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 thetonknew—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 aspresence, 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?”
