At last everyone appeared to tire of the soup, and the footmen stepped forward to remove the bowls and prepare for the next course. Lady Evans leaned forward, the ostrich plumes of her headdress bobbing, and said, “Well, that was entertaining.” She looked directly at Phadra. “I wonder what we’ll do for the next course.”
After dinner, the women left the men to their port and adjourned to the yellow parlor. Grant waited until Sir Cecil had nodded to the butler to serve before excusing himself from the company. No one would miss him. He’d discovered that his nondrinking presence was not always appreciated by men interested in emptying a bottle.
He didn’t even bother to check the drawing room, to which the women had retired. Phadra Abbott wouldn’t be there. When the women had left the dining room, it was obvious they considered Miss Abbott a leper in their midst. Nor did he think she would escape to her bedroom.
He walked down the hallway to the back of the house, where a set of doors led to the walled garden. He took the garden’s gravel path and found Miss Abbott where he thought she’d be, sitting on one of a trio of benches in the heart of the garden. She was so deep in thought that she didn’t appear to hear his approach. She sat as poised and graceful as a classic Greek sculpture, the moonlight turning her hair to silken silver and her skin to alabaster.
Grant stepped out of the shadows. “When I didn’t see you with the others, I assumed you would be out here.”
She appeared startled at the sound of his voice. Her gaze met his, and then she looked away. “I thought you would be with the men, enjoying your port.” There was no mistaking the bitterness in her voice. She resented his intrusion of her privacy.
He sat on the bench across from her and said lightly, “I tired of Reggie’s jokes about men who don’t drink.”
The expression in her large eyes turned sad. “I suppose we’re both outsiders, aren’t we?” He didn’t get a chance to answer because she went on, her voice very serious, “This isn’t going to work, you know.”
“What isn’t going to work?”
“Marrying me off. Tonight was my first introduction to society, and you saw what I did. I always get carried away. I always do the wrong thing.”
“Miss Abbott—”
“I made a fool of myself.”
“You weren’t a complete failure.”
“I wasn’t a total success.”
“Did you want to be?”
Her eyes widened at his question. Then she blinked and looked off into the garden as if considering this issue for the first time. “Yes,” she said slowly. “Yes, I did. I was nervous before the party, and Henny told me everything would go well. Of course, she also warned me to keep my opinions to myself.” She smiled ruefully. “I didn’t follow her advice.”
“The courses after the soup went well,” he pointed out in a mild attempt at humor.
“Do you think Lady Evans will remember that?” She took a long, deep breath before asking him, “Why did you come to my rescue? Why didn’t you just let me die a peaceful social death and be done with it? I’ll warn you now, I can’t change. No matter what the situation, I always end up speaking my mind. Even in school, my tongue made me an outcast. My imagination runs away from me, and then…” She gave a small laugh. “I can’t believe you drank straight from your bowl.”
“You make it sound as though I was playing St. George.”
“Trust me,” she said, giving a nod toward the house, “the dragons have their heads together in the drawing room. You are probably being painted just as black as I am right now.”
“Miss Abbott, I know how you feel—”
“You couldn’t possibly,” she interjected. “You can’t know how it feels.” Her eyes gleamed with tears in the moonlight, and she averted her face. “I don’t feel particularly well, Mr. Morgan.” She rose. “Perhaps the night air isn’t the best thing for me. I hope you’ll excuse me if I retire to my room,” she said, already starting to walk away from him.
He pursued her. “Is that it, then?” he asked. “You’re going to accept defeat and run to the safety of your room? I thought Phadra Abbott had more spirit than that.”
She stopped, the gravel crunching underneath her kid slippers as she turned to face him. “You don’t understand.”
“Oh, yes, I do. You’re talking about your father again.” He snorted. “Miss Abbott, having a father doesn’t guarantee that everything in your world will go fine or stop you from making a fool of yourself.”
She lifted her chin proudly. Her refusal to see her father as a selfish scoundrel angered Grant.
“You want to know about fathers, Miss Abbott? Let me tell you about mine. Noble blood flowed through his veins, but he carried no title. Of course, that didn’t stop him from acting like a lord. He was a great swordsman and an outstanding horseman. He was educated at Eton, and his friends represented all of the noble houses of Europe. He gambled, ran up huge debts, drank too much—” Grant paused for a moment, “And made love to other men’s wives. That was his career, drinking and making love to women.”
She gasped lightly at his admission, as he knew she would. “Did I shock you, Miss Abbott?” He “tsked” softly. “You are provincial. It is the duty of great would-be lords such as my father to spread himself out among women. It demonstrated that he was a man, and, to be honest, women melted in his presence. It’s funny, but I don’t remember him as handsome. Perhaps that is because I didn’t like him.”
“You didn’t like your father?” she asked. She spoke as if the idea was completely foreign to her.
“It’s an unnatural thing when the child doesn’t love the parent, isn’t it? Everything I’ve been taught from my prayer book to my primer says that I must love him and give him filial devotion…and for years I tried to. Not that my father demanded my love or even loyalty—he was far too self-absorbed to need anyone else’s approval other than his own.”
