“It’s your turn,” Susan murmured.
Isabelle stared at it wide-eyed. “No!”
“I am afraid so.” Susan nodded at the maid, who gave Isabelle a gap-toothed smile, then bobbed and slipped away.
Anna closed the door. When she turned back, she grinned widely.
Susan held the box out. “The boy said it was for a Miss Frasier. Is there any other Miss Frasier presently in this household?”
If her current state of confinement hadn’t robbed Isabelle of her agility, she would have scampered across the bed to the other side of the room. As it was, she cringed away, and, fearing her bosom might spill out over the cups of the stays, wrapped her arms over her chest to hold it in place.
“Don’t play at being surprised, Isabelle. We all knew it was inevitable,” Anna said.
“I don’t want to touch it,” Isabelle said breathlessly. “Send it back.”
“But you don’t even know who it’s from!”
Isabelle threw Anna a scathing look. “I suppose you are going to tell me it’s from my great-aunt, to wish me luck at the theater tonight?”
Anna shrugged, smiling impishly. “It is possible.”
“There is no need to wonder who it’s from,” Susan said. “The delivery boy said it was sent by Mr. Sutherland.”
“Ah!” Isabelle knew it, of course, but to hear it verified made her want to scream. “Send it back!”
“Oh, come now, Isabelle,” Anna said. “Aren’t you curious?”
She was curious. Far too curious. What could it be? Jewels would come in a much smaller box. Some sort of clothing, she assumed, but what?
She thrust her chin out. “Not at all.”
“I don’t believe you!” Anna giggled, clearly enjoying herself.
Isabelle turned to Susan. “Please send it back.”
“Of course. I will take care of it.” With a wan smile, Susan set the box on the counterpane at the foot of the bed.
Anna dropped into the chair at the dressing table. “Oh, you two are no fun at all. Can’t we see what it is first, then send it back? Please?”
“No.” Isabelle tried to sound adamant, but Anna’s curiosity was catching. If the box stayed in the room much longer, she’d give in.
What was she turning into? An outrageous, wanton creature. To even consider opening a gift from a man who was not her relative breached the defenses of the principles she’d so carefully constructed to protect herself from further shame, further heartbreak. To even consider accepting a man’s gift made her feel unaccountably guilty and terribly immoral.
It was all because of Leo. The horrid man had ruined her for anyone else. She closed her eyes.
“Please, Susan. Send it back now. I can’t bear to look at it a moment longer.”
***
Leo couldn’t stop thinking about her.
He remembered seeing her father for the first time after her “death.” Leo had encountered him in Scotland after a sojourn on the Continent. Frasier had played along with Leo’s brother’s ruse, accepting his condolences for his daughter’s death with strained politeness.
It had been an extremely awkward moment, and Leo had escaped as quickly as he could. They ran in different circles, so he rarely saw the man. He wondered if he still lived. If so, Leo thought to pay him a visit when he was released.
He wondered how much his brother had paid Belle’s father for his silence. The thought of it made him grind his teeth.
Who else had known of Belle’s survival? Nobody in society, none of her old acquaintances or friends. Perhaps only her immediate family and his. She must have had to start over in England. Shy, quiet Belle in an unfamiliar place, abandoned by all her friends and her lover.
It must have been dreadful for her.
Leo lay on the cold flagstones of the cellar floor and closed his eyes, imagining Belle beneath him, looking up at him in awe, her eyes big and blue in her pretty face. Belle, flashing her dimples at him as they walked together hand in hand along the banks of the loch. Belle and him locked together, tucked beneath the warm covering of a plaid. Belle on top of him, his hands cupping her soft breasts as she rode him, then trembled above him, gasping out her fulfillment.
Who was Belle now? How would society view her from behind their opera glasses at the theater tonight?
He squeezed his eyes shut, hating that she was going without him. Stupidly, he wanted to be by her side.
***
The novelty of being at the theater nearly made Isabelle forget about Mr. Sutherland’s gaze boring into her back, but it could not make her forget Leo.
