Chapter 9 #2
Grant peered at her a prolonged moment before answering. “A sliver of wood. He sustained the injury when someone hit him in the head with a piece of a broken table during a tavern brawl. It was causing a fair amount of pain.”
“You removed it?”
“He didn’t come to me for me to leave it in.”
Cassie ignored his sarcasm as she wandered around the tall lantern, a finger trailing along the smooth lenses. “Does Miss Matthews assist you?”
“You’re asking me questions to avoid the conversation we need to have.”
She gaped, taken aback at the accusation. “I am not.” She’d merely been curious about the woman in the kitchen.
Grant rolled down the cuff of one sleeve. The motion was slow and oddly intimate.
“Hannah assists me here and at my home surgery, at Thornton House.”
“So, she knows the truth? That you’re a peer?”
At his nod, she felt those claws under her skin sharpen. Why did this trouble her? It shouldn’t. She refused to let it. So what if a pretty young woman assisted Grant here and at his home? So what if he trusted her with what he’d claimed to be his most crucial secret? And now, with Cassie’s.
“That bothers you,” he observed.
She had been quiet too long. Lost in her own muddled head. “You should not have told her about Miss Banks without my permission.”
He finished with one sleeve and then began to roll down the other. “She is as trustworthy as Tris is. Hannah is my late wife’s sister. They were close. When she expressed an interest in assisting me, I indulged her, even though my brothers and father staunchly objected.”
The claws retracted a little. Annoyed with her reaction over Miss Matthews, Cassie walked toward the other side of the office, if only to put distance between them.
“Why have you come?” he asked. She decided to be honest.
“To avoid having you blacken my doorstep.”
“You are delaying the inevitable.”
Lead slid into her stomach. She was, though she hated to admit it. Grant Thornton was not trustworthy or honorable enough for her to believe he would not see his threat through to the very end.
But even though she would play his game, she would not make things simple for him. “What of Mr. Forsythe?”
He didn’t quite flinch, but she noticed the flexing of his jaw. “What of him?”
“I’ve grown rather fond of him,” she replied.
Grant snorted. “You have not.”
“Do not presume to tell me who I am and am not fond of.”
As if baited by the challenge, he came toward her. Each stride radiated malevolence. “While we are courting, you will not see Mr. Forsythe, or any other man. Is that clear?”
The demand made sense, as continuing to see other men would indicate that she had not settled on a beau, and their courtship would not be taken seriously by the marquess. But it also smacked of possessive envy. It set her back on her heels.
But then, Cassie formed a saccharine grin. “Tell me, Lord Thornton, what is your plan if this nephew you’re bargaining on enters the world as a niece?”
There was, after all, a fifty-fifty chance of it.
Grant reached his desk and, crossing his arms, leaned a hip against the edge. “I will worry about that when the time arrives. However, you have my word that either way, I will release you from our courtship. You may end things then as you see fit.”
“I would trust the word of a gentleman, but you, sir, are not that.”
A devilish grin pinned the center of his cheeks, drawing her eyes to twin dimples. It was not adorable in the least.
“Come now, Lady Cassandra, I am a gentleman at least forty percent of the time.”
She pretended not to hear him. “The duke will not allow a drawn-out courtship. He will corner you before long and demand you offer.”
Grant chuckled. “I rather think he will corner me and demand I sod off. But I wager we have a fortnight before that happens.”
“We have nothing,” she retorted swiftly. But then, more calmly, she returned to negotiations. “I am the one who will cry off. And it will be because you have done something wretched and unforgivable.”
He assented with a nod. “That will be more than believable.”
“I will allow no liberties,” she added, her voice quavering while naming the condition.
Grant pushed off the desk and came near. Close enough for her to trace his scent of cinnamon and sandalwood. “I would give you my word that I will take no liberties, but there is that other sixty percent of the time that needs to be accounted for.”
He wanted to get a rise out of her. Lead her into saying something he could use in some sarcastic remark. She wouldn’t give it.
“You have something to lose too, Lord Thornton. Do not forget that.” His clinic was important to him. Just as important as Hope House, she imagined.
“We both do,” he conceded. “So let us agree. These next few fortnights don’t have to be painful or unpleasant.”
She hated that he’d led her into this scheme by force. He was dangling her freedom over her head, using it to coerce her. And then acting as if they were on equal footing. She gritted her teeth so violently, they ached.
“Fine.”
