Chapter Four
Don’t you do it.” Grace fisted her hands on her hips, affecting a stern look as she gazed up at Tansy, who sat in perfect feline serenity upon the garden wall.
Unfortunately, Tansy—who had caused quite a lot of chaos already this morning, beginning with stealing a strip of bacon straight off the dowager duchess’ breakfast plate and culminating with being caught testing the sharpness of her claws upon the drawing room curtains—did not take kindly to orders of any sort.
The cat settled on her haunches, flicked one ear dismissively, and turned her face away in what Grace could only interpret as a direct cut.
“Tansy,” Grace said, forcing the word out between the grit of her teeth. “You must come down from there. There is no telling what his lordship will do if he catches you in his garden again.” Especially so soon.
As if to suggest she didn’t give a fig about his lordship’s threats, Tansy extended her front legs and lifted her rear in a lazy stretch as her jaws opened in a massive yawn.
Her great grey tail whisked back and forth as she righted herself and trotted toward the edge of the garden wall.
In a single bound she had disappeared beyond the gate, no doubt on her way to once more avail herself of his lordship’s catmint.
Blistering, bleeding, fucking hell.
Grace allowed her shoulders to slump as she heaved a sigh of resignation.
Perhaps this time would be different. It was still rather early in the day, and as she understood it, most noblemen led rather indolent lives.
Quite possibly Lord Lockhart wouldn’t yet be awake, and she could slip in and out entirely unnoticed.
So long as nobody had left a window open.
Her fingers fumbling for the latch upon the gate, Grace slipped out just in time to see Tansy’s fluffy grey tail disappearing around the house toward the street.
At least Tansy had enough sense to wait for the lull in the street traffic.
The cat waited upon the pavement, her tail curled primly around her front paws until the closest carriage had passed—and then sprang into action only seconds before Grace could reach for her, sauntering across the street in an elegant, agile stride.
Damn it all! Grace was forced to wait at the edge of the pavement for another three carriages to pass, watching in tense silence as Tansy took small, taunting steps past the front facade of Lord Lockhart’s house toward the garden.
And with a last mocking flick of her tail in what could only be a flippant farewell, Tansy rounded the corner, disappearing from view once more.
Sending up a little prayer to whichever god might happen to be listening, Grace skittered across the street and past the front facade of the house, swiftly rounding the corner where she’d last seen Tansy.
And there she was, sitting atop the large stone wall, delicately licking one massive paw, as if she had only been waiting for Grace to arrive.
If only Grace had thought to bring something with which to coax the cat down! But she suspected that even another strip of bacon could hardly compete with the vast quantity of catmint growing within his lordship’s garden.
Grace planted her hands upon her hips and pressed her lips together in a grim line. How best to approach this problem? Begging hadn’t worked, nor had cajoling, nor threatening. Tansy, like most cats, simply did as she wished.
Which was often whatever she thought would achieve the grandest spectacle of a reaction.
Blast and damn! Grace opened her mouth, struggling to summon up a sweetness to her voice that she certainly did not feel in the moment, and—
A long purple sprig of catmint flowers crested the top of the wall, perhaps five feet away from where Tansy sat. And from beyond the wall, there came a low, masculine voice: “Heeere kitty, kitty, kitty. Nice kitty.”
Grace’s mouth dropped open in mute shock.
Tansy lifted her head mid-lick of her paw, her green eyes fastening upon the twitching sprig of catmint with the ruthless determination of the consummate predator she was. Her ears flattened back against her skull as she coiled herself up to spring.
The catmint flicked out from beneath the crushing force of her paws, disappearing beyond the garden wall. Tansy traced its path with a sharp swivel of her head.
Had Lord Lockhart just chuckled?
Before Grace could get out a single word of reproach, Tansy pounced from her perch upon the wall straight into Lord Lockhart’s garden in hot pursuit of the catmint.
The wretched man had just baited her cat into his garden!
Fury sizzled beneath Grace’s skin. Every bit of sweetness she’d summoned forth for Tansy’s benefit burned away to ash. She had only scathing condescension left when she spoke: “Lord Lockhart, you had better have a damned good explanation for this.”
There was a sudden, distinct silence beyond the wall, broken only by the distance rumble of Tansy’s ferocious purr, which suggested she had gotten the catmint with which she had been enticed.
