A Measure of Deceit

by Jess Michaels

  Grace’s stomach turned. What he said implied that Connor and the Lady were…lovers. Which was utterly true, but not something he was aware of, nor something he should be crowing about like a green boy boasting about stolen kisses or virtues.

  Isabel shot a quick glance toward Grace, questions on her face. Grace shrugged and returned her friend’s stare with an “I don’t know what he’s doing” version of her own.

  It was not an expression she had to force. After all, that was exactly what was screaming through her mind as Connor continued talking and talking and talking.

  He laughed and she almost wept. What Connor was doing was using her to gain favor with those around him, to gain funds for his publishing endeavor and to respond to the abandonment of a father that obviously hurt the man far more than he had already admitted.

  Worse, she could do nothing to guide him away from this potentially devastating course of action. At least not until they were alone and she could attempt reason with him. But they wouldn’t be alone for hours now. Her party was too successful by far to assume otherwise.

  She let out a heavy sigh. She had been pretending her entire life, showing a face to the world that was meant to shelter herself from harm or from vulnerability.

  Tonight she would put all those skills to the test.

  The last of the straggling party guests were beginning to walk—or stagger—from the foyer to waiting horses and carriages on her drive. Grace’s head throbbed as she gave false smiles and hollow farewells. When Connor stepped into her space, she stiffened.

  “Shall I ride around the corner and come back in a few moments?” he asked softly so the others wouldn’t hear.

  She looked up at him, taking in his handsome face, his bright eyes. There was so much of her that wanted to refuse him. To pretend what he’d said, crowed about, all night had never happened. To put off any potential confrontation until another day.

  But that wasn’t possible.

  She nodded. “Yes, please do.”

  Desire fired in his stare, a feeling her body mirrored even though she didn’t want it to be that way.

  “Good night, Your Grace,” he said, all proper, even though he clung to her hand too long.

  The last to leave her foyer were Seth, Isabel, Jacinda and Jason. She widened her smile as she said farewell to her friends in the hopes they would not see her upset.

  She could tell she failed the moment Isabel locked eyes with her. The countess turned to Seth and Jason and said, “Will you two give us a moment?”

  The gentlemen exchanged a brief glance, but neither argued as they said their goodbyes to Grace, then went down to stand where the carriages were parked.

  “What is it?” Isabel asked softly.

  Grace gave a put-upon sigh she hoped would close the subject. “What is what?”

  Jacinda tilted her head. “You’ve been out of sorts almost all night. Please, won’t you tell us what’s wrong?”

  Grace stared at her two friends. She knew she could trust them as well as she knew her own face in a mirror. There was part of her that longed to throw herself into their arms and tell them everything she’d kept secret over the past few years.

  But a long-held sense of self-preservation lingered, putting a wall between herself and her friends, just as it had always done between her and those she loved.

  Connor’s behavior tonight had more than proven that those walls were needed.

  “I wish I could help you,” she said, her voice cracking. “But I’m merely tired.”

  Isabel’s jaw tightened. “Tired. I see.”

  Jacinda was less angry in her reaction, but Grace couldn’t mistake the way her pretty face crumpled a fraction. “Oh, Grace,” she said softly before she reached up to brush a kiss against her cheek and then slipped toward the carriages.

  Isabel stared a few seconds longer, then shrugged. “No one can force you to do anything.”

  Grace rushed to take her friend’s hands, but Isabel stepped back.

  “Isabel—” she said softly.

  “I love you,” her friend said. “But you won’t let me. And it breaks my heart.”

  She said nothing more, but left Grace standing on the step, watching her two best friends leave her home and feeling as though she had lost everything in one night.

  Tears stung her eyes as she walked inside and back into the parlor where the party had been held. Servants were already beginning to tidy up and she waved the few of them off with as much of a smile as she could manage.

  “Please leave this,” she said. “I’m expecting a visitor shortly and we’ll use this parlor.”

  The maids exchanged glances, but they all left the room with only a “Good night, Your Grace” as response. She was certain Maura would hear about this from one of the young women and have questions for her later.

  But even her maid, who she had confided in as a part of her deception as the Lady, was not someone she talked to about anything with depth. If she hadn’t needed a partner in order to keep up the ruse, she never would have told Maura her secret either.

  That was what she did, how she lived. And now it had quite possibly cost her two friends and a man she loved. She clenched her fist against the window and stared out toward the dark garden behind the house.

  Behind her, the parlor door opened, and she turned as Connor came inside. She could hardly breathe, hardly think as she stared at him. He had a broad, self-satisfied grin on his face and a spring to his step as he shut the door behind him and looked around the messy room.

  “By God, that went well,” he said with a laugh.

  She folded her arms. “With your father?”

  His smile fell and she saw his pain briefly. “No,” he admitted. “That went very badly.”

  Her anger toward him softened a fraction. “I’m sorry about that, Connor. I truly am.”

