“I don’t know how to hold a cat. I’ve never had a pet.”
A shame, that. But he had now—sort of. Tansy had decided, for some unknowable cat-reason, to honor him with her favor. “There is never a bad time to learn.”
Henry canted his head, looked down on Tansy sitting there serenely upon the couch, as if she had not just wrought chaos of his household. “Do you think she’d let me pet her again?”
“You could try it and find out.” Grace settled into a spot on the floor before the low table, picked up the stack of correspondence she had not yet sorted, and began to thumb through it.
Henry took a seat—gingerly, warily—at Tansy’s left side. He stripped off his gloves, made to lay them across his thigh. Slanted a glance at the cat, who had only days ago made off with one of them, and tucked them into his coat pocket instead. For a moment his hand hovered in the air, almost as if he were waiting for Tansy’s permission.
When she failed to offer a hiss of warning or even the hint of a growl, he gently settled his palm over her back, running his fingers smoothly through her thick fur. “She’s so soft,” he said,in a faint tone of wonder.
“She likes to be scratched between her ears,” Grace said. “Just at the top of her head. And also beneath her chin.”
“I don’t know that I’d dare just yet. Rather too close to those fangs for my taste.” Henry’s gaze flicked once more about the room, to the papers strewn across the table, the floor, several chairs—every conceivable surface but for the couch, which she’d left free for him. “What is all this?”
“Everything I stole from your uncle’s desk.”
His brows lifted. “So much of it?”
“Well, I hadn’t time to make a discerning examination of the contents,” she said as she laid a letter down upon a pile. “There was no safe, concealed or otherwise; just a single locked drawer within his desk. I had no choice but to grab everything the moment I heard steps upon the stairs.” She gave a little wince. “The empty drawer tipped him off right quick, I’ll admit. If we had known precisely what to look for, I probably could have gotten in and out with him none the wiser—at least until after the dinner party.”
“And how did you get it all out?”
“A pouch I secured to the tapes of my petticoats,” she said. “I could have stolen something so large as a candelabra, if it had been necessary. One doesn’t want to have obvious means of concealing stolen goods when one might be suspected of theft, after all. But the pouch—buried as it is beneath several layers of skirts and petticoats—is undetectable, so long as I don’t bump into anyone.”
“And you’ve begun going through all of your stolen correspondence without me.”
“Not all of it. There’s a great deal, and we certainty ought to make a thorough inventory of it at some point.” But for now, just evidence they were seeking would do. Grace held the letter in her hands closer to her chest. “And have I not earned the right to bejust a little nosy? I was going to discover it all anyway.”
“Fair enough,” Henry said. “What have you learned?”
“That he’s squandered your aunt’s dowry, for one. The sum he owes on the purchase of boots alone is exorbitant.” Grace laid down the letter with a sigh. “I fear the only option he has got to avoid a debtor’s prison is to take the earldom. He can’t even obtain credit any longer; he’s failed to repay too much already. Even the money he wrested from your mother is hardly more than a drop in the bucket.” She grabbed up the rest of the stack, split it in two, and handed one across the table to him. “There,” she said. “We’ll go through the rest together.”
“He might be back for more,” Henry said as he thumbed open the first letter in his stack. “I strained his finances further evening last, though I didn’t have to cheat quite as much as I expected to. He did a fine job of losing all on his own, except for a few hands I dealt and which I contrived to allow others to win. Took him for a few hundred pounds in the end.” The fingers of his free hand settled absently upon Tansy’s head, eliciting an obnoxiously loud purr.
“Did you?” Pleased, Grace leaned forward and braced her elbows upon the table. “You must have practiced a great deal.”
“I did,” he admitted. “For hours, until my fingers were sore. And then I tested my skills upon my mother, who noticed nothing amiss.” A little frown creased his brow, and his fingers ceased their motions—at least until Tansy mewed a demand and nudged her head up into his hand. “I have got to do something about Aunt Alicia,” he said. “Did you notice that she had a patch upon her gown last evening?”
She had, of course. But she found herself somewhat surprised that he had. “She tried to disguise it with clever stitchery, but yes, I noticed.”
“I’m ashamed that I hadn’t realized just how severely Uncle Nigel has neglected her needs,” he said, and his hand droppedinto his lap. Annoyed to have been summarily abandoned, Tansy began to gnaw upon his elbow. “She was a great friend to my mother, before Mother decided to shut herself away from the world.” His gaze grew distant, contemplative. “I have got to protect her, too. She’s a good woman; better than Uncle Nigel has ever deserved. And—I’m fond of her.”
A warm, sweet glow kindled somewhere in the vicinity of her heart. Until just recently, she would never have suspected Henry to be of a sentimental bent. But beneath his stern, rigidly proper façade there lurked a man far more complex than she would have expected. A man guided by a desire to do the right thing. To be the sort of man who could be relied upon to protect those beneath his care. Perhaps there would have been those who suggested his aunt’s difficulties were none of his concern, but Henry—
Henry was fond of her. He’d protect even his nefarious uncle’s wife, no blood relation to him, simply because of that.
“I like her, too,” Grace confessed as she lifted another letter. “She is coming to tea today, in fact.”
Henry gave in to Tansy’s petulant pawing and gnawing and scratched her gently beneath the chin. “Is she?”
“Yes,” Grace said as she opened a new letter. “She and Mercy got on like a house on fire during their brief conversation.” Probably because they both had had the experience of being the daughters of merchants who had married into the aristocracy. Perhaps Mercy would turn her fabric-draping demands to a new soul, and Alicia would come away with a few new exceedingly fashionable gowns for her pains. “I did her the service of warning her in advance that there would likely be several very loud children in attendance.”
“I don’t foresee that being a problem. Aunt Alicia is very fond of children. Speaking of, where are the little devils?”
“At the park. Flora broke a vase with her peashooter thismorning, and the dowager duchess turned several shades of purple before she insisted that all the children be taken out to rid themselves of their excess energy.Andshe confiscated Flora’s peashooter, besides. Flora was just devastated.” Her brow furrowed as she scanned the next letter.
“Do I dare to hope that the first time I was struck in the back of the head with a dried pea was also to be the last?”
