by Kate Bateman
“Five pounds,” Father offered.
Christie pointed his gavel at him. “Five pounds here. Do I hear ten?”
Maddie glared at Gryff, just daring him to bid. He lifted his brows, sent her a slow, taunting smile, and casually waved his printed catalog to bid ten pounds. Her stomach did a little somersault.
“That blackguard!” Father muttered beside her, pointedly refusing to turn around. “He’s running me up!” He bid twelve pounds.
Gryff bid fifteen.
Father bid eighteen.
Gryff bid twenty.
Maddie gripped the back of her chair and sent her most intimidating frown across the room at Gryff. Stop it! she mouthed.
His answer was a wink, and a bid of twenty-five, against her father’s twenty-two.
Christie seemed delighted by the heated competition. “I have twenty-five pounds, here on my left.”
Father stuck his hand up. “Thirty pounds,” he said belligerently.
Maddie sucked in a breath, praying Gryff wouldn’t force the bidding any higher. His gaze held hers and her pulse thumped erratically in her throat. He slowly shook his head.
“No more bids?” Christie said, rather mournfully. “Are you sure?”
When Gryff shook his head again, the auctioneer said, “In that case, sold, for thirty pounds, to Lord Lucas.” He crashed his gavel down on the rostrum, and a second clerk recorded the sale in the ledger.
“Ha!” Father crowed.
Maddie slumped back into her chair, completely at a loss to understand Gryff’s motives.
Was he angry at her for refusing his offer of an affair? Was this some sort of revenge?
That scenario hardly fit with his character; he wasn’t the sort to play cruel, vindictive games. Even if she’d hurt him by her rejection—and she didn’t think he cared deeply enough about her for that—he wouldn’t do something so spiteful. He’d probably already found his next mistress. Why waste time punishing her?
And if he’d truly meant to annoy her father, why hadn’t he simply kept bidding? He knew how precarious their finances were. He could afford to pay a great deal more than them. But instead, he’d let her father make the winning bid. It made no sense.
She endured the remaining half hour of the auction with barely concealed impatience, the back of her neck tingling with the certainty that Gryff was watching her from across the room. He didn’t bid on any other lots, and she wound herself into knots wondering why he would go out of his way to antagonize her father—especially since the two of them were going to have to work together on the joint mining project very soon.
As soon as the last lot was sold Tristan headed outside to locate the carriage. Maddie and her father made their way over to the tables at the front of the room to collect and pay for their purchase. Since most of the other buyers had the same idea, there was a general crush of bodies as everyone converged on the hapless clerks.
Father surged forward, making his way through the crowd with a judicious use of his elbows, and Maddie found herself hemmed in on all sides, squashed between a red-faced man with round spectacles and an elderly scholar.
A large body pressed up against her from behind and the unmistakable scent of Gryff’s cologne filled her nose. Her heart crashed against her ribs as for the briefest of seconds her back was pressed against his front. She almost sagged against him, then stiffened her spine.
“Step aside for the lady,” he growled.
His arm came around her in a protective cage, and he pushed the red-faced man aside. His intimidating size caused a clear path to open up before her. She hurried forward to join her father at the clerk’s desk, acutely aware of Gryff’s commanding presence inches behind her. Her whole body tingled in awareness.
Father’s smile of greeting turned to a frown as he saw Gryff. “Lord Powys,” he managed stiffly.
Gryff stepped around her and inclined his head in a polite nod. “Baron Lucas.” He turned to her, his eyes glittering with secret amusement. “Miss Montgomery.”
She bobbed a tiny curtsy, suddenly tongue-tied. She’d been intimate with him, but now it was if they were polite strangers. A pang of regret clenched her stomach. Idiot! She could have had so much more. Why hadn’t she agreed to an affair? It might only have lasted for a short time, but wouldn’t it have been better to have loved and lost than never to have experienced it at all?
She’d been trying to protect her heart, but it would have hurt either way. Just looking at him, and yearning, was painful.
