“Heavens,” Sophie muttered under her breath. “And that officer over there—” she cocked her head slightly towards the right “—can’t seem to take his eyes off you.”
Officer? Ellie glanced in the direction Sophie had indicated and standing next to a park bench stood not one, but two army officers in regimentals, and… Oh, good heavens! It couldn’t be! Her eyes locked with his, and her heart leapt.
Griffin Reid!
Was it really?
Without a thought about decorum, Ellie unlinked her arm with Sophie’s and bolted across Rotten Row. “Griffin Reid!” she cried, then she threw her arms around the army captain’s neck. Heavens, it had been too long since she’d seen him. And how wonderful it was to see him now! Griff’s arms tightened a bit around her waist, and she tightened hers about his neck.
“Elspeth,” Sophie said from behind her, “you’re making a scene.”
“Oh!” She probably was. Ellie slid from Griff’s embrace and smiled up at him. He was indeed, a sight for sore eyes. Heavens, how long had it been? “I just couldn’t believe it was ye! I thought ye were at Achmore. Ian will be so glad to hear ye’re in Town. How long are ye staying? Ye must come to MacLaren House this afternoon!” Her words all flew out in a rush, but she couldn’t help it. How wonderful to see him, so whole and hale and standing right before her.
“Afternoon, Ellie,” Griff grumbled faintly.
“Oh, good heavens!” she gushed. “Ye hardly look like yourself.” And he didn’t. Griffin Reid had left the shores of Lake Ericht a small, skinny lad with bony knees all those years ago. But now, standing before her, was quite an impressive sight as far as Highlanders went. He’d filled out quite nicely since she’d seen him last. His shoulders were twice as broad, and he must have grown nearly a foot. And handsome, he was most definitely handsome in a dangerous sort of way. His dark hair that brushed the top of his collar, his silvery eyes that seemed as though they’d seen quite a bit of the world. But then, that probably came from years spent upon one battlefield or another and trekking across the continent for nearly a decade.
“I could say the same about ye,” Griff returned softly as his eyes appraised her from the top of her head to the tips of her slippers. A bit of awareness washed over Ellie and her cheeks warmed. Of all the people she expected to see today, Griffin Reid was not one of them. And how dashing he looked in his regimentals.
“Who is this, Elspeth?” Sophie asked, breaking Ellie from her reverie.
“Sophie, this –” she smiled at Griff “—is Captain Griffin Reid. He’s a neighbor and an old friend of the family.” Then she turned her attention to the other fellow, a tall dark-haired man standing with Griff and said, “And, well, I don’t know ye, sir.”
“Lady Elspeth MacLaren, Lord Healeyfield.” Griff gestured between the two of them with a sweep of his hand.
“She hardly looks like a bairn to me.” Lord Healeyfield lifted his brow in amusement. Though what that meant, Ellie had no idea, nor did she truly care. It was hard to focus on anything other than Griffin Reid at the moment.
“No one asked you,” Griff muttered under his breath.
Ellie felt Sophie’s eyes on her and she glanced towards the girl. “Oh, and this is my friend, Miss Sophia Hampton,” she said as she once again linked her arm with her friend’s. “Sophie, Captain Reid and Lord Healeyfield.”
“A pleasure to meet you both.” His lordship nodded in greeting.
Griff grunted something, but Ellie couldn’t quite hear what. He was behaving oddly. Was he not happy to see her? He had been at first, hadn’t he? Had she said something that annoyed him?
“I am hoping you can be of assistance,” Lord Healeyfield said, breaking Ellie of her reverie. “We are looking for someone.”
Perhaps that explained Griff’s odd behavior. “Someone?” Ellie echoed, her eyes darting back to the strapping Highlander. “Who?”
Griff heaved a sigh and said, “We’re trying to find Miss Throssell, Ellie. If ye see her, do point her out please.”
Miss Throssell? Ellie blinked up at the handsome captain. Why in the world would he be looking for that odd girl? “Wilhelmina Throssell?” she clarified.
“Indeed.” Griff nodded, his jaw firmly set.
