Grace (31 page)

Across the ballroom Jonathon Lloyd watched them enter. He nodded above the crowd at Gareth and Trevor. All three men headed through the throng toward the small group of women now gathered at the bottom of the stairs.

Amanda greeted her husband with a kiss on the cheek and then turned to her friends. “You remember Miss Grace and Miss Faith Ackerly, my lord?” The girls curtsied to
the earl, and again Grace wondered what had attracted Amanda to such a stern, serious-looking man. She always had a hard time envisioning Jonathon Lloyd as anything but staid and boring, yet Amanda’s adoration was obvious.

Gareth and Trevor chose that moment to join the group upon which so much public attention had focused. Lord Lloyd performed all the necessary introductions. Grace executed a perfectly correct curtsy, as befitted Trevor’s rank, although her knees trembled and her mouth felt as dry as cotton. She almost collapsed in relief when she saw Trevor smile down at her in that lazy way of his. Then she looked into his eyes and her heart plummeted: they looked right through her, as cold and expressionless as shards of green glass.

Trevor went through with the farcical reintroduction to Grace. He had thought himself immune enough to her to manage to get through this evening without feeling overly affected. His heart had clenched, however, when he saw her, a breathtaking vision in blue gracefully descending the wide staircase. When Seth presented her to him, he even found himself smiling warmly down at her. Then, just when he had almost forgotten his animosity, Grace dropped into a perfect curtsy. The simple act reminded Trevor of the day he stood in Cleo Egerton’s parlor, trying to think of a circumstance in which Grace would willingly curtsy to him. He managed to keep the smile pinned to his face as she rose, although he knew the revulsion he felt at having to play this role was reflected in his eyes.

Shaken by the undiluted disgust in Trevor’s gaze, Grace watched as he secured her aunt’s permission to dance with Faith, as had been prearranged by Gareth and Amanda. Cleo gave him a nod, and the couple glided off to the dance floor.

The whispering immediately increased. Gareth, who had remained with the small group of people that included
Grace, had a hard time keeping a straight face. “Right now,” he said to her, “six hundred people are busy declaring to anyone who can hear that you certainly never sent Hunt a message at White’s.”

Grace looked dubious.

“They now know,” he continued, “because I told them, that Faith is also a possible candidate, and that your aunt Cleo is most fond of tracking Hunt down and summoning him to advise her on financial matters at the drop of a hat. Since everyone knows how very abrupt your aunt is, and how very correct your sister is, I’d say that most of these people are about to come to the conclusion that they were quite wrong about you.”

Just then two matrons standing across the room caught Grace’s eye, staring at her in blatant disapproval. When they realized she had noticed them, they coldly and pointedly turned their backs. Grace looked up at Gareth and inclined her head in their direction. She gave him a sad smile. “There are those, however, who will choose to believe the worst. Some people will always remain convinced of my guilt.”

Gareth looked momentarily sober. “I’m afraid I did you a grave disservice, Miss Ackerly, by placing that bet at White’s.”

Grace noticed for the first time how much he resembled his older brother. He looked so terribly contrite that her heart went out to him. She smiled warmly. “Please, my lord, don’t vex yourself on my behalf. I really don’t care what these people think of me. I never did.” She swept an arm in a wide arc that encompassed the entire room, then turned troubled eyes on the handsome man dancing with her sister. “But I do care very much what they think of Lord Caldwell,” she added quietly.

Startled by the depth of feeling in her voice, Gareth followed her gaze. He saw Trevor leading Faith off the dance
floor, courteously directing her back toward her aunt. In that instant he knew what he had to do. Considering the damage he had done to them both, he thought it only right. He excused himself and walked away in search of Amanda.

Trevor dutifully returned Faith to Aunt Cleo, then stood for a moment, talking and laughing quietly with them. Finally he turned to Grace. She stood to the side, a gracious smile pinned to her face, feeling rather like an awkward interloper. Courteously he held out an arm and gave her a smile. “Would you honor me with a dance, Miss Ackerly?”

