by Julia London
“I beg your pardon… did I say something wrong?” Miss Crabtree asked meekly.
Grif forced a polite laugh. “No’ in the least, lass,” he said. “’Tis that I’m a wee bit surprised to learn that the study of architecture is in vogue among the ladies. Perhaps ye’ve spoken to Lady Battenkirk of her travels?”
“No, my lord, for I scarcely know her at all.” She smiled uncertainly again; Grif returned her smile and turned her sharply about and started the march back to the house, where he intended to deposit Miss Crabtree at a table with a cup of punch.
As they strode down the length of the Darlington gardens, and Miss Crabtree spoke of the weather this Season, he nodded politely and glanced around at the other couples availing themselves of the garden shadows. As they neared the house, and the golden lights of dozens upon dozens of beeswax candles spilled out from the ballroom windows and illuminated the lawn, he caught a glimpse of a woman with hair the color of chestnut and turned to look.
She was very near to being locked in a man’s embrace, but Grif could just see her angelic face— alabaster skin perfectly smooth, her eyes luminous, and her lips dark and full. She was smiling up at the man who held her in such rapture, coyly batting her long lashes at him, laughing a little at whatever he said to her. As the man slipped his arm around her waist, Grif noted she was delightfully feminine in the curve of her body.
Beside him, Miss Crabtree made a clucking sound. “Oh dear, I rather think Lord Whittington would be quite displeased,” she said when Grif looked curiously at her.
“Beg yer pardon?”
Miss Crabtree didn’t answer, but frowned disapprovingly in the direction of the angel. “It’s rather unseemly for a debutante to be cavorting about,” she whispered. “Especially with a man of such reputation, and especially Miss Lucy Addison, as she is rumored to be the Favorite of the Season.”
The favorite what? Grif wondered, and thought that while it might appear unseemly to a lamb like Miss Crabtree, it was actually an awful lot of jolly good fun to go sneaking about lush gardens. Perhaps that was what was wrong with the English in general, he mused. They really had far too many rules that barred any merriment.
Grif smiled down at the mousy woman on his arm and wondered if she’d ever know the pleasure of cavorting about moonlit gardens. “What a pity, that,” he said low, “for I know one lass I should very much like to cavort with in the gardens.”
Miss Crabtree gasped and blinked. Then smiled beneath a furious blush.
Grif winked, but said nothing more.
He managed to extract himself from Miss Crabtree easily enough, although he didn’t care for the pitiful look she gave him—it made him feel a wee bit like he was leaving a puppy on the wrong side of a door.
She was quickly swallowed up by a number of couples and ladies who were ready for their supper.
He made his way back to the ballroom, smiling at any lady whose eye he could catch… which seemed to be all of them. He might have stopped to flirt with as many as he could, for that was a sport he excelled at, but he was rather determined to make Miss Lucy Addison’s acquaintance. Aye, if there was one thing on God’s earth that Griffin appreciated, it was a bonny woman, and Miss Lucy Addison was definitely bonny.
He found his friend, Mr. Fynster-Allen, in the place he had left him—standing a little behind one of the ridiculously overgrown potted palms, apparently enjoying the sight of the ladies as they waltzed by on the dance floor.
It had been Grif’s good fortune to make Fynster’s acquaintance at a gentlemen’s club shortly after his arrival in London. What had begun as a friendly game of cards had turned into a friendship. Fynster was a rotund, practically bald man who stood a full head shorter than Grif. He was likewise a bachelor, and possessed the most pleasant countenance Grif had ever encountered in another man. Unfortunately, Fynster was painfully shy when it came to women, and did not avail himself of their company nearly as often as Grif did, if ever.
Fortunately, however, Fynster seemed to know everyone among the ton, had even heard of Lady Battenkirk, and even knew a batch of Amelias.
Furthermore, it appeared that everyone among the ton knew Fynster; he was invited to all the important events, and it was indeed his influence that had garnered Grif’s invitation to this ball. Grif liked Fynster well enough to feel abominably guilty for the number of lies he had told him, beginning with the reason for his search for an Amelia.