She thought about him, trussed up and cold in the cellar. Was he still angry? Lonely? Did he understand yet why they’d brought him there?
A part of her felt inexorably drawn to him. She felt like a hungry herring enchanted by a shiny lure.
Unlike her companions, she focused on the story unfolding on the stage below. Despite her preoccupation with Leo, the actors made her smile with all their antics in misdirected matchmaking.
And Mr. Sutherland was watching her. He stood behind her, occasionally speaking in low tones to the other gentlemen who clustered around him, so she couldn’t see him unless she turned around. But she felt his gaze on her back more often than not, making her feel warm and out of sorts.
When the intermission came, people crowded the box instantly. Isabelle heard someone ask after Lord Archer, and it seemed he’d slipped away. Anna was gone, too.
She stood beside Susan, giving polite smiles when people glanced at her or when Susan made introductions. Susan fell into impassioned conversation with three ladies about the matchmaking during the Season this past spring. Isabelle stepped back, unable to participate. She glanced down at the darkened stage, thinking of the way Malvolio had been deluded into thinking Olivia loved him.
She had been deluded once, into thinking that Leo loved her. She couldn’t help but feel sorry for Malvolio, even though he was portrayed as a dour, priggish sort of a man.
“It is hot in here, don’t you think, Miss Frasier? I would be happy to accompany you outside. The air is crisp tonight—perhaps it will refresh you.”
A jolt of terror bolted through Isabelle, followed promptly by a jolt of rebellion. Mr. Sutherland would not harm her. He was incapable of hurting her—she wouldn’t allow him to. Since she had refused his gift, he should know where he stood with her, know she had no intention of granting him anything besides her company. She could clarify that, given a chance to speak with him alone.
She glanced at Anna’s empty chair and met Mr. Sutherland’s gaze. “A stroll sounds lovely, Mr. Sutherland. Perhaps we will find Anna and Lord Archer and let them know the performance is about to resume.”
Isabelle whispered an excuse to Susan, who glanced at Mr. Sutherland, then arched one suggestive eyebrow at her before returning her attention to her friends.
Mr. Sutherland proffered his arm, and they descended the stairs. Isabelle marveled at the feeling of a man so close to her, his solid arm entwined in hers. His touch was so strong, so firm compared to a woman’s. He took the lead confidently, steering her through the crowded lobby and out into the busy street. She shivered as the cold night air permeated her dress. Mr. Sutherland, who had been holding her cloak draped over his free arm, fastened it about her shoulders.
She smiled up at him gratefully. “It’s odd to go from hot to cold so quickly.”
“Sometimes the crush can be stifling. All that body heat, you know.”
She stiffened and gazed up at him, trying to decipher whether this talk of body heat held a deeper meaning. Surely nobody spoke of the temperature of human bodies in polite conversation. But then his lips tilted in a smile reaching all the way to the sparkle in his eyes, and in her mind she proclaimed him guileless. In this matter, at least.
She looked beyond his shoulder at the people filtering into the theater and changed the subject. “I wonder where Lord Archer and Anna might be?”
Mr. Sutherland hel
d out his arm for her again, and they resumed the sedate pace of their walk. “They are not in the theater,” he said, “Nor in the lobby, nor outside. They could be hiding from prying eyes somewhere. Or perhaps—” He broke off suddenly.
Isabelle slanted a look up at him. “Perhaps what?”
“Or they might have returned to Archer’s town house.”
She looked away, chastising herself for being coy. Before she could stop it, she blurted a less distressing alternative. “Or she might have been feeling poorly, and he might have escorted her home.”
“Surely anything is possible.” Mr. Sutherland slowed his step, then stopped fully. He turned to her, the expression on his face hidden in shadows. “You returned the flowers I sent, Miss Frasier.”
Flowers. So that was what had been hidden inside the long box. It wasn’t as insidious a gift as she had imagined.
