“I beg your pardon.” She went to walk around him, but he caught her arm.
“Don’t rush off so soon. You’re a pretty lass. I should like to know more about you.”
Her heart beat madly. “I am in a hurry. Please excuse me.” She pulled her arm from his grip and backed away.
A deep voice came from behind her. “I am an acquaintance of the young lady, Mr. Ross. You may entrust her to me.”
An ugly expression filled the man’s eyes, but he bowed slightly. “As you wish, sir.”
“Lord Grainger.” She turned to him with relief as soon as Ross disappeared back into the ballroom. “Thank you! I must tell you what happened when I danced with Farnborough.”
He held his finger to his lips and led her farther away from the ballroom noise. They entered a small antechamber furnished with two satin and gilt chairs. “Please sit and calm yourself, Miss Tothill, before you return to your grandmother. We cannot stay here for more than a few minutes.” He made no move to sit but stood gazing down at her as she seated herself. “Now, tell me what has occurred.”
Startled, her greeneyes wide, her lips trembling, Miss Tothill had changed from a confident, plucky young woman into a highly nervous one. Seeing her this way stirred him more than he cared to admit. Perhaps because he disliked this helplessness which gripped him, because they were getting nowhere with their investigation. It was not an emotion he was familiar with.
“That man gave me a fright.” She put her hand on her bosom, drawing his eyes to their pleasing shape, until he looked away. “I wasn’t sure what to do. There seemed something menacing about him, but it would have been bad manners to run away.”
“It is never bad manners to remove yourself from the vicinity of an offensive boor, Miss Tothill,” Grainger said. “If it should happen again, please remember that.”
She pressed her other hand against her flushed cheek. “As to what I learned from Farnborough, I am afraid it is very little.”
“However, I should like to hear it.”
“Farnborough has a stepdaughter, Julia. She resides at Mrs. Tyler’s boarding school at Ponder’s End, in Middlesex. He doesn’t seem very interested in her.”
He nodded. “Anything else?”
She shook her head. “But something he said unnerved me. It was fairly innocuous, I suppose, but he asked me if I liked gardens. I feared he might have been testing me.”
“And what did you answer?”
“Only that I enjoyed the gardens on my father’s estate.”
“And that was all?”
“It…it’s foolish, but when I did as you suggested and behaved like a silly ninnyhammer, without a thought in her head except for fashion and finding a husband, he began to look at me differently.” She shuddered. “As if he…he liked me the better for it.”
“Some men prefer such women.” He didn’t add that it was easier for a man to bend such a woman to his will. He would never understand it himself. To him, his wife, when he chose her, would be his partner and would share his life.
He removed his card from the pocket of his waistcoat and held it out to her.
She took it from him and read it. “This is your address?”
He nodded. “Should you have need of me, send me a message.”
Her troubled gaze sought his. “Do you think I might have need of you?”
“Best to be on the safe side,” he said lightly.
He reached down and took her hand for her to rise. “You must return to your grandmother. Thank you for telling me this. I urge you to avoid Farnborough, but I realize it may not be easy. Understand that I am watching out for you while I work to discover what lies behind all this.”
“You haven’t heard of a man being murdered and thrown into the Thames?”
“No. Nothing so far.”No gentleman in any event. Bloated corpses bobbed up from time to time, poor devils, and mostly went unclaimed.
“Oh. I am glad.”
They walked along the corridor, and wanting to put her at her ease, he drew her out with some amusing observations and soon had her laughing.
