But when Grace pleaded a headache and disappeared for the rest of the day, he sought someone to blame. First on his list was Neville Freyne. The shock on Grace’s face on seeing her former beau made Lucien wonder in that moment if she’d harbored anylingering feelings for the man. It didn’t take long to discover otherwise. The pompous fool was completely unaware of Grace’s growing ire the longer he spoke.
To think Grace’s father had ever considered Freyne a suitable match was confounding. But then to write to Freyne and invite him to court Grace even after the man had jilted her? Lord Elliot certainly lacked some common sense, as evidenced by his marriage to his current wife so soon after losing his first. How Grace managed to endure her stepmother was beyond him, recalling the way she prattled continuously about Mrs. Kemble this, Mrs. Kemble that when it came to planning the wedding gown, the wedding breakfast, the flowers and God knew what else. Lady Elliot had no idea how the very name of this so-called friend of hers grated on Grace’s nerves.
Lucien paced his bedchamber then looked at the door that separated his room from Grace’s. There was one thing he could do for his betrothed. Stop them from tormenting Grace once and for all.
Put her between his shoulder and his shield…
Where the devil had that come from? He hadn’t thought of that phrase since he’d been a boy, still naïve enough to read the tales of King Arthur and the knights he’d once aspired to emulate.
It was ridiculous for him to think of such a thing.
Yet, now that the house was quiet, he stood, stripped to shirt sleeves, two glasses of brandy in his hand. Strange, but he was almost unaware of pouring them. And yet, here he was, standing in front of his future wife’s door, propriety be damned. No leash so fragile as Society’s dictates could keep him away.
He raised his fist and knocked, heard a clatter of some object falling on the other side of the door.
“Y—yes?” Grace called out, her voice uncertain.
“May I come in?”
A pause. A bit of a scuffle, then again, that voice. “Yes.”
He pushed open the door, feeling a strange tightness in his chest.
Grace stood beside her dressing table, clutching a silver-backed hairbrush against her breasts, her expression wide-eyed with a mixture of shock and wariness that he would enter her bedchamber before they were wed. “Is something wrong?”
He stepped into the room, his mouth going dry. Her hair streamed down the back of her nightgown, her bed neatly turned back, but untouched. He imagined what that bed would look like if he made love to her, coverlets in total disarray. He cleared his throat, forced the image from his mind, then held out a glass to her. “I saw the light under your doorway. It seemed as if you might be in need of a bit of fortification after today.”
She set down the brush and took the brandy. “I’d offer you a seat by the fire, my lord, but as you know, you didn’t think a second chair necessary.”
He raised an eyebrow at the subtle barb. “It was not very sporting of you to abandon me at dinner with your stepmother,” he said.
“I had a headache.” While her expression gave nothing away, he thought he saw the slightest tremble in her fingers as she lifted the glass to take a sip. When she licked away a droplet that clung to her ripe lips, the arousal he’d felt a moment ago tightened its grip.
He dropped his gaze from her mouth. “Perhaps absenting yourself from the dining room was for the best, with your stepmother all aflutter over…whatever it was she was going on about.” Was he just imagining it, or could he just make out the faint shadow of Grace’s nipples beneath the cloth? “After spending an entire meal with her, I understand your proposal to me on an entirely new level.”
She paced toward the hearth, and the firelight filtering through the long skirts of her nightgown cast slender legs in shadow. Her feet were bare, pink and tender. Lucien wanted to scoop them up and warm them in his hands.
She stared at the flames for several long moments. “Sometimes I feel like a clockwork Helen keeps winding until my spring is about to break. I know she means well, but when she disparaged the gift my mother left me, it was more than I could bear at the moment.”
“A gift from your mother…?”
“Apparently, Mama commissioned it at the modiste’s shop during my first season.” Her voice cracked with emotion and it was a moment before she continued, her gaze still on the flames. “She left instructions for…”
“For what?”
Grace turned to face him, the firelight reflecting off tears that threatened to fall. “My wedding gown. She asked that it be delivered just prior to my marriage. She must have known she would not live to see me wed.”
Once again, Lucien was struck by an absurd wish to shield Grace. It was damned disconcerting. “Clearly, you have had an overabundance of shocks today. Your mother’s gift. Rescuing urchins. Colliding head on into a man you thought to marry.”
He’d thought it better to have the subject out in the open, yet the moment he said the words, he wished he could take them back. Her cheeks went scarlet, and he imagined the pleasure he’d take in throttling Freyne and Lord Elliot.
She set the brandy on a small table. “I’m so sorry for my father’s interference.”
“No need for you to apologize forhisactions. My own father’s interference is nigh on legendary.”
“But to think my father wrote Neville that I was in London and still on the marriage mart? Who does that?”
He recalled how his father had tried to marry a far-too-young Cassandra to Thornsby, something far worse in his mind. “You’d be surprised.”
