The Most Wicked Of Sins (23 page)

Though the reel was a spirited dance, Ivy felt like she was moving languidly in her sleep. She barely heard the music or felt Tinsdale’s hand holding hers. Instead, her eyes scanned the crowd ringing the dance floor, searching for Dominic.

She hadn’t mentioned the ball in her letter to him, merely begged him to leave London, but the article in the
Times
almost assuredly guaranteed his attendance this night. And foretold that the ball would end with her cheeks awash with tears.

She could just make out the silhouette of Grant, who was easily a head taller than any other man, save another Sinclair, in the room. He was positioned at the head of the staircase, at her request, to prevent Dominic from entering the assembly rooms if he could, or to enlist the aid of his muscled brothers if Dominic would not listen.

But this was all taking far too long. As much as she was loath to do it, as the song ended, she turned to Tinsdale and forced a sugary smile. “I have noticed that people are beginning to leave. Should we not announce our engagement soon?”

A worried look crossed Tinsdale’s eyes. “Yes, yes, I want everyone to hear the announcement. I shall collect my mother. Would you please locate the duke and join us before the orchestra?”

“Certainly.” Ivy would do anything to see this night over before Lord Counterton arrived, for he certainly would. It was only a matter of moments now.

Ivy found the Duke of Sinclair standing on the perimeter of the dance floor conversing with several gentlemen. A string of older women stood behind the men, chatting and laughing as they took turns stealing peeks at the Scottish duke.

“Da,” she interrupted. “The announcement. Would you join us please?” Ivy couldn’t bring herself to link her name with Tinsdale’s for even a moment. How strange this was, because only two weeks before, such a moment would have been her crowning glory. Her greatest success.

Her father excused himself from the circle of conversation. Ivy had just turned to lead him to the orchestra, when, at the other end of the dance floor, Dominic appeared.

Grant was standing beside him and beckoned Ivy forward.

What was her brother about? Grant was meant to stop Dominic from entering the room. To prevent his presence from piquing Tinsdale’s ire and having Dominic hauled off to Newgate!

The duke was standing just behind her; Tinsdale next to his mother before the orchestra. All of this, she knew, but Dominic was all she could see. Everything else blurred around him, around her.

The first lilting bar of a slow waltz rose up and bloomed, spreading out through the assembly rooms. Dominic strode forward, his hand reaching out as if to claim the dance.

Likely expecting the “announcement” the
Times
had reported, the other dancers scattered and drew back along the edges of the dance to watch, leaving Ivy and Dominic alone in the center.

And suddenly, Ivy realized she was moving, running to Dominic. Their hands touched and held as they fell together. He stared down into her eyes, saying nothing, and yet everything.

He grasped her hand and raised it high, and she felt his other hand encircle her back, holding her close against him. The beautiful music seemed to swell, and Dominic moved her across the dance floor.

This was not the slow waltz Ivy knew. This was an expression of passion. This was Dominic.

As they reached the center of the floor, Dominic abruptly tipped her backward, supporting her with his strong forearm. A surprised gasp rose up from the ladies in the room, who had clearly never seen such a display at Almack’s. From her inverted view of the crowd, Ivy saw dozens of fans flip open to cool their owners’ pink cheeks.

Just then, her eyes met her father’s heated gaze.

Dominic whipped her back up again and into his arms. “It’s your life, Ivy. You have a choice. You do not have to marry Tinsdale.”

Ivy glanced back over her shoulder at her father and bit her lower lip. She tried to sound sure, but her throat had gone dry. “I have to.”

His hand pressed against her lower back, making her arch against him as he turned her around and around. The crowd applauded, and couples hurried to join them on the dance floor before the waltz ended.

The spinning was making her dizzy, and she leaned in to him just as he lowered his head, their temples resting against one another’s.

“You don’t have to, Ivy.” Dominic’s heart pounded through the thin silk of her gown, making her own heartbeat quicken. He said something else too, but she couldn’t make it out with the music filling her ears.

“What?” She drew back her head and looked up at him.

