They entered the park at Hyde Park Corner and slowed their horses down, pulling them off to the side of the path.“I don’t judge you a bit for it,” Isaac quipped, grinning, taking a moment to look out over the sea of people in the park, each of them there to see and be seen.“In fact, if I was the one lucky enough to be working so closely with her, I probably would have done the same—”
Ethan reached across the space between their mounts and lay a hard hand on his brother’s sleeve, stopping his idiotic words in their tracks.“Don’t ever say anything disrespectful against her again,” he gritted when Isaac looked at him in shock.“Do.You.Understand?”
There was a beat of silence.And then, voice more sober than Ethan had heard it in a long while, “I apologize.I was so glad to see you loosening the tight reins you keep on yourself, I went too far.”Then a pained smile.“I just want to see you happy for once.I love you, Brother.”
Those words, said with such affection, knocked thebreath from Ethan’s lungs.He knew Isaac loved him, of course.And Isaac knew he returned that love.They were blood, after all, and had been through all manner of hell together.But they were not demonstrative people, and never actually said the words out loud.
Which gave him pause.Had he ever in his life told his brother he loved him?Never in words, perhaps.But in actions he had let his brother know he cared deeply for him.Hadn’t he?He frowned, thinking back, digging through their interactions over the years.Which brought him back much further than he had expected, to thebeforetime.
His hand fell numb to his side, Gavin’s smiling face swimming in his memories.But even as anger and guilt and pain washed over him, nearly as potent as they had been three years earlier for all he had kept them bottled up and fermenting, he could not help remembering how much easier the three of them had been with one another.Before Gavin’s betrayal and death and before their world turned upside down.
He looked fully at Isaac, forcing himself to take in the hint of grief in his brother’s eyes.Was that worry beneath the surface?Worry for him?A strange tightness closed his throat.
“Iamhappy,” he managed gruffly, looking out over the milling riders and open carriages.“I have everything I need, after all.What more could I possibly want?”
Isaac was silent beside him for a long moment, the lack of sound from him louder than the laughter and conversation and jangle of tackle about them.Finally he huffed a soft chuckle.
“You keep telling yourself that, you pigheaded bastard,” he mumbled.Before Ethan could think of a reply, Isaac clapped him jovially on the back.“But I’ve spotted severalof our patrons eyeing us.And as I’m damned tired of dealing with these cocky nobles, let’s find a quieter bit of dirt to stretch these beasts’ legs, shall we?”Giving Ethan a roguish wink, he kicked his horse on.
Ethan, unsettled and not knowing why, watched him leave.Then, shrugging off the uneasy feeling, he urged his own horse after him.
No matter how much effort Heloise put into avoiding everyone at the Wimpole Street house, she would not be able to succeed forever.Something she tried to remind herself of as she made her way to Sylvia’s suite for their scheduled afternoon tea.Could she have claimed a headache and sat it out?Certainly.Was she going to?She had been tempted.Oh, she had been tempted.But in the end she knew it was best to get it over with.So she raised her head high and threw open the door to Sylvia’s rooms, ready for the barrage of questions regarding her planned seduction of Ethan.After the trip to Dionysus the evening before, the othershadto know something had occurred.
What she did not expect, however, was the absolute disinterest she was faced with.
“I am telling you, Euphemia,” Sylvia was saying, pointing a bit of shortbread at her, seeming not to notice as Heloise approached and took a seat nearby, “your skills are improving beyond even my imaginings.When you walked in here this afternoon, I swore some strange man had infiltrated the house.I very nearly called Strachan to deal with you.”
Euphemia, still in the craftsman’s garb she had used to gain access to Dionysus earlier that morning, laughed delightedly and removed her wig of closely cropped darkhair.“No thank you,” she said with a grin, pulling the pins from her pale brown locks.“I’m terrified enough of Strachan; if she were to come at me in full fury I would expire on the spot.Oh, hello, Heloise.My disguise was quite a success, if I do say so myself.Mr.Ferris never batted an eye.Introducing me as your cousin was positively brilliant.”
“I do wish I could find a way to help,” Iris fretted, fiddling with the spoon in her teacup, nearly sloshing the beverage over the rim in her agitation.“I feel so useless sitting at home.”
