The Sweetest Revenge

by Dawn Halliday

  Lady DeLinn gazed at him, arching one fine, dark eyebrow. “There is no logical sense in that argument, Leo.”

  Leo shrugged helplessly. What more could he say?

  Thunder rumbled in the distance. The three of them gazed heavenward. The sky was pale blue overhead, but storm clouds loomed.

  Lady DeLinn finally spoke. “Do you truly still want Isabelle, my lord? Even after a month of freedom?”

  “Yes. This isn’t freedom, my lady. It’s hell. Not knowing where she is, not knowing how to find her…”

  Lady DeLinn glanced at Anna, who pursed her lips, a speculative gleam in her eye. “Why her?” Lady DeLinn asked him. “Didn’t you say you’d have every chit in London pretty enough and willing enough to spread her legs?”

  Heat prickled his neck. He felt a desperate urge to loosen his cravat. “Not anymore,” he said tightly. “You must know I have not touched anyone since I was freed.”

  Anna’s eyes flashed green as she gave him a dismissive gesture with her hand. “Go find a whore, then. That’ll satisfy. All women have the same basic parts, after all, don’t they, my lord?”

  Anger rose within him, an instinctual response. She mocked Belle, said she was no better than any common harlot. His Belle. He narrowed his eyes and gritted his teeth. “No, that will not satisfy.”

  Lady DeLinn dissected him with her sharp eyes. “Are your intentions honorable, my lord?”

  “They are.”

  “Do you fancy yourself in love with her?” Anna asked.

  Leo paused, then looked the woman in the eye. “I love her. I always have.”

  Lady DeLinn leaned toward him, lowering her voice to a whisper. “Do you believe you deserve her?”

  He could be nothing but honest. “No.”

  “Then why should we help you?”

  “I am…I am lost without her. She is all that is good in my life. All that ever has been good.”

  “We should not tell you where she is,” Anna whispered. “We should let you suffer.”

  At that moment, her face looked terribly hard and cynical, almost old. Leo was responsible for that look. He clenched his fists.

  “Perhaps you should,” he said. “I cannot force you. I only ask you to take pity on me. I will make her happy, or at least I will try. I will be faithful—”

  Both women raised skeptical brows.

  He tried to convey his sincerity with his eyes. It was an awkward, unnatural state for him. He felt uncomfortable in his own skin. Desperation made him weak. Throwing up his hands, he exclaimed, “I can’t have a hope to succeed if I am not given the chance.”

  Lady DeLinn shrugged delicately. “We know how thoughtless you can be, Lord Leothaid. We will not see our friend hurt again. How can we be confident you would not harm her? Isabelle is a gentle-hearted woman.”

  He cringed inwardly, feeling the hard stone of shame within him grow heavy. With it came a tug of insecurity. “Tell me where she is. Allow her to decide.”

  Lady DeLinn and Anna exchanged a long, meaningful look. Something undecipherable passed between them.

  Lady DeLinn turned to him. “Would you give us a few moments alone, my lord? I believe Miss Tomkins and I need to converse.”

  “Of course.” Leo bowed, moved to the nearest shop window, and looked inside.

  It happened to be a jeweler’s establishment, and Leo gazed into the window, stiffly aware of the women speaking in hushed tones just beyond his shoulder, but imagining all these glittering necklaces and earrings on Belle. She hadn’t worn any jewelry the one night they’d been together. She’d worn nothing at all. Still, she’d always been too modest to wear much in the form of lavish ornamentation, and most of these pieces were lavish to the point of ostentation.

  But then he focused on the corner of the display. A pair of sapphire earrings lay on the black velvet—small, teardrop-shaped stones ringed with tiny diamonds. Unassuming yet very pretty. Just like his Belle. And their color was the exact shade of her eyes.

  The ladies came to stand beside him.

  “Hm.” Anna clasped her reticule behind her back and studied the offerings inside the window. “Oh, yes, I see something that would be perfect for Isabelle. Here is your test, my lord: You must tell me what she would like the most. If it matches what I believe to be the correct choice, we will tell you where she is; then you will buy that gift and be on your way to eternal bliss with the object of your adoration. If not, go home and don’t bother us again. You are not a pleasant sight to my eyes. In fact, I am quite sick of you.”

