Patience leapt from the carriage and raced into the house the moment the driver opened the door. The front of their townhouse was alight and waiting for Patience and her father to return. The cold night air bit into her cheeks, sending a shiver down her spine. Her refusal to speak to or even look at her father for the endless ride home was childish and would only serve to delay the inevitable coming argument.

But there was no other way for Patience to hide the agony and embarrassment she felt at Sin’s deception. Her father would see through the anger she was using as a front to mask the turmoil within her.

Sin had lied to her, unequivocally and without remorse.

And Patience had taken him at his word. Never before had she believed any man, besides her father, when they told her something of such consequence. Even Merit and Valor were not above her questioning their every action and word—and the object of her scorn if they were proven dubious in any way.

But the Earl of St. Seville—no, Sin—had broken through her resolve, causing her to lower her guard. Drop the wall she’d constructed after her mother’s death when society had spurned her due to her strongly held convictions.

Patience kept her head lowered as she hurried through the foyer and past the main stairs. She would be easily found if she went directly to her room, and she’d run the risk of catching her maid turning down her bed for the night.

She’d misguidedly believed Sin had listened to her…and heard every word. More than that, she’d fooled herself into thinking that he cared for her.

Foolish.

Childish.

Gullible, silly girl.

Were those the many things Sin and his cohorts—Coventry and Holstrom—jested about after she left? Perhaps they’d adjourned to their gentlemen’s club and were even now spreading news of the hilarity of her actions. All of London would know she wasn’t only a champion for a cause that no one believed in, but also that she had been foolish enough to think herself falling in love with a man who was doing nothing but lie to her. They’d spent days together at Southlund’s training. She’d risked her father’s disappointment at discovering her activities, and all because she thought something—she wasn’t certain what to call it, friendship, more than friendship?—had developed between them. She’d spoken of her mother and the despair surrounding her passing.

Had Sin gone so far as to create a ruse in an attempt to fool Patience into training him in the art of pugilism?

If so, she was more simpleminded than even she’d thought.

And now her father knew of her failings.

She regretted abandoning her work to abolish pugilism far more now knowing her father’s disappointment in her.

Voices echoed behind her, but she kept moving, her feet tangling in the hem of her skirt for a brief moment. She’d thought the air outside abrasive, and the stale air of the carriage stifling; however, the walls of her home were not the sanctuary she’d expected. Her lungs contracted and expanded in time with her pulsing heart.

Her breaths fled her on ragged gasps.

She knew what was coming, and she’d be damned if her father or her maid would witness it.

Patience was about to cry…over a man she barely knew.

Blessedly, she reached the library and cast herself out the veranda door, stepping onto the terrace. However, she didn’t stop there, she continued on into the garden. The area her mother had cherished, especially after the countess had promised her husband she’d no longer enter the ring. Patience had watched her mother toil away in the roses for hours. She’d been meticulous when inspecting each bud, selecting the perfect blossoms to be snipped and collected for display in the house. Before the previous day at Southlund’s House, it was the gardens Patience sought out whenever she longed to feel closer to her mother.

At the moment, Patience wasn’t fleeing to the garden to be close to her mother, to feel her presence. The last thing she wanted was to be reminded of the sport that had taken her mother and led Sin to deceive her.

No, she needed to be alone. In the gardens, no one disturbed Patience, just as they’d allowed the countess her solitude when she worked among her roses.

The late hour had brought dew that clung to the grass, and it dampened her skirt as she slowed to a walk, turning her face to the cloud-covered night sky. The breeze held the familiar scent of rain, necessary to wash away the soot and smog that clung to most of London. The clouds slinking across the inky sky made the moon and stars invisible. Patience embraced the chill, allowing it to wash over her as the tears came, slowly sliding down her cheeks. She allowed the wind and her tears to wipe away the muddled mess she’d created of her life.

Patience turned slowly in a circle until she faced away from her house and any unwitting observers within.

In recent years, she’d turned into a woman she didn’t recognize, crusading for a cause that she wasn’t certain anyone but she and her father understood. She’d cast every person in her life—and those she met—into places of insignificance and ultimately forgotten about them, knowing she would, at some point, leave them behind in pursuit of her primary goal.

When had that happened?

But the Earl of St. Seville had broken through her guard that night at Lord Holstrom’s soirée. Or had it happened before that when Patience had happened upon him, stripped to the waist in Merit’s private chamber?

They’d both been vulnerable in that moment. She gowned in nothing but her white shift, and Sin bloodied without his shirt and jacket.

She’d hidden her vulnerabilities by cowering behind her convictions and her work.

The foolish, bloody pamphlets.

Her fists clenched at her sides until her nails cut through her gloves and into the palms of her hands.

It had taken only the sight of Sin—and his kind words in Holstrom’s hall—and Patience had all but forgotten the one passion she’d clung to since her mother’s death. She’d gone so far as to reenter Southlund’s House.

She’d lied to her father.

Perhaps she’d lied to herself, as well.

A frigid droplet of rain landed on her upturned face, mingling with her warm tears.

Her years of caution in regards to pugilism, the hours spent speaking with fighters, profiteers, and the printing of her pamphlets had made no difference, except to make her an outcast among those who should see her as their equal…a peer.

She’d toted her self-righteous message to all and sundry.

And then had quickly forgotten it all when she saw Sin’s need.

In the last five years, Patience had made certain that not a single member of society got to know her. She’d hidden behind her work. But why?

If Sin had taught her anything, it was that she’d been right to hide, both herself and her heart. The hurt at discovering Sin’s lies wounded her as deeply as her mother’s passing had.

It was a betrayal to her mother and her memory to even think this way. Comparing the death of her most loved and cherished relative to the lies of a man she’d met only a week prior? She wasn’t only an insufferable person, she was also an ungrateful daughter. In her selfish need to champion her mother’s death, Patience had knowingly sent her father into harm’s way, night after night, distributing her pamphlets. Worse yet, his reclusive nature had been Patience’s doing, as well. Each time he went out on her fool’s errands, he relived the loss of his countess.

It was his undoing.

Patience finally allowed the sobs to leave her, breaking the silence of the night…and doing nothing to alleviate her pain.

An agony she had no right to feel.

Her father was worthy of his continued sorrow. Sin was deserving of his all-consuming need to save his family and his people. Even the men and women who chose prizefighting as their means of crawling out of the deplorable circumstances of their birth had the right to seek a better future.

Damnation, if a person enjoyed the sport, who was Patience to fight, kick, and scream at them to change their interests?

Her mother had never given up on pugilism, even after she retired from fighting. She taught at Southlund’s and passed her passion for the sport on to another generation of pugilists. Including Patience. There had been a time when Patience knew no greater joy than seeing the smile on her mother’s face when she executed an advanced move in the ring or when she bested her sparring partner.

She’d taken something that had been a source of pride for her family and turned it into something so vile she felt compelled to shout her warnings from the rooftops.

In her single-minded pursuit, she’d even pushed her siblings away.

Her sisters, Temperance and Verity, scrambled to wed and be away from Marsh Manor, and Merit and Valor spent increasingly large spans of time away from their townhouse. And her father remained in his study when he wasn’t at his club.

Patience had done this to her family.

She’d thought she was helping others, stopping them from suffering what her family had, but instead, she was making it impossible for her family to exist in one home.

Could it be that she’d been utterly wrong? Maybe not in her belief that brawling was a danger but that life itself could ever be completely safe.

Tonight, she’d pushed Sin away, likely forever, and all because she didn’t see that his reasons were as important or worthy as her own.

“What have I done?” she demanded of the sky above.

In response, the clouds overhead parted and the midnight moon shone brightly.