Grayson squirmed. He should be concerned with his future wife’s comfort, but he’d considered only his own comfort when he’d left Lady Willow to hare off after Henrietta. How could he be comfortable if his own wife befriended his ex-fiancée? Could he guarantee he wouldn’t dream of the one while sharing a bed with the other? To do so would make him the lowest of cretins.
He finally answered her. “I do not see how such a friendship would benefit anyone.” And if Lady Willow should ever discover the true nature of their relationship … Grayson dashed his fingers through his hair. Impossible. Horrifying.
Henrietta stepped closer. “Grayson, you will be a kind husband, but …”
In her pause, Grayson heard more than silence. He heard Henrietta saying his name over and over again. Not “Lord Rigsby” or “my lord,” but Grayson. And the syllables ricocheted through him, loosening his clenched muscles and driving him wild at the same time.
Had his brother not died. Had he not become heir, Henrietta would have already been his, a thousand times over. His wife, his lover. His. Her use of his name jolted the truth loose from between his lips. “I’m not a good man, Henrietta,” he bit out. At least he didn’t feel like a good man at the moment. He felt trapped by goodness and desperate to escape. “If you insinuate yourself into my future wife’s life, you’ll be insinuating yourself into my life, too, and I cannot promise I will not hurt her, then, no matter how much I wish not to.”
She’d bristled at the word “insinuating,” but now she’d gone still as a statue. “What do you mean, exactly?”
Careful of thorns, he picked a rose and closed the distance between them. He lifted the flower’s petals to his lips and kissed them, then brushed the petals against Henrietta’s wide, sensuous mouth. She breathed, and the inhalation moved her entire body.
His fingers grazed her hair, tucking the rose into her curls. Then he slid his hands away from her jaw, her cheeks, dropping them by his side. But his body knew what it wanted and listed forward, closer, a breath’s space between them. “I mean I cannot seem to forget you, no matter that you ripped out my heart and ground it into dust beneath your heel.” Where was the venom in his words? They should be dripping in it, but they were calm, controlled, factual. “If you are in Lady Willow’s life, my life, I may be unable to control myself.” Her lips were brighter than the rose he’d placed in her hair, and he remembered what she tasted like—tea and sunshine.
Her blue eyes widened. Her breath hitched with a slight part of her rose-kissed lips. He pulled away, clutching his hands into tight fists. They would not be Grayson-kissed lips.
She stepped back, putting even more distance between them. “I don’t believe you. You would never treat your wife in such a way, no matter what friends she kept. Neither would I. Do not play with me.”
She knew him well. No matter what he desired, what his body screamed for, he’d never sleep with another woman once married to Lady Willow, not even a willing Henrietta Blake. He knotted his fingers behind his neck and paced away from her.
“I will work with Lady Willow,” Henrietta said, standing her ground. “But you’ll not have to worry about me rising above my station and seeking her out as a social connection. It’s to be a business relationship. I’m going to dress her, make her fashionable and confident. You may do as you please.” Her fingers rose, trembling, to her almost-kissed lips. She huffed a small laugh, bereft of true mirth. “Do you know, when I offered to end our engagement last year, I’d hoped you would not let me do it. I’d hoped you would fight me, call me a fool. But you did not. You knew then what I know now. After your brother’s death, we could never be together.” She turned from him. “Go back to Lady Willow, Lord Rigsby.”
She disappeared into the house, but her words remained, sharper than the thorns of the roses surrounding him. She’d not meant what she’d said last year when she’d ended their engagement. He’d figured that out eventually. She’d wanted him to fight her own ingrained sense of propriety for them both, and he’d failed. Or rather, he’d failed to do so soon enough. He had run after her a month later, after the shock of his brother’s death and his own social elevation and change of destiny had worn off. But it had been too late. She’d been engaged to another man.
But why had she done so if she’d not forgotten him, if she’d wanted him to fight for them, for her?
Grayson scratched the spot behind his ear, remembering Henrietta’s ringless fingers. She was not married now, and she did not speak of a betrothal. “Confusion, thy name is Henrietta Blake,” Grayson groaned. He tucked another rose into his waistcoat pocket, a taunting reminder of the lips he had not kissed.
She had a point, though: he could never consider marrying Lady Willow with such confused emotions coursing through him. He’d have to seek out the Duke of Valingford and inform him the engagement everyone expected to happen may not happen at all. He would speak to Lady Willow, too.
He entered the parlor Henrietta had disappeared into, but she had left it. Her absence was for the best. He couldn’t keep storming after Henrietta. At least not until he’d spoken with the duke. Besides, no matter whom he married or when, he’d need the necklace sooner or later. He still had a mission to complete—find the necklace. He hadn’t searched this room yet, and though he saw no reason the necklace would be hiding a year later in a room he and Henrietta had never been in together, he might as well be thorough.
But each time he turned over a pillow, each time he hit the floor on palms and knees to peek underneath a piece of furniture, the question cornered him. Not a question about what happened to the necklace, but about the mystery man Henrietta had supposedly been engaged to.
He had two mysteries to solve now, it seemed.
Chapter 6
The Duke of Valingford looked out onto the lawn from three floors up, his hands clasped behind his back. Who did his daughter speak with? The hostess, Lady Stonefield, he recognized. He wouldn’t choose for his daughter to fraternize with such a woman. The woman loved her husband too openly and wore her flamboyantly red hair with pride. But she was a necessary conversational partner, he supposed. One could not ignore one’s hostess.
The other young lady he could not place. She dressed plainly but neatly, as far as he could see from his distant vantage point. But he doubted a closer view of her would provide any other telling details. He wouldn’t know her, which meant she wasn’t worth knowing, which meant his daughter should not be speaking with her.
Annoyance bristled along the ridge of his shoulders. He couldn’t extricate Lady Willow from the conversation, as much as he desired to. He would not descend to such rudeness. But he would make Willow know, later and in private, that such an acquaintance would not be tolerated. The Duke of Valingford’s daughter would not lower herself to befriend a … whoever the woman was.
It didn’t matter. The conversation was temporary, and his daughter would not make friends without his express permission. He needn’t worry.
But worry niggled him nonetheless, worry in the missing form of Lord Rigsby. Valingford had sent his wife out to find the young man and push him toward their daughter, which she’d done before directly abandoning the task and leaving Lord Rigsby to hare off after another woman.
Truly, third floors must have been invented for the distinct purpose of information gathering. They were indispensable. Valingford rocked back on his heels and turned sharply away from the view. He sank into an armchair in front of the dwindling fire and steepled his fingers under his chin. Youth these days were intolerably stupid. Consider his own daughter and Lord Rigsby, both blessed in family and fortune and marriage prospects, yet the boy couldn’t seem to make a proposal and the girl appeared unable to encourage him to do so. They were a match made in heaven, or on a financial statement, and yet neither seemed to care about bringing such a union to fruition.
If he was one to sigh, he would. But sighing indicated weakness, and he never showed weakness.
A knock on the door.
Valingford rose to his feet with slow deliberation as the very man who had just occupied his thoughts slipped into the room, closing the door softly behind him.
Lord Rigsby bowed. “Your Grace, I would like to speak with you if you have a moment.”
