Stealing Sterling (The Dueling Pistols Series)

by Katy Madison

  He tried to remind himself that Suzanna was a beautiful woman, one that any man would be glad to have sharing his sheets. But the woman he’d really like to have lying beside him, was totally off limits, forever.

  Except she was alone with him, and the only damn stick of furniture in the house was the bed he’d just assembled.

  Chapter 4

  Mary removed her hat and set it on her hope chest. She moved to a corner with her measuring tape. She just wanted to get done and get out of here.

  She knew she had been too indulgent with her baby sister. After losing a mother and with their father disappearing inside himself Suzanna had an unfulfilled and desperate need for attention at a time when all girls felt awkward and unlovable. Mary had been a pour substitute for the mother who had eased Mary’s rites of passage as young woman.

  It had been easier to give in to Suzanna’s petulant requests, knowing that she suffered a loss perhaps greater than any of the rest of them had borne.

  And there was always the danger that Suzanna would make good on her threat to follow in Aunt Lydia’s footsteps and run away to England. Their headstrong aunt had done well for herself, but not without mishap.

  Mary knew now that she should have demanded more of her sister, but she could hardly correct all the mistakes she’d made in the last five years in the few weeks before the wedding. Now, Sterling probably thought it was all her fault that Suzanna was self-absorbed and indolent. He probably thought Mary would make a bad mother. She probably would make a horrid, overly indulgent, overly protective, overly interested in the business of making more children, parent, but at least she wanted to try.

  She dropped to her knees so she could lay the dressmaker’s tape along the baseboard.

  “Sit up here, drink your tea, and I’ll take the measurements. Just direct me.”

  He sounded strange. She glanced over her shoulder to where he stood by her hope chest, Suzanna’s now. He stared up at the ceiling and held a battered tin cup in his hand. Was he making do with the utensils he’d used as a miner? She really needed to purchase china for him to use.

  She stood, and her head swam. Sterling appeared at her elbow, steadying her. He guided her to the hope chest while she protested that she was fine.

  He frowned at her, until she climbed on the chest and took a sip from the tin cup. It burned all the way down. “That’s not tea.”

  “Actually, it is, with a few other things thrown in. Drink it.”

  She looked at him skeptically. “What is in it?”

  “Honey and lemon for your throat, whiskey for your cold.”

  She sat the cup down on her hope chest. “I don’t drink hard spirits.”

  He picked it up and put it in her hand. “It’s medicinal and only a tiny bit of whiskey.” He raised the cup to her lips. “It really is mostly strong tea. Drink or I’ll think you’re refusing because it’s not in a bone china cup and saucer.”

  He was so close she could see every one of his eyelashes on his blue, blue eyes. She involuntarily leaned toward him.

  She obediently took a sip and pulled back. The heat sliding down her throat soothed the ache that had been present for days.

  She closed her eyes, fearing that he would see how much she wanted him to move closer and how little she cared what kind of cup he shared with her. Just the thought that his lips had been on that rim...

  Heaven help her, she had to stop these thoughts right now. He was to be her brother by marriage, her sister’s husband, not hers. Not hers at all.

  “I promise it will make you feel better.”

  She nodded, though she suspected nothing would truly make her heart feel better. “I’m sure you are right. My throat feels better already.” The rest of her felt funny, both too hot and too cold and suddenly extra sensitive to the feel of the wood underneath her, the weight of her clothes, and his masculine scent of bay rum and soap.

  He backed away rapidly. “What measurements do you need?”

  “That length of that wall and the height of the windows.” She pointed. “You know, Suzanna has a good heart. I know I have been too lax with her, but she lost so much so young.”

  “Not so much.” He scribbled numbers on the paper. “What else?”

  “For now, just the main bedroom.”

  He gave her a strange look.

  “For the carpet. You will want a carpet on the floor, won’t you?”

  He grabbed the paper and pencil and headed for the staircase. “Stay here.”