He waited for her to say more, to form a new condition perhaps. When she didn’t, he nodded succinctly and stepped away from her. “There is a ball Monday night. Lord and Lady Tennenbright’s. I assume you’ve an invitation?”
She had received it last week and promptly set it aside. Lady Dutton’s ball had been the first she’d attended in some time, and that had been a glorified failure.
“I do.”
“Excellent. Attend. We will dance three times, and I’ll keep you away from all the other men. That should signal to everyone that I have an interest in you.”
The transactional performance left her cold. And furious.
“Is that all?” she asked, nipping her words.
Mischief brightened his eyes as he took his jacket from the back of his desk chair where he’d left it and inserted his arms. “It would help if you didn’t look at me as you are right now, as though I resemble a slimy snail.”
As soon as he said it, she felt the grimace tensing her facial muscles. She loosened them as well as she could.
“Just try to pretend to enjoy my company,” he said.
“Very well. But no quadrilles.” She held up a hand. “I hate the quadrille.”
Cassie leaped as frantic pounding came at the front door.
“What in God’s name…” Grant muttered, then headed for the front hall. Cassie followed, and the loud banging came again. Grant opened the door and a man rushed inside, a young boy in his arms.
“Mr. Mansouri, what’s happened?” Grant asked, clearly familiar with him.
“It is Amir,” the man said, taking the boy directly into the front room. Cassie jumped out of the way to let him pass. “He fell off a hitching post and caught his leg on a hook.”
He settled the young boy on the examination table, his pant leg soaked in blood. Grant removed the jacket he’d just put on and, once again, began to roll his cuffs.
“Miss Banks,” he said. She tore her eyes away from the boy’s bloody leg. “Fetch Miss Matthews.”
She nodded and hurried down the short hall. But the kitchen was empty.
“I think she must have left,” she told Grant once she’d hurried back to the front room. The boy, about nine or ten, whimpered as Grant used a pair of shears to cut away his torn trouser.
“I did tell her to go for the evening,” he said, his voice calm and measured. “Well then, Miss Banks, I’ll need you to assist in her place.”
“Me?” She felt glued to the spot as she looked on, the bloody gash along Amir’s calf already sending her stomach into a swirl.
Grant threw the shorn trouser leg to the floor and peered at her, slightly bemused. Then, he spoke to the boy. “Amir, this is Miss Jane Banks. She is going to be helping me.”
The boy turned his dark brown eyes onto her. They were filled with doubt. When he bit his bottom lip against a whimper of pain, Cassie realized she was being silly. Of course she would help. The boy was injured, and his father was frantic with worry.
“Should I fetch some hot water?” she asked, shedding her pelisse and gloves.
“And a syringe and tincture of iodine,” Grant replied, preoccupied as he inspected the gash. “You’ll find them in the second cabinet, third shelf.”
Cassie started moving, even though she was full of the same doubt that had been in Amir’s expression.
She searched for a bowl in the kitchen to fill with steaming water that remained on the stove.
It sloshed over the brim and wet the floor as she returned to the office, where Grant had lit the large lantern. It sparkled light throughout the room.
“Place the bowl here, Miss Banks,” he said, gesturing toward a small stand next to the examination table. She did, and then went to the cabinets for the syringe and tincture. She found them, along with a stack of clean linens.
Grant took the syringe and drew up water from the bowl.
“I have a riddle for you, Amir,” he said. “What is something that belongs to you but is mostly used by others?”
The boy frowned, wincing as Grant used the syringe to flush the gash of dirt and debris. “I don’t know, Doctor Brown.”
“Here’s a hint. I just used it. So did your father when he brought you into my office.”
Cassie bit back a grin as Grant flushed the wound a second, then a third time. All the while, Amir pinched his brow in thought. Then, he showed a toothy grin.
“My name!”
“Nicely done,” Grant said while dribbling the purplish liquid he’d called iodine over the gash. “Miss Banks, hold this to the wound, please.”
He placed a linen over the boy’s leg and beckoned her forward. Cassie reached her hand out, hesitantly. Grant gently took it and, pulling her closer, placed her palm onto the linen. “That’s right. Light pressure, like that. Good, all right, here’s another for you, Amir.”
As he went to his cabinets and collected some more items, he recited another riddle. “What is light as a feather, and yet the strongest person in the world cannot hold it for five minutes?”
Mr. Mansouri crushed his cap and looked on as Grant returned with black suturing floss and a curved needle.