Chapter Fifteen #3
Grace offered a sheepish smile. “He said he would,” she said.
And really—that had been enough. For some reason, that had been enough to keep her eyes pinned to the ballroom doors throughout the bulk of the evening.
Enough that she’d hardly managed to make even those vague, polite sounds which might have signified some manner of attention to the prattling-on of her dance partners.
Enough that she’d saved him a dance, which she had never been moved to do before.
“Ah, well,” Felicity said on a sigh. “I suppose something must have come up, then. And haven’t you spent a great deal of time together just lately, anyway?”
Yes, but—not as much as Grace would have liked. “We don’t attend all of the same events, you know,” she said.
“Perhaps not,” Felicity said. “But he has come to call every day.”
“Is that a problem?”
“No, not as such. It’s just that we have got two visiting days each week, and he’s far surpassed them.” Felicity shook her head in exasperation. “How long ago was it that the two of you were at one another’s throats?”
“We weren’t at one another’s throats,” Grace protested. “We were just—”
“At one another’s throats.”
“Oh, hush.” Grace nudged Felicity’s shoulder with her own. “How would you know, anyway? It’s been years since you’ve been to London!”
“I do have a rather robust memory,” Felicity said dryly.
“You’ve been complaining of him for just ages and ages.
You called him an arrogant prig, if I recall.
” She tapped her chin with her forefinger, arranged her features in an expression which suggested she was searching back through the myriad grievances which Grace had expressed across the years.
“And there was something about a stick lodged up his—”
“Felicity,” Grace grumbled. “And anyway, that was before—before—”
Before he had discovered her secrets. Before she had discovered his.
Before he had accepted her tutelage in the art of sleight of hand, and been grateful for the opportunity.
Before she had had occasion to notice the raw desire that he had somehow kept pinned and leashed beneath all the trappings of the consummate gentleman.
Before he had been a little less gentlemanly with her than he ought to have done, and before she had realized she had wanted that.
Before he had called her remarkable, and meant it.
“Tansy likes him,” she muttered beneath her breath, with an awkward roll of her shoulders.
“You like him,” Felicity accused. “Better than you ever liked Lord Latimer, if I had to guess, and you were very nearly engaged to him.”
“I came to my senses in time.” Though it had not been a difficult thing to do.
Every bit of affection she had felt for the man—which had, admittedly, been rather pale in retrospect—had died the instant he’d suggested she might benefit from a slimming regimen.
A man who required her to alter herself to be worthy of his love was not worthy of hers.
Henry liked her precisely as she was. Desired her precisely as she was. With a figure too full to be fashionable, and sticky fingers, and an aptitude for coarse words that rivaled a sailor’s. Still, he desired her.
And Tansy liked him. It said something of a man’s character, didn’t it, when an animal who liked nearly no one else liked him?
Twice this week alone he’d had to return her once it had grown dark and she had shown no signs of wandering back on her own.
Once more she’d caught him dangling a sprig of catmint above Tansy’s head, enticing the cat to play with it.
He’d developed a fondness for the animal he’d once claimed to loathe. Perhaps he’d developed a fondness for Grace, as well? Something that ran deeper than desire. Something more meaningful, more lasting.
“Oh, look,” Felicity said brightly as she nodded toward the ballroom doors. “I suppose you were right after all. Lord Lockhart has indeed arrived.”
And there he was, coming through the doors at last. Late, but here.
His dark hair combed away from his face, impeccably dressed in dark eveningwear, cravat expertly knotted.
He scanned the ballroom as he entered, grazing over face after face until finally that crystal blue gaze landed straight upon her. Lingered. Admired.
He ought to have taken the time to greet the hostess, to exchange the expected pleasantries, but no—he was making straight for her, weaving through the crowd like a man on a mission.
Grace’s heart fluttered against her ribs. Fluttered. Like a damned swarm of butterflies!
Somehow, suddenly, this pretend courtship that they had concocted between them had begun to feel all too real.
Or perhaps she only wanted it to be real.
∞∞∞
“You were late,” Grace accused as Henry offered her his arm to lead her to the ballroom floor.
He had been. But she had saved him a dance anyway.
