“It was an unpracticed kiss. Completely unexpected. It was . . . singular.”
He expected his aunt to retort, but she said nothing. Lucius turned to find her staring at him, mouth agape, as if he’d just made an astounding admission.
“What is it?” He was afraid to ask, uncertain he’d like her answer.
Augusta merely shook her head as if to clear her thoughts.
“I’ve no doubt there have been half a dozen scandals in London since the incident in Mayfair. Infamy is a fickle mistress, my boy. She’ll soon tire of you. There are precious few who know that my Miss Wright is the young woman from the gallery, and I am confident of their discretion. And most especially of hers.”
His aunt could fight her corner unlike anyone he’d ever known, and her lack of concern about the propriety of the situation reassured him. A bit. But it did nothing to quell the disturbingly satisfying sense of knowing Miss Wright would be at Hartwell for two weeks. He should not be pleased. He closed his eyes a moment and tried to rouse a sense of horror, a measure of indignation. But in his mind’s eye, a vision of Miss Wright blotted out all else. He saw her as she’d looked in the meadow, cheeks flushed, green eyes turned to jade in the sunlight, strands of her fiery hair fluttering in the breeze.
“Miss Sedgwick arrives soon. She may be here within three days.”
Miss Sedgwick. Lucius’s mind was so clouded with thoughts of Jessamin Wright it took a moment to remember who Miss Sedgwick was—who she was and who she might one day become.
“You don’t have to marry her. I sense she wished for a trip to England as much as a marriage proposal. Perhaps you will not suit each other.” His aunt spoke the words so quietly he could almost imagine it wasn’t her voice but his own conscience whispering words he wished to hear.
It was nonsense. Marrying Miss Sedgwick was a practical solution. She was wellborn, well educated, and almost unimaginably wealthy. Her wealth would secure Hartwell’s future. With her dowry, there would be no more leaky roofs or crumbling masonry. And the funds would not merely repair Hartwell, they would provide for repairs on the tenant housing, and maintenance of the lands and outbuildings that had been neglected for years.
He would marry her. It was his duty, and producing an heir and restoring the estate would ease Father’s mind. Miss Sedgwick’s father was a self-made New Yorker but he’d married a viscount’s daughter, and May’s parents had ensured their daughter received a thoroughly classical education, including travel in Europe and time spent at a ladies’ seminary. She was an ideal match. Best of all, Miss Sedgwick reputedly loathed the countryside and wished for nothing more than a title and a London town house.
Lucius counted on her predilection and imagined them spending much of their time apart, she in London and he at Hartwell, preventing her from observing any of his father’s more extreme behaviors. In marrying her, he hoped to do his duty and protect his father at the same time.
For the satisfaction of doing his duty and succeeding in the role that had been thrust upon him, surely he could steer clear of Jessamin Wright for a fortnight.
“She seems a perfect choice for a countess.”
Perhaps it was some hitch in his tone, a note of insincerity. A lack of enthusiasm, as his father had so astutely observed. His aunt stood and approached him, then laid a hand on his arm. When he looked at her, he read pity in her light blue eyes.
Lord, how he loathed pity. Don’t pity me. Miss Wright’s words that night in the carriage came back to him. On that point, she had the right of it.
“Lucius . . .” Whatever she wished to say was apparently unspeakable. His aunt paused and he waited, but she said nothing more.
“My options are few. We can no longer put off repairs, and even if the income from the estate could bear the cost, there is still the matter of maintaining Hartwell. I’ve initiated some promising investments, but Father refuses to consider our best option.”
She shook her head, and Lucius couldn’t divine whether it was a gesture of sympathy or the same disagreement his father had expressed.
“Our father would never consider selling off Dunthorpe lands either.”
Tradition, choosing a path because it was the one that had already been worn, was the worst sort of argument and one that didn’t persuade Lucius at all. Perhaps he’d worked too long in his uncle’s London office, where he’d been encouraged to trust his gut as often as his business acumen to take risks when making investments.
