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“He discovered that your father, without your mother or you by his side to assist him, struggles a little dealing with the many problems of his parishioners,” Alaric continued. “But your father also accepts that you are a grown woman and must be allowed to follow your own destiny.” His nostrils flared. “He appears to be in complete ignorance of the fact that destiny has taken you into the arms and bed of the Earl of Redding.”
Her expression was now pained. “Please return me to my home. Before this situation becomes any more serious than it already is,” she pleaded.
Alaric intended for Grace to do more than plead before this night was over. He fully intended to make her groan and beg. For his touch. For his possession. Grace washis, and he was determined she would know it as deeply as he did.
His lips thinned. “You are going nowhere. Not now, not tomorrow, nor the day after that.”
“You cannot force me to remain here against my will.”
“I can do whatever I wish in my own home.”
“Because no one would dare gainsay you!”
“Because there is no one heretogainsay me.”
Grace gave a puzzled shake of her head. “I do not understand.”
“We are currently on my estate ten miles from London, where I keep only a housekeeper to tend the house itself and an estate manager to care for my tenants and land.”
Her frown deepened. “I thought your ducal estate was in Oxford.”
“So it is. My mother resides there in the Dower House. But I have four smaller estates. One in the Lake District. Another in Norfolk. One more in Worcestershire. I have brought you to the one outside London.”
“You have kidnapped me,” she accused.
Alaric drew in a long and controlling breath. “I prefer to think of it as my having removed you from a situation in which there can be no ending for you other than the unhappiness most mistresses face when their lover tires of or discards them.”
She eyed him scornfully. “You are now claiming to be myrescuerrather than my kidnapper?”
He nodded abruptly. “I am.”
She snorted. “That is ludicrous!”
His eyes narrowed. “You saw Redding with his countess this evening, and the way in which he could not even acknowledge knowing you, let alone admit to fucking you twice weekly! No matter how longourrelationship lasts, when or if it ends, I would never cut you in public in the way that he did tonight,” Alaric added firmly after Grace’s face paled.
He had no idea whether her reaction was to the crudeness of his words or to his cruel reminder of her previous lover’s coolness toward her at the theater.
Grace rallied. “You may easily claim that, because whether as your mistress or merely an acquaintance, the likelihood of the two of us ever meeting on any social level is highly unlikely.”
“And yet we have done so, on numerous occasions.”
“By your machinations.”
“I had nothing to do with your meeting with Redding and his wife this evening,” he reminded, his expression grim merely from thinking of the other man behaving as if he and Grace had never met before.
Grace couldn’t deny that fact or the devastation she’d felt when George had no other option but to treat her as nothing more than a passing acquaintance of his wife’s from the countess’s time spent at the orphanage.
“Iamrescuing you, Grace,” Alaric repeated in a gentle voice.
“Only so that you can then take me as your own mistress,” she accused.
His expression darkened. “I will not fully make you mine until your letter has been sent and received by Redding. Nor will I ever force myself on you in the meantime. The choice will be yours and the boundaries set by you as to how far our intimacies shall go. But never doubt I eventually intend to make you fully mine. Completely and utterly mine,” he vowed.
How could she doubt it when Alaric looked so fierce and determined in that endeavor?
The truth was, Grace was still greatly troubled by the fact Alaric had instructed this man James Stanley to break into her home. Admittedly, it was so that the man could allow Finn to go out into the garden, as he liked to do last thing at night. But despite what Alaric said to the contrary, she had no guarantee the man would not also nose about her home once he had attended to the needs of her dog. Not that she left her private papers lying about for anyone to read, but this man Stanley appeared to be as adept at picking locks as he was kidnapping dogs. Which meant he could quite easily open the locked drawer of her bureau where all her personal documents were kept.
She was also most uneasy that Alaric claimed Stanley had sent one of his men to investigate her life in Devon. Although those investigations did not seem to have garnered the whole truth of the situation there, thank goodness. Grace could only hope it remained that way.