Ellie’s heart squeezed a bit. “Why are you looking for her?” And how would he even know her? Wilhelmina Throssell was the strangest girl of Ellie’s acquaintance. Always speaking nonsense and keeping to herself. Odd in every way. Certainly not someone who should have ever captured Griff’s notice. That he should be looking for her didn’t make any sense at all.
“Have ye seen her or not, Ellie?”
“I don’t see her right this moment,” she returned, hoping she kept the waspishness from her voice. But really, that was slightly difficult to do. Griff seemed more than determined to find Miss Thorssell for some reason, but didn’t look pleased in the least to have stumbled upon Ellie instead. That wasn’t terribly complimentary, all things considered. “Why are ye looking for her, Captain Reid?” she asked once more.
Griff shrugged. “We served under her father. We heard she was in the park today and just wanted to say hello is all.”
Served under her father? An odd reason to seek someone out. In fact, it didn’t sound as though Griff knew anything about the girl, other than her name. Why would he want her to point Miss Throssell out otherwise? “Hmm.” There was definitely something he wasn’t telling her. Ellie leveled her eyes on the captain, hoping she could figure him out as well as she’d once been able to do. “Ye wanted to say hello to her, but ye don’t know what she looks like. Am I understanding ye perfectly?”
“Just point out the girl’s direction, Ellie,” Griff growled.
He was most definitely up to something, but she wouldn’t get the answer out of him by simply asking. That was quite obvious. So she’d just have to find out using a different tactic. Ellie shrugged coyly. “I’ll be happy to help ye, Griffin, b—”
“How very kind of you,” he cut her off.
“But,” she pressed forward, “I need a little help myself.”
“Of course ye do. What do ye want, Ellie?” He folded his arms across his chest, just like he always had when he was being more than stubborn.
She shrugged once more, determined not to seem flustered by his temperament. Besides, she did need something and Griff was the perfect man to help her with her current predicament. “Well, I was hoping someone could find out which event a certain earl planned on attending this evening. I would ask Ian to help me, but he’s being rather difficult of late.”
Griff’s mouth dropped slightly open. “A certain earl?” he echoed incredulously. Not that he had any reason in the world to sound that way. He was the one searching out the very strange Miss Throssell and being rather evasive about his motives, after all.
“The Earl of Peasemore to be exact,” she told him. “If ye could learn his plans, I would be quite happy to help ye locate Miss Throssell.” Well, not quite happy, but Griff didn’t need to know that part.
Griff’s jaw tightened. “Ye haven’t changed one bit.”
She flashed him her most charming smile. “Does that mean we have a deal?”
Griff snorted in response. “Making deals with MacLarens never turns out well for anyone.”
“What an uncharitable thing to say.” Ellie tipped her nose slightly higher in the air. “I am happy to help ye, Captain Reid. It’s only fair I should get a little help in return, don’t ye agree?”
“Never mind. We’ll find her on our own,” Griff replied as his gaze turned to the pedestrians walking along the row.
Blast he was stubborn! One way or the other she would find out what he wanted with Wilhelmina Throssell, and one way or the other she was going to get his assistance with Lord Peasemore.
Ellie batted her eyelashes. “Please, Griff,” she said, stepping closer to him. “Ye could easily find out for me. All ye’d have to do is go to one of the clubs he frequents and ask the question. That’s
all.”
“What do ye want with this Peasemore?”
“Well, that’s none of yer concern,” she retuned quickly. Besides, why should she tell him her plans for Lord Peasemore if he wouldn’t share his for Miss Throssell? “But if ye help me, I’ll help ye in return.”
Griff glanced over his shoulder at Lord Healeyfield. “I do hope ye realize what a good friend I am.” He didn’t wait for his lordship to respond, but turned back to Ellie and said, “I’ll find out about Peasemore. Now tell him—” he cocked his head towards Lord Healeyfield “—where we can find Miss Throssell.”
Well, that was something. At least she’d find out which event Lord Peasemore meant to attend. She smiled brightly at Lord Healeyfield. “She keeps very much to herself, my lord. I don’t believe I have ever seen her walk along Rotten Row. In fact, I’m not certain if I have ever seen her outside of a ballroom, but even then she stays to the far edges as though she’s afraid someone will speak to her.”