Here at Hartwell, he was essentially his father’s steward, and that meant respecting the earl’s wishes regarding the estate, even if the man’s commitment to tradition seemed outmoded.
Marrying Mother, with her generous Buchanan dowry, had allowed his father to bolster the estate’s coffers. Was it any wonder the same was expected of him?
“You’ve chosen well, Aunt Augusta, as I knew you would. And what else shall I do? What other choice do I have? Miss Wright, perhaps?”
It was the most outrageous remark he’d made in years. It opposed all of his father’s expectations, every matchmaking effort on his aunt’s part, and every goal he had for Hartwell. But he savored his subversive moment and the sound of her name on his tongue.
His aunt didn’t reply in words, but a series of emotions swept over her face—confusion, surprise, pure bewilderment. She hadn’t meant he should consider Miss Wright at all.
Then her eyebrows shot skyward as she emitted a squeak.
“Jessamin!”
The woman herself stood just inside the room.
JESS HAD NO notion what Lord Grimsby might be considering her for, but the look of guilt on his face—a sort of panicked grimace as if she’d caught him with his hand in the biscuit tin—made her suspect it couldn’t be for any fine purpose.
As Lady Stamford had addressed her, or rather shrieked at her, Jess tried to ignore Lord Grimsby altogether and direct her attention at her employer.
This might be the moment of her dismissal, and she steeled herself to accept it.
“My lady, you asked me to request tea service in your sitting room.” Odd how her own voice sounded strange to her ears when spoken under the viscount’s scrutiny. It shook and teetered a bit. Very disconcertingly, in fact. She swallowed down the lump in her throat and tried again. “And you wished for me to bring you the guest list for the house party, but I couldn’t find it in your rooms.”
Lady Stamford seemed to compose herself. “Yes, my dear. Thank you. Actually, there is a new list. I’ve added one more guest to equal out our numbers. Lucius wished to see it.” She reached inside a pocket of her skirts and produced a folded piece of paper, handing it to Jessamin and nodding her head toward Lord Grimsby.
Jess took the paper, but the simple act of passing him the sheet seemed daunting. She stepped toward him, and an echo of the same trepidation she’d experienced in the gallery caused her hand to shake.
Lord Grimsby didn’t seem to share her discomfort. He reached out to retrieve the sheet with only the merest glance in her direction, oblivious to the tremor in her hands or any other part of her body.
An awkward moment of silence passed, and Jess became aware of her breath, too rapid and ragged for her short walk down the stairs.
The paper crackled as he smoothed it with his fingers, and she studied the breadth of his hands, the play of sinews as he moved them, before forcing her gaze away. He’d touched her with those hands every time they’d met. Until now. Now, inside the walls of Hartwell, inside the bounds of rules and propriety, he would never touch her again.
That is as it should be. They should never have touched each other at all. She bit her lip and repeated the words in her mind, and again, until she suppressed the urge to look at him.
She forced herself to examine the room. The study was a masculine haven of dark wood, heavy drapes, and a desk larger than the bed she’d slept in over the shop. She darted her gaze from his brass desk implements to the details in the crimson wallpaper above the wainscoting, but as silent seco
nds passed she heard the quickened inhale and exhale of his breath, noticed the moment he lifted a hand to his mouth while examining the paper she’d handed him.
She focused on the ticking of a clock and examined the beautifully crafted device on the fireplace mantel. Fixing her gaze on the slowly moving hands, she watched the second hand slide across the clock face, any distraction to keep from looking in the viscount’s direction.
“Equal numbers for dining, and dancing, if we wish it.”
Lord Grimsby didn’t respond to his aunt’s words and continued to skim the paper in his hand.
“There’s one name I don’t recognize.”
“Oh?”
None of the names on the list had been familiar to Jess, except for Miss Sedgwick’s. She wasn’t even aware it was a social faux pas to invite an uneven number of guests to a house party and had no notion whom Lady Stamford might have added.
After another moment, Lord Grimsby’s deep rumble sounded. “Who is Lady Katherine Adderly?”