Fynster was watching a woman in a blue gown when Grif clapped him on the shoulder, startling him. “Ho there, Ardencaple!” he exclaimed, jumping a little. “By God, you startled me!”
“Dreadfully sorry, lad,” Grif said, grinning.
Fynster glanced around Grif, saw he was alone. “She was not your Amelia, I take it?”
“She was no’,” Grif said, affecting a sorrowful look.
“There now,” Fynster said with a sympathetic smile. “There are more Amelias. Squads of them, I’d reckon. You’ll find her, I’m quite certain.”
Grif smiled sadly and looked out over the dance floor, wishing he wasn’t forced to tell a decent chap like Fynster such a god-awful lie about Amelia. He had made up the outrageous tale one night over cards and with the considerable help of whiskey. His story went something like this—that his Uncle Angus had sired Amelia in an illicit but passionate love affair (the details of which had Fynster’s eyes bulging quite out of their sockets). But, alas, Uncle had been forced by family tragedy to return to Scotland, and Amelia’s mother had married an Englishman. It had been his uncle’s dying wish that Grif find Amelia and give her something that had belonged to her true father.
It had worked—Fynster had been so touched by the tale that he had immediately and earnestly set out to help Grif find as many Amelias as he could shake from a tree. He had high hopes for this ball, which he said was one of the more important events of the Season, but sadly, only one of the Amelias known to him was in attendance tonight… and she was the wrong Amelia. Which, to Grif’s way of thinking, left him a clear opening to ask after Miss Lucy Addison.
“By the bye,” Grif said as they both watched the woman in blue sail by again. “The young woman just there,” he said, nodding in the direction where Lucy Addison was now holding court with three gentlemen. “Do you suppose her Christian name is Amelia?”
Fynster looked to where he indicated and laughed. “Ah, so you’d join the ranks of gentlemen smitten with Miss Lucy Addison?”
Grif shrugged. “She’s a bonny one, she is.”
“She certainly is. I’d wager there isn’t a man in this room who hasn’t dreamed of her, myself among them. Very well, then… come along and I’ll see if I can’t give you a leg up.”
Grif grinned. “Ye’ll have me adoring ye yet, Fynster,” he said jovially.
“That’s quite unnecessary,” Fynster said, turning a little red of face as they started off.
Miss Lucy was entertaining the gentlemen around her with some girlish tale as they walked into her charmed circle. Something about having twisted her ankle, which had the men gathered about aahing at her misfortune. She looked up at Fynster and Grif, and smiled prettily at Grif. “Good evening, Mr. Fynster-Allen. How very good to see you,” she said charmingly, her gaze still on Grif as Fynster bowed over her hand.
“My pleasure, Miss Lucy, to be sure,” he said. “Might I beg your pardon? I should very much like to make a proper introduction of my good friend, his lordship Ardencaple.”
Her smile deepened; she was an old hand at this game, Grif could see, as she snapped open her fan and fanned herself. “I should think you may, sir.”
A bit too theatrically, Fynster intoned, “My lord, may I present Miss Lucy Addison.”
Miss Lucy daintily held out her gloved hand; Grif instantly took it and bowed deeply over it. “Ye canna know what a pleasure it is to make yer acquaintance,” he said, and thought he heard one of her fawners snort.
“My lord, I daresay the pleasure is mine,” she said, her smile perfect as Gr
if raised himself up. Her hand slipped from his. “Have you been in London long?”
“Scarcely more than a month.”
“Ah,” she said as her eyes quickly flicked the length of him. “And how do you find the weather here?”
“Quite pleasant, aye.”
“Isn’t it? I’m rather pleased, for I am quite cross when it is dreary.”
“Really, Miss Lucy! You’ve not a cross bone in your body!” one of the other men said with a laugh.
“I swear that I do, sir, and it is most likely to present itself when the weather is dreary,” she said, and smiled at the laughter of the men.
“Miss Lucy, I believe if you will check your dance card, you will find my name written against the quadrille,” another one said, edging forward.
“Oh! That is a quadrille they are playing, is it not?” She looked at the dance card dangling by a ribbon from her wrist. A very full dance card, Grif could see, for there was not a blank spot on it. “You are quite right, Lord Preston. I promised the quadrille to you.”
