Chapter 19
Chapter
Nineteen
By the time Monday night arrived, frustration had settled like a stone in Grant’s chest. Dinner with his father had loomed like an ominous black cloud for the last two days, and it had cast its shadow over everything, it seemed.
Saturday at the clinic, plenty of patients had come in for one thing or another, but he had not seen Amir or his father.
The boy’s sutures needed checking; without proper care and attention, they would fester.
Surely, Mr. Mansouri would have sent for him had Amir turned feverish, or the wound red and infected.
Still, he and Hannah waited an extra half hour past their regular closing time to give them a chance to show. They hadn’t.
Then, arriving home, a message from Hugh had been waiting.
Mrs. Lydia Montrose had denied any knowledge of where her niece could be.
In the aunt’s opinion, the ungrateful girl had captured a wealthy man’s heart and had squandered it by running away.
The only helpful thing she provided was Youngdale’s address, but when Hugh had called on him, the staff said their master was out and that Miss Isabel had not been seen as of late.
With no solid legal reason to force entry, all Hugh could then do was place someone as a look out.
Unsurprisingly, Sir had volunteered. But there was still no sign of Youngdale.
Sunday night, Grant returned to Duke’s for a match, but he had not been among the spectators either.
It was as if he’d disappeared. Or was lying low.
And, of course, there was Cassie.
As Merryton pulled along the curb outside twelve Grosvenor Square, Grant regretted every single decision he’d made for the last fortnight. But none so much as the one he’d made Friday night in Hugh’s study. Though, kissing Cassie hadn’t been as much a decision as it had been a compulsion.
Grant had cursed under his breath the entire walk back to Thornton House.
Storming inside, he’d barked at his butler to lock up for the night, taken the stairs to his room like a tempest, and slammed the bedroom door in his valet’s face.
But one look at the bed in which he’d so recently imagined laying Cassie down on, stripping her gown from her body, and making love to her, and he’d ached with the solitary need for release.
He wasn’t often in a foul temper, and so the servants were sure to talk, but he did not care. He’d lost control in Hugh’s study. Hell, if he’d been assured of their privacy, he would have laid Cassie onto the carpet in front of the fireplace and taken her there and then.
Had that happened, when the sun rose, he would have had no choice but to go to Fournier and offer for Cassie’s hand. In truth.
That was something he could not do. That he would not do.
Cassie’s footman allowed him in, and Grant held himself rigidly while he waited. He’d forced all his frustration from the last few days to stay lodged where it had accumulated, right in the center of his chest. He would make no more mistakes.
He was staring holes in the parquet flooring when a throat cleared softly.
Cassie had come to stand in front of him.
He straightened but didn’t look her directly in the eye as he murmured a good evening.
She held still and quiet as her maid helped her into her pelisse, thankfully covering up the emerald satin gown she wore; a hasty assessment had shown it displayed a healthy amount of decolletage. Grant refused to let his eyes linger.
Without more conversation, they got underway, the two of them alone, enclosed in the interior of his carriage.
He breathed evenly and kept his attention on the window.
Flakes of wet snow collected on the glass.
The silence intensified with every passing minute.
His fingers drummed on the black superfine encasing his thighs. He needed to say something.
Grant turned away from the window, and she was waiting for him. Their eyes connected, and he could not look away. Not without appearing cowardly.
“Mr. Youngdale hasn’t been located.”
Cassie lifted her chin, and he saw her disappointment. She wanted to speak about the kiss. He could not think of anything he would like to discuss less.
“Hugh suggested he could be keeping Isabel in an undisclosed location. Or perhaps the aunt was lying, and she is helping Youngdale after all.”
He kept his words flat. Emotionless.
Cassie took a bracing breath. “Shouldn’t we speak of what happened the other night?”
His eyes clashed with hers again. He then squared his shoulders. “No. It was a mistake. Let’s leave it at that.”
Cassie stared at him as if a realization was dawning, one that now slid through her like oil. She made no reply, and Grant again looked out the window. “The marquess is going to test the veracity of this courtship. Are you prepared to keep up your end of the bargain?”
“My end? You rule over all of this charade, Lord Thornton. Not me.”