  Mary put her hand to her forehead. Had he guessed the tenor of her wayward thoughts? And she should have known better than to suggest to a foundling that her sister had suffered significant losses in her life. His standard of measure would be so very different from hers.

  And she could only admire him that much more since he had triumphed over the circumstances of his childhood and become a warm, decent, and caring man. She couldn’t even imagine her father or brothers ever fixing her a tea posset or measure the walls for her.

  Oh, my Lord, she wanted her sister’s fiancé for herself.

  Sterling made it back inside his new home and leaned his head against the wall. He should just bang it through the paneling. All the while Mary was trying to reassure him that Suzanna was worthy of his affection, he’d wanted to kiss Mary’s rosebud lips and explore those hourglass curves of hers. She was so innocent she probably didn’t have a clue what he was thinking.

  As he was leaving Mary at her home, his bride-to-be arrived, and she looked like a pale pink and white, too frilly and furbelowed, version of her sister.

  Mary had asked for the list of people he wanted to invite to the wedding. He wrote down the names and directions of a dozen of his business associates. He was stretching to come up with that many names.

  Suzanna had handed it back. “This can’t be right. Where are your family members?”

  Mary had made a sound of protest, and Sterling realized Suzanna had never bothered to learn he had no family. “I doubt you’d want me to include the other orphans I was raised with.”

  “You came from an orphanage?” Suzanna screeched as if he’d announced he had the French Pox. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “It didn’t seem important.” He wanted it to be important enough for her to object, but he’d waited in vain.

  “I’m sorry. I’m sure it isn’t significant. You just don’t behave like an orphan,” Suzanna said.

  How did an orphan behave? He supposed they didn’t amass a fortune and then enter the ranks of Boston society. He shook his head and took his leave.

  Now he stood in his empty, unwelcoming house. Would it ever become a home?

  He crossed to the lonely chest in his front parlor and opened it. It was full of linens. He pulled out a set of tea towels with neat lavender flowers embroidered down the edge. Had Suzanna made these? Mary said the chest was Suzanna’s.

  The stitches were neat and even, the pattern soft and elegant. Maybe she had some redeeming qualities after all.

  He pulled out a quilt and below it stowed in tissue was a set of linen sheets. The weave of the fabric was tighter than anything he had ever owned. As he unwrapped the sheets he discovered the generous, satin-faced hems. The stitches in shimmery silver thread mirrored the grape leaf pattern carved in the bed he had assembled this morning. Silver and satin, maybe Suzanna wasn’t so wrong for him.

  The woman who had sewn these expensive sheets had taken painstaking care, and she had paid a great deal of attention to detail. This was a woman he wanted running his household, raising his children, and standing beside him as he grew old.

  Had Suzanna made these linens, or had her sister done the task for her?

  Mary stared at the box of wedding announcement with horror. “Suzanna, your name isn’t on these.”

  “I told them exactly like you said. Robert C. Hamilton, Esquire announces the marriage of his daughter to Sterling John Cooper—”

  “His daughter, your name. I know I said to put in your name.”
Or had she? She’d been sicker than a poisoned dog when she insisted Suzanna she go to the stationary shop and have the invitations printed, that the task couldn’t wait.

  Suzanna shrugged. “We’ll get them done again.”

  “We don’t have time. You’ll have to write in your name.”

  Suzanna tried one. She wadded it up and threw it away. “It looks awful. I can’t fit my name in there.”

  “How could the printer neglect printing your name on the invitations? Surely they would know better. Didn’t they ask?” Mary wished she could call back the words as soon as she voiced them. Not everyone was looking out for her sister or would guide her past an oversight.

  Suzanna looked at Mary and teared up. “I’m sorry. I’m not good with details. You know that.”

  Mary saw where this was headed, that she shouldn’t have required her sister to have her own invitations printed, for her own wedding. For once, anger trumped Mary’s desire to make everything right for her sister. “This is not my fault. I didn’t schedule a mad dash for the alter as if you were in the family way.”

