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Both outward signs of Grace’s inner turmoil?
Alaric believed so. In the same way he had sensed her alarm the night before when he’d told her Stanley had gone to her house to see to the needs of her dog. And again, once he’d told her a man had been sent to Devon to make enquiries about her and the life she had led there before coming to London.
She had not only looked worried as to what might have been the result of those enquiries, but he had also seen the fear in her eyes. As if she were apprehensive as to what Alaric might now know about her.
An apprehension that he, because of his urgent need to make love to Grace, had failed to investigate more fully at the time.
Not that his desire for Grace was any less this morning. If anything, it had deepened following those hours of kissing, caressing, and tasting every silken inch of her slender body. Kisses and caresses Alaric knew she had enjoyed as much as he had, even if, as he had promised, they had not fully consummated their new relationship. He was prepared to wait for them to reach that intimacy for as long as Grace required him to do so.
Alaric wished to seduce, not force her into a relationship with him. As such, it was enough for now that Grace had willingly shared last night’s intimacies with him.
But her reaction this morning to their conversation indicated Grace was hiding something. Something she feared Stanley or one of his men might have discovered either at her house in London or during the investigation into her life in Devon.
Quite what that secret might be, Alaric had no idea.
But he would.
Before long, he had every intention of knowingallthere was to know about Miss Grace Sunderland.
In the same way he already knew how soft her skin was and how delicious she tasted.
Alaric briefly closed his eyes as he remembered breathing in the rich and spicy aroma of her release when he woke earlier with Grace in his arms. How he could still taste the honey of her release on his fingers and lips from when he had licked and sucked and stroked the sensitive bud between Grace’s thighs as he brought her to climax again and again.
Which was why he found her demand to leave this morning extremely annoying. Even, dare he admit it, hurtful.
Not that he intended granting her that request. Staying here together would give them the time and privacy for her to become more comfortable in his company. For her to consider—reconsider?—the futility of her previous arrangement with George Harper.
Even the thought of that adulterous bastard touching Grace and tasting her nectar in the same way Alaric had during the night, of the other man beinginsideher—as Alaric had not yet been—was enough to make the blood boil and roil in his veins.
Best he now do as Grace requested, and leave the bedchamber, rather than allow any of that anger to spill over into their conversation.
Alaric knew it was unfair of him to fault Grace for the choices she had made. Heaven knows, her life in Devon, unmarried and therefore still living with her widowed vicar father, must have been one of repetition and tedium. The lure for Grace of being able to travel to London and have the freedom of managing her own home and going wherever and doing exactly as she pleased was surely one no single young lady aged twenty would be able to resist.
As such, Alaric didn’t have a single doubt that Redding had been the driving force behind their arrangement, with the promise of those freedoms and the excitement of living in London.
It was an arrangement Alaric was determined would come to an end this very day by Grace writing and Redding receiving her letter informing him as much.
“I will go into the adjoining dressing room and also bathe and dress,” he decided. “I shall then wait for you downstairs in the entrance hall so that I might take you through to where breakfast is being served.”
“Might I—might I be allowed to see Finn first?”
Alaric frowned as he looked across the room to where Grace still sat on the side of the bed, wrapped in the bedsheet. Her lids were lowered, the lashes dark against the pallor of her cheeks.
“Grace, look at me.” He waited until she had slowly raised her head and turned to him before he spoke again. “I would never keep you from the pet I know you love so much.” The fact that she had even thought he might did not sit well with him. “I will ensure the two of you are reunited the moment you arrive downstairs.”
Her expression instantly brightened. “Thank you for having him brought here to me…Alaric.”
Pleasure swelled in his chest at hearing Grace voluntarily call him by his given name, rather than having her do so out of annoyance or because he had instructed her to.
“Even if by doing so, your actions were not for my benefit but your own.” She eyed him knowingly. “I am fully aware that you know George would have become suspicious if I had not taken Finn with me when I went away, supposedly to Devon.”
Alaric had no answer to that accusation, because it was entirely accurate. If he was aware of Grace’s partiality for the little dog on so short an acquaintance, then the man who had been her lover for a year would be aware of it too.
Raw and painful emotion ripped through Alaric at this reminder of why, and at who’s largesse, Grace was currently residing in London.
Until he’d met Grace, jealousy had been an unknown emotion to him. But it had now become so embedded inside him that the mere thought of her being intimate with another man, any other man, threatened to bring him to his knees.
“I will see you downstairs shortly.” He closed the dressing room door firmly behind him, before he gave in to the temptation to say something unpleasant about how little he cared for what George may or may not think.