  He didn’t hesitate. He pointed to the sapphire earrings. “Those.”

  “Those?” Anna gazed at them for a long while. “Why, I do believe you’re correct. They match her eyes. What do you think, Susie?”

  “They would be stunning on Isabelle,” Lady DeLinn said gravely.

  He stared at the earrings, imagining Belle’s hands moving as she clasped them to her ears. He closed his eyes, remembering the feel of those hands caressing him.

  “Where is she?”

  “She’s in Scotland.” Lady DeLinn said.

  “Scotland.” He nearly choked on his frustration. “No. I just came from there. Her uncle said…” He hesitated, then clenched his teeth together so hard he was surprised they didn’t break.

  Her damned uncle had lied to his face.

  Fury made his chest so tight he could hardly speak. “He said she wasn’t there.”

  Lady DeLinn raised a black brow. “And you believed him?”

  “Yes,” he bit out.

  Bloody hell. He’d been duped yet again by family members conspiring to keep them apart.

  Scotland was too far away. He wanted her to be in London. He wanted to see her today. Now.

  But he’d go back. He’d leave London today. This wasn’t going to happen again.

  Anna and Lady DeLinn exchanged a concerned glance.

  “That odious man lied to you,” Anna said. “For we know she is there. And we are worried about her. The situation there may be dire. We have written every day, and she has returned not one of our letters. So do go fetch her. Bring her back to us.”

  “I will. I am leaving today.”

  “She is still very angry with you,” Lady DeLinn said. “It will not be easy for you to earn her forgiveness.”

  “I understand,” he said.

  Lady DeLinn leaned forward, spearing him with glittering, dark eyes. “We are revealing this information to you because we believe you comprehend the folly of your ways. We believe you seek redemption. We believe your intentions are pure. If, however, we discover that they are not—” She paused, leaving the threat to hang in the air.

  “I’ll kill you,” Anna finished cheerfully. And Leo didn’t doubt her for a second.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Isabelle emerged into the hallway, carrying two empty pots. It had rained more this November than it had ever rained in her memory of Novembers. Everything was damp and musty. She couldn’t get her clothes to dry. The fields were black with mud and dark puddles. The house had several leaks, but Devon couldn’t seem to find the wherewithal to fix any of them. Isabelle learned to fall asleep to the sound of fat drops dripping into a metal pail.

  She trudged up the stairs, pots in hand. She’d pinned her hair haphazardly this morning and wore a secondhand homespun gown directly over her night rail. She hadn’t bothered to change into her chemise or arrange her hair properly or wear stays or a petticoat. What was the point?

  She’d lost more weight, too. She’d normally feel happy about such a thing, but nobody here cared whether she had a nicely shaped figure.

  Sighing, she went into her bedchamber to replace the pot she had set in the corner this morning. It was quite full, for the rain had not let up since yesterday.

  “Isabelle!”

  Aunt Una’s reedy cry wafted through the house. Heavy pot in hand, Isabelle returned downstairs. She set the pot in the kitchen as her aunt shrilled her name again. “Isabelle, come here right no
w!”

  “Coming, Aunt Una.” Shoving strands of hair out of her face, she opened her aunt’s bedchamber door.

  She froze on the threshold. Aunt Una lay propped up on the bed, her lap strewn with papers. Uncle Ewan stood on the far side of the bed, a sheet of stationery in his hand, his scowl deeper than she’d ever seen it.

  Her aunt turned to her, white-lipped, her dark eyes livid. “What are these, Isabelle? What? What are they, I ask you?”

  Isabelle raised her hand, trying to stay calm, trying not to guess what those papers could be. “I don’t know, Aunt. What are they? Has something happened?”

  “Didn’t I tell ye, Una?” Uncle Ewan crumpled the sheet in his hand and tossed it in the fire. It went up in a little ball of flames. “Allow a tainted woman to go to London, and she’ll engage in all manner of immoral, corrupt, wicked behavior. Men comin’ here, askin’ for you like a damned cheap trollop—”

  Fear bubbled into Isabelle’s chest. She held on to the doorframe for support. “What on earth are you talking about, Uncle?”