“I have a plan that will turn everything around for us. Trust me, Ivy. Put your faith in me. Everything is not as it appears.”

She peered into his eyes and saw the emotion there.

“Meet me outside, as soon as you can manage it.”

She nodded, just as the music ended. Dominic released her then, and in that moment, he disappeared into the churning crowd.

Grant had her arm in an instant and was pulling her from the dance floor at a fast trot.

“What is going on?” Ivy was frantic. Her father would no doubt be furious with her outrageous display and certainly have angry questions to pose.

As Grant pressed her forward, Ivy whipped her head around toward the orchestra dais. Tinsdale had her in his sight and was racing toward her through the throng.

“You’ll know soon enough,” Grant said. He urged her through the doorway and hurriedly down the staircase. “Dominic only needs a few minutes to explain, but I fear you will need a goodly amount of understanding if this is to work.”

A liveried footman opened the door to the street, and Grant rushed Ivy through the lines of nearly identical carriages to one parked nearby.

When they neared, the door to the cab opened, and she saw Dominic waiting there. Grant gave Dominic a nod.

“Trust him. Trust your heart, Ivy,” her brother told her, then spun around and dashed back in the direction of Almack’s.

Dominic reached down and grasped Ivy’s waist. She squealed in surprise as he lifted her and pulled her inside. He jerked the door closed behind her.

“Dominic, what is this all about? Do you know what you have done?” Ivy searched his eyes, but she saw no worry there. “Tinsdale will certainly—”

“Tinsdale isn’t worthy of you.” He rapped on the front wall of the town carriage and the driver urged his team slowly through the gauntlet of vehicles outside Almack’s.

He reached inside his waistcoat pocket. “But I hope you will find it in your heart to find me worthy of your love.”

Ivy’s eye’s widened. Between his fingers was large emerald ring, its cut stone glowing vivid green in the lantern light of the cabin.

She peered up Dominic. “This can never be. We can never be—”

He took her hand, peeled off her glove, and slipped the ring onto her left hand. “We can be. All you have to do is say…
yes.”

Envy is blind and she has no other quality than that of detracting from virtue.

Titus Livy

A-aye,” Ivy said.
p. Nick smiled. “Close enough.” He eased his arms around her and pulled her back into the thickest shadows of the carriage as they inched past Almack’s.

Tinsdale was standing at the door, his face red and pinched as he shouted at Grant, who was shrugging nonchalantly in response.

Ivy huddled against him. “This is madness, Dominic, you are aware of that. Tinsdale will expose and bury us both. We’ll need to leave tonight.”

“Tinsdale may try, but he will not be successful. Trust me, Ivy. I have made sure of that.”

“And my father…” A sudden look of sadness fell over her visage, and she turned her face from him. But then, she caught sight of the emerald ring on her finger and lifted her hand slightly from his chest to peer at it.

Nick hooked a finger under her chin and turned it up toward him. Her eyes were dark with worry, and even though a child could have walked faster than the carriage was moving through the squash of vehicles, she made no move to leave his side. She had made her decision.

She loved him.

She trusted him. Enough to walk away from the life she knew, and, for all she was aware of, from the family she loved as well.

And now he had to trust her too—with the truth.

Fine feathers of smoke rose like blue specters from the cheroots and pipes of dozens of carriage drivers, passing the time, bantering and laughing, as they waited outside Almack’s for their passengers.

Their carriage horses were slow, hardly moving at even a walking pace. Dominic knocked on the forward carriage wall again.

“Damn it, can’t he move this thing any faster?”

The driver on the perch of their carriage responded by calling down to the other drivers and footmen, urging them to move their vehicles to allow him through. There were shouts in return, and twice Ivy thought she heard the unmistakable clink of coin being tossed to the pavers.

Every muscle in her body was tense, and she imagined that at any moment Tinsdale, or worse, her father, would fling open the carriage door and pull her onto the pavers and back inside the assembly room. She nestled closer to Dominic.

His fingers smoothed her hair, soothing her, but his breathing grew more and more shallow. His expression was pensive.