  “Oh, my goodness.” Suzanna shoved back her chair and stood. “That is what people will think, isn’t it?”

  Suzanna stared at Mary as if she’d sprouted horns. In two seconds she would run off and leave Mary with the monumental task of addressing two hundred invitations. Sterling’s assertion that Suzanna needed to be relied upon kept circling in her head. The invitations weren’t perfect, but it wasn’t Mary’s wedding and they need to be mailed.

  “If you want anyone to show up for your wedding and see your dress, sit down and address those invitations.”

  Suzanna stared even harder. Mary supposed she might as well grow a tail and horns too. A few months ago, Mary would have accepted the responsibility for the invitations being wrong, because she hadn’t seen to it herself. She would have tried to placate Suzanna, and written out the invitations herself out of a protective urge to save Suzanna from any unpleasantness.

  But Mary’s head spun. There was too much to be done and she didn’t care if anyone showed up at the church for a marriage she didn’t want to witness herself, a marriage that could put the final nail in Mary’s dreams of a future. Why oh why, had she fallen for her sister’s intended?

  Then Suzanna threw herself at the desk and buried her face in her arms. “I don’t know what I want. I thought John would take me places.”

  Mary took a step backwards. She couldn’t say anything for fear she would encourage her sister to forgo her engagement. But that was what Mary wanted and wasn’t necessarily the best thing for Suzanna.

  She would have to marry sooner or later and Mary couldn’t think of a better man for her, for any woman, than Sterling. And just because Mary wanted him, didn’t mean that he wanted her back.

  He had asked Suzanna to marry him.

  He was a very solicitous man, caring and kind. Suzanna would expect that. She would need the pampering he had offered Mary this afternoon. Normally, Mary didn’t need caretaking, she was quite sure she shouldn’t like it much when she was well. She was used to taking care of herself.

  Mary took another step backwards. Ironically, she might be the one who would have to sail to England, because she didn’t think she could sit back while her sister married the man Mary wanted and set up house just a few blocks away.

  “Why weren’t you here to talk sense into me?” Suzanna moaned.

  “Because I was helping David and his wife,” Mary said cautiously. Did her sister mean to end her engagement? Hope and guilt knotted in Mary’s stomach.

  “You shouldn’t have left me alone. You know, I’m headstrong like Aunt Lydia. I got my heart set on a great big wedding, and he doesn’t even have anyone to invite.”

  A thread that held her emotions in check snapped inside Mary. “Aunt Lydia may have been willful and stubborn, but she at least managed her future. She arranged passage to England and evaded her searchers for months. Except even she had to be shot before she learned any common sense. She didn’t wait around for her sister to do everything.”

  Mary clapped a hand over her mouth. She spun around. She never meant to be so vicious. Not that there had been any real malice in her description of Aunt Lydia’s escapade. Her aunt had said she didn’t have a bit of sense until she was shot. She had even married the man who shot her, although it was all a great secret to non-family members.

  “She didn’t have a sister,” pointed out Suzanna. “And she certainly didn’t have someone like you who is so good at everything.”

  “I’m not doing the invitations. I have too many other things to do today.”

  Suzanna lifted her tear free face from her arms. “I just don’t think he loves me.”

  Mary reached out for the back of a chair, gripping as if it were a lifeline and she was adrift in stormy seas. “Do you love him?”

  The weeks to the wedding had passed quickly. Sterling donned his black tails and silver ascot. The linen sheets with their silver thread and satin hems were on the bed underneath the quilt from the hope chest. He just wished he was anticipating his wedding night with more joy. Instead he had sick feeling of doom and dread.

  He took one last look around the bedroom, making sure everything was ready, before heading for the chapel. He was ready to take the next step in his life. His bride would mature eventually. After all, no one stayed a child forever. Perhaps he could promise to take Suzanna to England after the birth of their first baby. He truly did want her to be happy, even though he only hoped for contentment himself.