A waltz, near the end of the evening—which meant he had had to watch her dance with three other gentlemen before his turn had come up at last. “I was,” he said.
“Tansy found her way back into my house.” Still, no one in the household was quite certain how she kept managing it.
“She had what looked to be an extremely satisfying nap right upon the clothes my valet had laid out for me this evening. Again.”
Grace wanted to laugh. He could see it in the faint tremble of her lips as she pressed them tightly together. “I swear, Henry, if Tansy comes home missing even one hair—”
“How could you tell? She’s so damned fluffy, I could probably shave a strip straight down her back and no one would ever notice.”
That had done it. She could not restrain the silvery laugh that trickled across her lips and shivered down his spine. Her hand tightened on his as he steered her through a turn. She hadn’t laughed with any of the other gentlemen she’d danced with before him—at least, not that he’d seen.
Had she laughed like that with any of the gentlemen she’d danced with before he’d arrived?
Each ball for which they had both been present, he had had exactly once dance with her—the tacitly understood limit for any one gentlemen, unless a couple was on the verge of announcing an engagement—but Grace had never been left lingering at the fringes of a ballroom for long.
Even if she had claimed to have no suitors at present, he’d noticed at least a handful of gentlemen whom he suspected of some manner of interest.
Whether or not that interest had been expressed to her, whether she would welcome it—hell, even whether she had entertained callers other than himself were beyond his knowledge.
“Still,” Grace said primly, once she had recovered herself. “It’s bad form to keep a lady waiting.”
“Were you waiting?” The question slipped out before he could think better of it.
A tiny, inquisitive tilt of her head. “What do you mean?”
“I sneaked a look at your dance card,” he said. “While I was writing my name in.” For the waltz he’d had to wait three damned sets to claim. “There were a fair few names upon it.”
“Had you expected otherwise?”
No, he hadn’t. Grace was beautiful and personable; clever and witty.
It only stood to reason she would have her fair share of admirers.
But it strained some corner of his heart.
Pricked it with something rather like jealousy.
It seemed unfair, somehow, that anyone else should claim even that small fraction of her attention, when he—
When he wanted all of it.
He knew parts of her that no other gentleman ever had.
Possibly that no other gentleman ever would.
Would she ever share with some other man the truth of her origins?
Teach him to cheat at cards? Kiss him on a deserted balcony beneath the pale glow of the moon?
Sneak into his house in the darkest depths of the night in only her wrapper?
Run those delicate, bewitching fingers up his chest, scrape them through his hair?
“I was only curious,” he said, his voice gone oddly hoarse. “I told you what had kept me, after all. I wondered what had occurred in my absence.”
“As it happens,” she said, pitching her voice to a murmur. “Uncle Rafe has come through. I have got his note in my reticule.”
“You have?” The fine hairs at the nape of Henry’s neck prickled.
It had been well over a week since that dinner, since they’d left the matter within Mr. Moore’s hands—and they’d heard nothing since.
Time had been swiftly winding down, and Henry had experienced it as sand in an hourglass, waning inexorably toward the end of his life as he knew it.
“I have,” she said, and that sly little smile he’d grown to find so enchanting played about her mouth.
“Cooper is known to frequent a tavern in Whitechapel called the Queen’s Arms. Of course we cannot go this evening,” she said.
“I can hardly slip away from a ball without being noticed, and the pub will no doubt be closed by the time the ball lets out.”
“Grace,” Henry sighed.
“I haven’t got an engagement tomorrow evening, so it would be the perfect—”
“Grace,” he said again. “No.”
“No?” That smile faded into a frown with alarming alacrity. “Henry—”
“I’ve told you,” he said, “I won’t risk your safety.” Their last adventure had been in the safety of his uncle’s townhouse, on a quiet residential street. And still it had nearly proved catastrophic. “You cannot be seen in Whitechapel, and it’s unsafe for a lady besides.”
She scoffed, with a roll of her eyes that was unnecessarily dismissive. “I promise you, I’ve been in worse places, and in worse circumstances.”
“That does not reassure me.” But it scored a little part of his heart to know that there had been whole years of her life fraught with danger, in which there had been no one able—or willing—to protect her. “I am not going to let you cast yourself headlong into danger.”
