He shook his head. “It’s faster to head to Jermyn Street from here.” He saluted her. “I’ll see you tonight.”
He shut the carriage door and nodded to the coachman, then stood and watched the carriage rumble away.
Then he started walking down the lane. He would find a hackney in Russell Square and be at his lodgings in good time to wash and change.
As he walked, he pondered the feeling seeping into his gut. It took him a while to identify it, for he hadn’t felt the like in a very long time.
He was nervous. Keen and eager and strangely nervous over making a good impression on Izzy’s mother and sister.
Nonsensical, yet…
He emerged into Russell Square, spotted a hackney, and waved it down, and just for a minute, allowed himself to question where he was heading with what was fast becoming his pursuit of Isadora Descartes.
Then the hackney halted beside him, and he shook the distracting question aside and climbed in.
He was, as usual, operating on instinct—just as he had for the past very many years.
And over all those years, instinct had never steered him wrong.
Chapter 8
An hour and a half later, Gray was admitted to the Norfolk Crescent house by a benevolently smiling Cottesloe. The butler took his coat and hat, then led Gray to the drawing room and formally announced him to the company.
Izzy was already on her way to greet him. “Good evening, my lord, and welcome.” She was all sophisticated formality in a gown of pale-gray watered silk that made the most of her abundant charms, with the hue setting off her flawless complexion and lustrous dark hair to perfection.
Gray smiled, took the hand she extended, and equally formal, bowed over it. “Lady Isadora. It’s a pleasure to be here.”
She retrieved her hand and turned, gesturing to the four people gathered before the fireplace. “Allow me to introduce you to my mother, who I daresay you remember from long ago, and my sister, Marietta, our cousin Jordan Descartes, and our good friend Mr. Silas Barton.”
Gray had assumed others would be present, but hadn’t expected Silas Barton.
Deploying his customary urbanely charming mask, Gray bowed over the dowager countess’s hand and murmured appropriate responses to her greeting. The countess remained a fashionable, personable, and handsome woman; if he read her aright, she was in two minds over him, uncertain whether to disapprove mightily over his past flight—near enough to a jilting of her daughter—or instead, welcome him back, given he was helping Izzy and was even wealthier than he had been.
He hadn’t forgotten her role in his and Izzy’s past, but given the passage of years and the current situation, he was willing to let bygones be.
Seated beside the countess, Izzy’s sister, Marietta, blithely gave him her hand, her curiosity regarding him and, even more, his connection to her sister undisguised.
He bowed over her hand. “Lady Marietta, it’s a pleasure to meet you. I understand you made your come-out this year.”
“I did, indeed.” Marietta all but bounced on the sofa. “But I understand that you weren’t in London at the time.”
The words were more question than statement. He smiled. “I believe I was in Boston at that time.”
Izzy looped her arm in his and drew him on to meet her cousin, who was standing before the fireplace.
Jordan appeared to be a young sprig a few years older than Marietta and, if his black-and-white-striped waistcoat was any indication, plainly seeking to cut a dash. He grasped the hand Gray offered and shook it vigorously. “I say, Izzy mentioned this dead photographer she stumbled over. Rum business, what?”
“Jordan!” The countess frowned at him. “I told you—no more talk of murder in my drawing room.”
Jordan arched his brows. “But I didn’t mention murder, Aunt Sybil—you did.”
The countess flapped a hand at him. “Dreadful boy! I don’t wish to hear more of that matter in any way, shape, or form this evening.” She directed a pointed look his way, then skated the same warning look over Izzy and Gray, before leaning sideways to fix it on Silas Barton. “I wish us all to enjoy a pleasant evening of civilized conversation, and I would rather not hear about that subject at all.”
Silas—older, solidly built, rather grizzled, and dressed in sober but well-cut clothes Gray would have said had been deliberately chosen to make him appear unremarkable—huffed. “Can’t blame the lad for being interested, Sybil. Not every day a murderer comes calling, and I admit to being rather curious myself, but”—he held up a placating hand—“as you wish it, we’ll refrain from mentioning the subject.”
The countess humphed and subsided, much like a chicken settling ruffled feathers.
Izzy exchanged a look with Jordan and drew Gray on to meet Silas Barton.
