Beguiled. Susan Paul Spencer
Miss Hamilton would care for it, either.”
Graydon laughed out loud. “I’ve no intention of giving Cardemore a reason to be displeased. Never fear, Matthew. Lady Lillian will enjoy her stay in London. I’ll devote myself to the task entirely.”
“It may be harder than I first thought,” Daltry admitted. “I didn’t understand any of those hand movements she made. Looked like a sorcerer’s trick.”
“I didn’t, either,” Graydon said, “but before you and Lady Isabel returned she used a different method of communicating that was quite charming. If I can somehow convince her to use it with others, I believe she’ll readily conquer even the most unforgiving members of the ton.”
“You sound more confident than you did two nights ago.”
“I am. All I need to do is make certain she’s out and about town as often as possible, meeting the right people and making the right friends. Her beauty and Cardemore’s power should do the rest in securing Lady Lillian’s place in society.”
“I hope that’s true, my friend,” said Lord Daltry.
“As do I. Most fervently.”
Graydon spent the remainder of the day making plans and visits. The plans, he knew, were only as good as upcoming circumstances, or the Fates, might make them. He wrote his steward at St. Cathyrs with instructions to proceed with the land improvements they had agreed upon. Having met and, to some degree, successfully communicated with Lady Lillian, he at last felt comfortable in taking such a step. To his mother and sisters he wrote a determinedly lighter, more entertaining missive, striving to erase any fears they might have taken from the steward’s behavior. Not that Graydon believed his competent employee would have spoken of or shown his concern regarding the warnings of impending doom that Graydon had recently sent him, but the ladies of St. Cathyrs were remarkably sensitive, and Graydon, having spent a lifetime drowning in their well-meant concern, had learned early on to nip such worries in the bud. In addition, he wanted his mother in London. It was true that Countess Graydon rarely came to Town, and his sisters seldom more, if they could avoid it, yet his dainty, slightly lunatical mother still welded the respect and power claimed by only the staunchest of the ton’s matrons to ably launch a young lady, regardless of the particular young lady’s imperfections. If Lady Lillian could weather his mother’s and sisters’ peculiar brand of coddling, she’d have nothing left to fear in the way of making her way through the ton’s treacherous waters.
The visits were, on the whole, more predictable. Frances and her mother, Lady Hamilton, received him in the usual fashion, making him feel exactly like what he knew he was: an extremely eligible, highly titled, unmarried peer of the realm. The prize of the season’s marriage market, just as he had been the season before, and the season before that, and even the season before that. He’d had more young women thrown at him during the past four years than he could either remember or give count to, but had successfully managed to escape wedded bliss, or even the consideration of it, until the right woman had finally been thrown at him.
Frances.
She was as delightful in her own right as she was in her physical form, and he had realized, shortly after having met her, that she was the ideal wife for him. Graydon had very nearly decided to make her an offer this season. Nearly. He wasn’t altogether certain what it was that held him back. He was fairly sure of the depths of his own feelings—if he didn’t actually love Frances, he certainly admired and held her in great affection—and he had good reason to believe that she felt similarly toward him. She had given him every indication that if he should ask her to become his wife, her answer would be a positive one.
And yet he held back, waiting for something that he couldn’t define. Something foolish, he often told himself, chiding. Something ridiculous. A bolt out of the heavens when he looked at her, perhaps, or a light-headed feeling when he kissed her lips—as he had already done twice without feeling even the least bit dizzy—or some kind of heart-pounding sensation, anything, that would tell him he would never regret making her his wife.
His visit with her this afternoon only served to confirm to Graydon how foolish he was to hesitate. Frances and he were ideal for each other, both in mind and spirit, and he would surely never find another such lady, so sweet and intelligent and understanding.
He presented himself at Wilborn Place at half past four, and was informed by the earl’s dour butler that the earl wished to speak with him before Graydon took Lady Lillian and Lady Isabel on their planned drive.
The study to which Graydon was taken was by now familiar to him as that place where Cardemore carried out most of his dealings. This time, the earl was already in the room, waiting.
“You’re here,” Cardemore said, glancing up from the papers on his desk as Graydon walked through the door. “Good. Sit down.” He nodded to the chair Graydon had occupied on his earlier visit. “I suppose you already know what I want to discuss.”
“I can guess,” Graydon replied, staring down at his host from behind the chair, where he continued to stand. “Your minion took no permanent damage, I hope. I shouldn’t want to have the man out of the way of useful employ. Such a one shouldn’t be allowed to live off the largesse of the workhouse.”
Cardemore smiled in an unpleasant way. “Perhaps you’d prefer to make him the responsibility of the jails? Never fear. I take care of all those in my employ, one way or another.”
Graydon didn’t doubt that in the least. He wondered if the little man who’d made such a pest of himself, having made a muddle of his assignment, was even still breathing. “I’m glad to know it,” he replied evenly. “Send another such a one to shadow me and I can promise I’ll not leave so much to care for.”
Cardemore gave a grunt of amusement. “You’ll not be bothered again, I give you my word. Little though you may credit it, my word is as reliable as death.” His attention still given to his papers, which he was neatly piling into different stacks, he added tersely, as though Graydon were an aggravating and misbehaving servant, “I offered you a chair.”
With an effort, Graydon didn’t react with so much as a raised eyebrow. “You may take your chair, my lord, and go to Hell. If you wish to speak with me, then I advise you to speak. Otherwise, I’ll not keep Lady Lillian and Lady Isabel waiting.”
With an abrupt movement, Cardemore sat back and regarded his guest. “It isn’t so much what I might say to you, Graydon,” he stated with cool intent, “but rather that I believe you have something you wish to say to me.”
The muscles in Graydon’s jaw tightened painfully, and for a moment his anger was so white-hot that he thought he would say something truly unwise. But he remembered himself, and remembered the sort of man Cardemore was—one not to be dealt with lightly, or, worse, foolishly.
“If you received the message I gave your minion, then you already know my sentiments. I should be curious to know, however, why you neglected to tell me that Lady Lillian cannot speak, and why you seemed to find such information irrelevant.”
A look of irritation crossed Cardemore’s scarred features, and he replied, gruffly, “Lily can speak. She chooses not to do so for reasons of her own. As you say, I find the fact irrelevant, both in regard to Lily and in regard to your seeing to it that she enjoys her time in London. However you may view the situation, whether Lily speaks or does not speak has no bearing on the task set before you.”
“So you say,” Graydon replied. “Because of your lack of care, I very nearly humiliated her. At Almack’s. Even you, with your disdain of the accepted social customs, must realize what that would have meant to her.”
“It would have been unfortunate,” Cardemore admitted, “especially for your mother and sisters. You may think me an unconscionable swine for subjecting Lily to such a chancy situation,