Grace held her breath for a moment, then remembered her audience and let it out slowly. Returning his smile with a dazzling one of her own, she executed another graceful curtsy, then nodded and rested her gloved fingertips lightly on his arm.

The orchestra had just begun a waltz as they stepped out on the floor. Trevor immediately swept her into the crowd of couples dipping and swaying in the lovely dance. She danced with him in silence, staring at his burgundy superfine-clad shoulder, not quite trusting herself to begin the conversation.

After they had glided around the room in silence for a second time, Trevor finally spoke, his low, angry words at complete odds with the pleasant, almost relaxed look on his handsome face. “If you don’t wipe that damned look of bored disdain off your treacherous face, I’ll resort to one of your infamous tricks and leave you standing in the middle of the dance floor.”

Seconds of shocked silence passed before Grace found her voice. She forced herself to smile up at him in a very plausible imitation of a simpering debutante. “And destroy all the work Gareth and Amanda have done to restore our respective reputations? Really, Lord Caldwell, that would be most ungrateful,” she admonished.

Trevor ignored the impulse to smile, once again genuinely impressed by her control. He whirled her around the room again, angry with himself for the weakness he felt each time she entered his sphere. “You and I are going to finish this dance,” he bit out between clenched, bared teeth, “and then I’m going to ask your aunt to dance. And after that, Miss Ackerly, if you ever speak to me or approach me again, I will take great pleasure in publicly humiliating you. To hell with anyone’s bloody reputation!”

Numb, Grace made herself smile as though he had just given her a flowery compliment. Only she and Trevor would ever know that her eyes were bright with unshed tears.

True to his word, Trevor next took Aunt Cleo for a romp around the dance floor. Grace watched for a moment from the sidelines, then left the ballroom, searching for a quiet corner in which to compose herself and try to stop the suddenly uncontrollable quaking of her limbs. She found the darkened library and slipped inside. She sank down on a low, cushioned stool near one of the soaring windows that lined one side of the room. There she finally succumbed to the tears that raged within her.

Unobserved by Grace, Amanda had followed. She watched as Grace entered the library, observing from a quiet post by the door as her friend sat down and seconds later buried her face in her hands, sobbing in anguish. Amanda withdrew, hurrying back to the ballroom to find Gareth and her husband.

Her tears finally spent, Grace sat looking out the window at the strolling couples in the gardens below, wondering how she and Trevor had come to this point. They had found themselves at cross purposes from the moment they met, each wanting the same thing. They had simply wanted it at different times.

Until now.

Now they wanted precisely the same thing: for this to be
over. Trevor had already put Grace from his mind. As the tears slipped slowly down her cheeks again, Grace decided that she would do the same. No more schemes or plans for winning him back. No more games. She would put the Earl of Huntwick out of her mind, and she would start by going back to Pelthamshire. Tomorrow.

The door crashed open. The man she had resolved to forget only seconds before stormed into the darkened room. He stalked past the window where Grace sat, straight to the side-bar laden with decanters and glasses. There, Trevor poured himself a glass of brandy, drained it, then quickly poured another. He walked across the room to the fireplace and set the drink on the mantel. He braced one hand against the wall for support and ran the other through his thick, dark hair.

Grace had come quickly to her feet as he strode past, her heart thumping wildly in her chest. As he stood by the fire-place, his aristocratic profile outlined in stark relief against the white marble, Grace realized that he did not know she was there.

Moonlight mingled with the illumination from the gas lanterns in the garden below to spill through the row of tall windows that lined an entire wall in the room. Grace stood in the shadows to the right of the window farthest from Trevor, but he stood bathed in that light. The look on his face and the vulnerability of his stance made Grace catch her breath.

His head was tipped forward in profound anguish, the lines of his handsome face harsh and angular, his eyes closed against the emotion that quaked through him. He had loosened his cravat at some point since she had last seen him, and the snowy white ends dangled in stark contrast to the deep burgundy of his jacket.