“You sound so bitter.”
He looked up at her. “Do I?” For a second he looked into the dark shadows of the tree, looking straight into the past, seeing the memories, the demons that sometimes haunted him, even there in the fragrant peace of the garden. “Yes, I am,” he said quietly.
“Why?”
“You always have a question, don’t you, Miss Abbott?”
“How else will I understand, Mr. Morgan?”
Grant sat down on one of the garden seats. He shouldn’t answer her. He never talked about it, but…He started speaking, needing to tell her, needing to let someone understand. “It started at Eton. The first day I was there.” He could recall it all perfectly, the smell of books, slate and chalk, the shuffling of the older students as one by one they noticed. “I looked across the schoolroom, and there sat a boy who looked almost exactly like me.”
She didn’t understand, so he explained, “This was no cursory likeness. The boy and I were close enough in looks to have come from the same womb. He was a marquess’s son, heir to a grand estate, and held a title of his own. I was the son of a titleless gentleman whose very name made the other boys’ mothers whisper behind their hands and their fathers threaten to withdraw their sons from the school if I remained. In fact, there had been some question about my even being accepted at Eton because of my father’s reputation. Fortunately, my mother was related to Marlborough, and he spoke on my behalf.”
“Are you going to tell me that boys can be as cruel as girls?”
He laughed. She evidently understood. “They can be worse. One day the boy’s mother visited the school but didn’t ask to see her son. Instead she asked to see me. When I went into the headmaster’s office to meet her, she burst into laughter and told me I was better-looking than my father. That night, my half-brother and his mates gave me the worst beating of my life.”
She sat down on the bench beside him. “No! What did you do?”
“Learned to fight back.”
“Did you say anything to your father about your resemblance to this boy?”
“Of co
urse. There was a part of me that wanted him to deny the truth. I loved my mother and still had a child’s deeply held opinion that my father must love her, too.” He looked at her. “Life is very simple when we are children.”
If she understood his point, she gave no sign but asked instead, “What did your father say?”
Grant shrugged. “He laughed.”
“He laughed?”
“He informed me that he didn’t understand what I was upset about.”
“I think he was the one who didn’t understand!” she said, her spirited indignation returning. Grant smiled. Phadra Abbott loved to champion causes.
He almost hated to destroy her illusions. “No, he made me understand. That night he took me to his favorite brothel and purchased a girl for me.”
Her eyes widened in shock. “What did he want you to understand?”
“How to be a man, Miss Abbott. The type of man he thought I should be.”
“And did you become a man?”
He wondered if this young woman, cloistered for so long in a girls’ school, really had any idea of what they were discussing. In his mind’s eye he could recall the features of the prostitute, who had been little older than himself, and his blundering attempts to make his father proud of him…his own confusion. He erased the night from his mind and responded coldly, “I wanted to please my father.”
She frowned, as if she wasn’t certain that she had heard him correctly. “But you were so young.”
He laughed, the sound without mirth. “Trust me, Miss Abbott, I learned it all at my father’s knee—gambling, drinking, whoring.”
She sat back, sliding him a shrewd glance. “But you are not like him today.”
“No,” he agreed softly. “When I turned seventeen, I came home on holiday and found my mother dying. She had a brain sickness and had been ill for months.”
“And no one told you?”
Grant leaned forward, resting his elbows on his thighs, finding the memories almost too painful to recall. “My uncle, who was looking after my mother and sisters, didn’t see fit to tell me because he considered me too much of the ‘devil’s own image.’ He never got along with my father.” His uncle’s words still had the power to hurt. “Father knew Mother was ill, but he hadn’t gotten around to paying her a visit. I remember that she lay in the middle of her big bed, calling his name over and over. She didn’t even recognize me.”
Miss Abbott surprised him by laying a hand on his shoulder. The gesture was strangely comforting. “What did you do?”
“I went looking for him—and I found him. He and a crony had picked up a young girl on the street. They had raped her. A young girl.” He stood abruptly, feeling a need to put distance between himself and Miss Abbott’s compassion. “You can’t imagine the things they did.”
The memory was too real, too vivid. He ran a hand through his hair and took a deep, steadying breath. “That’s when I knew I didn’t want to be like my father.” He turned to her and added quietly, “And I’m not.”
“What happened to the girl?” Miss Abbott asked softly.
“I took her home. Her family had to call the physician…but I don’t know what happened to her. She had a brother who was a lieutenant in the Horse Guards, though. He called Father out and ran him through. The rumor is that Father showed up for the duel drunk. I don’t doubt it.”
“Did he ever see your mother before—”
“No. She died two weeks later. It was just as well. The man was a bastard.”
She studied him quietly with that direct, clear gaze of hers. Finally he broke the silence. “Trying to picture me as a rake?” he asked, hearing more bitterness in his voice than he’d intended.
“No,” she responded softly. “I’m seeing you as a man desperately trying to be the opposite of his father and yet headed in the same direction.”
The verdict shocked him. “What do you mean?” he demanded.
She rose to her feet. “I mean that you want so desperately to prove yourself different from your father that you’d even marry a woman for whom you have no affection whatsoever.”
