To Sin With A Stranger (17 page)

He father sat silently for nearly the tick of a minute hand, before flicking his fingers to shoo her away. “Send Alton to me. I must send a missive to the committee at once.”

Isobel backed from the room and closed the door. She only hoped that her father would do the right thing and save the marbles no matter the cost.

The next day

Isobel had hoped for some correspondence from Sterling. A bent visiting card would have sufficed, but she had not heard anything. She wondered how this could be, because her world had changed so completely since they…viewed the marbles.

La, even if the British Museum acquired them, she knew she could never look at one particular statue again without flushing bright scarlet.

Her father and the other trustees tapped to consider the purchase of Elgin’s Parthenon marbles had met for hours last night, not adjourning until she had already retired to her bedchamber. Surely this was a favorable sign for Elgin, for had the reigning suggestion been to refuse purchase of the marbles, the meeting would have been much shorter. The marbles were miracles of man’s own artistry—and she did not think so just because she’d spent the most amazing night of her life atop one.

“Isobel!” She looked up from the chair beside the window to see her father standing in the doorway, his arms folded tightly across this chest.

“Good afternoon, Father. I did not hear you come into the parlor, I was so taken with the story I was reading.” Her eyes focused on the book that lay open in her lap—only to realize it was one of the books she had found among her mother’s things—a love story. Her father would not approve of her taking anything of her mother’s except the old dresses that still hung in the wardrobe. Her eyes widened in panic, and she hurriedly snapped the cover closed and shoved the book between her skirt and the arm of the chair. She spread her dress over it so her father would not see it. “I did not hear you come upstairs to bed last night. Your meeting with the trustees continued quite late, did it not?”

“It did.” He seemed to be studying her, and what he saw did not seem to please him. “Go and put on another dress—a walking gown if you have one.”

Isobel blinked in surprise. “But I am not going for a stroll, so I do not understand why I must change when this dress is perfectly suited for sitting at home.”

Her father unfolded his arms and set them on his hips. “Isobel, do not argue with me. I do not understand why the gentlemen of Town are suddenly so intrigued with you, but they are.”

Isobel’s mind swirled with confusion, and she turned her gaze downward to see that she was wringing her hands worriedly. Had Sterling sent her father a letter or a card? Could it be he planned to offer for her? No, surely not. And yet…

“Are you listening to me, gel?” came her father’s booming orator’s voice.

She snapped her head upright. “Yes, Father.” She came to her feet, allowing the book to fall like a tree into her seat.

“Mr. Burke Leake, an esteemed protégé of one of the trustees, has requested the honor of meeting you and taking you to Hyde Park for an afternoon ride in his phaeton. You will receive him graciously wearing…something else.”

“Leake? Father, I do not know Mr. Burke Leake.” Nor did she wish to. Now that she had given her heart to Sterling, she did not wish to encourage the affections or attentions of any other.

“I realize you have not been introduced, but I know him, and he seemed quite taken with you when he saw you at the Partridge ball.” He pushed out his lower lip and gave a satisfied smile. “Two men vying for my wayward daughter’s attention. I am quite sure it was the red gown I bade you to have fashioned.” His voice became low then, almost as though he was talking to himself. “Should have thought of that years ago. Had I, someone else might have been worrying over your latest ill-thought-out antic.”

A painful sadness rolled through Isobel. She and her father had been so close once. And now, after her brother and mother had died, a time when she and her father should have been closer than ever—there to support each other—he only wished that she was some other man’s problem.

“Go on now, gel. You only have an hour to make yourself presentable.”

“Yes, Father.” Isobel bowed her head, then walked slowly across the parlor, passing her father as she moved into the hallway for the stairs.

“Wait,” he said, noticing the book sitting on the chair.

Isobel stopped and turned, barely raising her head to look at him.

He walked to chair and picked up the book and started to hold it out to her when he recognized it, and drew it before him. “Never mind,” he amended. “I will do it for you. You need to prepare.”

Isobel nodded her head and made her way to staircase. She had taken only three treads when she heard her father sobbing. But that was not possible. He never cried. She crept back down two steps, then crouched down and peered between the rail posts.