The lucky man stepped forward, his arm extended.
Miss Lucy snapped her fan shut, smiled adoringly at the others. “I do beg your pardon,” she said sweetly, and glanced at Grif from the corner of her eye. “A pleasure to make your acquaintance, Lord Ardencaple.” Before she could say more, Preston had clamped his hand down on hers, was pulling her along, ready to be gone from the throng of admirers.
Fynster sighed as she glided alongside Preston and the other men drifted away. “There you have it, then, Ardencaple. The most desired debutante in all of London. It’s the subject of much speculation as to who will win her hand.”
Aye, but it wasn’t exactly her hand that interested Grif.
He accompanied Fynster to the game room for a time, and when he’d lost a few more pounds than he cared to lose, he decided it was time he joined Hugh at the town house they had overrun, and left Fynster to carry on.
He took his sweet time making his way through the crowd, going against the tide so to speak, smiling and nodding at dozens of women who passed him by, but his head was filled with the lovely images of Miss Lucy Addison and her chestnut-colored hair—so filled, in fact, that he almost collided with a woman who stepped in his path near the main entry.
He recognized her instantly—Miss Crabtree had introduced them—yet he could not for the life of him recall her name.
She smiled pertly at him, her coppery brown eyes sparkling beneath dark brows dipped in a vee. She looked, he thought, delightfully devilish.
“Why, Lord Ardencaple, we meet again,” she said happily, clasping her hands before her.
“Aye, that we do,” he said, racking his brain for her name.
“You do recall our introduction, do you not?”
“Naturally, I do, and it was indeed a pleasure,” he lied.
“If it was indeed a pleasure, then I should think you might recall my name,” she said as the corners of her lips curled into a daring little smile.
That, more than anything, caught Grif’s attention. He’d been in London a month now and had learned that the many lovely ladies of the ton were, by virtue of their many societal rules, prisoners of decorum and propriety. Of all the women he’d met—and there had been quite a lot of them, pretty and young and terribly enticing to the man in him—he had yet to meet one who was quite so… saucy.
Grif paused to have a closer look, and couldn’t help but like what he saw—her hair was an earthy maple color with strands of dark auburn. It was swept up in bunches of ringlets as was the current fashion. Her nose was straight and delicate, her lips full and pleasing, and her neck long and slender. Her copper eyes were flecked with bits of deep gold. She was a very attractive woman, certainly, and he noticed, as he clasped his hands behind his back and smiled down at her, that her eyes were her most remarkable feature, for the sparkle in them clearly betrayed the vixen in her.
The vixen lifted her head, smiling playfully. “Oh dear, my lord, have you perhaps forgotten our introduction?” she teased.
“How could I possibly forget ye, lass?” he asked, his gaze drifting to her lips.
“Then say it—I dare you,” she said, her smile broadening.
“Why should I? Just to please ye?”
“Yes. Just to please me.”
Saucy and impudent. Grif grinned, blatantly letting his gaze wander the length of her. “How dare a gentleman deny such a request? All right, here ye have it, just to please ye …Miss Dragh,” he said, using the Gaelic word for trouble, and winked.
That took her aback; the lass blinked up at him with those coppery eyes. “I beg your pardon?”
“Do ye no’ recognize yer name in Gàidhlig, then?”
The saucy smile instantly returned, and she lifted her chin. “There, you see? You don’t recall my name! For I am certain that Miss Addison is Miss Addison in whatever language you choose.”
Miss Addison? The same Addison as the lovely Miss Lucy Addison? It surprised him, but Grif was skilled at the art of flirtation and did not flinch. He just smiled deep into her eyes. “Miss Addison it is, then,” he said. “I shall no’ forget it. And now, I must bid ye good night.” He allowed his gaze to sweep over her once more before stepping around her and walking on.
“Before you take your leave, Lord Ardencaple?” she called, stopping him. “I was wondering if you might know an acquaintance of mine from Scotland?”
God’s blood, why was it everyone in London supposed he knew every other Scot in the blessed world? “And who might that be, then?”
“His name is Captain Lockhart.”
