“Oh, you naughty girl,” Grace whispered as she started for the cat. “I’ve half a mind to let his lordship shave you after all.”
Tansy, however, had other plans. The moment she realized she had been spotted, she twitched her tail in a contemptuous little flick and darted off down the hall, a streak of grey disappearing into the darkness.
With a muttered oath, Grace hiked up the skirt of her wrapper and trailed after her. Tansy had headed deeper into thehouse, but each closed door which Grace passed narrowed the scope of her search and reduced the chances that Tansy had found some deserted room, some nook to tuck herself away within and wait out Grace’s pursuit.
There. They had reached the end of the hall, and Tansy was fresh out of options. A dead end; the lone window at the end of the hall the sole source of dim light. Tansy wheeled around, cast about for an escape which did not involve darting past Grace.
Grace fisted her hands upon her hips, standing arms akimbo in an effort to block as much of the corridor as possible just in the event that Tansy might perform an ill-advised leap for freedom. She pitched her voice to a low hiss. “I’ve got you now, you little terror—”
A slice of light cut across the floor from somewhere behind her. There was the faint creak of floorboards, the muted thump of feet on carpet.
At once, Grace realized that she had made a critical, careless error. She had scanned the windows at the front of the house for evidence of light within the house, the suggestion that someone might still be awake even at this hour. But she had not given a similar attention to those at the back.
She froze, utterly and entirely. And Tansy—
Tansy did what Tansy did best. She pitched herself forward in a sudden scrabble of claws on carpet, producing a magnificent tearing sound as she vaulted past Grace and back toward the stairs.
“Christ!” The masculine oath split the air, and despite herself, Grace let her head swivel toward the sound. Lord Lockhart stood there in the doorway, leaning back against the frame with one hand pressed to his bare chest as if the furry missile that had streaked past had frightened ten years off of his life. “Tansy?” he muttered, his voice faintly slurry-sounding. “What the devil?”
The fine hairs at the nape of Grace’s neck prickled as she watched the realization settle over his face—where Tansy was,shewas sure to follow. Slowly, as if he hardly dared to confirm his suspicions, he turned his head toward her.
A dozen thoughts raced across Grace’s mind at breakneck speed. She had been unceremoniously ejected from his garden too many times to count, but she had never—never—been caught entirely within his house before. She might have bargained for Tansy’s freedom to trespass as she pleased, but even then she had known that arguing for her own would have been too much to ask. And even if shehad, extending such a request to his house would have been beyond the pale.
“Grace?” The incredulous, baffled question wavered in the air, rife with uncertainty. As if he simply could not believe his eyes.
Grace’s shoulders slumped as she let her arms fall to her sides. The time had come to pay the piper, she supposed. She had gotten herself into this mess—or Tansy had, at any rate. He might have some well-deserved words of recrimination for her, but at least he wasn’t likely to summon a constable to apprehend her, when one considered that he still required her assistance.
With a heartfelt sigh, Grace turned at last. “Lord Lockhart, I can explain,” she said, clasping her hands before her in a gesture of entreaty. Half a dozen words climbed up her throat—and died upon her tongue the moment she lifted her eyes to his.
A shiver slipped up her spine.
I don’t like the way ‘e looks at ye, Uncle Chris had said only yesterday. And she hadn’t understood it, because until just recently he had never looked at her with anything but annoyance; with a sort of ever-present exasperation. As if she existed only to plague him.
But it wasn’t true at all. She had just never caught him at it. Looking at her, as he did now, in this unguarded moment. Shehad blundered in this evening and caught him utterly unawares, and now he looked at her like—
Oh.Oh.
She knew now. She knewexactly. Uncle Rafe had said as much, too, only she hadn’t believed him. Lord Lockhart was looking at her like—
Like Danny looked at Hannah.
∞∞∞
Grace Seymour was in his house.
It seemed impossible, like some sort of fever-dream Henry’s whisky-addled brain had conjured up. His fingers twitched at his side; he’d left the bottle on his desk, which was just as well because he had the feeling he’d had quite enough already this evening.
Probably he should have shouted. Railed against the impropriety of her here, in his house, at this hour, in what appeared to be nothing more than her wrapper. Instead he raked his fingers through his disheveled hair and asked, “Can you?”
“I beg your pardon?” Those wide, green eyes stared at him with something bordering on astonishment. Which was rather rich, given that only one of them had any right at all to be astonished at this juncture, and it was most certainly him. After all, hecould reasonably be expected to be found within his house this time of the evening, and she most certainly ought to have been in her own.
But she wasn’t. She washere.
“Explain,” he clarified. “You did say you could.”
“Oh. Oh, yes.” Her hands clasped before her, fingers flexing.“I, ah—I saw Tansy in your window.”
“That explains the cat,” he said, bracing one hand upon the door. “Not you.”