“You made the winning bid, sir,” Gryff said gravely. “Congratulations.”
Father seemed a little taken aback by such a sporting attitude, but he obviously decided he could be magnanimous in victory. “Thank you, Davies. I’m sure you’ll find your missing half at some point.”
The phrase jolted Maddie’s memory; Aunt Pru had been searching for her “other half” too.
Gryff’s gaze flickered to her. “Thank you, sir. I certainly hope so.”
She clenched her hand into a fist and pressed her nails into her palm. He was talking of books. Not love.
Mercifully, the auction clerk interrupted them and Father accepted the volume in question. He clutched it to his chest and gave the cover a loving stroke with his hand.
Maddie froze. There was a scratch across one corner.
A rather distinctive scratch.
A scratch she’d traced with her fingers when deciding whether to steal that very same volume from Gryff’s library.
She glanced up, and found Gryff watching her intently, that enigmatic half smile at the corner of his mouth. She opened her own mouth to accuse him, but he shook his head in a tiny negative motion.
“Will you be attending Lady Belton’s gala this evening?” he asked casually.
“We will,” Father said.
“Then I shall see you there. I have a proposition to put to you.”
Maddie frowned as her stupid heart gave another jolt. He was addressing her father, referring to the joint mining project—but his gaze never left her face.
She had to stop seeing double meanings in everything he said.
Gryff raised his fingers in a jaunty salute and stepped back. “Until tonight then. Enjoy your purchase.”
He strode away, leaving them both in shocked silence.
Maddie barely noticed the carriage ride home. She filtered out Father’s ecstatic chatter and tried to make sense of what had just happened.
Gryff had put his half of the dictionary up for sale. And then deliberately bid on his own property against her father.
Why? To get the price up? To make her father pay the maximum amount?
That was an incredibly risky strategy. He couldn’t have known when Father would stop bidding; he could easily have ended up buying his own book back again—and incurred extra fees from the auctioneer in the process.
The busy streets beyond the carriage window rolled past without her really seeing them. She wanted to scream with frustration. She knew that wicked smile. Gryff Davies was up to something, but she couldn’t for the life of her imagine what it was.
Chapter 49
“Dear God, Carys, what’s that on your head?”
Gryff looked up at Morgan’s exclamation. Carys stood framed in the doorway of the study, having paused there for dramatic effect. She lifted one hand and gently patted her elaborate coiffeur.
It was an astonishing sight. Blue ribbons had been threaded through her natural red hair to resemble waves, and a miniature ship, complete with paper sails, perched atop them at a jaunty angle, as though being pitched and tossed in a storm. Pearl-ended pins were scattered throughout, like tiny specks of seafoam.
“It’s a ship, brother dear,” she said sweetly. “In honor of your safe return from the perilous seas.”
“Yes, I can see that,” Morgan said, his tone mystified. “Three years in the navy and I can, in fact, recognize a ship when I see one. It appears to be a galleon of some kind. The real question, I suppose, is … wh
y?”
Carys’s rich laugh echoed around the room. “Why not? Because it’s so completely ridiculous. It amuses me to make the slavish followers of fashion look silly when they inevitably copy my style. You watch, after tonight ships will be all the rage.”
Gryff took in the rest of her outfit. The year of her come-out Carys had endured the pale pastels expected of a debutante, but the following season she’d embraced the ability to choose richer, more provocative colors. With her creamy skin and flaming hair she could make almost any tone look good. And she always managed to add some individual quirk or detail that made her stand out from the crowd. Tonight’s dress was no exception.
“Are you really going out in that?” Rhys drawled, from his recumbent position on the sofa.
Carys rolled her eyes and glanced down at the expanse of milky bosom on show. “Of course I am. Don’t be such a prude, Rhys. This low neckline is everywhere this season.”
“It’s not the neckline I object to. It’s the fabric. I’ve seen windows less transparent.”
“Pfft. It’s an optical illusion.” She lifted her skirts. “See, the top layer’s sheer, but the underlayer is skin-toned. It just looks like I’m not wearing anything underneath.”