Her audacity stunned him. No one had ever delivered a crueler insult. “You don’t know what you are saying,” he said when he found control of his voice. “I am not offering Miranda carte blanche, Miss Abbott. I am offering her my name.”
“Mr. Morgan, perhaps I am overstepping myself in saying this, but Miranda has a problem.” She tapped her temple with two fingers. “And I can’t believe you don’t see it as clearly as I do. You’re a fool to marry her—especially for no other reason than to buy a title to prove yourself different from your father.”
Grant stared at her hard for a long minute before responding, “You’re right, Miss Abbott.”
She blinked in surprise. “I am?”
“Yes, you are overstepping yourself. Furthermore, I’m the fool for unburdening myself to you.” He practically ground the words out.
She sat down on the bench, carefully erect. A cloud covered the moon, and he couldn’t read her expression.
He looked away. Damn her! She’d insulted him—so why did he feel guilty? Finally he said, “I didn’t come out here to argue.” He sat on the bench opposite her. “I wanted you to know that I understand how it feels not to fit in.” He paused a moment and added, “I also know how important it is to you to believe that your father must feel something for you.”
When she spoke, her voice came out hoarse with pent-up emotion. “Then let me go.”
“What?”
“I said, let me go.”
“The bank has a responsibility to you. I can’t.”
“Yes, you can.” Her eyes sparkled in the moonlight as she challenged him, “If you understand even a little of what I feel, then you should know how I long to free myself from this.” She gestured to the house and surrounding garden.
“So you can do what? Run up bills you can’t pay? Or find your father? Haven’t you understood anything of what I just told you? The man’s not worth it.”
“Why? Because you say so? I don’t know that! And I have to find out for myself.” She dropped to her knees in front of him. “Don’t you understand? You know who your father is. You rejected him. But I don’t know. My common sense tells me that he can’t have my best interests at heart, but I’ll never know until I meet him.” She touched her hand to her breast. “It’s something in here, deep inside me, that needs to meet him. To look into his eyes. To hear his voice.”
“Even if he’s a bloody scoundrel?”
“Yes,” she said softly. “Perhaps after I meet him, I won’t want him in my life…but I have to know.”
A part of him wanted to grant her deepest wish. She had that effect on him. He rose and walked a few steps away, again feeling the need to put distance between them.
“It’s virtually impossible to reunite you with him,” he said curtly.
“Only because you keep saying it is,” she said, rising to her feet.
“You must understand, I’m acting in your best interests—”
“A pox on my best interests!” she shouted, her voice carrying in the night. He looked toward the house. She did, too, and then lowered her voice to say with equal heat, “It certainly can’t be in my best interests to be forced into a marriage I don’t want. And if you tell me one more time that it is an acceptable solution, I shall scream and pull my hair out. You may marry for money, sir, but I want nothing to do with it.”
The woman never gave up! “You know, Miss Abbott, you can be quite infuriating.”
She arched an eyebrow. “So can you, Mr. Morgan. So can you.”
Grant caught himself smiling. She was more stubborn than a barrister and twice as intelligent. A man would never be bored with Phadra Abbott in his life. Finally he confessed, “I have tried to think of another way.”
She looked at him with surprise. “You have?”
“But I haven’t been successful. The problem is time. The activity in your accounts has drawn atte
ntion. We need to replace the funds for the emeralds before the end of the year.”
“I could take a position as a governess. I could work off the debt.”
“I don’t think—”
“Yes, I can.”
“Miss Abbott, it would take years for you to earn enough to pay back the amount the emeralds were sold for. Don’t look for help from Sir Cecil. The man’s made several unwise business decisions and is barely making ends meet, in spite of all this.” He nodded his head toward the house.
“Then I’ll pay back all of it.”
“Ten thousand pounds?”
She sank down onto a bench. “I had no idea they cost that much,” she said in a small voice.
“It was an incredible set of stones.”
Miss Abbott looked off into the distance as if evaluating her future. Grant didn’t like the determined set of her chin and wasn’t surprised when she looked at him intently and announced, “I’ll do it. I will find a way to pay back the debt. I can write. I can teach. I may even try my luck on the stage, as Henny did.”
“No,” he said emphatically.
“Why not?” she asked with some exasperation. “It’s a solution. There has to be another way besides marriage. Trust me, I’m not marriageable material.”
“That’s not true,” he answered, surprised she would even say such a thing. “Right now, standing in the garden with the moonlight all around you, you look very marriageable.”
Miss Abbott’s mouth dropped open, as if she couldn’t believe he’d said those words.
He couldn’t believe he’d said them, either. Grant shifted, suddenly uneasy.
A voice calling his name interrupted his thoughts. Lady Roberta had come out into the garden from the back doorway of the house. She hurried toward him, throwing a shawl around her shoulders.
Thankful for the interruption, Grant walked up the path to meet her. “Is something wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong…other than that we missed you. I noticed that you didn’t come out from the dining room with the other men.” Her lips formed a lovely little moue before she asked, “What have you been doing out here by yourself?”
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