Had Lord Lockhart justchuckled?
Before Grace could get out a single word of reproach, Tansy pounced from her perch upon the wall straight into Lord Lockhart’s garden in hot pursuit of the catmint.
The wretched man had just baited her cat into his garden!
Fury sizzled beneath Grace’s skin. Every bit of sweetness she’d summoned forth for Tansy’s benefit burned away to ash. She had only scathing condescension left when she spoke: “Lord Lockhart, you had better have a damned good explanation for this.”
There was a sudden, distinct silence beyond the wall, brokenonly by the distance rumble of Tansy’s ferocious purr, which suggested she had gotten the catmint with which she had been enticed. “Miss Seymour,” Lord Lockhart said at last. “Join me in the garden, won’t you? I have got a proposition for you.”
∞∞∞
Grace came flying through the gate so swiftly, Henry was surprised she’d not caught the fluttering hem of her skirts in it as she’d slammed it closed behind her. She fairly vibrated with fury; her cheeks painted in a cherry-red flush of ire that was uncomfortably becoming.
The strangled sound that slipped between her teeth as she fisted her hands at her sides wasnot. “I swear to God, if you touch one hair—”
“I haven’t harmed your cat,” Henry said. “You know as well as I do that she was bound for my garden anyway. I simply…expedited matters.” Just on the off chance that she’d intended to heed his last warning and had kept a more careful watch on the fluffy menace. Using Tansy’s fondness for his garden had seemed the safest, fastest method to gain a private audience with Grace, since he hadn’t imagined one could manage the sort of conversation he required when chaperoned by any of her relatives.
And it hadworked beautifully. Tansy was splayed out on her back near his feet with the sprig of catmint he’d offered her clutched between her paws as she gnawed upon it. It was almost endearing, really.
Almost.
He’d thought the cat might make a halfway decent hostage—just to ensure that Grace stayed for the duration of a conversation—but Tansy had had other ideas entirely. She’d let his hand get no closer than six inches from her before she’d lashed out with one enormous paw, her claws nearly stripping the glove straight from his hand as she’d yanked it back. And then she’d growled, so low and deep that he’d found himself genuinely fearful of a creature only a fraction of his size.
Bit of a bully, she was.
But he’d placated the beast with the catmint, and he supposed that so long as he didn’t attempt to take it from her—or touch her—she might magnanimously spare his life.
“If you have developed a sudden fondness for cats,” Grace said snidely as she crossed the distance from the gate, “I cordially invite you to find your own. Tansy is mine.”
“I haven’t,” he said. “That is, I don’t want your beastly cat. I want—”
“Beastly!Oooh.” That flush mottled her cheeks still further, and she bent to retrieve her cat.
The catlether pick it up, the damned capricious creature. It lolled in her arms like a ragdoll, still chewing happily upon the tattered remnants of the catmint hanging half out of its mouth. “Goodday, Lord Lockhart,” Grace said as she turned to go, with a haughty lift of her chin that would have done a duchess proud.
Probably, he thought, her duchess sister had taught it to her. “I saw you steal a pocket watch,” he said.
Grace froze. Tansy yowled as her arms tightened, her back claws catching upon the bodice of Grace’s dress as she kicked with such tenacity that Grace was forced to release the cat once more.
Grace turned round, her hands clasped before her. The cant of her head and the little furrow of feigned confusion etched between the gold of her brows were just—perfect. The absolute image of baffled innocence, as if she genuinely could notunderstand what might have caused him to level such an accusation at her.
If he hadn’t personally witnessed her steal that watch, he might’ve found himself convinced of her innocence himself.
“I beg your pardon?” she asked, in such a sweet, bewildered tone that Henry was very nearly tempted to second-guess himself.
But, no. He’dseenher with his own eyes. Still, the fact that even now she could so effortlessly make him doubt his own sight was…encouraging. “Evening last,” he said. “At the ball.”
“My lord, I’m afraid you’re mistaken.” This, with a flutter of her long lashes, and the smallest twitch of her nose, as if she extended to him the generosity of her forgiveness for such a base allegation. “Of course I did not—”
“Isawyou do it. It was a remarkable lift, actually. Bold as brass.” And she hadn’t given herself away even for a second. No one—not one person, other than himself—had suspected her of anything. Probably the man whose watch she’d nicked hadn’t even done so. Like as not, he’d simply assumed he’d mislaid it. “I’m not going to tell anyone,” he said. “Probably Ishoulddo…but if I’d overheard them saying such things of me, I imagine I might be tempted toward some manner of retribution myself.”
But he hadn’t the skill for theft, and that was the damned problem.
Tansy curled around Grace’s ankle and plopped herself down right over one of Grace’s feet, half-hidden beneath her skirts. “My lord, whatever it is that you’re implying…”
“I’m not implying anything,” he said. “Other than that you’re a proficient thief, and I—”Hell. He’d had only a few days to come to terms with how thoroughly his life had been upended. He’d never imagined himself begging such a favor of anyone, much less of Miss Seymour. But he had few enough options at present, and Miss Seymour mightjust turn out to be his saving grace. “Ihappen to have need of a thief,” he said at last. “So tell me, Miss Seymour…how much of what the gossips say of you is true?”
∞∞∞
