Chapter Nine #3
Mother’s hands plucked nervously at the heavy fabric of her skirts. “I have not. Henry, do you think it wise to attend? Your uncle—”
“Aunt Alicia is not Uncle Nigel,” he said as he tucked the queen of hearts into the pocket of his coat.
“She’s been nothing but kind to me. To you.
” And she didn’t deserve to be brushed aside, or to be painted with the same brush her husband had earned.
“She was good enough, even,” he said, “to extend an invitation to a guest of my suggestion as well.”
“The Seymour girl,” Mother said. “She mentioned as much in her note. She said—she said you looked very fine dancing together evening last.”
Had they? One couldn’t tell, really, how one looked while dancing. But Grace had an effortless elegance and feet as quick and sure as her fingers. Light steps which whispered across the smooth surface of a ballroom floor as if she’d been born to it.
Probably, he thought, her earlier predilection for burglary had helped her to it. For some strange reason, the thought of her parlaying her skills in thievery into her present talent for dancing amused him excessively.
“Had you attended last evening’s ball,” Henry said slowly, “you might have seen for yourself.”
Mother winced. “Henry—”
“You must know, Mother, that you can’t hide yourself away forever.” And the longer she did, the harder it would be to emerge.
“I know,” she said quietly. That whisper-soft voice; like the last echoes left upon the strings of an instrument after the music had ceased. “Nigel will eject us, eventually.”
He most certainly would, if he managed to succeed in his aims. The townhouse that belonged to his family had been entailed to fall into possession of the oldest male heir.
And as it was quite a bit grander—and owned outright by the estate—there was no doubt that Uncle Nigel would prefer to give up the lease on his own smaller townhouse when he might as well make use of this one.
“As to that,” he said. “I might have come up with a potential solution.” Perhaps.
Too early to tell just yet. Tomorrow would determine it, he hoped.
He gestured to the empty chair across from his own.
“Will you sit, just for a few minutes? I want to test out a theory.” Henry held up the deck of cards for her inspection.
A full five seconds passed in utter silence, and Henry was certain she would refuse. But at long last, she took that first tentative step toward him. An eternity passed before she slowly took her seat, easing down onto the very edge like a wary bird perched for a swift flight.
“Vingt-et-un,” he said as he shuffled the deck. “We used to play, years ago. Do you remember?”
“I was never much good at it,” she said, her thin shoulders pinching into a defensive posture, as if she half-suspected he would lash out at her. “Shouldn’t you rather play with someone more skilled?”
“I intend to. Tomorrow evening, at Uncle Nigel’s.” He dealt a pair of cards to each of them. “We’ll keep it simple this evening. No wagers.”
“A card, please,” Mother said, and she took the card he offered to her. “Oh. I’ve gone over. And for you?”
“Twenty-one.” He scraped together the cards and set them aside, dealt a fresh hand.
Mother gestured for another card. “Miss Seymour seems...lovely,” she said delicately.
“Have you met her?”
The briefest of flinches flickered across her face. “No, but—but I can’t envision you having an interest in anyone who wasn’t. Is there an interest?”
“I called upon her today,” he said. Mother had gone over once again. Henry discarded the last hand and dealt anew. “She’s an amiable woman,” he said. “Very pretty. Witty. Kind.” Kinder than he had had any right to expect of her. “I’ve made a bargain of sorts with her.”
Mother’s gaze lifted from her cards. “A bargain? What sort of bargain?”
Henry hesitated, his fingers curling around the deck of cards in his hand. “What I am about to tell you,” he said, “must not leave this table. You must not speak of it to anyone—not even Eliza. Do you understand?”
Mother’s eyes widened. “Has this got something to do with—with—” She pursed her lips into a grim line, and ventured at last in a muted whisper, “Our private matter?”
“Yes,” he said. “So we must not betray Grace’s trust, just as she has promised not to betray ours.”
“She knows?” It emerged on a thin little wail, aching and devastated. That ever-present shame, killing her soul a piece at a time.
“She would be the last person to judge, and she’s agreed to help us, besides,” Henry said.
“Grace was, at one point in her life, a thief. Her fingers are every bit as nimble as ever they were; a fact to which I can attest myself. I gained her an invitation to Aunt Alicia’s dinner party so that while I have occupied the gentlemen with cards after dinner, she may sneak away to Uncle Nigel’s study and retrieve whatever evidence”—or evidence of evidence, as it were—“which he might happen to possess.”
Mother’s lips parted on a shocked breath. “Miss Seymour agreed to this?”
“In fact, it was her suggestion,” he said.
“Which is why I asked you to play cards. I have been charged with distracting the gentlemen with cards rather than billiards. It would be beyond foolish for Miss Seymour to burglarize a room directly beside the billiards room, after all. So I am to keep the gentlemen—but most especially Uncle Nigel—invested in cards in order to leave Grace free to wander. And to do that, I must keep him losing.”
Mother’s shoulders sank. “I’m sorry to disappoint,” she said. “But if your aim was to practice cards, then I have been a poor partner. I’ve lost every hand thus far.”
“I know,” he said. “That’s what I’ve been practicing.”
“Whatever do you mean?”
“Grace is also skilled in sleight of hand. She taught me a few tricks when I called upon her today. You lost,” he said, and felt the tiniest bud of hope bloom in his chest, “because I’ve been cheating.” Competently. Ably, even.
And Mother had not noticed anything amiss. That pit of anxiety which had gnawed at his stomach these last days felt suddenly almost manageable; his cause somewhat less hopeless than it had felt only moments ago.
Mother shifted uncomfortably in her seat. “Henry,” she said. “Do you think this is wise?”
No; of course it wasn’t wise. But it was necessary. “Grace believes it is possible,” he said. “And really, Mother, we are not in a position to refuse the aid of someone who would help rescue us from our present predicament.”
There was a strain in her face; a tightness about her eyes which still shied away from his. “You speak as if you have developed a fondness for her,” she ventured quietly.
Fondness wasn’t quite the right word for it. For his entire life, he had known he had something to prove. That he would have to rise above the scandal and gossip which had colored the early years of his life, to demonstrate himself to be the very model of what an earl was meant to be.
The path which he had been set upon from birth allowed little room for childhood foibles, for those slips which might be forgiven in another.
Any misstep, no matter how minor, would be proof positive that he was no better than he ought to be.
He was meant to excel in his studies, to manage his estates, to prove himself honorable and decent in all matters.
Eventually to marry precisely the right sort of woman, and to sire a handful of little heirs to carry on his legacy into the next generation.
The right way to live—the only way, according to his position and his situation.
No matter what private feelings he might have harbored, the fascination he’d long held for Grace Seymour was not just a minor misstep.
It would be a divergence from the path he was meant to walk entirely.
He knew it intellectually, and yet he had never been able to shake himself of that fascination, that helpless fixation he had long had upon her.
Only now it was tinged with shades of admiration. With gratitude. With respect and awe.
“I am grateful to her,” he said, folding his hands over the deck of cards between them. “Let’s leave it at that, shall we?”
“Henry,” Mother said imploringly, and as if on instinct she reached out, her fingers hovering over his.
A moment, two—her fingers fell to the surface of the table without ever making contact.
“Your father and I,” she said, her voice falling once more, like a stone cast into a well, “made so many mistakes. I couldn’t bear to watch you make the same ones. ”
And there it was again; the dull ache of shame. A familiar companion after so many years. His hand could almost feel the phantom press of hers upon it, the touch she had not been able to force herself to offer.
They had made mistakes, of course, his parents. But he would always be the greatest of them all.