He did not move for several moments. Grace’s tender heart constricted painfully as she felt a nearly uncontrollable impulse to go to him, to put her arms around him and
to comfort him. She had actually taken a step forward before she thought better of it, then turned to leave quietly before he noticed. But her one step forward had brought her into the moonlight that streamed through the windows, and the subtle rustle of her gown caught Trevor’s attention; out of the corner of his eye he saw her turn to leave. He stiffened and whirled to face her.

“I thought I’d warned you to stay away from me!” he ground out.

Grace stopped and turned toward him, suddenly angry at the entire situation. “I was here first!”

She looked like a defiant angel as she stood across the room, her chin outthrust and her hands curled into tight little fists at her sides. Her blue eyes flashed, her hair a fiery red halo created by the moonlight. A reluctant grin of admiration tugged at the corners of Trevor’s mouth as he looked at her. It widened when she stamped a dainty satin-shod foot.

“Will you kindly cease laughing at me, Trevor Caldwell!”

The grin slowly left his face. He belatedly took in the two bright spots of color flagging her cheeks and realized that her fury had escalated beyond reason.

She proved it a second later when she advanced on him like an angry young tigress. “I have had it with you, my lord. You swoop into my life after nearly killing my sister and magnanimously declare that you are going to marry me, which forces me to run to London like a hunted rabbit in an effort to avoid you. I couldn’t even lose you in a city this size, though, because there you were, popping in for uninvited visits, following me to functions, making a complete nuisance of yourself!” She stood nearly toe-to-toe with him now, jabbing him in the chest with a long, tapered finger to add emphasis to her words. “And
then,
” she continued, spreading her arms wide in an exaggerated shrug of mystification, “when I finally admit to myself that I’ve fallen in
love with you, I get sick, which
you
”—another jab—“found so inconvenient that you couldn’t even wait for me to recover before expressing your tender feelings to me so very eloquently in my bedchamber in the middle of the night!”

She turned away, feeling suddenly deflated, and failed to notice the expression of dawning amazement in Trevor’s eyes. Her voice trembled, small and weak, when she spoke again. “I thought you were just angry with me for the way I’d treated you, that you still cared for me, that perhaps I’d deserved it. But I hoped that if you loved me just a little before, then perhaps you could love me again.” She looked down and scuffed the floor with the toe of her slipper, desperate to keep him from seeing the tears that had welled to overflowing and now slipped silently down her cheeks.

“I do.”

He uttered the two small words softly but firmly. Grace refused to turn and look at him, certain her ears had deceived her. A second later she felt his hands on her upper arms. He turned her around, then crushed her against his chest. She almost sobbed in relief as he pressed a kiss to the top of her head. They stood quietly like that for long moments, neither able to speak through the tide of emotions that swept through them.

Finally Trevor pulled out of the embrace and took a small step back. “May I speak?” He grinned wryly. Grace nodded, then held out both of her hands to him. He took them in his.

“First,” he began, “I did not declare that I was going to marry you that day, though I’ll admit the possibility was foremost in my mind.
You
informed
me
that you wouldn’t marry me before I even had a chance to do the asking.” He smiled tenderly down at her as a faint blush stole over her face; then he sobered and tilted her face up to his. “I’m so sorry I hurt you.” His voice caught, and he cupped her face in his hands and looked deeply into her eyes. “The night
you fell ill, you seemed to have given in to me. For the first time it all felt right. I was terribly worried that they wouldn’t let me stay with you for very long when you were so sick. I visited every day. Then, when the fever had passed and you were recovering, your aunt suddenly denied me visits. But even all of that wouldn’t have made me do what I did.”

“What did?” asked Grace.

“As I was leaving, Faith gave me your message.”

Grace looked confused.

“You told Faith to tell me that I had only a few days left our agreement,” he reminded her.

Grace’s face cleared as she remembered when she had spoken those words. “But . . . I said that in jest!”

He gently placed an index finger on her lips. “I believe that now,” he said, “but only moments before, your aunt had informed me that you would not see visitors for at least a week.”

“So you sought to punish me by doing that terrible thing,” she said, hurt. Immediately she wished she had not spoken. Trevor looked so anguished by his actions that she tried to smooth things over. “It’s all right,” she began, laying her hand on his cheek.