Her father was kneeling on one knee, resting his head in one hand and holding the small book against his chest with the other. His shoulders shook, and he cupped his hand over his mouth to mute his sorrowful gasps and cries.

Isobel shot to her feet. She knew too how it felt to miss someone so much. She started down the stairs wanting to comfort him, to remind him that he was not alone. But she stopped short.

He was vulnerable now, a weakness he hated in others, but especially in himself. If she approached him now, it would only embarrass him and increase the cool gulf that had grown between them since they lost the rest of their family.

She turned, knowing that was what he would want, and climbed the stairs to her bedchamber.

Three great forces rule the world: stupidity, fear and greed.

Einstein

The Carington residence
Leicester Square

Bluebell opened Isobel’s bedchamber door an hour later. “There’s another one here for you, Miss Isobel.” The maid peered warily over her shoulder and then scooted into the room. “Forgive me for sayin’ so, but this Mr. Leake gentleman, he’s fine in form and in face, but if you ask me, the Scotsman, he’s your man.”

As she hooked a string of pearls around her neck, Isobel met the reflection of Bluebell’s gaze in her dressing table mirror. “Lord Blackburn is my man…for what?”

Bluebell shared a toothy grin. Even in the dim reflection of the silvered glass, Isobel could see color rise into the maid’s cheeks. “Well.” She paused and turned to make doubly sure that the door was completely closed. “
Everything
.”

Isobel shifted her legs and turned around on the stool she sat upon and faced Bluebell. “Everything?”

The maid rolled her eyes and snorted a short chuckle. “Criminy, I have seen him, you know. All the belowstairs women are talking about it. Some have even seen him in a kilt—and prayed to the heavens for a good gust of wind.”

“You still haven’t told me what you mean by
everything
.” Isobel was toying with the long-nosed maid now, but she was not eager to meet this Mr. Leake, and so she fussed over her appearance for a few moments more.

“
In bed
, that’s something.” Bluebell crept closer. “Those Sinclair men are huge…and so are their feet. And you know what they say about men with big feet.”

Isobel widened her eyes at Bluebell.

“Big hands too.”

“Is that what they say?” Isobel sucked her lips into her mouth to avoid bursting into giggles.

“Well, it is something like that anyway.” Bluebell held up her forefinger. “So, there you have one thing: better in between the bedsheets.” She lifted another finger. “He is going to be a bleeding duke. Mr. Leake, well, he’s just a mister, isn’t he?” She raised a third finger. “Have you seen the gleaming stone on His Lordship’s finger?”

“Is Mr. Leake wearing a ring?” Isobel asked, trying very hard to appear most serious.

“Only gloves, but, remember, the Scotsman has big hands. Bigger hands, bigger ring, which would cost more so…that means he must have money if you think about it.” She smiled, seeming pleased with herself. “That adds one more. Big ring. Money.” She raised two more fingers. “That’s five.”

Isobel shook her head. “Only four. You counted the big ring twice.”

Bluebell looked confused for a moment, then raised her hand with all fingers straightened again. “Better in bed.”

“You already said that. Better in bed was the first thing you mentioned.”

Bluebell shook her head in frustration. “That’s because it’s the most important thing. Miss Isobel, you are so innocent. Don’t you know that if you got a man who can make you happy in bed, whether or not he’s got a title or money don’t matter a lick. If you ask me, if a man makes you happy, you don’t need nothing else.”

“Thank you for your advice, Bluebell.” Isobel sat very still and thought about what Bluebell had said. Her thinking and logic might have been a little convoluted, but her conclusion was sound. If a man makes you happy, what else do you need?

Bluebell bounced a shaky curtsy, then spun around and started for the door. “Oh, don’t forget, the
other one
is waiting for you in the parlor, Miss Isobel.”

Isobel and Mr. Burke Leake walked out the front door and down the steps to the pavers where the Carington manservant, Alton, stood grimacing. From the put-upon expression on his face, it was plain that he felt that the top-ranking member of the house’s meager staff should not have been required to stand in the square holding Leake’s matched pair like a common stable boy.