Rhys let out a disapproving huff.
“Almost-naked is the look we’re going for these days, is it?” Gryff chuckled.
Carys grinned at him, sensing an ally. “It is. I’ll be most disappointed if some stuffy old dowager doesn’t faint at the sight of me. And at least I haven’t dampened the material to make it cling, like Cecily Browne did last month.”
Rhys turned to Gryff. “You can’t mean to let her out of the house looking like that?”
Carys glared at him. “Of course he does. Stop being such a hypocrite. If a woman you liked wore this dress, you’d be delighted. It’s only because I’m your sister that you’re being so disagreeable.”
“You look like an opera singer,” Rhys growled.
Carys’s smile widened. She clearly took that as a compliment, instead of the criticism he’d intended. “Oh, good. And I suppose you’d know, given how many of them you’re acquainted with.”
Gryff interrupted before Rhys could say anything else.
“You look lovely,” he said soothingly. “Just make sure you wear a cloak or you’ll freeze to death in the carriage.”
He’d long ago learned to trust his little sister. Carys knew to an inch just how far she could push her outrageous behavior. She might take a wicked delight in creating a stir in society, but she’d never do something so terrible that she’d be ostracized.
She sent him a triumphant grin. “Thank you, brother dear. I’m so glad you’re the oldest, and not Rhys or Morgan. They’d have packed me off to a nunnery years ago.”
“I doubt anywhere would have you,” Morgan muttered. “Not even if we financed a whole new cathedral.”
“Just try not to have anyone propose to you this evening,” Gryff said, only half joking. “I’m sick of lovestruck swains cornering me in the cardroom to ‘have a word.’ I want a night off.”
Carys waved her hand in a dismissive gesture. “You know I do nothing to encourage them. In fact, I do everything to discourage them. Just look at this hair. It’s monstrous. But they’re all so shallow, all they see is my pretty nose and my well-turned ankle.”
“And your impressive dowry,” Morgan added with a chuckle. “That’s more than enough to make a man overlook your eccentricities.”
Carys sighed. “It’s true. I’ve even made having freckles fashionable. Last summer I deliberately spent weeks without my hat, hoping freckles would put me beyond the pale. And what happened? As soon as we got back to town, Simon Bainbridge declared himself ‘utterly charmed,’ and the next thing you know half the ladies are buying brown pencils and drawing freckles on their cheeks. I can’t win!”
Gryff chuckled. “Well, there’ll be at least one man there tonight who won’t fall under your spell. Tristan Montgomery’s back from his Grand Tour.”
Carys wrinkled her nose, which made her look more like the stubborn twelve-year-old he remembered than the self-possessed young woman she’d become. For an instant he wondered at the change; halfway through her first season she’d gone from dutiful, biddable debutante to this carefree, confident creature, almost overnight.
He hadn’t taken much notice of it at the time, being determined to enjoy his last few weeks before going to fight in France, but now he wondered if something had happened to cause such a seismic shift. As a girl Carys had always indicated that she would like to marry, but now that she was out, she seemed entirely dismissive of the male sex.
“Temperate Tristan’s back, is he?” Rhys said, using the teasing nickname they’d given their neighbor on account of his levelheadedness.
“He is,” Carys said dismissively. “Gryff and I saw him at the auction this morning. He looks exactly the same. I expect he’s as uptight as ever.”
“Oh, he’s not that bad. You’re just cross because he never reacts to your teasing.”
Carys shrugged. “The man’s an automaton. He needs to learn to enjoy himself more.”
“Leave the poor chap alone,” Morgan said easily. “Content yourself with the adoration of every other man in the room.”
Carys’s green eyes twinkled. “Ah, but you know I can’t resist a challenge.”
Gryff rose to his feet and tugged at the cuffs of his evening jacket, suddenly impatient to see his own particular challenge for the evening: Maddie.
“We should be off. I’ll have Pinsent bring the carriage round.”