The room went hazy and Jess felt heat rush into her cheeks, flames crawling across her ears, and a trickle of moisture at the nape of her neck. Praying neither of them noticed how her legs trembled, she made her way to the chair next to Lady Stamford and sat.
“The Marchioness of Clayborne has been a friend for years. I met her during my first season. Kitty is her eldest daughter. A lovely young woman, though perhaps a bit too fond of frivolity. You met her at the Worthington ball.”
“Did I?”
You refused to dance with her. You snubbed her. The words were just there, ready to burst out, along with her confession about taking money to carry out Kitty’s scheme. The prospect of releasing it, of finally explaining her behavior, held tantalizing appeal. The secret had been a burden, pressing down on her, like the stack of books Mother used to place on her head to instruct her in proper posture. She’d never been any good at balancing those books, and she was dreadful at keeping secrets. As an only child and veritable spinster, she’d had few to keep.
It would ease her mind to tell it. But what would they think of her? She’d taken money to kiss a man she had no right to touch, with whom she hadn’t even cause for a passing acquaintance, considering their difference in wealth and status. The names for a woman who accepted payment for kissing a man played through Jess’s mind. Such a woman certainly had no right to serve as paid companion to a dowager countess. Such a woman deserved to be turned out without tuppence, without even the funds for a train ticket back to London.
And what would she do in London? Who would employ her if the whole ugly truth were revealed? Even with Lady Stamford’s generous salary, one month’s wages wouldn’t sustain her long.
She couldn’t bring herself to tell them—to tell him.
Jess sensed Lord Grimsby watching her. Looking toward him, she found his searching inspection held a flicker of what she’d glimpsed the night she kissed him, a heat that warmed and soothed her. She felt for a moment as she had in the gallery, as if all else faded away and his gaze meeting hers was sacrosanct, a private moment, even if others watched.
Jess broke the spell and turned away, focusing on the benign face of the mantel clock.
Would he look at her the same way if Kitty Adderly divulged the part Jess played in her plan to humiliate him? Though Kitty’s plot reflected as poorly on the young woman herself as it did on Jess, it didn’t excuse her actions.
What had Kitty called her? A freethinking woman? The kiss had been her act, her choice, and these were her consequences. And she would take them, come what may. She had to. If she didn’t claim the folly of her actions, she wouldn’t own any of the power of that kiss. And whatever kissing Lord Grimsby had cost her, it had given her something too—her own moment of passion, of being desired, the sort of desire she’d only read about in books. She’d never imagined a bit of it for herself, and now that she did possess it, and very little else, she was determined to keep it. Brazen woman, trollop, failed bookseller, unfit lady’s companion, whatever they called her in the end, whatever it had cost her, she would cherish that one sliver of passion. At six and twenty, she was keenly aware it might be her life’s portion.
“Jessamin?”
Lady Stamford’s voice made her jump, and Jess bowed her head, clenching her hands in the fabric of her skirt forcefully enough to tear it. Holding her breath, heart hammering, she waited for her dismissal from service, and lifted her head to stare at Lord Grimsby’s back. He seemed a pillar of calm, a soothing contrast to her tangled emotions. He’d turned his attention to the mantel, not to the clock she’d been watching, but to rearranging the knickknacks and framed photographs lining the space.
“Yes, my lady?”
“In other circumstances I would introduce you to my nephew, but I am well aware you have already met in a most . . . singular fashion.”
Lord Grimsby turned the moment Jess stifled a gasp.
“Aunt Augusta . . .” Jess detected a thread of the same discomfort in the viscount’s deep voice that she felt at his aunt’s reference to the moment in Mayfair.
Lady Stamford lifted a hand, her ivory handkerchief fluttering in her fingers, as if to forestall whatever objection he might have.
“Now I do not wish to make a feast of it, but do hear me out. I trust we’ll make this house party a success. That shall be our focus, and we’ll leave the rest behind us. Agreed?”
Though she spoke the words loudly enough both of them could hear, she directed her gaze at Lord Grimsby throughout.
