Free To Sin With A Stranger by Kathryn Caskie Page B

shoulder to check the distance between the two of them and their fathers. “Very well. I am going to dance with Lord Blackburn, if he asks me. I am going to give him the cut direct if he is rude to me. I am going to flutter my lashes like a young miss in love. I am going to ignore him horribly, and I am going to remain breathlessly poised on his every utterance.”
    “You are being nonsensical, Issy.” She frowned at Isobel. “Did you, perhaps, sip some of your father’s brandy before leaving the house?”
    As they merged with a crowd thinning to pass through the front door, Christiana stopped again and waited as if to force Isobel’s answer.
    “I am not being nonsensical. I vow that I mean to do all of those things…and more. If not tonight, then at some other gala. I mean to keep the
ton
interested in the two of us—and the wager.” Isobel put her mouth to Christiana’s ear. “And while I have the
ton
’s interest, I will use it to voice the plight of war widows and their children. My mission is to collect as much as I can from those who have so much money that they eagerly relish the chance to throw it away on such a meaningless wager.”
    Christiana responded with a gasp just as they entered Partridge House. She said nothing as they surrendered their wraps, her face impassive as she seemed to consider Isobel’s request for assistance. But when their fathers belatedly crossed the threshold, ensconced in a crush of humanity, Christiana turned her wide eyes to Isobel’s and nodded. “I will do it. You know I will do anything for you. But Lord help you if your father learns what you are about this night.”
    “No,
I
will be helping the Lord, for if my father learns of my strategy, I will surely be dispatched to my great-aunt’s pig farm in Yorkshire.”
    “What? Your great-aunt Gertrude—the one whose lingering swine scent of pig makes your eyes water?”
    “
Yes
.”
    “Well, Issy, you will pardon me, won’t you, if I do not come to visit you in Yorkshire?” Christiana asked. “You know I detest pork.”
    Isobel scowled. “So, Christiana, now you understand why I simply cannot fail. If I am forced to leave London, the widows will have no one to assist them, to help find rooms and employment. To give them money when they have none to feed their children.”
    “Yes, but
especially
because you do not wish to perpetually smell like pigs,” Christiana added, quite seriously.
    “R-right. That too.” Isobel swallowed deeply, girding herself for the evening. As their fathers rejoined Isobel and Christiana, their party moved together up the staircase to the ballroom.

    Sterling stood beside his brother Grant at the perimeter of the opulent Partridge ballroom. Or rather, where the perimeter would have been if the grand room had not been filled from the center to each of the four walls with far too many overcurious guests.
    He glanced across the room at Killian and Lachlan, who were easily visible over the waves of shorter Englishmen, and saw that they were already making their escape from the crush.
    Sterling groaned inwardly. He supposed he couldn’t fault them for leaving; after all, he would do the same had he not been here for the sole purpose of encountering Miss Isobel Carington—without humiliating her or earning a slap this time.
    He had the wager…and his family’s financial future to consider.
    His sisters were each swathed in a vibrant hue: indigo, saffron, and emerald. They stood out from the misses dressed in “purity” white, and the matrons in dull shades of metal, each seeming to repel attention more efficiently than the last.
    Then a wave of silence rippled through the swarming ballroom. Sterling turned his head, his eyes just catching a flash of crimson in the doorway before everyone in the room seemed to move at once.
    Suddenly the crowd opened like a loose seam until he alone stood at its apex, and in the doorway stood Miss Carington.
    Her crimson gown shimmered in the flickering