“Dominic?” Ivy leaned back from him, and when he still seemed lost in thought, she shook his shoulder.

“Nick.” He met her gaze. “I prefer Nick.”

Ivy broke their embrace entirely. Dominic. Nick. What did it matter which he preferred? It wasn’t his name!

Unless…
it was.

“I know, when we first met, then when you agreed to help me, I told you I didn’t want to know your true name. It would make the ruse easier if I didn’t stumble and use your real name in conversation.” She swallowed hard. “When I began to care for you, began to love you, I wanted with all my heart to know who you really were.”

“Not enough to ask.”

“No. I didn’t ask because I couldn’t let myself know. Not knowing who you were let me pretend that what was happening between us wasn’t real—because it couldn’t be.” Her voice quavered uncontrollably. “But I love you. I want to be with you, as your wife, for the rest of my days. I don’t care if we have to live hand-to-mouth, or live out of a portmanteau moving from town to town. I know what matters most in this world. It is love and happiness. Nothing else. And I have that with you. I know that.” A steadiness settled over her then, as if saying the words aloud had somehow imbued her with a new strength, a confidence she had not possessed even a moment before.

A tiny smile tugged the corners of her lips upward. “The only thing I don’t know…is your name.”

He didn’t answer right away, which surprised her. Several more moments passed, and still he said nothing.

Why wouldn’t he want to tell her, especially after all she just confessed? Her heart began to thrum harder in her chest. “Please, you have to tell me now. I can’t endure waiting anymore.” She tilted her head downward a bit and prodded him. “Your name is Nick…”

He nodded slowly, then clasped her hands firmly in his. The expression on his face became one of apprehension. One of guilt.

“Yes, my name is Nick,” he admitted.

Squinting her eyes, Ivy mentally braced herself for what he would say next.

“As in…Dominic Sheridan.”

Ivy’s mouth dropped open. She blinked, not quite able to comprehend exactly what he was saying.

So he said it for her. “I am Dominic Sheridan,” he told her, “the true fifth Marquess of Counterton.”

“The
real
Lord Counterton?” Ivy didn’t know what she had expected him to say, but it was not that. Confusion and anger flooded her senses. “Why didn’t you tell me?” Her eyes began to sting, and she knew she’d be overtaken with tears in a moment. “
I-I
would have married Tinsdale to protect you!” She struggled to pull her hands from him.

“Ivy, please. Hear me out.”

She slipped from his grip, leaving behind the emerald ring in his palm. “I can’t. Not now.” Flinging the door open, she hiked up her ball gown and jumped from the slow-moving carriage. Her momentum slammed her against a carriage parked along the road, and she slid down its side to the rain-dampened pavers. A footman, who had been standing beside it, rushed to her and helped her to her feet.

Dominic appeared in the open cab doorway. “Ivy!” She saw him gauging the distance to the ground. He meant to jump.

“Don’t follow me, Dominic. Please.” The tears rolled down her cheeks. “I am begging you. Do not follow me.”

He paused then, his eyes filled with anguish.

That was all the additional time she needed. Whirling about, she ducked between two parked carriages and ran back down the street toward Almack’s.

Love envies not.

St. Paul

Grosvenor Square

Ivy peered out into the wet streets of London as the carriage trundled through Mayfair. She felt numb and utterly confused, and all she wanted was to crawl into her tiny bed and sleep, and pray that in the morning she would find that what happened this night had all been a dream.
p. At Grant’s instruction, the hackney driver halted the carriage at the northernmost corner of Grosvenor Square. Her brother handed her down, and they began to walk the short distance to their home.

The clop of the hackney’s lone horse bounced off the houses around the square, but other than the soft song of a nightingale somewhere nearby, there were no distinctive noises. And so, as if to preserve the quiet of the square, they walked in silence until they were but three houses away from the Sinclair residence.

It was then that Grant grasped her arm and prevented her from going any farther. “What are you going to do?”

She raised her palms skyward and shrugged. “I don’t know, Grant, I wish I did.” Her throat was raw from crying, and she could scarcely force the words into the air. “But I will not marry Tinsdale.”