Chapter Thirteen Mercy
Chapter Thirteen
Mercy
“Can she do that?”
Grant raked a hand through his hair, and the shifting muscles in his forearm distracted me from the brief moment of imperfection, like a flash of the sun when you’re not prepared. When he dropped his hand, every single dark strand was perfectly in place.
I leaned forward, studying him intently. “How is that possible?”
“What?”
“Your hair. It just went right back into place. What the hell do you use on it?”
“I don’t know, something my sister, Rose, found at a salon in London.” He narrowed his eyes. “That’s what you want to know?”
I blinked. “No. I mean, yes, I was wondering. But no.” I straightened my shoulders and took another sip of coffee. “Continue.”
Grant sighed, staring down at his mug for a long moment. “I need food first. I didn’t really eat dinner, and my stomach is protesting my choices.” His eyes met mine. “Are you hungry?”
Just as I was about to say no, my stomach let out a loud growl. I slapped a hand over it, my cheeks going hot.
Grant’s eyes warmed. “I’ll take that as a yes. I’ll make some eggs and toast.”
Ten minutes later, I was curled up in the corner of the couch, cheesy eggs and buttered toast on a plate balanced in my lap. We ate in silence, but I kept stealing glances of his hard profile.
Had it been like this in the early days of our marriage?
It wasn’t possible that we bickered all the time. At some point, we must have found a different rhythm. Something more polite. Friendly.
Friendly enough to have sex, at least.
Sex. Me and Grant having sex.
Shit.
Don’t think about Grant in bed.
There must have been baby steps there, right? We didn’t just hop into the sack in between hissing at each other from across the room. Oh, or maybe we did, and it was angry and we broke furniture and—
“You’re thinking awfully hard over there.”
My eyes moved back down to my plate. “Just . . . thinking about you and I being friendly. Wondering when that happened.”
“Who says it did?” he asked, warmth creeping into his voice.
My head snapped up. “It didn’t?”
“I suppose that depends on your definition.” Grant took another bite of toast, the muscles in his jaw shifting nicely.
He swallowed, licking a crumb off his bottom lip, and I looked away for a moment, heat crawling up the back of my neck.
“But rest assured, we never lost that contention between us. It was rather comforting after a while, to know that no matter what changed between us, you could always frustrate me like no one else in the world.”
My cheeks were flaming. “Everyone needs a talent,” I said primly.
“Just so,” he murmured.
“Okay. How and why would your grandmother push for annulment? We . . . consummated.”
His gaze lingered on my face, then went back to his own food, his fork pushing the eggs around without scooping any up.
“I mentioned earlier that marrying you was a stumbling block for my family. They wanted something for my future that I didn’t.
And the pressure of those expectations was disastrous after a while.
So when I told you we married over money, it was mine.
” He took a small bite, then set the plate aside on the end table, stretching his long legs out in front of him where he sat opposite of me on the couch.
“Half my trust was released when I turned twenty-one and finished school. The remainder upon my marriage. That paperwork was in place when I was born.”
“So you wanted that last fifty percent?”
He nodded, watching my face carefully. “I could’ve lived a very comfortable life without it.
But the expectation was that I’d return to London, be groomed to take my father’s place in charge of the Hastings estate, and marry someone with just as much money and property.
It’s how my parents’ betrothal happened as well, but lucky for them, it’s what they wanted out of life.
And they fell in love in the course of their engagement.
There was no hope of that happening with me. ”
“You were engaged?”
“Not exactly,” he hedged.
“Oh my gosh, you were, weren’t you?”
Grant sighed, rubbing a hand over his jaw. “There was an understanding in place with my father’s best friend and business partner. I’d marry his daughter, and we’d take their places someday.”
“But you came here for school?”
He smiled faintly. “An indulgence they allowed, thinking it would offer me some controlled freedom before returning home. They wanted Ivy League, but I am quite persuasive when necessary. Michigan is a highly ranked school, and I wanted a different experience for myself. When I visited, it felt . . . I don’t know . . . like I was meant to be here.”
We were tiptoeing closer to really big topics, and the apprehension crawling up my spine primed my nervous system for fight or flight. Instead of trying to ignore what my body was doing, I closed my eyes and let it happen. I didn’t count breaths or try to distract myself, I simply felt it.
You’re scared, I told myself. You’re scared because this is something you don’t know. But it’s better that you do.