Mr. Leake handed Isobel up to climb into the high perch, then walked around to the other side to board himself. Isobel looked back at the house and saw her father standing in the doorway with a satisfied slip of a smile dressing his lips. Movement above drew her eye to the second floor, where Bluebell stood with Mrs. Bowls, the house cook.

Isobel shielded her eyes from the sun by raising her hand to her brow so that she might better see into the shadow shading the front of the house. She had just focused again on the maid and cook when Mr. Leake cracked his whip and the phaeton lurched forward. Isobel turned around in the seat as they sped away, and would never be quite sure if the servants were all scowling at her and Mr. Leake, or if the shadows were merely playing tricks on her eyes.

“Do tell me if we are whisking along too quickly, won’t you, Miss Carington?” Mr. Leake said, a little too proudly to sound sincere. “This particular make of phaeton is said to be one of the fastest in existence.”

Isobel flashed a bright smile at him. “Do not worry over me, Mr. Leake. I find the speed exhilarating.”
And the sooner we arrive in Hyde Park, the sooner we will return
. It was still possible, after all, that Sterling would call.

“Do you?” Mr. Leake seemed pleased, and he snapped the ribbons, urging the horses into a fast trot.

Isobel’s father had been right; she did know Mr. Burke Leake, though they had not been introduced until this afternoon. He had been the handsome auburn-haired gentleman who had raced Sterling through the Partridge ballroom to ask her to dance. He had lost then, and if he truly sought her affections, he had lost again.

Sterling was the victor of her heart.

When they arrived at Hyde Park, Mr. Leake took them immediately to the stables, where a boy took the horses in hand so that their owner and Isobel might partake of a stroll around the Serpentine.

“Miss Carington, since I first saw you at Partridge House, my greatest desire has been to express my interest in courting you.” He offered her his arm, and since she could not think of a polite way to refuse his offer, she took it and allowed herself to be escorted down the pathway along the sparkling water.

“Honestly,” Isobel said, not wanting to encourage Mr. Leake when she did not share his feelings, “I am surprised that you did call, given that half of London believes Lord Blackburn and I are to be married before the end of the Season.”

He laughed. “But the other half believes the two of you will not, and I count myself amongst their strong number.”

Isobel smiled and gazed up at him as they walked. His eyes were as blue as the sky this day and his smile just as bright as sun. “What interests you, Mr. Leake? Politics? Art? Travel?”

He glanced down at his feet as they walked, almost bashfully. “Everything you mentioned, distilled into one.” Mr. Leake looked up at her, almost, it appeared to Isobel, to be sure she was still listening. “Topographical and antiquarian studies.” He waited for her to comment, and now she understood why he monitored her attentiveness. His two elevated interests were not subjects of usual parlor conversation.

“My father told me that you were intimately connected with Elgin’s marbles. Was it your knowledge of antiquities that involved you?”

He nodded. “I see you have been well informed. I spent several years in Constantinople for our government, instructing the Turks in marine artillery, and I traveled with them to Egypt to expel the French. During that time I surveyed the valley of the Nile, and grew fascinated with topography. The ship I sailed with was later engaged to transport Elgin’s marbles from Athens to England. It foundered off Greece, however, and all my maps were lost, but my interest in antiquities and topography was not.”

Isobel studied him. “I wonder,” she began, “what a man with such experience in the region and knowledge of antiquities believes should be the fate of Elgin’s marbles.”

“You do not truly care, certainly,” he said.

“In truth, I do,” Isobel protested. “My father is one of the trustees deciding whether Parliament purchases the marbles.” She could tell that Mr. Leake felt hesitant in providing a reply. “I vow I will not discuss what you say with him. I am only interested in your learned opinion.”

He peered into her eyes, and she knew he wondered if he could trust her. A moment later, he proved to her that he did. “I am a member of the Society of Dilettanti, a society of noblemen and gentlemen dedicated to the study of ancient Greek and Roman art. I am the protégé of Sir Richard Payne Knight, who has claimed that the marbles are not Greek at all. Like your father, he is also one of the trustees who will decide the marbles’ fate.”