  “You were right, husband. Dear God, you were right.” Aunt Una covered her face with her hands and burst into tears.

  “Goodness gracious, both of you. I’ve done nothing at all to elicit any of this!” Isabelle exclaimed. “Surely there is some misunderstanding.”

  Aunt Una dropped her hands and turned to Isabelle, her face twisted with fury. Isabelle saw no wetness on her cheeks.

  Her aunt held one of the papers up, her hand shaking. “We’re talking about this, you ungrateful little trollop,” she spat.

  A sense of peace drifted over Isabelle. She would not let them upset her. It didn’t matter anymore. The worst that could happen was that they would throw her out. At the moment, anything seemed better than having to live like this.

  “I’ll not have ye bringing your evil ways into my home, under my roof,” Uncle Ewan said. “I canna believe I have let it go this far.”

  “Next she’ll be sneaking men inside at night—taking men up to her room,” Aunt Una cried.

  Isabelle took a measured breath. She would not panic. “What is this about?”

  “Letters! Letters filled with the worst kind of moral depravity—” Aunt Una brought the page to her face and began to read. “‘He accompanies me everywhere—to the theater, to balls, to exhibitions. He is kind and giving and sharing, but when we are in bed’”—here her aunt’s voice faltered, but she continued easily enough—“‘we share the sweetest moments of all. He is generous in his lovemaking, so much so that I often wonder what I’ve done to deserve it. He does things to me that—well, Isabelle, to be honest, he does new things to me. He puts his mouth—’ Och, I canna read on!”

  Aunt Una flung the sheet of paper out of her hand. It sliced through the air and landed beneath an occasional table.

  Isabelle’s mouth tightened with rage. She spoke through pursed lips. “You read my letters?”

  “Your letters? Do ye believe anything belongs to you?” Uncle Ewan said. “Everything under this roof is mine. I keep you here because you are my brother’s daughter with nowhere else to go. Not because I wanted you. Ye’re a surly, disrespectful lass—always have been. Everything you eat, everything on yer back, is provided by me, and you thank me by bringing yer wickedness under my roof.” A mottled flush had traveled from his neck to the tips of his ears. “Well, I willna have it.”

  No. No. Isabelle wouldn’t stand for it. Not this time. She wouldn’t abide it.

  “Those letters are mine,” she said.

  “Nothing is yours,” Aunt Una spat.

  “Those are. My friends sent them to me. They are mine.”

  Uncle Ewan took a menacing step forward. “I made a mistake with you. I didna teach you discipline from the beginning. I didna beat you because you were a grown woman.”

  Isabelle scarcely heard him. Her voice was cool. “You stole my letters, opened them, and read them. Without my permission.”

  Uncle Ewan clutched the bedpost. His pale eyes bulged. “Go to your chamber. I’m going to find a strip of bark to beat the hide off you. Then ye’ll be stayin’ inside for the rest of your days.”

  Calmly, Isabelle walked inside the room, leaned down, and retrieved the piece of stationery Aunt Una had flung across the room. She held it up. “This is a letter from my friend. It is mine.”

  “Put that in the fire,” her uncle said, his knuckles white on the bedpost.

  Isabelle went to the bed and began stacking the papers neatly, recognizing Anna’s flowery script and Susan’s more compact hand. The sheets were hopelessly out of order, but seeing that they had written so much made her want to weep.

  They’d written to her. Because they cared about her. She wouldn’t let anyone take that away from her. Never again.

  She gathered them to her breast. “I’ll be thanking you to never touch my correspondence in the future.”

  Aunt Una’s gaunt fingers snaked out, trying to snatch the papers away, but Isabelle was faster.

  “You will no longer be allowed to receive correspondence of any kind,” Uncle Ewan said.

  She hugged the sheaf to her chest. “I’ll be going to read these now. I will speak with you later.”

  “You will not read them.” Her uncle took a step forward, clearly fighting for control. He looked as if he wanted to choke her. She wasn’t afraid.

  “You will throw those into the fire,” he growled. “And then you will go upstairs for yer birching.”