  He waved off the emotion with one hand. “These kinds of hurts can so often lead to greater things. If he hadn’t rejected me, I might never have formed my company with his money. And if he hadn’t mocked me tonight, I mightn’t have made my announcement about the Lady.”

  She swallowed. “What were you thinking, Connor?”

  His jovial mood vanished as he stared at her in genuine confusion. But of course he would be confused. He didn’t know who she was, what she was…not truly.

  “What do you mean?”

  She moved closer, her hands shaking at her sides no matter how she tried to control herself. “Why did you tell them that the Lady would write another book?”

  He shifted and she saw the discomfort on his face, but he covered it oh-so-well. She almost laughed. They were truly well matched, liars both of them, pretenders.

  “I received a correspondence from the Lady earlier today,” he lied. “She agreed to write a new book.”

  Grace folded her arms, a shield around her breaking heart. “Just in time for your triumph before Seth and Jason’s potential investors, not to mention in front of a man who despises what you do and you wish to hurt.”

  Connor arched a brow. “A happy coincidence in timing, indeed.”

  She stared at him and her anger, her upset boiled inside of her. She clenched her fists at her sides. “You are lying.”

  The moment she said the words, she wished she could take them back. She should have utilized her famous control, she should have hidden herself. But with Connor it was so hard. With Connor it seemed impossible.

  His eyes widened. “What do you mean?”

  “Exactly what I say,” she continued, too far gone down the path now to step away. Not when emotion guided her rather than reason.

  She moved to turn away from him, but he caught her elbow and spun her back, holding her in place as he stared down at her, searching her face for…something.

  Whatever he found, it made his mouth drop open.

  “How do you know?” he whispered.

  “I can see it,” she hissed, yanking herself free and pacing across the room.

 
He was right on her heels, like a hound on the hunt, not giving her quarter, not giving her breath.

  “How?” he pressed, cornering her against the wall and grasping her shoulders.

  She knew what she would say in that moment. She knew she shouldn’t. But she seemed to have no control over her voice, over herself as she wrenched away from him a second time and staggered a few steps out of his reach.

  “Because I’m her! I am the Lady.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  “I have never promised that passion might not bring pain. Proceed at your own risk.”—The Ladies Book of Pleasures

  Connor stared at Grace as her words sank past the ringing in his ears, into his skin, into his soul. She was pale as paper, shaking, and there was nothing on her face that said she was lying. Yet he shook his head in disbelief.

  “No,” he said and then repeated it again, as if it would make the denial stronger. “No. No.”

  Her face grew hard. “You don’t believe me?”

  He shook his head. Not because he didn’t, but because he couldn’t. The concept was so mind-boggling and so rife with betrayal and lies that he could scarcely digest any of it.

  She shrugged and walked to a small table across the room. She opened a drawer and removed a piece of expensive paper and a quill and ink. Swiftly she wrote a few words, then crossed back to him. She held it out.

  “You exchanged letters with the Lady for years, didn’t you?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he croaked out, shocked he could form the word when his throat was so dry.

  She forced the paper into his hands. “Then this should be irrefutable proof.”

  He looked down at what she had written and immediately recognized her handwriting. It was the same hand he had analyzed as he read and reread her words time and again.

  The handwriting of the Lady.

  Grace had scribbled, I’m her. Please leave.

  He stared at the dismissal, then back up at her. She stood, arms folded, lips trembling, anger and betrayal in her eyes. In her eyes, even though she had lied to him for weeks.

  He shoved the paper into his pocket and moved on her. “Oh no, my Lady…the Lady…whatever you wish to be called. It won’t be that easy.”

  She stepped away. “Just go, Connor.”

  “No. Not until you explain yourself. Explain this!”

  He was shouting now, but he couldn’t help himself. There was no control anymore. Not when he was standing staring at the woman he had been obsessed with twice. Once as the mysterious Lady and once as the submissive duchess who had bewitched him since their first meeting.

  Which one was the truth? Or was Grace only a lie from beginning to end?

  “What is there to tell?” she asked, her shoulders rolling forward. “I wrote a book.”

  “Please don’t sport with my intelligence,” he whispered.

  She looked up at him and nodded. “Very well. The truth. I suppose it is time to tell it so that at least one of us won’t be a liar.”

  He recoiled, but didn’t interrupt her.

  “It was a lark, really. A tome about how women shouldn’t only be passive partners in love or passion. I had been in Society for years and watched women, friends of mine, lost in empty marriages, empty lives.”

  “And what took you from mere scribblings to satisfy your frustrations to wanting to see your work available at large?” he asked, happy he could ask such reasonable questions when what he wanted to do was grab her, shake her, kiss her, scream at her.

  She sighed. “When I told you I read George Swan’s book, I meant it. His thoughts on love and death resonated with me, but I was also fascinated by how freely he discussed love-making. Some of his ideas danced on the outer edge of concepts I wanted to explore in much more depth in my own book. I thought perhaps if you liked him, you might be interested in me.”

