Her stomach did a neat somersault, and a bloom of heat sprouted over her. She eyed the hearth, surprised to see only a small fire glowed in the grate. She resisted the urge to fan herself. “You do not like Lord Vane?”
“Not particularly.” He gazed at her from beneath hooded lids. “Youseemed to like him well enough.”
She lifted her chin. “Of course. He was all that was gracious and kind—unlike some people.”
Jaw tensing visibly, he crossed his arms over his broad chest. “If it was your intention to make an impression on him, you succeeded.”
She opened her mouth to ask him what on earth he implied, but he continued speaking, executing a swift subject change into the heart of where they’d left off. “Now then. To refresh your memory, last you told me, you’d overheard Gaston asking my sister if she would approach me about him accompanying me to my club.”
No use trying to put this off further, she supposed. “Yes, that sounds right.”
“She didn’t, as I recall.”
“No, of course not,” Annabelle replied. “She explained that you planned to discuss your recent inheritance of the marquess’s holdings here at Holy Island and that, as such, it wasn’t a good idea for her to suggest bringing him along.”
“Ah. I begin to understand.” One corner of his broad mouth crooked upward in a bemused smile. “After overhearing one chance conversation, you deduced you’d find me here.”
The admiration underlying his words had her face flushing anew. “A mere guess. It was clear by what Lady Caroline said that you and your grandfather were quite close. As he had passed several months prior to Gaston’s death, and as, following Gaston’s death, you disappeared without a trace with no one seeming the wiser as to your whereabouts,andas no one in your family had rung the alarm bell, I decided it was as good a place as any for you to have gone off to hide.”
“To hide,” he mocked with a snort of amusement, but he propped his chin on his hand and studied her for a long moment, like a heretofore unknown object he wished to comprehend.“Fascinating,” he finally said. “Armed with that scrap of information, you came all this way.”
She gave a dismissive, one-shoulder shrug, growing uncomfortable with his continued scrutiny, and half convinced he was making sport of her.
“Anyone would have concluded as much, and as the journey cost me only a day’s voyage and some pin money”—a bit more than pin money, thanks to the loss of her reticule carrying the guide’s exorbitant fees—“I decided it was one worth exploring.”
“Worth exploring, perhaps. Although one has to ask what you would have done if you’d arrived and found no one here to receive you.”
Her stomach clenched. He was right, of course. She could have been wrong. She could have died.
“Nevertheless,” he continued, “It was a rather astute assessment.” An odd little smile curved his lips.
“I’m uncertain what you find amusing.”
“I’m not amused. Impressed. My sister did say there was more to you than a pretty appearance.”
That caught her completely off guard. “Lady Caroline said that? About me?”
“No need to sound so shocked. I’m sure you knew Lady Caroline liked you. She always did admire when a woman with natural intellect chose to apply herself."
A woman with natural intellect? Had he, in a roundabout way, complimented her?
“Did you, by chance, know your brother had put out feelers to the powers that be regarding a possible membership at White’s?”
She sent him a look of polite interest, or so she hoped. “I may have heard something to the effect. I hardly recall. Why do you ask?”
He lowered his gaze to his boot tips. “He was advised not to bother.”
Rather than admit she’d overheard her brother raging about the correspondence he’d received to that effect, she muttered a vague, “That seems very odd,” while striving to maintain a neutral expression.
“A clever girl like you might ask herself why a gentleman’s club might dissuade a member of the nobility from attempting to join its ranks.”
In truth, shehadasked herself that question, many times. “The answer is obvious.”
He arched a thick dark brow. “Is it?”
“They had reached the same conclusion as you, Lord Randall,” she said crisply. “That my brother’s blood—and that of my entire family—is not nearly blue enough to meet their exacting standards. Father, with his enviable looks and charmandbusiness acumen received a title for his value to the Crown. But as for accepting him into the more elevated circles which the likes of your family have enjoyed for years, that apparently was too much for the upper echelons of society to stomach.”
“So youwereaware.”
