Chapter One
London, England
April, 1840
Irecognize that arse,” Henry Marsden growled as he shot out of his chair. His knee jogged the leg of the table in his haste to stand, and the dishes arranged across the surface jumped and clattered at the sharp strike, tea cakes and tiny finger sandwiches toppling from their tidy piles.
His mother pitched forward to grab at a precious crystal sugar bowl before it could topple from the table onto the grass below. She craned her neck around, striving to follow his gaze, features contorted with lines of worry as she inquired in the thin, whispery voice to which he had long become accustomed, “Is...is aught amiss?”
“It’s the Seymour girl,” Henry said as he laid his napkin down with a sharpthwack. “She’s in the damned garden again.”
Mother’s shoulders drooped from their tight pinch in abject relief. “Leave it alone,” she advised softly. “Like as not, she’s only after her cat. It’s taken a fancy to our garden.”
“She’s hanging halfway through the stillroom window, Mother!” Henry’s fingers itched to throttle the obnoxious chit, just as they had the last several times he’d caught her snooping about the house. The damned woman hadn’t the sense God gavea cabbage, nor so much as an ounce of discretion besides.
“Leave it,” Mother pleaded again, stretching one hand across the table toward him. “Please, Henry, I really must speak with you. It’s important.”
She’d said as much half an hour ago, and still she’d hemmed and hawed over the ritual of tea, no matter how he’d pressed her. A man could consume only so many finger sandwiches at a time. He’d hit his limit ten minutes ago, and still Mother had not managed to get out whatever it was she’d meant to say. “Later,” he said, unable to keep the impatience from inflecting his voice. “When you’re truly of a mind to talk.” And she hadn’t been—not for nearly a year now. Not since Father had died.
“Henry!” Mother’s voice warbled, high and plaintive.
Whatever it was she’d meant to say would keep. The insufferable hoyden who was presently hanging waist-deep through the stillroom window would not.
There was a snap in his step as he stalked across the lawn. It wasn’t deliberate so much as it was an instinctual reaction whenever Miss Seymour chanced to disturb his peace. Which was often, considering that she lived in the grand house just on the opposite side of the street, though she did not, as a general rule,staywithin it as a lady properly should.
But then, he supposed, Grace Seymour was not a lady. Not in the literal sense; not even in the technical sense. She was, as he understood it, the half-sister of the duke’s wife—a woman who was scandalous in her own right, since she had once been a courtesan of some renown, and had not quite managed to escape her notorious reputation despite her elevation in rank.
It hadn’t stopped the duchess, however, from enjoying some manner of welcome within a certain echelon of theTon. There were other sisters who had married well—one to a baron; one to a financier who had made his home and fortune in Brighton. Friendships she’d forged with wealthy families—the Beaumontsand the Toogoods. And the Toogoods were so damned prolific that the family’s events could have carried the whole of the Season all on their own.
Miss Grace Seymour might find the best of homes closed to her, owing to the shabbiness of her origins and the myriad scandals which the sisters as a whole had collected—as some ladies might have collected precious figurines to place upon a shelf—and still Henry had seen her at far moreTonevents than a woman of her origins had any right to expect to be invited to.
Still, that familial connection to a duke, a baron, and one of the wealthiest men in England besides meant that a not-insignificant portion of the aristocracy could not afford to slight her, which might carry with it the risk of alienating her powerful—and extensive—family. She stood a halfway decent chance of making a rather good marriage for herself, supposing she could find a man willing to take to wife a woman who spent an inordinate amount of her time chasing after her demonic, ill-behaved feline.
Supposing a manexistedwho was willing to look past her predilection for trespassing onto private property, housebreaking, and whatever other criminal proclivities to which she might be inclined.
The gossips of theTonwhispered that she’d spent a year in prison at some point in the past. That her mother was a bigamist and a fraud who had been transported years ago. That nobody knew who her father was—not even Miss Seymour herself. Gossip being what it was, it would be impossible to say whether or not those rumors held any truth.
But it would not have surprised him if they did.
Probably she had not expected anyone to be dining in the garden today. And to her credit, she had mostly been hidden from view behind a meticulously-pruned topiary. But he’d have recognized that upturned bum anywhere.
Unfortunately, Miss Seymour had a damned fine arse.
And it was, presently, hanging out the narrow window set just above the ground to let some manner of natural light into the stillroom within the basement. She’d had to lay down flat on her belly to manage it, and her restless wriggling had shimmied the pink skirt of her day dress up past her knees, baring a good deal more skin than any other woman of his acquaintance would have ever dared.
Christ, he could see her garters tied just above her knees. Frilly blue ribbon holding up blush-pink silk stockings. And just above them—soft, peachy skin. Was she even wearing drawers?
By God, he wasn’t going to look.
That magnificent arse wiggled again. He heard her voice at last; strident, annoyed, faintly muffled through the panes of glass on either side of the window she’d crawled through. “Tansy, you naughty girl. Come here right now!”
Henry cleared his throat and, with some effort, tore his gaze away from her bum. “Miss Seymour,” he said. “I’d say it’s a pleasure to see you, but I’d be lying.”
A sharp gasp. Her whole body jerked, her toes pointing, scraping the polished surface of her half-boots against the rough stone of the terrace. “Lord Lockhart,” she said, glumly. “What are you doing here?”
The temerity! “In my own damned garden? Taking tea with my mother.” Someone should have spanked the incorrigible woman more often in childhood. A tempting thought even now, with that lush arse just an outstretched hand away—no, goddammit. “What thehelldo you think you’re doing, halfway through my stillroom window?”
A restive little wiggle. He could see the muscles in her calves flexing through the thin silk of her stockings. “It’s Tansy,” she said. “She crawled in. I was trying to get her out.”
