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Chapter Two

“ I t's remarkable how much better food tastes when one doesn't need to pay for it,” Finchley said blithely. He gulped down some ale.

Isaiah eyed him balefully. “I shouldn't get too accustomed to the flavor of victory, if I were you.” He gave his meat pie a desultory poke with a fork.

He hadn't been entirely truthful with Miss Sylvaine when he'd told her he 'liked' to win.

I win; therefore I am , was closer to the truth.

He ruthlessly tallied his own worth in failures and triumphs, and every loss that ought to have been a win made him feel, if only briefly, as though the trap door between him and the abyss was splintering beneath his feet.

He was conscious that this was not entirely rational.

Then again, competitiveness had served him well, even as it frequently caused him great and secret suffering.

He never undertook a single endeavor without intending to master it.

His dart aim was, in fact, legendary in Sussex.

So losing at darts to Finchley maddened him.

It didn't show. Most people assumed Isaiah's preternatural composure was just another feature of his Redmond birthright, like his green eyes.

But he'd in fact been obliged to cultivate it, much the way he'd honed his aim. Mainly because it had been as necessary to his survival as a shell is to a clam’s.

He’d played shamefully today. As surely as if he’d been blinded by light.

After a fashion, he had been.

Leaf-dappled light on a girl’s shining dark hair.

He suddenly resented his dinner companion, because he wanted to close his eyes and be alone with that image.

But Finchley was here to discuss potentially joining Isaiah’s still nascent but already successful investment group, the Mercury Club, which suddenly had an opening for a new member.

“Why did those pretty girls dash off so abruptly?” Augustus wanted to know.

“Isn't that what pretty girls normally do at the very sight of you?” Isaiah replied idly.

“Ha,” Augustus replied complacently, around his mouth full of victory sausage. He hurriedly added, “They weren't as pretty as Miss Tarbell, of course.”

Isaiah nodded slowly, once, amused by the diplomatic fawning. Finchley knew—all of the ton knew—Isaiah had been courting Miss Fanchette Tarbell, the daughter of the Chancellor of Exchequer. “Is anybody?”

Miss Tarbell had floated through the London social season with the serenity of a swan on a lake, comfortable with, but not insufferable about, her overwhelming supremacy.

She was exquisite from every angle. She bestowed her pearly smiles judiciously, she was polite and kind to less-blessed young ladies, and she was gracious, if remote, with all the poor young bloods who stammered in her presence.

But whatever she saw in Isaiah’s eyes when they were first introduced had caused her to blush and drop her fan.

Females of all ages had been making cakes of themselves over him since he was about fifteen years old.

The bold attention had been discomfiting at first. He’d been shy and awkward as a little boy, sometimes so overwhelmed by impressions and emotions he’d go mute or stammer, which earned his father’s lashing scorn.

Speak, boy! he’d bark at him. What the bloody hell is the matter with you?

Your brother could charm the birds from the trees .

Isaiah had never met his sainted dead brother, but his alleged legion of gifts seemed to multiply in direct proportion to Isaiah’s failings.

He was nearly twenty now. Not only had he learned to harness the power of his remarkable good looks, he gradually came to understand that he possessed that separate but indefinable quality known as presence , the thing that made heads turn when he entered a room.

It made men want to impress him, be a part of his circle.

And if Isaiah had never quite conquered his inner tides, he’d learned that silence could be power, too. Silence could fascinate. Intimidate. Unnerve. Punish.

Seduce.

Even… perhaps even cherish.

His pulse had ticked faster than the timepiece in his hand during those thirty silent seconds beneath the oak tree.

He was tempted to rub at his chest now, as though he could feel the outline of Isolde Sylvaine’s delicate profile permanently etched there, like his initials on his watch.

It made him almost as restless as if it was an actual wound.

And silence, as it so happened, was indirectly why Finchley was sitting across from him now. The membership opening in the Mercury Club had been created after former member Mr. Peter Markhart muttered “how does Redmond walk with that stick up his arse?” within Isaiah’s earshot.

Whereupon Markhart had ceased to exist, as far as Isaiah was concerned.

He ignored Markhart in club meetings; he refused to respond if Markhart spoke to him.

He looked right through him in all social circumstances.

Awed by the thorough, icy ruthlessness of the shunning, the other club members had followed suit.

Reduced to a babbling, wretched nonentity, Markhart had disappeared from the social scene almost entirely.

Finchley was unlikely to make a similar mistake.

“Who were they?” Augustus pressed. “The girls beneath the trees?”

Isaiah found himself strangely reluctant to say her name aloud. “They are the Misses Isolde and Marie Sylvaine of Pennyroyal Green.”

Augustus paused in sawing at his sausage and gestured with his knife. “Sylvaine? They must be George Sylvaine's sisters... I heard a rumor that Jacob Eversea is courting a girl named Isolde. Unusual name for an English girl. Hard to forget. Surely there can't be two Isoldes in Sussex?”

At the best of times, hearing the words “Jacob Eversea” was akin to biting down on the tines of a fork.

Tonight the jolt was brutal.

Isaiah’s mouth went acrid with a jealousy that left him, for a moment, speechless .

“Your knowledge of local gossip rival’s my sister's, Finchley.” He took pains to sound bored. “How is it possible for Eversea to be courting anyone on English soil at present?”

It galled him that he somehow always knew Eversea’s whereabouts. He supposed it was for the same reasons two rival wolves might always be particularly attuned to the scent of each other on the wind.

It was given to understand that Eversea men tended to go off on long sea journeys to faraway lands upon leaving university, which was apparently meant to build their characters or some such rot.

Isaiah could not see how any Eversea had ever been improved by this.

