Chapter Thirteen
I believe this belongs to you.”
Grace blinked as Henry extended Tansy to her, his hands hitched beneath her front legs as he held her in the air between them, her rear legs dangling in a lanky, awkward extension.
There was an air of affront about her, as if it were beneath her dignity to be carted about in such a fashion.
But she bore it with a sort of exasperated resignation, her tail swishing in long strokes.
“She—she let you pick her up?”
“She didn’t not let me, at least,” Henry said. “But I had to get her out of my bed somehow—”
“Your bed!” Grace choked on a flutter of astonished laughter, and struggled to smooth her expression into careful neutrality as Henry flashed her a disgruntled expression that suggested he’d been somewhat less than amused by the occurrence than had she.
“I must not have closed the door properly evening last,” he said. “I woke to her climbing into bed with me. Right onto my chest.” He lifted Tansy insistently. “Would you take her? Holding her aloft like this is murder on my arms.”
Yes, well, Tansy was a solid cat. Grace extended her arms, sweeping Tansy from his hands and into her arms. She stepped away from the front door to allow Henry room to enter.
“She doesn’t allow anyone but me to pick her up,” she said.
“Redding tried to move her from a chair in the drawing room last week so that the maids could tidy up, and received a swat and a hiss for his troubles.”
“He did suggest when I arrived that your household at large would not be particularly aggrieved if I happened to keep her for a while longer,” Henry said as he followed her toward the drawing room.
“Eliza would have enjoyed that, probably. She became quite excitable when she found out that Tansy had come for a visit.”
Grace set Tansy down upon the couch, and Tansy arched her back in a long, trembling stretch, padded in a circle, and settled down. “Really?” she asked. “I’ve seen her on occasion, sneaking Tansy pieces of meat.” Which Tansy had no doubt enjoyed, but had not bought her friendship.
“She did this morning as well,” Henry admitted. His brows pinched as he scanned the room and the papers scattered across it. “I couldn’t figure out how to get Tansy off of me without risking my neck.”
“Probably she wanted breakfast,” Grace said. “She always sits on me when I’ve failed to rise before what she has decided is breakfast time. Which is ever-changing and often appallingly early.”
“Luckily the bell pull was within reach.”
Grace coughed to disguise a chuckle. “You summoned a servant to evict a cat?”
“What else was I supposed to do? And it didn’t work, besides. Apparently my staff have had enough run-ins of their own with Tansy to have developed a healthy fear of her. But Eliza caught wind of my predicament from someone and suggested bacon.”
“Wise girl. It’s Tansy’s favorite.” Grace leaned down to scratch Tansy beneath the chin.
“It was enough to get her off of me, at least, but once she’d had her fill of it, she wouldn’t be moved from my bed. And not even Eliza would risk picking her up. I suppose I thought—since she’d already made a bed of me—that she might let me try. After the bacon, of course.”
“Naturally, after the bacon.” And Tansy did have the equivalent of a satisfied feline grin as she pressed her chin down into Grace’s fingers.
“It’s easiest if you hold her like a baby,” she said.
“Many cats don’t prefer it, but Tansy does.
Although she’ll tear you to shreds if you try to pet her belly.
” Which was soft and fluffy and so, so very tempting. Grace had made that mistake before.
“I don’t know how to hold a cat. I’ve never had a pet.”
A shame, that. But he had now—sort of. Tansy had decided, for some unknowable cat-reason, to honor him with her favor. “There is never a bad time to learn.”
Henry canted his head, looked down on Tansy sitting there serenely upon the couch, as if she had not just wrought chaos of his household. “Do you think she’d let me pet her again?”
“You could try it and find out.” Grace settled into a spot on the floor before the low table, picked up the stack of correspondence she had not yet sorted, and began to thumb through it.
Henry took a seat—gingerly, warily—at Tansy’s left side.
He stripped off his gloves, made to lay them across his thigh.
Slanted a glance at the cat, who had only days ago made off with one of them, and tucked them into his coat pocket instead.
For a moment his hand hovered in the air, almost as if he were waiting for Tansy’s permission.
When she failed to offer a hiss of warning or even the hint of a growl, he gently settled his palm over her back, running his fingers smoothly through her thick fur. “She’s so soft,” he said, in a faint tone of wonder.