He pressed his mouth into a grim line before offering her a curt nod of agreement.
Jess wasn’t certain if her agreement, or even her presence, was necessary, but when she opened her mouth to acknowledge Lady Stamford’s terms, the countess spoke again.
“Wonderful. Oh, isn’t it a relief to have a matter settled?”
Chapter Twelve
JESS TWISTED HER hair into a loose chignon, pinned it, and then slid her hands over the velvet panels of her emerald green gown, one of three evening dresses Lady Stamford had commissioned for her. The velvet, cool against her fingertips, soothed her nerves.
Lady Stamford hadn’t dismissed her, but Lord Grimsby had stalked off, somber as ever, immediately after the odd agreement between the three of them in his study. She’d made a partial confession to Lady Stamford after his departure, acknowledging the money she’d taken and returned. But when she’d mentioned that a scorned young woman had put her up to kissing the viscount, Lady Stamford appeared more amused than shocked. The moment had reassured Jess regarding her employment with the countess, but it had done nothing to stem the dread of encountering Kitty Adderly at the house party. Her employer seemed oddly disinterested in Jess’s motives for taking money to kiss her nephew, and Lord Grimsby hadn’t pressed her on the matter, but the notion he’d learn she had done it for money and as part of a plan to embarrass him churned in her mind.
And the anxiety multiplied at the prospect of taking her first meal at Hartwell with Lord Grimsby. At Marleston, Lady Stamford had occasionally allowed Jess to dine alone in her room, especially if they weren’t hosting visitors, but the countess had insisted she attend the first evening meal at Hartwell and dress formally for the occasion. Jess considered it an oddity of nobility to make such a fuss over meals, but she could hardly refuse Lady Stamford.
As she took one last glance at herself in the looking glass, surprised as she always was to find what a difference a bit of effort made, a knock sounded at the door.
Tilly stuck her head around the door frame. “My lady sent me to assist you with dressing,” she said as she entered and closed the door behind her.
The maid stopped and placed a hand on each hip. “I see you’ve gone and done it on your own.” The girl’s tone was chastising, but then a satisfied gleam lit her face. “Ah, but you haven’t finished your hair. I can at least do that for you, miss.”
Jess crossed her eyes to focus on the strand of hair snaking down her forehead, already esca
ped from her inexpertly pinned arrangement. Perhaps she could use Tilly’s help after all.
“Thank you, Tilly. I’d be most grateful.”
“Sit yourself there, miss. Where’s your brush and pins?”
Jessamin showed her the collection of hairpins and the girl set to work. Tilly tugged and twisted and pinned with a speed and skill that caused Jess to wince only once. Whatever the result of Tilly’s efforts, it would be far more elaborate than anything she’d ever attempted on her own.
The maid didn’t speak while she worked and Jess was grateful. Her nervousness ratcheted up with every passing moment. She imagined the awkward dinner table conversation and vowed to remain as mum as possible throughout the ordeal. What did she have to say to a viscount, and to that inscrutable one in particular? What topic might she broach with any of them? Perhaps if she drew no attention to herself and refrained from conversing any more than necessary, the whole thing would pass by quickly.
She wasn’t certain when Kitty would arrive at the house party, but Lady Stamford had indicated they would have a smaller group for this first dinner.
“Not bad if I do say so meself. Not bad at all.” Tilly turned the looking glass toward Jessamin. “You do have the prettiest hair, Miss Wright.”
“Th-thank you.” Tongue-tied with shock, Jess examined herself in the mirror. She looked . . . elegant. Tilly had wrapped certain strands of her hair into curls and woven them to create an elaborate style while allowing a few wavy locks to fall down over her left shoulder.
She’d never had cause to look elegant in her life, and there had been a freedom in it. There’d been no need to fuss over ladies’ magazines or keep up with the latest style of gown. Fiction had always interested Jess far more than fashion. But now, it was gratifying to find that she could pull it off, that with expertly arranged hair, a fine dress made to fit, Father’s green eyes and Mother’s high cheekbones and strong chin, she might just pass as pretty.
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