Chapter 50
Lady Belton’s ball was, as Tristan had predicted, a terrible crush. Carriages lined the streets waiting to deposit their occupants at the porticoed entrance to the Belton residence. It took Maddie and the rest of the family almost twenty minutes waiting in the receiving line until they finally stepped into the crowded ballroom.
The Aunts were all of a twitter. Father looked resplendent in a new deep-burgundy evening jacket, and Tristan looked as handsome as ever. A stickler for detail and aesthetic order, he was always immaculately turned out.
Maddie scanned the room. She spied Harriet and Uncle John at the far end of the dance floor and sent them a halfhearted wave.
She spotted Rhys Davies next, talking to a ravishing blonde near the punch table, then Morgan, whose arm was supported in a sling. Judging by the gaggle of women around him, it was clear he was attracting a great deal of feminine sympathy.
Harriet rolled her eyes as Maddie reached her side. “Do you see that? He’s matched the fabric of his sling to his waistcoat! What a charlatan.”
Maddie chuckled at her outraged tone, then stilled as she saw Gryff, heart-stoppingly handsome in dark evening clothes. She looked to see who he was with, and blinked in disbelief: He was standing with Henry Sommerville, the very man with whom he’d dueled less than a fortnight ago.
The two of them had obviously decided to let bygones be bygones. Even as she watched, Gryff said something amusing, and Sommerville roared with laughter and slapped him on the back.
The beautiful woman at Sommerville’s side was his wife, Sophie. It was clear from the way she barely glanced at Gryff that there was nothing more than friendship there; she couldn’t take her eyes off her own husband. Still, Maddie was envious of the woman’s easy relationship with Gryff. She wanted that teasing banter, that laughter.
As if he sensed her gaze, Gryff glanced over and her heart leapt to her throat as he caught her eye. His mouth curved in a smile, and she watched him excuse himself from the Sommervilles and start around the room toward her.
“I’m going to get a drink,” she mumbled to Tristan.
She had no intention of avoiding Gryff, although it would have been a simple enough matter in such a crowded affair. She began skirting the room, weaving between groups of revelers, aiming to meet him halfway. His behavior at the auction this morning had been driving her mad—she had to know what he was doing.
They met in front of a large pedestal bearing a larger-than-life-sized sculpture of Perseus holding aloft the snake-topped head of Medusa—part of Lord Belton’s famed collection of ancient marbles. Maddie thought the furious expression on Medusa’s face probably matched her own. She rather wished she could turn Gryff to stone with just a look. He was incredibly frustrating.
She didn’t waste time with courtesies. “All right, Davies. Out with it. What are you about?”
His smile told her he was amused at directness. “I told you, I have a proposition. For your father. I know neither of you were keen on the canal, so I’ve been researching alternatives. A compromise, if you will.”
She narrowed her eyes, suspicious of his sudden affability. “You? Willing to compromise? How?”
“A tramway,” he said, his eyes bright with enthusiasm. “Using horses or even a steam-powered engine to pull the trucks. It would be far less labor-intensive, and therefore far cheaper than a canal. And instead of disrupting your archaeological treasures, the tracks could bypass the areas you wish to remain undisturbed.”
Maddie digested this information. “That does, actually, sound like a decent solution,” she admitted, rather grudgingly.
“I’m delighted you think so. I’m hoping your father will agree.”
“Aha!” she pounced. “So that’s why you let him buy your half of the dictionary. You’re trying to put him in a good mood.”
“That’s rather cynical,” he mocked gently. “And only partly true.”
“Well, why else would you do it?”
He glanced over at the newly forming set of dancers in the middle of the room and held out his arm. “I’ll tell you if you dance with me.”
“We’ll cause a scandal,” she said, alarmed. “I don’t think a Davies has danced with a Montgomery since before the Norman Conquest.”
“What’s the matter? Scared?”
“Of course not.”
“Then come on.” He took her hand and tugged her gently into the center of the room.
The previous set had been a lively reel, but as the couples formed into pairs, rather than two long lines, Maddie realized it was going to be a waltz.