“My dear Iris,” Sylvia drawled, giving her an arch look even as she laid a gentle hand over the other woman’s to still her anxious fidgeting, “you are delusional if you think you are not useful.”
“Sylvia is right,” Laney chimed in as she passed Heloise her cup of tea—plain, without a bit of sweetness, just as she liked it.“Your usefulness is not determined by how often you get into the thick of things.Supporting us from the barracks, as it were, can be even more meaningful.”
But Iris was not to be soothed so easily.Placing her cup down with a clatter, she worried at the skin of her wrist with her thumbnail.“If only I was a better actress, I could assist you all within Dionysus as well.”Her small pixie-like face screwed up in frustration.“I must have improved somewhat since I started out.Surely if you give me something to do within Dionysus, I can manage to succeed.”
“No,” Sylvia said, a touch too quickly, an alarmed look in her eyes before she schooled her features into a mild smile.“That is, we need you here.You’ll have to be fresh for the night of the masquerade should we be forced to infiltrate the gaming hell en masse, and as you are quite the most talented of us when it comes to picking locks, your help will be invaluable then.Also, I’ve sent out wordthrough my connections to see if any more of Dionysus’s victims can be located.I shall need someone close to home should word come through.”
“Oh, splendid,” Iris exclaimed, sitting forward, knee precariously bumping her teacup in her relief.“Whatever I can do to help.”
Sylvia gave her a small smile.“With you ready in the wings, Laney’s plans to practice in the new ring once it is built, my own invitation to play in their private gaming room, Euphemia in place to locate the valve to the gas lamps, and Heloise well and truly ingrained in Dionysus and with Mr.Ethan Sinclaire, our success is practically assured.”
Heloise tensed.There it was, confirmation that they knew she had succeeded in seducing Ethan.But once more she was proven wrong in her belief that they would leap to discuss it.The conversation quickly turned.
“Now that we have got that out of the way,” Sylvia continued with satisfaction, “I would very much like to begin planning a trip for when this whole affair is done.It will be good to get out of London for a bit as the dust settles.What say you all to a visit to the Isle of Synne?I’ve a mind to clear my head with a dose of sea air and sunshine, and it’s far enough removed from London that we may safely relax there without fear of becoming entangled in the aftermath.”
And just like that, the entire atmosphere transformed, everyone joining in with her plans for the proposed trip.Everyone, that was, except for Heloise.Now that her worry had settled some that they would bring up the more intimate aspect of her dealings with Ethan, a new feeling had burrowed under her skin, causing the muscles in her shoulders to twitch.Frowning, she sipped at her tea, trying to make sense of it.It had all the flavor of guilt.But why guilt?Shethought back over the past minutes, trying to understand.It was when she recalled Sylvia mentioning the aftermath of their efforts that she realized just what it was that had her uncomfortable and itchy: If she failed to locate the jewels and they infiltrated Dionysus in a last-ditch attempt to save Julia, it could destroy the place’s reputation.That fact, of course, had certainly never bothered her before.
Why, then, did it now feel wrong?
She stared down into her cup and the dregs submerged beneath the amber surface.Wrong?There was nothing wrong with what they planned.The club was responsible for the hell that Julia was going through.If not for their crooked tables, her dear sister-in-law would not now be facing possible transportation or death.Yes, it was Julia’s employer’s actions that had put Julia in this position.That woman had been the one to offer up the jewels as collateral, after all, and was now threatening Julia if said jewels were not recovered—something she had to know Julia had no control over.
But if not for the fact that the gaming had been rigged in the first place, her sister-in-law would not now be living in daily fear.
Yet even as she tried to reawaken the same outrage she’d had when she’d first learned of the hell Julia was being subjected to, she found it was a weak thing.Why?Nothing she had seen or heard thus far during her time at Dionysus had given her reason to regret doing whatever was necessary to recover the jewels.
Well, that is not exactly true, is it?The small, quiet question floated about in her mind, almost like a scolding.Hadn’t Ethan shown her incredible tenderness and care?But more than that—for she could not go solely off of their time spent in intimate congress, for God’s sake—othersshowed him an extraordinary amount of respect and ease.He was a man people trusted.