A crease settled on his lordship’s brow. “She was supposed to be here. In the park today. She must be here.”
Ellie wasn’t certain why they would think such a thing, but the idea was most definitely a ludicrous once. “I haven’t seen her.”
“Neither have I,” Sophie added. “But perhaps she isn’t walking the row. Perhaps she’s enjoying a picnic or talking to the squirrels or something like that.”
That did sound like something Miss Throssell would do.
“Talking to the squirrels?” Lord Healeyfield echoed, incredulity lacing his words.
“That is possible,” Ellie agreed. “She did tell me once that one only had to pay attention to what birds were saying. I thought it was some sort of metaphor, but after giving it more thought, I do believe she meant actual birds and not something else.”
His lordship’s frown deepened. “We are talking about the same lady? Wilhelmina Throssell.”
Ellie nodded. “I don’t imagine there are two of them.” Just the idea made a chill race up her spine.
Lord Healeyfield heaved an unhappy sigh. “Can you at least tell me what she looks like?”
This entire exchange was very odd. Almost as odd as Miss Throssell herself.
“She has dark hair,” Sophie said. “She usually wears it in a chignon.”
“Light eyes. Grey, silver, light blue. Something like that. I’m not entirely sure,” Ellie added. “She’s slender, about my height. A nice smile, though she doesn’t smile all that much.”
“She’d be pretty if…” Sophie shrugged. “Well, if she wasn’t so odd.”
Truer words were never spoken. Miss Throssell was pretty, until one spent time with her. Then one couldn’t quite look at her the same any longer.
“I suppose we should see if we can find her,” Griff said. “And if that should fail, we do know she’ll be at the Ridgemonts’ this evening.”
The duo was quite adamant about finding Miss Throssell, which made less sense the more Ellie thought about it. She certainly didn’t believe that Banbury Tale about wanting to say hello to the girl simply because they’d served under her father. They had some sort of agenda. Very odd, that. But she’d find out what Griff was up to, one way or another.
“Griff,” she began, making her voice a bit more breathy than it had been up ‘til now. “When ye learn where Lord Peasemore plans to be this evening, do come to MacLaren House to tell me. I’m certain Ian would love to see ye.” And without Lord Healeyfield or Sophie Hampton about, she’d get the truth out of him, once and for all.
Captain Griffin Reid’s blood was boiling. Honestly, he wasn’t even sure why, but that was often the case with Ellie MacLaren. From the time she could walk, she’d twisted his insides into a ball just as easily as she could crumple a piece of foolscap in her hand.
He’s a neighbor and an old friend of the family. Truly! That’s how she introduced him to that English girl? As an old friend of the family! Ellie was his bloody fiancée, no matter that he wasn’t happy about the fact. But that was beside the point. He was more than just a bloody friend of the family, and she well knew it.
And then to ask him to play spy for her, to gather information about some other man! Griff snorted. Once again, the MacLaren gall knew no bounds. And Ellie was the worst of them. Worse than her deceitful uncle. Worse than her managing father. Worse than her blackguard of a brother. Beyond all of that, she was - without a doubt - the single most maddening female in existence, and she always had been.
The way she made her flaxen curls bounce about her shoulders. The way she batted her pretty blue eyes at him. The way she could sound so innocent with that breathy voice of hers. The way…
Damn it all, she was even more beautiful than he’d remembered. Curse her for that.
“What is wrong with you?” his friend, the former Lieutenant-Colonel Nathaniel Carrick, now the 1st Viscount Healeyfield, asked as Ellie and the English girl walked away from them.
Griff turned his attention from Ellie’s departing backside to meet Nate’s gaze. “We’d better find yer Miss Throssell. Shall we split up? Cover more distance, looking for a chit talking to squirrels?” What did that even mean? It was the most ridiculous thing he’d ever heard. Who talked to squirrels for God’s sake?
“Honestly, the prospect terrifies me.” Nate cringed. “I have a sneaking suspicion that Throssell has duped me somehow.”