Steeling herself, she disentangled her arm from his and found her voice. Still, she couldn’t quite meet his eyes as she said in a near whisper, “You must understand that I cannot accept a gift from you, Mr. Sutherland. Any gift.”
He rubbed the back of his hand across his jaw. “Of course I understand. I am sorry to have offended you.”
“You did not offend me. It is my fault. I should never have given you the impression—” She broke off, finding it impossible to finish the sentence delicately. As usual, he came to her aid.
“You gave me no impression. It was all my regrettable doing.”
“I am very sorry. It is…I am not the kind of woman who—”
“Of course, Miss Frasier.” He cleared his throat. “I sent the flowers out of the great esteem I hold for you. There was nothing more to it than that.”
“You hardly know me,” she murmured. Surely no one could hold “great esteem” for anyone after such a short acquaintance.
For an instant, his face relaxed and his eyes glinted in the dimness. She felt certain he would tell her he knew everything about her. Instead, he said, “You are right. I don’t understand it.” He shrugged helplessly, and his voice lowered. “But when you are near, I am quite…taken. I am worse than a besotted schoolboy.”
He appeared so fraught, so distressed, that Isabelle could not help but soften. “I…I’d like to offer you friendship, Mr. Sutherland.”
Nothing more.
Even in the gloom, she saw how handsome he was, his straight stature, the angles of his face, those disarming blue eyes, and she wondered why she couldn’t offer him more. Why was she hiding behind this wall of propriety? Anna wasn’t hiding. She was happy—nay, thrilled—to become Lord Archer’s mistress. And Susan herself had said she would take many lovers before martyring her happiness to society’s moral standards.
What if Leo and not Mr. Sutherland stood before her and offered himself to her? What then?
The wall would disintegrate. She would fall into his arms.
This had nothing to do with morality. She was not moral. It was all a screen to hide the truth. Her traitorous, wicked heart belonged to someone else. Someone who had never wanted it.
“Friendship?” Mr. Sutherland’s voice was cautious.
She forced a smile, forced herself to look at the handsome countenance of the man facing her. “Aye, I would be honored to have you as a friend.”
“May I visit you at Lady DeLinn’s house?”
Leo had put her in this wretched position. She hated him for it. She took a shallow breath. “Of course you may.”
Mr. Sutherland bowed his head. “Thank you. I shall endeavor not to be a disappointing friend to you, Miss Frasier.”
“That’d be impossible,” she said gravely, wondering if she was disappointed or relieved that this friendship would necessarily be quite brief. She would be back in Scotland soon, after all.
***
Isabelle couldn’t sleep. Admitting to herself that Leo held her heart in a vise had opened the floodgates of her desires.
She thought she had learned to be cold. After years alone, the powerful physical and emotional longings she’d once experienced had simmered away, leaving more mundane images to rule her dreams.
But here, tonight, Leo was too close. She couldn’t banish the memories. How he’d touched her. How he’d held her in his arms and whispered about the things he wanted to do to her body.
As much as the evidence proved it, she couldn’t believe it had all been a lie.
She couldn’t believe he’d planned it. He had been as much a slave to their desire as she had.
No, his words were genuine—she couldn’t make herself believe otherwise. They had been genuine in the moment. Afterward, perhaps, he had changed his mind, admitted the folly of his ways and decided to abandon her to her fate. But during those moments they were together, he had been as intensely drawn, as intensely moved, as she had.
She rose from her bed, lit a candle from the embers of the fire, and drew a modest wool wrap over her shoulders. Shielding the candle with the palm of her hand, she padded downstairs, pulled as if by a string looped around her heart, through the dark kitchen and down another flight of stairs to the cellar.
Her wits put up a brave fight, told her she was being stupid, careless, and that there were no ends that could possibly justify the recklessness of what she was doing. But some fiend lodged itself firmly inside her head, rationalizing that there was no danger in this, that it was already nearly morning, and surely Leo would be dead to the world. Even if he wasn’t, he would be blindfolded and bound.
