Earl 0f St. Seville Page 17

  He wanted to tell her it was all right, that she owed him nothing. There shouldn’t be any confliction when it came to deciding between Sin and her father. There was no decision to be made. Her allegiance belonged to Desmond.

  But Patience didn’t glance back again, only strode past her father and out the door into the brisk, cold night.

  It shouldn’t matter, but her departure wounded him far more than any thrown fist could. It wasn’t something that caused him injury that would heal with time. When Patience left, she took a piece of him with her.

  What remained was far more painful than the bruises to his chest and face and the cuts on his knuckles.

  Something no amount of time or distance could heal.

  It would remain open, broken without chance of repair.

  Perhaps it was for the best. His injuries from pugilism would heal, but to take from Patience the life she deserved was something Sin could never do.

  A hand clapped Sin’s back, sending a sharp burst of pain down into his legs and up his neck.

  “Well, St. Seville,” Holstrom said, standing at his side. “You cannot say I did not caution you against entangling yourself with Desmond and his sharp-tongued shrew of a daughter.”

  Sin turned swiftly, his clenched fist slamming into Holstrom’s nose, sending fresh blood cascading down the lord’s chin and onto his pristine, white linen shirt and neckcloth.

  “Never—I mean never—shall Lady Patience’s name or any reference to her or her family cross your lips again. Let that be my words of caution to you, Holstrom.”

  Holstrom held his nose, blood oozing through his fingers and he stared at Sin with rounded, shocked eyes as the color drained from his face.

  Before his temper flared any hotter and his fury took the small amount of control Sin still held, he elbowed past Holstrom, making certain his fists remained by this sides as he moved toward the Earl of Coventry, who stood several feet away.

  “St. Seville?” Coventry asked, his brow raised in question, and a smirk curving the corners of his mouth upward.

  “Can I trouble you for the use of your carriage?” Sin rumbled.

  He didn’t wait for an answer but stepped around the earl toward the back door of the warehouse. It was best if Sin didn’t encounter anyone else who might disparage Lady Patience or her family—for the slim strand of control he held would surely snap.

  Although that breakage was nothing compared to his heart.

  Chapter 16

  Patience leapt from the carriage and raced into the house the moment the driver opened the door. The front of their townhouse was alight and waiting for Patience and her father to return. The cold night air bit into her cheeks, sending a shiver down her spine. Her refusal to speak to or even look at her father for the endless ride home was childish and would only serve to delay the inevitable coming argument.

  But there was no other way for Patience to hide the agony and embarrassment she felt at Sin’s deception. Her father would see through the anger she was using as a front to mask the turmoil within her.

  Sin had lied to her, unequivocally and without remorse.

  And Patience had taken him at his word. Never before had she believed any man, besides her father, when they told her something of such consequence. Even Merit and Valor were not above her questioning their every action and word—and the object of her scorn if they were proven dubious in any way.

  But the Earl of St. Seville—no, Sin—had broken through her resolve, causing her to lower her guard. Drop the wall she’d constructed after her mother’s death when society had spurned her due to her strongly held convictions.

  Patience kept her head lowered as she hurried through the foyer and past the main stairs. She would be easily found if she went directly to her room, and she’d run the risk of catching her maid turning down her bed for the night.

  She’d misguidedly believed Sin had listened to her…and heard every word. More than that, she’d fooled herself into thinking that he cared for her.

  Foolish.

  Childish.

  Gullible, silly girl.

  Were those the many things Sin and his cohorts—Coventry and Holstrom—jested about after she left? Perhaps they’d adjourned to their gentlemen’s club and were even now spreading news of the hilarity of her actions. All of London would know she wasn’t only a champion for a cause that no one believed in, but also that she had been foolish enough to think herself falling in love with a man who was doing nothing but lie to her. They’d spent days together at Southlund’s training. She’d risked her father’s disappointment at discovering her activities, and all because she thought something—she wasn’t certain what to call it, friendship, more than friendship?—had developed between them. She’d spoken of her mother and the despair surrounding her passing.

  Had Sin gone so far as to create a ruse in an attempt to fool Patience into training him in the art of pugilism?

  If so, she was more simpleminded than even she’d thought.

  And now her father knew of her failings.

  She regretted abandoning her work to abolish pugilism far more now knowing her father’s disappointment in her.

  Voices echoed behind her, but she kept moving, her feet tangling in the hem of her skirt for a brief moment. She’d thought the air outside abrasive, and the stale air of the carriage stifling; however, the walls of her home were not the sanctuary she’d expected. Her lungs contracted and expanded in time with her pulsing heart.

  Her breaths fled her on ragged gasps.

  She knew what was coming, and she’d be damned if her father or her maid would witness it.

  Patience was about to cry…over a man she barely knew.

  Blessedly, she reached the library and cast herself out the veranda door, stepping onto the terrace. However, she didn’t stop there, she continued on into the garden. The area her mother had cherished, especially after the countess had promised her husband she’d no longer enter the ring. Patience had watched her mother toil away in the roses for hours. She’d been meticulous when inspecting each bud, selecting the perfect blossoms to be snipped and collected for display in the house. Before the previous day at Southlund’s House, it was the gardens Patience sought out whenever she longed to feel closer to her mother.