  He looked her up and down, unable to express how very interested he had been when her scandalous manuscript had come across his desk along with a neatly written letter of introduction. A letter in the very hand that matched the one in his pocket.

  “Why the subterfuge?” he asked.

  She rolled her eyes at him. “Come, you always knew why. What was I to do? March into your office with a shocking book about sex and identify myself as the author? I couldn’t risk the ruination and shame that might befall me or my friends or my late husband’s family if I did so. So I engaged in an elaborate ruse, becoming An Anonymous Lady and filtering every correspondence through a wide network of unrelated solicitors and servants. None of them, save one, knew the real nature of whatever they handled at the time.”

  “Save one,” he repeated, numb and unable to stop staring at her, seeing his Lady and his Grace merge together into one confusing woman made of lies and beauty and utterly unexpected passion.

  “My servant, Maura, knew the truth only because she was the first link in every chain. She is also the person who wrote any correspondence between me, the real me, and you since your arrival in Society.”

  He shook his head. “That was why I didn’t recognize your handwriting earlier.”

  She nodded in the same matter-of-fact way she had spilled her darkest secret. Only her paleness revealed that she had any deeper feelings about the subject. If he listened to her tone, he might think she didn’t care a whit.

  “Who else knew?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “No one. I told no one.”

  “And what about me?” he asked, stepping toward her and feeling her desire to back away, even though she held her ground in the face of his anger and betrayal. “Why didn’t you tell me when I came into Society?”

  “Why would I?” she hissed, her wrath matching his. At least here he saw some kind of passion, not that icy exterior she presented to the world. “You walked into Society and you were trying to pretend you knew my identity, making a name for yourself off of my secret. At first, I feared telling you in case you might simply out me for your own gain.”

  He drew in a sharp breath. “I would never do that.”

  “Yes, I ultimately realized that…or thought I did. But by then things were…” She turned her face. “They were complicated, and you know why. Confession is not in my nature. Trust certainly isn’t—you know that as much if not more than anyone else. I didn’t want you to see me as the Lady, on the pedestal you had placed me upon as that person. I also didn’t want you to only view me as the financial boon I was for your company. Not when there was so much more between us when I was merely Grace.”

  “When were you ever merely Grace?” he asked, knowing the question would hurt her and rewarded by the way she turned away.

  “You can look at me as if I’m the worst person you have ever met,” she said softly. “But you lied as much as I did. You used me, even if you didn’t recognize me.”

  “Because of tonight?”

  She nodded, still keeping her face away from his, which only made him wonder further about her expression.

  “You pretended, you used, and when you were cornered by your feelings for your father—or his lack of feeling toward you—you lied.” She hesitated, and her breath caught. “I never thought you would outright lie about her…me.”

  He barked out a humorless laugh. “At least you are as confused as I am about her…you.”

  She faced him. “Why wouldn’t I be confused? I met you and you were…you were everything I knew you would be. And more. And less. You looked at me and saw something I didn’t even know I was, and yet you didn’t know me at all.”

  He arched a brow, both moved by and angered by her words.

  But anger was first, at least for now.

  “You are right, Your Grace,” he said, retreating back to their proper positions in life. Ones he ought not have ever challenged with desire. “I never knew you at all. Now, if you will excuse me.”

  He turned to leave the room, but she was immediately at his heels. “Wait, wait.”

  He turned back, holding his breath even though he w
asn’t exactly certain what he hoped she would say. She hesitated, and he could see her mind turning on that very subject. Finally she said, “Will you reveal the truth?”

  His heart dropped. That was the one thing he didn’t want to hear.

  “It seems, my lady, that you also never knew me either,” he said softly. “Your secret is, as it always has been and always will be, safe with me. Good evening.”

  He walked out, and it was the most difficult thing he had ever done to not look back at her.

  By the time he staggered into his home a few hours later, Connor was well aware that he was deep in his cups. It should have numbed the pain, made him forget what he what had happened with Grace, but somehow he felt even worse about the situation. He ran what she had said over and over in his head, scrutinizing every word, every expression.

  She was the Lady. His Lady. How had he not known, not sensed it? Or had he? It was all so very confusing.

  He thought of her letters, the ones she had written to him over the years while they worked together. Perhaps if he looked at them, he would see the situation more clearly. He would see the connection between the woman of his fantasies and the one of reality.

  He waved off the assistance offered by Higgins, ignored whatever the butler was saying to him and stumbled down the hallway to his office.

  When he opened the door, he was surprised to see Adrian there, leaning over Connor’s side of the desk, a drawer open. When he stepped into the room, his friend straightened up, shutting the drawer and looking him up and down.

  “Drunk?” he asked, his eyes wide.

  “A brilliant deduction,” Connor hiccupped, though he knew why Adrian was stunned by this turn of events. He rarely drank at all anymore, and certainly not to excess. “What were you doing in my things?”

  Adrian came around the desk with a shake of his head. “Looking for some paperwork related to a manuscript. Great God, let me help you before you fall over.”