  She was not concerned about his threats. All that concerned her were the letters she had rescued. Her only regret was that one page had gone up in flames. She held his gaze fearlessly. “Nay.”

  “Oh Lord,” Aunt Una simpered. “No modesty, no shame. Och, the devil’s got into her.”

  Uncle Ewan looked awestruck. “I think he has, Una.”

  “I will read my letters now,” Isabelle said softly.

  Her uncle was speechless. She supposed her flagrant disobedience shocked him. She never contradicted him, much less disobeyed him. But today he had sought to take her only lifeline away. She would not allow it.

  She turned and, with a straight back, marched out of the room and down the corridor.

  “Isabelle, come back here this instant!” Aunt Una screeched. “Come back!”

  She grabbed her cloak from its hook.

  “Isabelle!”

  She opened the front door.

  “Return at once, Isabelle!”

  Head high, she stepped outside, down the path, and onto the road, sheltering her precious letters in the woolen folds of her cloak.

  Only when she was beyond view of the house did it hit her what she had done. A shudder began in the center of her belly and spread through her limbs. She stumbled off the road, sloshed through a puddle. Cold water seeped through her shoes and stockings. She sank down onto the stone wall bordering her uncle’s lands, clutching the letters, shaking all over.

  The air was thick with rain. Mist shrouded the distant, green, rolling hills. Sodden sheep speckled the landscape, standing dumbly about, paying her no heed. The pages rustled against her body. Her breath hitched, sounding loud and irregular in her ears.

  She had no money, no way of going back to England to solicit Susan’s or Great-Aunt Mary’s assistance. That left her with two options. She could make her way to Inverness and beg, or she could return to Uncle Ewan’s.

  Nobody in Inverness would help her. Why would they? She would end up on the streets.

  But if she went back, Uncle Ewan would beat her and burn all her letters. He would force her to stay inside and wouldn’t allow her to correspond with her only friends in the world.

  Susan was right. She should have stayed in London. If only she were there, if only she had a chance to make the decision all over again, she would never have come back here. She would do whatever anyone asked of her to keep her life there.

  She had behaved like such a martyr, sacrificing any hope of happiness for dreams of impossible love and a life o
f loneliness and despair.

  She was a fool. A stupid, stupid woman.

  Nay, she wouldn’t go back to her uncle. If her time in London had taught her anything, it had taught her that living with Uncle Ewan was not living. She would return to London, to the people she loved and who loved her in return. Somehow she would find her way back.

  But first, her letters. Withdrawing the papers from her cloak, Isabelle straightened them with still-shaking fingers, trying to prevent the ink from running. Everything was wet. Wetness blurred her vision, then streamed down her face.

  Giving up on organizing the letters, she clutched them to her chest again to keep them dry, rocked back and forth on the hard stone wall, and cried.

  She cried all her weakness away, all her pain. She cried away Leo—what he had done to her and what she had done to him. With each salty drop that slipped down her face, she felt the evils of the past seven years drain from her body.

  She was a grown woman, a strong woman, a woman with friends. She would find a way.

  Somewhere in the distance, she heard a scraping and rattling. It grew louder. She looked up, blinking through her tears. A black form emerged from the mist. A carriage, bumping over the potholes in the uneven road, approached from the direction of town, heading toward her uncle’s house.

  The old Isabelle might have cowered behind the wall, but the new Isabelle stared boldly at the carriage as it passed, knowing she looked wild and unkempt, knowing tears made streaks down her face.

  A few yards past her, the carriage jolted to a stop. The door opened, and then one shiny black boot appeared, then another.

  Leo, her heart cried out, reaching, hoping. Leo!

  Philip Sutherland emerged from the carriage.

  Of course it wasn’t Leo. She had wasted a third of her life pining for that man. But he hadn’t come. He wasn’t real.

  Phil Sutherland was real. He strode toward her with purposeful steps, allowing his perfectly clean, perfectly shiny boots to become soiled so he could reach her.

  He had come for her.

  He stopped in front of her. Bravely, she gazed up at his handsome face. His eyes were wide, his mouth agape. His expression transformed from concern to rage, and back to concern again.