“Give it here,” Grace said, extending her hand for the book.
Before he could lay it into her hands, Tansy pounced upon the seat between them, snapped her spine into an arch, flattened her grey ears back against her head, and bared her fangs in a feral hiss. Henry reared back, book clutched to his chest like a scandalized maiden might clutch a handkerchief. “Does she bite?”
“Yes,” Grace said. “When she feels it’s merited.” She stroked the tips of her fingers down the arch of the cat’s back. “Tansy,sweetheart. Lord Lockhart has been kind enough to allow you the use of his garden. Perhaps you could be just a bit nicer in return?”
Tansy’s eyes narrowed to slits, the exact same vibrant green of her mistress’. She uttered what Henry interpreted as a last warning growl as she slowly relaxed herself, settling in to sit between them with all the unassailable dignity of a duchess.
“Do you know,” Grace said, her voice warm with amusement, “I do believe she thinks she is acting as my chaperone.”
A more capable chaperone there likely had never been, Henry supposed. At worst, under human supervision, one might expect to be politely shown to the door—but Tansywould undoubtedlychase him to itif he happened to displease her.
He extended the book to Grace once again, wary of the animal who sat only inches beneath his fingers, in the perfect position to strike should she take offense to even the tiniest movement.
“Coleridge,” Grace said as she examined the book. “I’m quite fond of him, actually. My brother-in-law, Ian, spent an astronomical sum purchasing every volume available for me when I learned to read a few years ago.”
Henry had known—in the way that it was generally known—that Grace had not had the most conventional upbringing. But he suspected theTondidn’t truly know the half of it, and each new snippet she tossed out so casually about the life that had come before this one she now lived was…fascinating. Disturbing, but fascinating.
He wanted to ask her when, exactly, she had learned to read. What her brief stay in jail had been like. What had truly happened with her mother. How she had ended up in the care of her half-sisters. How she had learned to pick locks, when she had begun to burgle houses.
Instead he said, “The book is a ruse, mostly. It’s what’s insideit that matters.”
Grace thumbed through the book in her hands, until she found the pages he’d wedged a few folded papers between. “Oh,” she said, carefully unfolding them and laying them across the pages of the book. “It’s a map. How clever of you.”
“Of my uncle’s house,” he said, pitching his voice low. To all appearances, any onlooker who chanced to peek in upon them would see only Grace peering down at an open book in her hand, and a cat seated between her and her caller, with a proper distance left between them. Should someone happen to wander in, she could simply snap the book closed, and they’d be none the wiser.
“The dimensions are good,” she said, as she scanned the drawings he’d painstakingly rendered upon the page. “It’s quite competently done. I hadn’t expected it of you.”
“You received the invitation to the dinner party?
“Yes,” she said. “It was sent over this morning. Mercy has agreed to accompany me.”
“I regret that I couldn’t secure more from Aunt Alicia,” he said. “Her house isn’t quite so grand as yours. Even two extra guests was something of an imposition.” But she had been kind enough to grant his request anyway.
“Best that it is just Mercy and me,” she said absently as she continued her perusal of the floorplan. “Besides, there’s rather a lot of us. And scandal does have a remarkable tendency to follow in our wake. This is an accurate map?”
“As accurate as I could make it,” he said. “I’m afraid there are rooms I’ve never been in, so most of the second floor is just a blank. I know there’s a salon up there, and a music room. Aunt Alicia is very fond of music.” But he didn’t know precisely where they were located. “Uncle Nigel’s study is on the third floor, second door on the left. That much I do know.”
“Where do the gentlemen go after dinner?”
“Hmm?”
She cast him a dry, exasperated look. “After dinner,” she said. “When the men disappear to…wherever it is they disappear.” A vague little gesture of her fingers. “The ladies move from here”—she tapped the little rectangle he’d labeleddining room—“to here.” She dragged her finger down the length of the hall to the square he’d labeleddrawing room. “I need to know what rooms I must avoid. Where will the men be?”
“Oh.” He hadn’t even thought about it. “The billiard room, I suppose.” He flipped the pages, pulled the third floor map from beneath the others and set it atop the rest. “Here, just at the top of the stairs. Uncle Nigel considers himself a particularly keen player.”
“Is he?”
“He thinks he’s better than he is.” It was damned embarrassing, the way the man had the childish tendency to sulk and pout whenever someone else played better than he had.
“Well, that won’t do,” she said. “Unless you can contrive to keep the door closed.”
“Unlikely,” he said. “There’s just one window in the room, and there will likely be a dozen gentlemen within. With the door closed, it will be stifling.”
Grace heaved a sigh. “Here is our problem,” she said. “The best time for me to sneak about will be after dinner. There will be fewer people to notice that I have been gone for a bit longer than I ought to have been, and most everyone else will be engaged in conversation or games. But even I would struggle to sneak past the open door of a roomful of gentlemen—and to pick the lock of the next door down—without being observed.”
Henry’s heart fell to his shoes. “It’s hopeless, then?”
“Nothopeless,” she said carefully, with a speculative cant of her head. “How are you at cards?”