“She likes to be scratched between her ears,” Grace said. “Just at the top of her head. And also beneath her chin.”
“I don’t know that I’d dare just yet. Rather too close to those fangs for my taste.” Henry’s gaze flicked once more about the room, to the papers strewn across the table, the floor, several chairs—every conceivable surface but for the couch, which she’d left free for him. “What is all this?”
“Everything I stole from your uncle’s desk.”
His brows lifted. “So much of it?”
“Well, I hadn’t time to make a discerning examination of the contents,” she said as she laid a letter down upon a pile.
“There was no safe, concealed or otherwise; just a single locked drawer within his desk. I had no choice but to grab everything the moment I heard steps upon the stairs.” She gave a little wince.
“The empty drawer tipped him off right quick, I’ll admit.
If we had known precisely what to look for, I probably could have gotten in and out with him none the wiser—at least until after the dinner party. ”
“And how did you get it all out?”
“A pouch I secured to the tapes of my petticoats,” she said.
“I could have stolen something so large as a candelabra, if it had been necessary. One doesn’t want to have obvious means of concealing stolen goods when one might be suspected of theft, after all.
But the pouch—buried as it is beneath several layers of skirts and petticoats—is undetectable, so long as I don’t bump into anyone. ”
“And you’ve begun going through all of your stolen correspondence without me.”
“Not all of it. There’s a great deal, and we certainty ought to make a thorough inventory of it at some point.
” But for now, just evidence they were seeking would do.
Grace held the letter in her hands closer to her chest. “And have I not earned the right to be just a little nosy? I was going to discover it all anyway.”
“Fair enough,” Henry said. “What have you learned?”
“That he’s squandered your aunt’s dowry, for one.
The sum he owes on the purchase of boots alone is exorbitant.
” Grace laid down the letter with a sigh.
“I fear the only option he has got to avoid a debtor’s prison is to take the earldom.
He can’t even obtain credit any longer; he’s failed to repay too much already.
Even the money he wrested from your mother is hardly more than a drop in the bucket.
” She grabbed up the rest of the stack, split it in two, and handed one across the table to him.
“There,” she said. “We’ll go through the rest together. ”
“He might be back for more,” Henry said as he thumbed open the first letter in his stack.
“I strained his finances further evening last, though I didn’t have to cheat quite as much as I expected to.
He did a fine job of losing all on his own, except for a few hands I dealt and which I contrived to allow others to win.
Took him for a few hundred pounds in the end.
” The fingers of his free hand settled absently upon Tansy’s head, eliciting an obnoxiously loud purr.
“Did you?” Pleased, Grace leaned forward and braced her elbows upon the table. “You must have practiced a great deal.”
“I did,” he admitted. “For hours, until my fingers were sore. And then I tested my skills upon my mother, who noticed nothing amiss.” A little frown creased his brow, and his fingers ceased their motions—at least until Tansy mewed a demand and nudged her head up into his hand.
“I have got to do something about Aunt Alicia,” he said.
“Did you notice that she had a patch upon her gown last evening?”
She had, of course. But she found herself somewhat surprised that he had. “She tried to disguise it with clever stitchery, but yes, I noticed.”
“I’m ashamed that I hadn’t realized just how severely Uncle Nigel has neglected her needs,” he said, and his hand dropped into his lap.
Annoyed to have been summarily abandoned, Tansy began to gnaw upon his elbow.
“She was a great friend to my mother, before Mother decided to shut herself away from the world.” His gaze grew distant, contemplative.
“I have got to protect her, too. She’s a good woman; better than Uncle Nigel has ever deserved. And—I’m fond of her.”
A warm, sweet glow kindled somewhere in the vicinity of her heart.
Until just recently, she would never have suspected Henry to be of a sentimental bent.
But beneath his stern, rigidly proper facade there lurked a man far more complex than she would have expected.
A man guided by a desire to do the right thing.
To be the sort of man who could be relied upon to protect those beneath his care.
Perhaps there would have been those who suggested his aunt’s difficulties were none of his concern, but Henry—
Henry was fond of her. He’d protect even his nefarious uncle’s wife, no blood relation to him, simply because of that.
“I like her, too,” Grace confessed as she lifted another letter. “She is coming to tea today, in fact.”