  At the moment, Patience wasn’t fleeing to the garden to be close to her mother, to feel her presence. The last thing she wanted was to be reminded of the sport that had taken her mother and led Sin to deceive her.

  No, she needed to be alone. In the gardens, no one disturbed Patience, just as they’d allowed the countess her solitude when she worked among her roses.

  The late hour had brought dew that clung to the grass, and it dampened her skirt as she slowed to a walk, turning her face to the cloud-covered night sky. The breeze held the familiar scent of rain, necessary to wash away the soot and smog that clung to most of London. The clouds slinking across the inky sky made the moon and stars invisible. Patience embraced the chill, allowing it to wash over her as the tears came, slowly sliding down her cheeks. She allowed the wind and her tears to wipe away the muddled mess she’d created of her life.

  Patience turned slowly in a circle until she faced away from her house and any unwitting observers within.

  In recent years, she’d turned into a woman she didn’t recognize, crusading for a cause that she wasn’t certain anyone but she and her father understood. She’d cast every person in her life—and those she met—into places of insignificance and ultimately forgotten about them, knowing she would, at some point, leave them behind in pursuit of her primary goal.

  When had that happened?

  But the Earl of St. Seville had broken through her guard that night at Lord Holstrom’s soirée. Or had it happened before that when Patience had happened upon him, stripped to the waist in Merit’s private chamber?

  They’d both been vulnerable in that moment. She gowned in nothing but her white shift, and Sin bloodied without his shirt and jacket.

  Sh
e’d hidden her vulnerabilities by cowering behind her convictions and her work.

  The foolish, bloody pamphlets.

  Her fists clenched at her sides until her nails cut through her gloves and into the palms of her hands.

  It had taken only the sight of Sin—and his kind words in Holstrom’s hall—and Patience had all but forgotten the one passion she’d clung to since her mother’s death. She’d gone so far as to reenter Southlund’s House.

  She’d lied to her father.

  Perhaps she’d lied to herself, as well.

  A frigid droplet of rain landed on her upturned face, mingling with her warm tears.

  Her years of caution in regards to pugilism, the hours spent speaking with fighters, profiteers, and the printing of her pamphlets had made no difference, except to make her an outcast among those who should see her as their equal…a peer.

  She’d toted her self-righteous message to all and sundry.

  And then had quickly forgotten it all when she saw Sin’s need.

  In the last five years, Patience had made certain that not a single member of society got to know her. She’d hidden behind her work. But why?

  If Sin had taught her anything, it was that she’d been right to hide, both herself and her heart. The hurt at discovering Sin’s lies wounded her as deeply as her mother’s passing had.

  It was a betrayal to her mother and her memory to even think this way. Comparing the death of her most loved and cherished relative to the lies of a man she’d met only a week prior? She wasn’t only an insufferable person, she was also an ungrateful daughter. In her selfish need to champion her mother’s death, Patience had knowingly sent her father into harm’s way, night after night, distributing her pamphlets. Worse yet, his reclusive nature had been Patience’s doing, as well. Each time he went out on her fool’s errands, he relived the loss of his countess.

  It was his undoing.

  Patience finally allowed the sobs to leave her, breaking the silence of the night…and doing nothing to alleviate her pain.

  An agony she had no right to feel.

  Her father was worthy of his continued sorrow. Sin was deserving of his all-consuming need to save his family and his people. Even the men and women who chose prizefighting as their means of crawling out of the deplorable circumstances of their birth had the right to seek a better future.

  Damnation, if a person enjoyed the sport, who was Patience to fight, kick, and scream at them to change their interests?

  Her mother had never given up on pugilism, even after she retired from fighting. She taught at Southlund’s and passed her passion for the sport on to another generation of pugilists. Including Patience. There had been a time when Patience knew no greater joy than seeing the smile on her mother’s face when she executed an advanced move in the ring or when she bested her sparring partner.

  She’d taken something that had been a source of pride for her family and turned it into something so vile she felt compelled to shout her warnings from the rooftops.

  In her single-minded pursuit, she’d even pushed her siblings away.

  Her sisters, Temperance and Verity, scrambled to wed and be away from Marsh Manor, and Merit and Valor spent increasingly large spans of time away from their townhouse. And her father remained in his study when he wasn’t at his club.

  Patience had done this to her family.

  She’d thought she was helping others, stopping them from suffering what her family had, but instead, she was making it impossible for her family to exist in one home.

  Could it be that she’d been utterly wrong? Maybe not in her belief that brawling was a danger but that life itself could ever be completely safe.

  Tonight, she’d pushed Sin away, likely forever, and all because she didn’t see that his reasons were as important or worthy as her own.

  “What have I done?” she demanded of the sky above.

  In response, the clouds overhead parted and the midnight moon shone brightly.

