“No.” Grace wrung her hands awkwardly. “That is to say, I need some ofyourtea.”
“Oh.Oh.” Charity touched her fingers to her lips. “I see,” she said. “Yes, of course, dear. Right away.”
A sob sneaked out of her throat, and Grace pressed her palm to her mouth to smother it a second too late. She had known, of course that Charity would not heap judgment upon her shoulders for a sin that most would say put her beyond redemption.
A ruined woman. One who needed to besavedby a man who would inevitably resent her for the sacrifice of his name and his title. One who thought her a mistake.
But Charity would never. “Oh, sweetheart,” Charity said, and in a swish of silk she had wrapped Grace in her arms. The sweetly-floral scent of her perfume was a welcome contrast to the sour ale smell that had been stuck in her nose all evening.
And from the salty-spicy scent of Henry’s skin, with which she was now intimately acquainted.
“Lockhart?” Charity asked gently, with a soothing stroke down her back.
Grace nodded miserably against her shoulder. “I don’t want to marry him,” she said.
“Darling, you don’t have to marry anyone. Ever, if you don’t wish it.” Her hand stilled just briefly. “He didn’t…take liberties which you did not permit?”
Grace shook her head. “No, nothing like that. He said—he said it was a mistake.” A shuddering breath burned her lungs on its way out. “He said he was going to the Archbishop for a special license, but it was clear he was displeased about it. I told him I wouldn’t marry him but—he’ll likely turn up in the morning anyway.”
“You won’t have to see him,” Charity said, and her voice shifted to a dark, threatening inflection. “Anthony will handle his lordship. I promise you that.”
A little hiccough slid over Grace’s lips. “I really do need that tea,” she said.
“You’ll have it,” Charity said as those soothing strokes resumed. “Do you want to tell me the whole of your story? We could sit in the library while you drink your tea.”
“I really don’t think I can just now,” Grace said. It was too raw; too fresh still. The humiliation of it still wrenched at her heart. “I’m sorry.”
Charity made a comforting noise near her ear and crooned, “Would you like me to instead wake Mercy and Felicity so that we can all get incredibly drunk together and invent terrible new epithets for his lordship?”
Grace choked on a flutter of laughter and drew in what felt like the first full breath this evening. How lovely it was to have sisters like hers. Sisters who loved her no matter how she had come into their lives. Who loved her precisely as she was, and who had never thought of her as a mistake. Scrubbing at her eyes with the cuff of her sleeve, she said, “Yes. I think I would like that very much.”
∞∞∞
Henry had been welcomed—if one could call it that—into the Duke of Warrington’s study at half past eleven. It was still far too early for a proper morning call, but this wasn’t a proper morning call, exactly. A fact of which the duke, who sat across from Henry at the vast expanse of his gleaming mahogany desk, was no doubt already acutely aware.
The man had only one eye from which to glare, but by God, he did it expertly. Exactly the right amount of malice shimmering within the depths of his lone dark eye. Precisely the correct curl of his lips in the sneer he wore only too easily, the old scar that bisected his lips creating an even more imposing image than he suspected the duke knew.
“Speak,” the duke ordered, in the commanding tone of a man accustomed to obedience.
Henry swallowed, his throat gone suddenly dry. “I want to marry Grace,” he said.
“Do you?”
“I have got a special license,” Henry said, “issued by the Archbishop himself only this morning.”
“A special license,” the duke repeated, that sneer creeping up his face to twitch at his nose.
“It is…a matter of some urgency.”
“For you,” the duke said snidely. “It is a matter of some urgency—foryou.”
“And for Grace. If she is with child—”
“If she is with child, it is because you couldn’t keep your cock in your trousers where it damned well belongs,” the duke snarled. “Better men than you have come to me to ask forGrace’s hand in marriage, and not a one of them had the goddamned gall to compromise her in advance of it.”
Henry stifled a wince. “Your Grace, I know I have behaved badly. But I am here to rectify matters.”
“Grace is not in need of your charity, Lockhart. Whatever happens—which my wife has assured me will benothing—Grace has got her family around her.” The duke placed his hands upon his desk and shoved himself up from his chair. “You, Lockhart, are a feeble, puling invertebrate.”