I opened my eyes and found him watching me. For a moment, I simply stared back, until my chest twisted and my pulse hammered in my ears. “And who were you supposed to marry?”
“Imogen Beaufort.”
“Is she horrible? Is that why you didn’t want to marry her?”
Some twisted part of me wanted to hear him say exactly that. Imogen, snooty fucking name that it was, kicked puppies and made little kids cry. She was selfish and vain and probably stared at her own reflection all day for fun.
We hate Imogen, I waited for him to say. Team Kincaid-Hastings wanted her gone.
“No, she’s not horrible at all.” Then he gave me a rueful look. “You wanted her to be, even back then.”
“I did not,” I lied.
Grant leaned forward, resting his elbows on the tops of his thighs. “You did. She was traveling when we went to London, so you couldn’t meet her, but oh, my dear, you wanted to hate her so badly, and I can see it in your pretty eyes right now. That spark of vengeance that you wear so well.”
I scoffed. “It’s not vengeance.”
“It’s jealousy.”
My eyes narrowed. “Watch it, buddy. I’m hungover and still a little cranky.”
“My favorite side of you, darling.”
“Fine. Tell me all about this paragon of English gentility.”
“She’s kind. Funny. Beautiful.”
“Of course she is,” I muttered, shoveling another bite of eggs into my mouth. “A musical prodigy, too, I bet.”
“Not bad on the piano, but her singing is divine.”
“Fuck off, now you’re just trying to make me mad.”
“Oh no, I’m quite serious.” He licked his bottom lip, eyes holding mine steady. “You couldn’t hate her if you wanted to.”
“Wanna bet?”
Grant exhaled a short, quiet laugh, and the sound of it made my eyes flutter closed. I forced them open because fluttering anything around this man was a terrible idea.
It was his fault, though. He was the one who’d introduced sex into the equation. Naturally, I was thinking things now.
Had we showered together?
Did we have sex in the kitchen?
What was his favorite position?
Noises like that—a low, amused sound that would be so nice up against my ear, or the side of my throat, or the skin of my stomach—were meant to be a slow seduction, and there was no way he didn’t know it.
I sniffed haughtily. “You’re still not explaining why you didn’t marry her.”
“Imogen is a hopeless romantic. She wants real love. Not something that grows out of necessity or in stunted circumstances. We’ve known each other our entire lives, and there isn’t a single spark to be found.
We kissed once when we were eighteen, and she nearly gagged.
” When I laughed, he paused to watch. “She had that kind of love once, with someone of a much lower social class than her family, and they threatened to cut her off. Kick her out. So she let him go.”
“Why?”
“Because she was young and terrified of losing the only home she’d ever known.” His gaze cut straight through the noisy clamor filling my mind, the voices I did remember and wished I didn’t. “Not everyone is as brave as you when it comes to starting over, darling.”
I couldn’t look at him any longer. It was too hard.
He’d been there when I moved in with Connor. When I’d shown up with one bag of clothes and a backpack of keepsakes, skinny as a rail and scared shitless because I’d walked across town in the cold, not knowing what my future would look like.
I stared down at my fingers knitted together tightly in my lap. “Why is it so hard for a family to understand that sometimes children want something different than the life they know.”
Grant was quiet, patiently waiting to see whether I’d say something else. When I didn’t—when I couldn’t—his voice was the kind of rough reassurance that I needed. “They should understand.”
“I’d be proud if my son or daughter wanted to carve out their own life,” I said quietly. “Wouldn’t you?”
“Immensely.”
I sighed. “Fine, so we like Imogen. But why marry me?”
“It gave me a reason to stay, and she could keep her freedom because I’m the one who made the choice to break off the agreement.
” Grant rubbed his hands up and down the tops of his thighs, a nervous gesture that I wasn’t used to seeing from him.
“There are many reasons why I love my life here, and while my parents—my mother,” he corrected, “has been supportive, my father and grandmother still view it as a phase that I might outgrow. And if they knew that you remembered nothing of our relationship, she would push for annulment on the grounds of incapacitation. Or fraud. Take your pick.”
“Fraud? I’m not defrauding anyone.”
“I know that. My parents as well. You had . . . you had very frank conversations with them about how you felt regarding my wealth.” One side of his mouth hooked up. “My grandmother, too, which is why I will never leave the two of you in a room alone again.”
I winced. “Was it bad?”
“Depends on your definition.”
“It was bad.”