“Miss Seymour,” Lord Lockhart said at last. “Join me in the garden, won’t you? I have got a proposition for you.”
∞∞∞
Grace came flying through the gate so swiftly, Henry was surprised she’d not caught the fluttering hem of her skirts in it as she’d slammed it closed behind her. She fairly vibrated with fury; her cheeks painted in a cherry-red flush of ire that was uncomfortably becoming.
The strangled sound that slipped between her teeth as she fisted her hands at her sides was not. “I swear to God, if you touch one hair—”
“I haven’t harmed your cat,” Henry said.
“You know as well as I do that she was bound for my garden anyway. I simply…expedited matters.” Just on the off chance that she’d intended to heed his last warning and had kept a more careful watch on the fluffy menace.
Using Tansy’s fondness for his garden had seemed the safest, fastest method to gain a private audience with Grace, since he hadn’t imagined one could manage the sort of conversation he required when chaperoned by any of her relatives.
And it had worked beautifully. Tansy was splayed out on her back near his feet with the sprig of catmint he’d offered her clutched between her paws as she gnawed upon it. It was almost endearing, really.
Almost.
He’d thought the cat might make a halfway decent hostage—just to ensure that Grace stayed for the duration of a conversation—but Tansy had had other ideas entirely.
She’d let his hand get no closer than six inches from her before she’d lashed out with one enormous paw, her claws nearly stripping the glove straight from his hand as she’d yanked it back.
And then she’d growled, so low and deep that he’d found himself genuinely fearful of a creature only a fraction of his size.
Bit of a bully, she was.
But he’d placated the beast with the catmint, and he supposed that so long as he didn’t attempt to take it from her—or touch her—she might magnanimously spare his life.
“If you have developed a sudden fondness for cats,” Grace said snidely as she crossed the distance from the gate, “I cordially invite you to find your own. Tansy is mine.”
“I haven’t,” he said. “That is, I don’t want your beastly cat. I want—”
“Beastly! Oooh.” That flush mottled her cheeks still further, and she bent to retrieve her cat.
The cat let her pick it up, the damned capricious creature.
It lolled in her arms like a ragdoll, still chewing happily upon the tattered remnants of the catmint hanging half out of its mouth.
“Good day, Lord Lockhart,” Grace said as she turned to go, with a haughty lift of her chin that would have done a duchess proud.
Probably, he thought, her duchess sister had taught it to her. “I saw you steal a pocket watch,” he said.
Grace froze. Tansy yowled as her arms tightened, her back claws catching upon the bodice of Grace’s dress as she kicked with such tenacity that Grace was forced to release the cat once more.
Grace turned round, her hands clasped before her.
The cant of her head and the little furrow of feigned confusion etched between the gold of her brows were just—perfect.
The absolute image of baffled innocence, as if she genuinely could not understand what might have caused him to level such an accusation at her.
If he hadn’t personally witnessed her steal that watch, he might’ve found himself convinced of her innocence himself.
“I beg your pardon?” she asked, in such a sweet, bewildered tone that Henry was very nearly tempted to second-guess himself.
But, no. He’d seen her with his own eyes. Still, the fact that even now she could so effortlessly make him doubt his own sight was…encouraging. “Evening last,” he said. “At the ball.”
“My lord, I’m afraid you’re mistaken.” This, with a flutter of her long lashes, and the smallest twitch of her nose, as if she extended to him the generosity of her forgiveness for such a base allegation. “Of course I did not—”
“I saw you do it. It was a remarkable lift, actually. Bold as brass.” And she hadn’t given herself away even for a second.
No one—not one person, other than himself—had suspected her of anything.
Probably the man whose watch she’d nicked hadn’t even done so.
Like as not, he’d simply assumed he’d mislaid it.
“I’m not going to tell anyone,” he said.
“Probably I should do…but if I’d overheard them saying such things of me, I imagine I might be tempted toward some manner of retribution myself. ”
But he hadn’t the skill for theft, and that was the damned problem.
Tansy curled around Grace’s ankle and plopped herself down right over one of Grace’s feet, half-hidden beneath her skirts. “My lord, whatever it is that you’re implying…”