Griff was starting to suspect the same thing. And being duped was something he was quite familiar with. Anyone who grew up alongside the MacLarens would be an expert at such things. Still, he couldn’t quite imagine that the rigid Colonel Throssell possessed a daughter who sat around conversing with squirrels and birds. And after everything they’d been though together, he couldn’t quite image that Throssell would foist such a girl upon Nate. He’d always treated Nate like a son, but then Niall MacLaren had done the same with Griff all those years ago too, hadn’t he?
“You going to tell me what’s bothering you? Or are you just going to stand there, glaring at the world?” Nate interrupted Griff’s thoughts.
“Nothing is bothering me.” Nothing more than had bothered him over the last decade, anyway.
“You didn’t seem happy at all to see your intended, who by the by, is hardly the child you described earlier today in my study.”
Griff supposed that was true, though all of his memories of her were as a child. When he did think of Ellie, he always thought of her as the spirited lass who splashed about in the icy waters of Loch Ericht until she turned blue. He remembered the irritating gnat who’d flitted about whenever he and Ian wanted to build castles and forts, somehow always managing to negotiate her way into their games despite their best efforts to keep her from them. He recalled the pretty lass who never failed to make the humorless Lord Ericht do her bidding with just a few bats of her eyelashes. “We know where my intended is, Nate. Shouldn’t we start looking for yers?”
Nate shook his head. “Upon further thought, I think I like my chances better at the Ridgemont ball. If the girl truly does talk to squirrels, I’d rather not witness it with my own eyes. That’s not something I think I could easily forget.”
“Ellie was probably exaggerating,” Griff said, though he’d never known her to embellish the truth. Despite her many flaws, she was honest. Which was more than one could say for her ancestors.
“She seemed quite sincere to me.” His friend heaved a beleaguered sigh, which truly he was entitled to. After having been granted a viscountcy for his bravery on the battlefield, the crown had also bequeathed a crumbling abbey upon Nate’s shoulders. A crumbling abbey he had no funds to repair and a wealthy fiancée he’d never met who evidently spent her time conversing with squirrels. “Besides, you apparently need to seek out this Peasemore fellow,” Nate continued. “No need to peek around every bush in Hyde Park for Miss Throssell.”
Peasmore, whoever the devil he was, could go hang. “Our deal was that I’d find out the earl’s plans in exchange for her helping ye find Miss Throssell. But
just like a MacLaren, Ellie didn’t live up to her end of the bargain. And I’m not about to do her bidding in exchange for a mere description of the girl.”
An amused expression, the first Nate had worn since Griff’s arrival in London, settled on his friend’s face. “You’re not at all curious what your fiancée wants with another man? I’d want to know if I were you.”
“Nothing Ellie ever does makes sense,” Griff lied. One might not know what Ellie was ever up to, but she always had some sort of plan and went about accomplishing any task with a determination that would make any military commander squirm a bit in his boots. Damn it all. She was most definitely up to something, and he really should figure out what it was.
He could storm over to MacLaren House and demand answers from Ellie in front of her family, putting a rather quick end to whatever scheme she’d hatched. Or he could trail after her like a shadow, just as she’d done to him and Ian in their younger days until he discovered what she was about. Or…Or he could play the hand she’d dealt him and lull her into a false sense of security. That’s what she would do, anyway. And it might just be the best way to figure out what she was up to. But...Griff shook his head. “I don’t have the first clue where to find the Earl of Peasemore.”
Nate shrugged. “She said something about his club. Wroxham did insist upon sponsoring me at Whites. We could try there.”
That sounded like a colossal waste of time. Of all the places Peasemore, whoever the devil he was, could be, what were the odds it was at the one club Nate had access to? “So we’ve gone from one wild goose chase to another?”
“That does seem to be the case.” Nate laughed. “But, I’ve been staring at that stack of debts, piling up on my desk for days now. The distraction can only do me good.”
“Well,” Griff began, “anything to keep you from withering away behind that desk.”
Thankfully, Griff spotted a familiar looking dark-haired fellow just as soon as they crossed the threshold of Whites. A lieutenant from the 45th, if he remembered correctly. The man’s name wasn’t popping to mind, however. Everett, Emory. Something like that. He nodded towards the fellow across the room and said to Nate, “Ye recognize him over there?”
An Encounter at Hyde Park Page 18