And that was how she knew that Uncle Chris would say yes…eventually. Any one of them would have, only because she had asked it of them.
“Well,” Aunt Phoebe said with a smile as she rose at last as the servants began to clear away the dishes. “Ladies, shall we adjourn to the drawing room?”
It had to be now. Grace pushed back her chair, abandoning Henry to the company of the rest of her relations as she wove her way toward the head of the table and Uncle Chris. “Could I speak to you?” she asked as she reached him, pitching her voice low. “In private?”
“Has it got to be now?” he inquired. “It’s cards this evening.Thought I’d see if yer lord has learned to properly recognize a cheat. See how much o’ his fortune I can help myself to.”
Probably less than he hoped, though still more than he needed. But Henry might well prove himself a better cheat even than Uncle Chris could have expected, which might even win his respect. Or a portion of it, at least. “It really has got to be now. And he’s not my lord.” Though she thought—perhaps he might be. Just a little. A little more than he had been only yesterday, even. A little more hers, with every day that passed between them.
“Hell,” Uncle Chris grunted. “My study, then. Two minutes.”
In the pandemonium that was the mad rush from the table and the crush of bodies weaving through the room to their respective destinations—ladies to the drawing room and gentlemen to the library—Grace managed to shepherd Henry out into the hall and toward the stairs.
He tugged at his cravat as they climbed. “My stomach is in knots,” he confessed. “I’m almost certain he already knows my situation. The broad strokes of it, anyway.”
“It’s a possibility,” she allowed. “There was a time that Uncle Chris was involved in the business of extortion.”
Henry’s feet stutter-stepped upon the stairs. “And you want to give him more ammunition?”
“Untwist your smallclothes, if you please,” Grace said, planting one hand at the small of his back to urge him onward once again. “He doesn’t do it any longer. Aunt Phoebe would have his head.”
Reluctantly, Henry began to ascend once again. “He doesn’t seem the sort to be led about by his wife.”
“He doesn’t seem it,” Grace agreed. “But he is. Every one of us knows it.” Even Uncle Chris, who had just come to accept it as a sort of inevitability. “Here we are,” she said as they reached the study at last. “Have a drink. Uncle Chris will be along soon.”
“I don’t know that making free with his liquor will endear me to him,” Henry muttered.
“Casting up your accounts in his study will endear you less,” Grace advised. “You’ve been green since the second course.” When he failed to move, she swept around him toward the sideboard and poured a healthy glass of amber liquid from a crystal decanter. His nerves were catching, she thought. Her heart beat a rapid tattoo as the distinctivethumpof Uncle Chris’ cane resounded in the hallway outside. “Drink,” she insisted as she shoved the glass into Henry’s hand.
Henry managed only the tiniest of sips before the door flew open, and Uncle Chris walked in. He was already scowling. Not the best of omens, Grace thought.
He slanted a glare at Henry as he strolled across the room toward his desk, bracing himself against it to lift his cane in a pointed jab in Henry’s direction. “If you’ve come to ask my blessing,” he said acerbically, “save your damned breath. I won’t give it.”
Henry choked on his liquor.
“It’s not like that,” Grace said, lifting her hands in entreaty.
“What a clanker.” The words dripped with the scathing mockery to which Uncle Chris was often inclined.
“Really,” Grace insisted. “This—us, I mean to say”—she gave a little gesture to Henry—“it’s just fiction.” Although it hadn’t felt quite so…fictional just lately. “And besides,” she added cheekily, “your blessing is not strictly required.”
Uncle Chris’ scowl deepened. “It damned well ought to be.”
“I believe Charity and Anthony have got that well enough in hand.” Grace pursed her lips together to smother a giggle. “You would have been proud. Anthony told the last suitor I refused to fuck off.”
Somewhere behind her, Henry made a strange sound in his throat, like a cough that had gotten stuck. But at last, a reluctantsmile from Uncle Chris. “Did ‘e, then?” he asked. “Never would’ve imagined.”
“I beg your pardon,” Henry said, in a particularly scandalized tone of voice. “Did you just sayfuck off?”
“Gracie’s learned all the best words from me,” Uncle Chris said. “Daresay she could make a sailor blush. She’s fluent in the sort of language that even members of yer club wouldn’t dare to utter amongst themselves.” But by the sly smile that clung to the corner of his mouth, Grace suspected he was enjoying Henry’s discomfiture at present. “All right, then, Gracie. Pour me a drink and tell me what you’ve gotten yerself into this time.”
“Thistime?” Henry inquired.
“Gracie’s got a soft spot for helpless little things,” Uncle Chris said snidely as he accepted the drink Grace offered to him, “and a predilection toward the pursuit of justice that borders on the unnatural. Somehow, I’ve got the feeling that ye qualify for both. So what is it, then?”
Grace fumbled for the reticule hanging from her wrist and dug within for the letter she’d tucked inside. “I was hoping,” she said, “that you might be able to tell us something about the sender of this letter.”
Uncle Chris snatched it out of her hands, shaking it open to scan the lines contained within. “Hell,” he said on a sigh. “Suppose someone found out yer little secret, then, Lockhart?”