She could not have stunned him more if she had kicked him in the shin. Grif stood almost paralyzed for a moment, his smile frozen, peering closely at her, assessing her. But she smiled innocently. “I canna say that I do,” he said.
“No?”
“No. Good night, then, Miss Addison,” he said, and bobbing his head in something of a bow, he continued on.
“Good night, my lord!” she sang after him.
Grif could feel her eyes on his back all the way out the door. Once outside, he drew a breath of relief, but his mind raced wildly. How could she possibly have known Liam? His brother hadn’t mentioned any women, had not even hinted at a woman besides Ellie. All right, then, the only plausible explanation was that Miss Addison must have met him at a social function, something like this ball. Aye, it was nothing more than that. A strange coincidence.
But for the entire drive to Cavendish Street, where he and Hugh lived like kings in Hugh’s grandmother’s house, he could not shake the rather unpleasant notion that Miss Addison knew something about him.
Five
T he next morning started with a row between Grif and Hugh, as Hugh had been out all night again, gambling with the money the Lockharts had borrowed and smelling of cheap perfume. Grif angrily reminded Hugh he was to be a valet, not a scoundrel. Hugh shoved the toast points he’d made at Grif and complained of feeling trapped. Before their argument was said and done, Grif had extracted Hugh’s promise there’d be no more gambling or trawling about the city at night, and no more women of questionable character to darken their door.
Hugh had gone off to bed in foul temper, muttering his unflattering opinion of the new Earl of Ardencaple. Grif determined he needed some air. He left Dudley to keep an eye on his old friend and set out with the intention of calling on the lovely young lass he’d dreamed about last night.
He had to inquire of Fynster-Allen how to find Lucy Addison, but Fynster-Allen was amused by Grif’s ardor for her, and with a chuckle sent him to Whittington House on Audley Street.
On Audley Street, Grif was slightly taken aback by the grandeur of Whittington House—not that he hadn’t seen grand houses, but when he thought of Miss Lucy, her circumstance was not exactly the first thing that came to mind.
When he lifted the heavy brass knocker and let it fall, a footman instantly opened the door. Behind him stood a butler. “Sir,” the butler said stoically
, bowing slightly before extending a silver tray.
Grif retrieved a calling card from his breast pocket and placed it on the tray. “Good day to ye. Lord Ardencaple calling for Miss Lucy Addison.”
“Of course, sir,” the butler said, as if Grif were somehow expected. “If you will follow me.” He pivoted sharply about, strode into the ornate foyer.
Grif stepped inside, quickly tossed his hat and his gloves to a footman, and hurried to catch up with the impatient butler before he lost him.
The butler turned from the foyer into a large corridor and strode to a pair of highly polished oak doors. “If you will kindly wait here, I shall inform Miss Lucy that you’ve called,” he said, and pushed open one door; Grif barely had an opportunity to step inside before the efficient butler closed the door behind him.
“Thank ye,” he said to the closed door, and turned around to have a look about the room. Yet it seemed as if he’d scarcely begun before the butler was once again at the door. “If you will follow me, sir.”
Grif hurried after him again.
They walked to the end of the very long carpeted corridor, past portraits and large porcelain vases full of hothouse flowers and brass wall sconces. At the end of the corridor, the butler paused in front of another set of doors, pushed them open with a flourish, bowed deeply, and announced, “Lord Ardencaple calling.”
Grif stepped across the threshold and saw the angel, Miss Lucy. She was perched like a pretty bird on the edge of an embroidered chair, her back straight, her hands folded in her lap. When she stood, it reminded him of the way the morning mist rose on the loch. “Lord Ardencaple, what a delight.”
“Ah, but the delight is mine, lass,” he said with a bow, and it wasn’t until he was striding forward to take her hand with a ridiculously broad grin on his face that he noticed he wasn’t the only caller in the room.
There was a man seated on a divan, who was eyeing Grif disdainfully. Directly across from him was an elderly woman with a matronly cap. The chaperone, he presumed, as her attention was on a piece of needlework in which her needle flew in and out. And there was one more person—a man standing at the window, his hands clasped behind his back. Grif recognized him as the man with whom Miss Lucy had been in the gardens at the Darlington ball last night.