Her need to see him overruled rational thought. She had to see him again. She had to look upon his face one last time.
A servant was nodding off at the cellar door. Isabelle shook his shoulder and the boy blinked up at her, then straightened and rubbed his hands vigorously over his face and through a mop of brown hair.
“Listen at the door, please,” she whispered. “If you hear me call for you, come inside immediately, do you understand?”
“Yes, miss.”
As quietly as possible, she unbolted the door and slipped inside. A hinge creaked, sounding like cannon fire in the silence.
Gooseflesh rose on her arms as she set the candle on the stone floor near the doorway. No fire warmed Lord Leothaid’s dark, barren cell.
Isabelle saw the remains of his supper on the floor—a dry crust of bread and a crude clay cup of water. No plate, no napkin.
The earl lay on the chaise longue near the wall, about three long paces away, curled as tightly as his bonds would allow, sleeping beneath a blue silk blanket.
A strip of linen blindfolded him. Susan had planned this—to keep him blindfolded and the ropes lashed to his hands at night in the event something should happen, or in the event one of them wished to make a nighttime call. At the time, Isabelle thought Susan’s decision extreme, but here she was.
She stared at the blindfold and remembered his eyes. Dark, stormy blue with hints of metallic gray that glimmered when he was angry…or aroused.
His wide lips parted slightly in sleep. Facial hair covered the edge of his jaw. She remembered running her lips over his jaw, up his hairline, across his forehead. She remembered stroking his torso, learning every muscle, every dip and curve of his form. She’d loved touching him. He’d told her he loved touching her, too.
But he’d lied. Just as he had lied to Anna and Susan and countless others.
Why?
Isabelle released a long, slow breath.
“Belle?” he said in a rough voice. “Is that you?”
She froze. How long had he been awake?
Silence.
She had to breathe or her lungs would burst. She inhaled shallowly, trying desperately to be silent.
“Please don’t hide from me.” Awkwardly, he kicked the blanket away and shifted his body so he sat upright. The chain clanked on the floor, and Isabelle winced.
She could not peel her eyes away from him. He sat on the edge of the chaise, fully awake now, his body alert, so alert he reminded her of a lion studying a mouse, s
econds from leaping on its prey.
When she was eighteen, she’d believed he was the handsomest man in the world. Since then, she’d privately scoffed at her immature infatuation.
She’d been wrong to scoff. He was beautiful. He was larger now than he’d been seven years ago—thicker through the shoulders and in the thighs. His muscles had grown to mouthwatering proportions.
He was a dissolute, spoilt rake. How on earth had he grown so strong?
She studied his feet, awed by them yet again. They were so big, so naked. The nakedness extended up his manacled ankles to the bottoms of his crumpled black trousers.
The only other thing he wore was a blousy white shirt, which opened at his neck in a vee. She gazed at his chest, her heart thudding in her ears. Surely he must hear it as well.
Was it her thunderous heartbeat that had woken him?
“Take off the blindfold, Belle.” It was a whisper, a seduction. “Let me see you.”
She shook her head.
“What are you afraid of? I never thought I’d lay eyes on you again.” He coaxed with his voice, as if speaking to a temperamental horse. “It’s been seven years and three months, almost to the day. Please, Belle. I’ve wanted so badly to see you. Keep me bound, but let me look on you again.”
No. He was lying; he was full of lies. He had abandoned her, left her alone and loveless, while he…
All he wanted was to be set free. He would coax her to remove his blindfold; then he would wheedle freedom from his bonds. He could easily subdue the stick-thin boy on guard outside.
“God, I can feel you,” he whispered. “Come closer.”
Nay, she couldn’t.
“It has been so long. How is it that you are here? What are you doing with those women?”
Those women? Isabelle stiffened. “They are my friends,” she whispered.
“How? Why? Where have you been for all these years?”
“It doesn’t matter.” Tears pricked at her eyes. “But I know where you have been.”
The Sweetest Revenge Page 11