“That would have been quite foolish indeed,” Eugie pointed out.
She raised a brow at her sister. “You are not telling me anything I have not already told myself, and quite sternly, too. There is simplysomethingabout the man. I cannot define it.”
“Rakish wiles,” Christabella suggested, sighing wistfully.
“A handsome face,” Pru added. “When he holds you in his arms, you forget all the reasons why you should not trust him. Why he is all wrong for you.”
“Yes,” Grace agreed with her eldest sister, frowning. Once again, it seemed as if Pru spoke from personal experience. “Just what have you been doing with Lord Ashley?”
Pru colored furiously. “Nothing at all. Certainly not groping each other in the gardens at midnight.”
“There was no groping,” Grace denied. “Well, perhaps just a bit of touching…but that, too, was quite exceptional…”
She was thinking, of course, of Aylesford’s hand on her breast. The knowing way he had cupped her there. But the liberties she had allowed him were dreadfully improper. And then there had come his stinging suggestion she had another suitor she had arranged a clandestine meeting with in the gardens. The reminder rather dampened any incipient stirrings of ardor she may have been experiencing.
“You must take care,” Eugie warned her. “If you allow things to progress too far between yourself and the viscount, you will find yourself wed to him in truth.”
Grace sighed, the shame and the guilt returning. “I know.”
“There could be worse fates, surely,” Christabella suggested. “Can there be anything more romantic than a reformed rake?”
“You need not fear for my reputation,” she assured her sisters. “I am impervious to Lord Aylesford’s charms. The only reason I succumbed in the first place was curiosity. Now that my curiosity has been satisfied, I shall never let him kiss me again.”
“Or grope you,” Eugie insisted, her tone stern.
“It was not groping so much as it was caressing.”
“Grace,” all four of her sisters chastised at once.
“No more,” she reassured them. “You have my promise that I will carry on with this bargain, continue with this feigned betrothal for as long as it must last, and then I will regain possession ofThe Tale of Love. I will never again allow the viscount to do anything improper with me or to me. Are you happy now?”
Pru’s eyes narrowed. “I supposed we shall have to be.”
“Good,” Grace said. “Now please let us seek out another topic of conversation.”
Christabella started talking excitedly about a book she was reading, and the rest of the sisters reluctantly allowed the topic to be guided into much safer waters. Grace heaved an inward sigh of relief at the reprieve.
All she had to do was keep her promise.
And to do that, all she needed to do was stay as far away from Lord Aylesford as she could.
Chapter Seven
Staying away fromLord Aylesford would have proven far easier to accomplish if he were not awaiting Grace in her chamber when she returned there from Pru’s. She stepped over the threshold, snapping the door closed at her back, and blinked, certain her eyes must be deceiving her.
Certain the inert form on her bed could not be real.
But his handsome profile was unmistakable, as were the wavy, raven locks falling rakishly over his brow. He was dressed in his shirtsleeves, waistcoat, and a loosened cravat, and his lower half was clad in nothing more than his breeches and his stockinged feet. His shoes had been neatly toed off at the foot of her bed.
He looked as if he belonged there. Someone had made himself quite at home, but she girded her heart against the sudden pang there. Entirely unwanted. Foolish and reckless and wrong.
As wrong as the viscount’s presence in her chamber.
“Lord Aylesford,” she said quietly, lest someone overhear her. “What are you doing in here?”
Still, he did not move.
Good heavens, was he ill? Had something befallen him? Despite her pique with him from the evening before, and in spite of all her reassurances to her sisters, she found herself going to his side.