  He’d been through enough hell in his life that happiness ought to be easily achievable. He just wasn’t sure why he felt so empty on the verge of having his dreams of acceptance into one of the acclaimed older families of Boston realized.

  Several evenings of the past three weeks, he had dined in the Hamilton household. But more often than not he ended up talking with Mary. Because she was older her interests were wider and more varied than Suzanna’s. His bride’s favorite topics where clothes and gossip. Since he preferred Mary’s high-necked slimmer gowns rather that the monstrous ruffled and hooped skirts Suzanna wore, fashion wasn’t a topic he felt comfortable discussing with Suzanna.

  And even good-natured gossip sat ill with him. His own past was too riddled with tidbits people would find interesting beyond their worth. The orphanage had turned him out fit for little beyond being a dock worker or a criminal or both. And well, who knew about his parentage. He didn’t want to think that any of his past might ever be a part of a conversation over tea, but with Suzanna’s penchant for tittle-tattle he feared it would just be a matter of time.

  As he scooped up two envelopes from the floor below the brass mail slot, it occurred to him, Suzanna’s clothes trunk had not arrived as scheduled last night. He’d hoped to have her things put away when she arrived, but now the task would have to wait.

  Mary had made her sister take more responsibility for her things, which was probably why the trunk hadn’t showed up yet. Suzanna had probably forgot to arrange its delivery. Sterling was sorry he’d said anything, because forcing Suzanna to take more responsibility had been hard on both sisters. Then again, he wanted her to know he expected her to be a wife, not a toy or decoration. Then his bride found him a poor ally when she complained about the amount of work she had to do. He reminded her that it was for her future, not her sister’s, leaving her in a miff.

  At least of late her conversations had been broader than her wardrobe or inquiries about his travels. He had answered badly when, out of the blue, she asked him if he loved her.

  The truth was he hadn’t considered love a prerequisite for marriage. He wanted connections to a respectable family and a woman who was raised in a warm, loving and giving environment as unlike an orphanage as possible. Suzanna met his requirements on both counts. On top of that she was beautiful, not as curvy and cuddly as her sister, but she turned heads with her spirits as much as her looks.

  They’d been riding in his carr
iage, as Mary had suggested he’d neglected his courtship once Suzanna agreed to his proposal. He reluctantly had to admit that he had let his attentions drop off, as much because of his own commitments to establish his business enterprises and readying the house as anything. However, he meant to be a good husband regardless of his stupid oversight in not considering love as an important ingredient for marriage. But as they drove about the nearby countryside in his open gig, he’d had to make a conscious effort to hold Suzanna’s gloved hand.

  She’d watched him patiently as he fumbled for an answer that he would come to love her, and she need never fear. That he would always treat her with great respect.

  She’d nodded as if the matter was of no great importance and gone on to ask if he was content with the carpets and drapery.

  When he said he was well satisfied, she said, “I know you wanted me to do more to choose our things, but Mary helped me inordinately. She has always been so much better than I with practical things.”

  “You’ll learn,” Sterling had said gruffly.

  Suzanna looked earnestly at him. “I hadn’t dared to try when Mary does everything so well. She isn’t interested in fashion, so that has always been my providence.”

  The last thing he wanted to do was discuss her sister. “If you try, you will find that most anything you want to do is within your grasp. You are well capable of running your own household.” He pledged to himself to be patient. “I wouldn’t have asked you to marry me, if I thought different.”

  “Yes, but I always do the wrong thing. I wanted to have the cook prepare more French food while Mary was away, but it was a disaster. Papa complained the whole time. And well, the cook was not so good with the sauces. You have to be able to make all kinds of sauces to cook in a French manner.”

  Food was food to him. Of course, most of his life he’d eaten anything edible to survive. “Sometimes failures teach you as much as victories.”