He looked at her again, the void between them yawning wide and hollow. Good. It was what he needed.
“Can you make the marquess believe you are interested in my suit or can you not?” he asked.
Cassie breathed thinly, her temper beginning to visibly flare. And why shouldn’t it? He was being unforgivably callous.
“I will make him believe it.” She ground out each word. At the chilled glare that followed, Grant had the notion that she was devising something in that crafty mind of hers.
Neither of them spoke another word as the carriage bore them across the Thames, toward Lindstrom House in Kennington.
For as long as Grant could remember, he’d considered the place a prison.
Though it faced the distinctive and landscaped Oval, it was the wild lawns out back of Lindstrom House where Grant had preferred to spend his time when he’d been younger.
There were some outbuildings where he’d taken shelter if the weather was cold or rainy, and he’d kept them stuffed with supplies—hampers of food, pilfered bottles of his father’s good whisky, books, and blankets to keep warm.
Almost always, one of his brothers would find him and drag him back to the house, where he’d receive a lecture from the marquess regarding his irresponsible behavior and commands to strive to be more like Lawrence or Harold, or at the very least, like James.
As the carriage stopped, Grant realized he was about to lead Cassie into a house that had, from the beginning, seemed to swallow him whole whenever he entered it.
Not once had he possessed even a shred of true confidence within these walls, and if he was going to pull off these next few hours with any semblance of success, he would need all the confidence he possessed.
Grant handed Cassie down onto the pavement out front of Lindstrom House and noted that her slippers made deep impressions in the snowfall. By the time they made it to the front step, they would be soaked.
“I can carry you, if you’d prefer to keep your feet out of the snow,” he said, though immediately wished he hadn’t offered. He could not put his hands on any part of her body again.
“Carry me? Don’t be absurd,” she snapped, and then started forward without him.
Half thankful and half vexed, he followed, flecks of snow shuttling into his eyes.
The front door whisked open before he could bring down the knocker, and upon entering, the voices of his brothers and their wives barreled into his ears.
They were a loud lot and always had been.
His father’s longtime butler, Harding, greeted them with a bow.
“Welcome, my lord. My lady,” he said, taking a second bow toward Cassie. The footman, a new one Grant did not know, divested her of her snowy pelisse and gloves, and then took Grant’s outer trappings.
“The marquess and his guests are in the drawing room,” Harding intoned.
The butler started away, expecting them to follow.
With an arm gesture for Cassie to proceed, she gave Grant her back and crossed the entrance lobby.
Gray was the overarching theme inside Lindstrom House.
A cold pewter. Grant recalled yellows and greens when he’d been young and his mother had been alive, but after her death, the marquess had tried to eradicate all traces of her.
Any memory of her would be salt in an open wound.
When Sarah had died, it was the closest Grant had ever been to understanding his father.
A moment before Harding announced them, Grant braced himself. Then slipped his arm under Cassie’s, hooking it. The touch sent a bolt through him, and surprise was still bright on her face too when they entered the room together.
His father stood, along with Lawrence, Harold, James, and Penelope’s husband, Alfred.
“Lady Cassandra, may I present my father, the Marquess of Lindstrom; his heir, Lawrence, the Earl of Cranfield and his wife Lady Cranfield; Lord Harold Thornton and his wife, Lady Priscilla; Lord James Thornton; and Mr. Alfred Farrington and his wife, my sister, Mrs. Penelope Farrington.”
Had he been in any typical humor, having spat out that mouthful of introductions, Grant would have made some quip about his family having more members than the Houses of Parliament. But he couldn’t find it within him. A heaviness had settled in his chest and stamped out any humor at all.
His siblings and their spouses, and his father too, greeted Cassie in turn, who continued to clutch Grant’s arm. He was almost positive she was tightening her grip due to nervousness. Even still, he was entirely too aware of her arm against his.
“We wondered if the snow had hampered your carriage,” Harold said.
Grant frowned. “It’s nothing. A dusting at most.”
“It’s going to increase,” Harold, ever the fusspot, argued. “I think we’d be better off leaving for Town sooner rather than later.”
The marquess scoffed. “Stop stewing over the weather and act like a man, for God’s sake.”