  Chapter 17

  In the aftermath of his confrontation with Holstrom—and in his hurry to depart Seven Dials—Sin had paid no heed to the two men who followed him from the warehouse to Coventry’s waiting carriage in the alley. Due to his rage over the circumstances, Sin didn’t bother glancing about when he paused to put on his shirt, followed by his jacket. He was prepared for any confrontation to come. In his need to see Lady Patience, and in his anger at himself for hurting her, Sin hadn’t noticed the two men climbing into the carriage after him. And as the pain from his injuries began to draw at the edges of his mind, and the exhilaration of the fight subsided, Sin finally glanced up from his place in the carriage to see the two dark-haired men sitting across from him.

  Their mirrored glowers and crossed arms did nothing to clear Sin’s fogging mind, even as his thoughts swirled around, demanding the driver to deliver him to the Earl of Desmond’s townhouse with the haste of a thousand wild horses.

  Certainly, most men would be concerned when faced by two adversaries whose menacing glares in no way promised friendship. However, not even both men combined could equal Sin’s weight, and even with his injuries from the prizefight, he was certain the two men would not prove a threat to him. If they thought to attack him and take his prize purse, they would have done it before entering the carriage.

  The minutes had ticked by as their hostile, almost ferocious, stares hadn’t diminished in the least.

  However, the pain of his injuries—had he broken his hand or suffered bruising to his back?—had cleared his mind and brought an acute awareness to his surroundings—and his need to quicken his journey across London.

  Each time Sin called to the driver to make haste, one or both of the men shouted for the driver to remain halted. The bolder of the two kept his hand on the carriage door latch, daring Sin to make a move to exit.

  Sin chuckled. If the men wanted a fight, Sin had enough pent-up aggressive growing inside him to take on the men without a second thought. If they were here to pinch his winnings and make off into the night, then he wished they’d get on with their business and leave him to his next task.

  “May I help you, gentlemen?” he asked, his voice level and even, his gaze moving from one man to the other. They appeared vaguely familiar, and Sin wondered if they’d passed in the halls of the Albany or perhaps they were members of Coventry’s exclusive club. Their lapels were devoid of a golden W, which dispelled the notion that they were aligned with the Wicked Earls’ Club. “Are you here for something, or are you simply in need of transport back to London proper?”

  “What is your business with Lady Patience Lane?” It was the man holding the door closed, preventing Sin from departing, who spoke. In proper lighting, the pair would be hard to tell apart, and without a proper introduction, Sin could only note the lines on the man’s face to indicate that he was the elder of the two men.

  “That is none of your concern,” Sin retorted. If they were simply more men thinking to warn him away from Patience, they’d picked the wrong day to issue their cautionary stories. And if either thought to disparage the woman’s name, they would see the same fate as Holstrom had. “If you will excuse me—”

  “I would have to say it is exactly our concern, my lord.” This came from the younger man. Sin quickly realized why the men appeared familiar, though he was confident that they’d never met. “You will answer my brother’s question. Now.”

  Knowing the men were not present to cause him serious harm should have eased Sin, but it only served to fill him with guilt over what Patience was suffering through. These men were her family—her brothers, if Sin weren’t mistaken. If anyone deserved to know Sin’s intentions with Lady Patience, it was the gentlemen sitting across from him.

  “My business with Lady Patience isn’t about business at all.” It was the truth. Never had Sin thought of Patience in a business sense. He hadn’t met her with any nefarious notions in mind; in fact, he’d wondered at her intentions when she stumbled upon him that night in he
r home. “We met not long ago, and it doesn’t pain me to admit…I care for her greatly.”

  “And yet you do the one thing that will crush her feelings?” the younger man scoffed.

  However, the tension drained from the man next to him. “I am Valor, and this is Merit.”

  “Patience’s brothers,” Sin continued for them.

  Merit, the young brother, asked, “Is it so obvious?”

  “Dark complexion, dark hair, and eyes that change from blue to grey with your mood and the lighting—no, the resemblance isn’t obvious at all.”

  “You left the fight in a bit of a rush,” Valor continued, re-crossing his arms as if remembering why he’d waylaid Sin’s coach. “Where are you headed?”

  “Most likely the same place you are,” Sin offered, crossing his own arms and pegging the men with his coolest stare.

  “Do not think to know where we are headed, my lord,” Merit threw back. Of the pair, Sin thought Patience was much like this young man: fiery and passionate with a healthy dose of indignation.

  “I planned to go to your townhouse and beg Patience to see me.”

  “Did you not hear our father?” Valor retorted. “You have been banned from both Southlund’s House and Marsh Manor.”

  “And if I do not heed Desmond’s words?” Sin asked, lifting his chin to stare down at the men. “Will the pair of you attempt to stop me?”

  “Depends,” Merit offered, but he’d relaxed ever so slightly since he entered the coach and sat across from Sin.

  “On…?”

  “Whether you mean to cause Patience more hurt,” Valor said. “We do not take kindly to anyone harming our sister, as I’m sure you can understand.”

  “I do,” Sin agreed. “However, I can assure you, I never meant to hurt Patience in the first place.”

  “Be that as it may,”—Merit pushed up straight in his seat—“you did cause her grief. So acutely she made a spectacle of herself before half of London. What about her reputation? Do you think she will ever find a suitable man to wed now?”