Like most normal wealthy young men, Isaiah had toured the continent for a few months and returned to England apace.

Something about just the very presence of Jacob Eversea made Isaiah feel more acutely all of his secret inadequacies, the way a stiff wind could find all the cracks in an apparently sound building.

Isaiah had once found himself confronting Eversea during a fencing competition at university two years ago. Both were exceptionally skilled, aggressive, nimble swordsmen. Both were hellbent on victory.

The crowd knew this, and watched in held-breath tension. A gasp went up when Eversea seemed to lose his footing and stumble. He fell hard on his back.

An instant later Isaiah was crouching over him, the point of his foil touching Jacob’s throat, caught in the grip of a reflex forged by centuries of bad blood between their families.

He’d been disqualified from the competition.

Isaiah both savored and feared that memory. Because he knew the hate burning in Eversea’s eyes during that moment lived in him, too, beyond the reach of reason.

He was glad Eversea was somewhere out on the ocean.

What a pity it would be if pirates got him.

Would Isolde Sylvaine suffer if pirates got Eversea?

His stomach muscles tightened against the notion of grief shadowing her bright little face.

Eversea probably made her laugh all the time.

At university, one could find Jacob Eversea by following the sound of laughter. He effortlessly gathered crowds of friends with his showy charm.

Lodged in Isaiah’s heart like a splinter was the suspicion that Eversea was the sort of son his father would have preferred.

Fanchette seemed inured to the kinds of emotional surges that prompted shouts of mirth or thunderous scowls; she seemed to do everything with grace but nothing with abandon.

When Isaiah said something in jest, she usually tipped her head and eyed him with rueful indulgence, as though he was a naughty child who ought to know better.

He found this equal parts charming and irritating.

He was about as far from ‘naughty’ as a man could get.

But he loved how all eyes were on them when they rode together in Rotten Row.

He knew they looked magnificent together.

He was enchanted and bemused by the contrast between her otherworldly beauty and her strictly prosaic interests and expensive and particular tastes.

It was like listening to Aphrodite go on and on about the latest bonnet trimmings.

Her artless assumption that he would be interested in listening to her go on about such things he found touching and almost childlike.

But she listened with flattering attention when he talked about his plans to become even wealthier. They both loved opera and horses and fine objects and they both wanted the best of everything.

Which obviously meant each other.

And perhaps most importantly, Isaiah knew his father craved a relationship with Chancellor Tarbell. “Once you’re in with the politicians, Isaiah, my boy, the world is your oyster,” he’d told him more than once during one of his many lectures about life.

“So. More girls for me, I suppose, because I imagine you'll be leg shackled e'er long to the exquisite Miss Tarbell, you lucky old dog.” Augustus patted his lips with his napkin. “Surrounded by a brood of handsome little brats, and all that.”

This was the plan, of course. Just as one did not go through all the steps of loading a musket unless one intended to fire it, Isaiah knew the only possible conclusion to a lengthy, formal, public courtship of a girl like Miss Tarbell was a proposal.

Anything else would be unthinkably dishonorable. Disastrous for both families.

He knew both of their families tacitly approved and expected this outcome, and it worked in Isaiah’s favor that the Redmonds were wealthier than the Tarbells.

And so, Isaiah’s heart had sped with triumphant anticipation when he’d told his father that he hoped to propose to Fanchette during the Tarbell’s visit to their home in Pennyroyal Green this week, and perhaps even announce his engagement at the upcoming assembly.

His father’s face had suffused with a rare warmth.

He'd gripped Isaiah's shoulders; briefly, he'd pressed his forehead to his.

“Good God, but it will be a splendid match, Isaiah. I've never been so proud of you, son.”

It had almost felt like love.

“Every man should be blessed with wife and progeny, Finchley,” Isaiah told his friend, dryly. “And of course, the world deserves more Redmonds.”

When Finchley laughed, Isaiah’s tension eased a little. He sometimes forgot he could be liked for his own sake.

He looked forward to being the patriarch of his own family.

It would be no hardship to bed a beautiful woman whom he could fluster into a blush by just smoldering at her.

Certainly, if he dwelled upon the idea of a naked Fanchette, he could conjure lust. But doing it for the sake of coaxing forth an erection seemed ungentlemanly, something an Eversea might do to pass the time. He did not burn for her.

Did Jacob Eversea burn for Isolde Sylvaine?

The dimple at the corner of Isolde’s lush little mouth flashed before Isaiah’s mind’s eye and the bands of muscle across his stomach tightened.

Had Eversea… kissed her?

The thought pressed the air from him. Isaiah’s hand spasmed into a fist. He flattened it deliberately.

“I’d rather like a few brats of my own,” Finchley allowed wistfully. “Tumbling about the place. After I get my oats sown, of course.”

Tumbling about the place . Children did that sort of thing, didn’t they?

He pictured Fanchette eyeing their children with that same fond, rueful indulgence when they were tumbling about.

And children could be silly, wasn't that true?

Neither his father nor his mother had been able to tolerate rambunctious silliness for long.

Let alone...whinnying.

For God’s sake.

But Isaiah recalled the breath-catching radiance in Isolde's face when she’d turned to wave at her sister. Such...unguarded ... love.

Something about that expression had fleetingly made him feel profoundly alone and restless. It had started up an ache in him.

Light. That was it. That was how he'd felt in Isolde Sylvaine’s presence.

Made of light.

Isaiah took a breath and addressed the business at hand.

“Then you’ll want to grow your wealth now, Finchley. To finance the wild oats, and to support your family. And what better way to do it than to combine talents with similarly brilliant men? Allow me to explain how our club works.”

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