Good God, the woman couldn’t mean … But she did. Her belief was written all over her face. In a room full to the seams with the most gently bred in society, the Duchess of Valingford guaranteed him her daughter would be a passive bed partner.
Well, one thinly veiled double entendre deserved another. His father’s voice told him not to, but he could not resist the impulse. “I am sure she’ll be quite good, but I don’t mind if she grabs me, Madam.”
Lady Valingford’s smile vanished. She understood his meaning, then.
Lady Willow blinked out of her blank stare and barked a strange laugh, earning a scolding glance from her mother.
Grayson smiled innocently, as if he had no idea what he’d said.
Would the ladies believe it? He granted them a questioning stare for good measure, enjoying the small rebellion from proper behavior. He decided to put them out of their misery. “I’m sorry. Did I say something untoward?” Lying came easily to him after a year of pretending to be someone else. “I simply meant Lady Willow did me no harm by grabbing my forearm just now. She’s too delicate to cause pain.”
The duchess’s face melted into one of approval.
“My apologies. I didn’t mean to suggest anything else.” Yes, he did, but he could hardly admit to having a little fun. He eyed the door to the gardens behind them. His verbal rebellion proved too small an escape. He needed into the night air, now, and he needed to speak with Henrietta, who moved further and further away from him with each breath. Grayson inched another foot toward the garden door.
“Go,” Lady Willow hissed, surprising him. Her head didn’t move from its concentrated stare in her mother’s direction, but the words definitely came from her. “Don’t make it worse than it already is, my lord.”
“Willow!” Her mother’s censorious cry rang across the room.
Grayson ran, darting backward into the crowd and out the door. He cast a look back at the ladies he abandoned as he passed through the French doors. The duchess’s eyes trained on her daughter whose face drained to the white of an empty slip of paper.
He should stay, support his fiancée-to-be who swung back and forth between personalities like a pendulum on a clock. But he couldn’t. Not if he planned to retrieve the necklace that would unite him to her.
He slipped through the crowd and into the garden, breathing in the cool night air and turning his face to the star-studded sky. The moon shone full, and a row of torches led down a garden path to a bowling green set up for evening sport. Had Henrietta joined the merry makers? Or taken one of the darker, more solitary paths further into the garden?
Grayson scratched his ear. It always itched when he couldn’t solve a problem. He chose the torchlit garden path. She’d been following Lady Collington and Miss Cavendish, after all. But how far ahead was she? Could he catch her before she joined the others on the lawn? If he ran, probably. His father’s voice rang through his mind. Dukes don’t run. Dukes never did anything.
But he needed to catch her. Quickly. He ran. It felt good, too, stretching his legs and lungs at the same time, letting the breeze wash his father’s voice from his ears. Even with the torches and the moon, the avenue hung dark and shadowy. He stumbled over a rock, but the almost fall had him laughing, exhilarated by the danger of running through a dark garden. Well, dangerous-ish. But he hadn’t done anything dangerous, or even dangerous-ish, in a year, so this slight misdemeanor pumped exhilaration through his chest.
He felt the body he careened into before he saw it.
“Ack!” the body screamed as it plummeted toward the earth.
He knew that voice, even in single-syllable distress.
Grayson wrapped his arms around Henrietta and twisted in the air so his back hit the garden path and she landed on top of him.
The force of the fall knocked the air from his lungs, and when he inhaled, her scent filled him up. She smelled like tea, had always smelled like tea. It’s why he couldn’t stomach the stuff now. For the first time in a year, with the scent of tea—of Henrietta—twisting around him, he felt light and free, not morose and angry. Her soft breasts pressed against his chest, rising up and down with each breath. She stared down, wide-eyed, her lips slightly parted. He wanted to touch his lips to hers, to see if they tasted like tea and honey as he remembered, but instead, he reached up and tucked a loose curl behind her ear. She had jilted him, become engaged to another man. He grasped for rage but identified only the pleasure of holding her soft form close.
His heart raced. Or did her racing heart beat through her chest and into his?
“Lord Rigsby? Oh!” She rolled off him and stood up, brushing her skirts. “Why in the world were you running down a dark path? Mercy!”
“My apologies. I wasn’t paying attention. Are you hurt?”
“No.” She tilted her head and peered up, squinting to see him through the shadows. “Why were you running? Escaping to the lawn for lawn bowls?”
Grayson blinked. “Lawn bowls? This late at night? How will anyone see to … to do anything?”
“That’s the fun of it, I suppose.”
It sounded rather fun. It sounded like the type of fun he used to have before becoming Viscount Rigsby. “Well,” he sniffed. “It’s impractical.” God, he sounded like his father, stuffy and strict. “I’m not rushing off for games. I have a purpose. I saw you slip into the garden and thought it the perfect opportunity for us to speak with one another.”
“Oh?” She sounded skeptical. “I see no words between us these days, my lord.”
He gestured toward a bench near the path. She hesitated, her hands fluttering about her skirts. She’d never fluttered before. Was she nervous? She sat, and Grayson released a breath he’d not known he held.
He eyed the bench. It wasn’t nearly as spacious as it had looked from the garden path. He didn’t want to crowd her, to scare her. Besides, his body reacted to hers in ways it shouldn’t, what with being days away from proposing to another woman. He perched on the bench’s farthest end, its edge cutting into him. He stifled a grimace, shifted uncomfortably, and locked his gaze on a bush across the avenue.