“Oh, come. Have a little more faith in me than that,” she said. “It wouldn’t be headlong.”
“It won’t be sidelong, either, or from any other direction or angle you might happen to contrive to accomplish. Mr. Moore made me responsible for your safety; I will not compromise it.” Certainly not if it involved her strolling blithely through some of the worst slums of London.
“You need me,” Grace said, her voice lowering. “You look like what you are; you’ll be lucky to leave with your life. You certainly won’t leave with your valuables.”
“Then I won’t take any,” Henry said. “Besides, I have got a plan.” One he’d been turning over in his head in preparation these last several days as they had waited for this very news.
“A plan?”
Henry swept them away from a couple that had taken a turn too close.
“Cooper wants the sum of one thousand pounds from my uncle in exchange for the passenger manifest,” he said.
“It’s possible that my uncle has had some trouble coming up with that amount.
My staff informs me he’s come to call twice more, most likely to extort more money from Mother.
He’s been refused both times, naturally. ”
“He has still got valuables,” Grace warned. “Perhaps he’ll get only a fraction of the value of them if he should sell them, but he’ll do what he must to come up with the money. And once he has got the evidence he needs…”
Henry knew already. He’d have the title and the bulk of the estate. Worth far more than whatever valuables he had sacrificed to obtain it. “I know,” he said. “So I’m going to offer Cooper double what he’s asked of my uncle.”
“Henry, that’s madness.”
“It’s the most reasonable solution. I’ll offer him a bank draft—”
“A bank draft?” Grace echoed, nonplussed.
“Henry. Men like Cooper do not traffic in bank drafts. And what’s more, there is a certain sort of honor amongst thieves and criminals.
It would be a blot upon Cooper’s reputation—such as it is—to renege upon a deal, even for double the going amount. He will not negotiate with you.”
“You can’t know that,” Henry said. “Not for certain, at least.”
“I don’t need to know him,” Grace said. “I have known people like him. Uncle Chris would tell you the same. You must understand that to men like him, this is very much a business.”
“The business of extortion, you mean to say. What sort of business is that?”
“To him—and to men like him—a business the same as any other. The products he sells might differ from those that you would find in a storefront, but they still have got value. Value that is compromised if it becomes known he will not honor his word.” Grace winced as the music began to draw to a close, and hurried through the rest of her speech.
“Even at double what he would charge your uncle for the same, what he stands to lose in reputation is no doubt worth significantly more than an extra thousand pounds. Oh, please, Henry—”
“Grace.” Subtly, as the dance ended at last, Henry squeezed her fingers in his.
“I believe you.” She knew the shadier side of society far better than he ever had, or ever would, most likely.
And still it changed nothing. “I still have to try,” he said.
“I made a promise to your uncle that I would keep you safe.” And he had made the same promise to himself the very moment he had helped her climb through the window of his uncle’s townhouse the first time he’d involved her in his little intrigue.
Her nails curled into the wool of his coat as he tucked her hand into the crook of his elbow to escort her back to her family. “I could—”
“No, you could not.”
“But if you fail—”
“That was always a risk, and it is mine to take.” But not hers.
Never hers. “I would rather lose my good name, my title, my fortune, and everything else I own than to put you in danger for even a moment.” He paused there at the edge of the dance floor, drawing her to a stop beside him.
In the momentary chaos of people swarming through the room seeking their next partners, it would have been impossible to be overheard.
“None of this is worth your life or your safety,” he said.
“So you are going to promise me that you will let me handle this nasty bit of business on my own. All right?”
For just a moment, her lips pursed and her chin trembled in what promised to be a quarrelsome manner.
But at the last she seemed to recall where they were, that any hint of hostility or belligerence might prove unwise.
“All right,” she sighed dejectedly, her shoulders sinking with the words. “If I must.”
“Good,” Henry said tightly, as a new knot of anxiety formed in his stomach.
She had made the right sounds. Cast her gaze away from his as if in resentful submission. Lowered her head and let a slight pout of injured pride slide across those full, sweet lips.
But her nose had twitched. And he knew she’d lied.