothing more than a disappointment to her father? But when the moment was now upon her, the words she wished she could say would not come. “You do. You do not love me, Father, and haven’t for years.” She raised her eyes. “More than that, you’ve made it plain that you wish me out of your life. So why, when Lord Blackburn came to request my hand—to offer to relieve you of your responsibility for me—did you not just forget about what you knew about the wager? Why didn’t you just let me go…and be happy?”

“I have failed you, daughter.” He reached out and, urging her hand from the teacup, took it into his own. “When your brother was killed at Corunna, a piece of me died with him. I was so broken and consumed with my own grief that I failed to see how your mother was foundering in her deep despair until she drowned in it.”

Isobel’s eyes were swimming in unshed tears. “We needed each other then, Father. I needed you, needed your support and love then more than ever. I had lost my brother, my mother, and the man I thought I would marry. But you pushed me away, making it clear to me that had you been able to choose which of your children would live, you would not have chosen me.”

“Oh, Isobel, you so misunderstand.” She wished he would hug her to him and tell her how she was wrong, had been wrong all these years. Instead he brought his other hand atop hers, cupping it between his palms. “For weeks, I could not make it through the day without falling to my knees in tears—me, the minister known as the Rock in Parliament. It was all I could do to hide my sadness from those around me. And then I would look at you—a young girl who had lost more than I—but who was able to turn her loss into something good. The charity to support others whose husband, brother, father, or son had died in the battle. You were so strong. And I was weak.”

Isobel’s mouth fell open, and yet she could not utter a single word. She had never heard her father speak of her this way or the charity she had founded and felt passionately about.

His eyes began to well. “I never wanted you to leave. You are all I have left. And I never thought you would go, after the ladies of the
ton
sullied your young reputation. I did not believe that a gentleman would ever offer for you, and, to be truthful, I think I relished the security that belief brought me.”

“But why then did you practically force me into Lord Blackburn’s arms if you did not wish me to marry and leave?” Isobel asked.

“That perhaps was my most selfish moment. A time when I so underestimated you and the Scotsman as well. When I learned the reputation of the Sinclairs, the Seven Deadly Sins, I at first sought to protect you and your own name from being associated with the wild Scots. But I saw too that the harder I strove to keep Lord Blackburn away from you, the more passionately he pursued you. And then I heard of the wager, and I knew I had nothing truly to fear. He was a gamester, consumed with greed, and you were naught but a means to winning an enormous bet.”

“And yet that was when you threatened to send me to Great-aunt Gertrude’s pig farm if I didn’t marry. I don’t understand. Why?”

Her father released her hands then and stood. He began to pace across the carpet, keeping his eyes averted from hers. “Because I knew you would eventually see that you were being used. You would believe that no man would honestly choose you, and you would finally give up any hold on your dream of marrying one day.” He turned and faced her then. “And for that, I am greatly ashamed. Not only for trying to make you remain living at home with me, but for not caring that I was hurting you to do it.”

“But Sterling was in love me, and I with him. That is what you never believed or understood.”

He shook his head. “I did see it, eventually, and I knew you would marry him if the offer was presented. That is why I sought to pair you with Mr. Burke Leake.”

“Why Mr. Leake, Father?” Isobel turned her cup around and around on its saucer. “His interest in me was clear. Mightn’t he have offered for me?”

He nodded. “But he would stay here in London…and not whisk you away to Scotland.” He sighed. “Isobel, I have failed you completely as a father. I only hope that someday you can forgive me, though I know after today, I fear that you will find it nearly impossible.

Isobel peered up at him as he neared the tea table again. Her chest tightened. “Why are you telling me this now?”

His skin grew paler, and his lips trembled, but he said nothing. “Father?” She was growing increasingly anxious.

Something was terribly wrong. She had seen her father look this way only once before…and that was when he had had to tell her that her mother had taken her own life. The day her life changed forever.

His hands trembled as he lifted something from his waistcoat pocket. Isobel peered down at the small leather pouch, which he slid slowly across the table to her.

She peered down at it, not sure if she should open it. No knowing if she wanted to.

“This arrived for you a short while ago.” He nodded to it. “The man who delivered it said he was Poplin, Lord Blackburn’s manservant.”

“What?” Isobel untied the leather cord that cinched the bag shut, pulled it open, and then emptied its contents on the linen tablecloth.

Out fell Sterling’s ancestral diamond ring, the Sinclair diamond, and a wrinkled charity pamphlet for the benefit of the widows and orphans of Corunna. One of those, of her own making, that she had flashed about at the Pugilistic Club. The backs of her eyes pricked. “I—I don’t understand.” She looked up at her father.

“I don’t quite either,” he admitted, “not completely. Poplin said that Lord Blackburn wished you to have this…
in the event something happened to him
.”

A chill like a freezing rain swept over Isobel. “My God, has something happened to him? Where is he?”

“I asked the manservant that very question, and he reluctantly told me that Lord Blackburn had gone to Fives Court to battle the Irishman Dooney this evening.”

“So Sterling is well. Nothing has happened to him at all. The battle has not yet even begun.” The edges of her mouth twitched in the beginnings of a hopeful smile.

Her father’s lips turned downward, and he shook his head. “You do not understand, Isobel. Lord Blackburn cannot win this battle. The Irishman’s right is so powerful that his last two competitors were killed by his blow.”

Tears began to collect in Isobel’s lashes. “What are you saying to me, Father? Tell me plainly.”

“Lord Blackburn is a fair fighter, a good fighter…for a marquess—but he cannot win.”

“Cannot win…you mean he will—die?”

Her father said nothing until he lowered his head and was not meeting her gaze. “I am sorry, Isobel. I know that in some way, by revealing his wager, by destroying Lord Blackburn’s hopes of marrying you, I am responsible for this.” He lowered his head. “I fear what he plans to do is naught but suicide.”

Isobel leaped to her feet, toppling her tea onto the linen cloth beneath it. “Then help me, Father,
please
. If you do love me as you claim, then help me stop this fight
now
.”

“Fives Court is in Tethersley, hours from London,” he confessed. “We may not arrive in time.”

“We have to try.” Isobel grabbed his hand and pulled him into the passage toward the door. “Because I love him.”

Reduce the complexities of life by eliminating the needless wants of life, and the labors of life will reduce themselves.

Teale

Fives Court
Tethersley

Isobel looked out the window with confusion at the scene before them. Carriages, donkey carts, and phaetons alike packed the road. Nothing was moving. Isobel whimpered in frustration. As she peered up the road, she saw that gentlemen and commoners, likely worried they might miss a single punch by the world champion, Dooney, were abandoning their vehicles in the road and heading on foot to the court still at least a mile distant.