Grace (5 page)

Grace shrugged and looked around, wrinkling her nose with the air of someone who really had no interest in what others thought of her. “You’re a stranger to Pelthamshire. We don’t get many of those here.” She raised suddenly curious eyes to Trevor’s. “You mentioned a title?”

“It’s not important,” he said dismissively, wanting to preserve the pleasant sense of companionship that had sprung up between them for as long as possible. He sensed that, once she knew of his nobility, she would be far less open and unassuming.

“But it is,” she insisted, her brow furrowed in thought. “Why would a handsome, titled stranger suddenly appear in Pelthamshire, claim he was looking for me”—she paused, trying to think back to what he had already said, then narrowed her eyes, adding slowly—“and already know my name?”

“Do you really?”

“Do I really what?” she asked, distracted, as he intended,
by the question that deliberately did not relate to the conversation.

“Do you really think I’m handsome?” He raised both eyebrows and cocked his head in an exaggerated, preening gesture.

Despite herself, Grace burst into sudden, musical laughter, causing the guests, who had begun to lose interest, to start watching their byplay with renewed attention. “All right,
my lord,
” she said with intentional emphasis. “Enough distractions. Now, really, how did you know my name?” Her eyes glowed with pure enjoyment as she tilted her head back to look up at him, her wide smile causing a distracting dimple to appear on each side of her mouth. “Did Faith put you up to posing as a nobleman? Or was it Patience? I know they both think that I’m at my last prayers, but really, I’m not, sir. If I marry, I’ll marry when I’m ready and not a moment before.” She looked through the crowd for one of her sisters, but did not see them anywhere.

Trevor stopped dancing and drew her hand through his arm, resolutely ignoring the fetching dents in her cheeks. He led her toward the French doors she had so desperately wanted to reach earlier, the curious eyes of the entire village following. Whispering began as soon as they stepped outside, most guests wondering about the mysterious man who seemed so familiar with Grace Ackerly. Those who had spent time in London and already knew his identity hastened to spread their knowledge. Before the doors had completely closed behind Grace and Trevor, nearly everyone in the room knew the noble identity of the handsome stranger who had just disappeared out onto the darkened terrace with Grace.

A few steps from the door, Grace stopped and pulled on his arm to halt Trevor, an inexplicable sense of alarm threading through her. He turned to face her, his eyes a deep, rich jade, gentle in the flickering torchlight from the
gardens that bathed them both in a warm orange glow. He did not make her wait. “My friend and I are traveling to his new home, which lies about two hours west of here. We stopped to dine at the inn on the edge of the village and encountered your younger sister Mercy.”

At this alarmingly ambivalent statement, Grace’s eyes grew round, and Trevor took her hands in his, speaking hastily to reassure her.“She’s just fine, Grace, really. She admired Sebastian’s team, and when we left, unbeknownst to us, she followed us alongside the road on horseback for a short way. While she was trying to get ahead of us for whatever reason, she jumped a hedge onto the road in front of our vehicle and simply miscalculated just how close she would be to the coach when she landed. Her horse spooked and threw her, and she got a rather nasty bump on the head, but we got her home all right, and . . .” He trailed off at the sudden look of blazing anger on Grace’s face.

She pointed a shaking finger at him, then actually poked him in the shoulder with it to punctuate each word. “What took you so long to tell me?” She whirled away from him, storming back inside in a flurry of green silk skirts to search for her father and sisters.

“The opportunity hadn’t exactly presented itself,” he muttered dryly. He strode after her, now oblivious to the renewed stares of the villagers, his long legs easily eating up the distance her furious pace had put between them. “Miss Ackerly, if you’ll just slow down, I’ll be happy to explain.”

“Explain what? That you nearly killed my sister, and thought you’d slip that information to me between partners on the dance floor?” She tossed the words over her shoulder at him.

“You’re hardly being fair, Grace,” he pointed out reasonably.

“Fair!” she hissed. She rolled her eyes skyward and took a deep breath. “Well, at least make yourself useful and have
our carriage brought around.” She stopped walking and peered at the crowd in search of her father or one of her sisters, giving Trevor a second to stop and gather his thoughts, but before he could say anything, she rounded on him again. “I don’t suppose you had sense enough to summon a physician?” Without waiting for an answer, she threw up her hands in disgust and hurried away.

Struck speechless by Grace’s rapid veer from scathing contempt to unaffected friendliness, then to a demonstration of one of the quickest tempers he had ever witnessed, Trevor stared after her, then looked around the room at the now blatantly distrustful faces of the villagers. He shook his head and shrugged at them in rueful apology, then turned to do as Grace had told him and have the Ackerly carriage brought around. He smiled inwardly. He wondered what the ton would make of the powerful Earl of Huntwick meekly following the orders of a small, angry girl from the country.

T
he Ackerly carriage careened into the drive and pulled up in front of the house, spewing gravel in its wake. It halted with an abrupt jerk just as Trevor stepped out of Sebastian’s coach and started up the steps to the door. Trevor stopped, watching with interest as Grace hurtled out of the vehicle and ran past him up the stone steps without sparing so much as a glance in his direction. She burst through the front door and slammed it closed behind her with a loud bang, showing little concern for the fragile panes of expensive glass in the windows to either side. Trevor shrugged, shook his head with an inward smile, and looked back at the carriage. He watched as an older gentleman, whose face he remembered from the portrait room, stepped down from the carriage and extended a hand to assist the two ladies inside. Fully expecting to see two more Mercy look-alikes emerge from the dim confines of the small carriage, Trevor noted with surprise the tall, willowy blondes who stepped, one at a time, out onto the cobbled drive. Their faces set in grim worry, the trio hurried inside, followed at a more leisurely pace by Trevor, who already knew that they would most likely find Mercy sitting up in bed, cheerfully recounting the accident that had brought the two strangers into their home.

When he stepped inside, Trevor noticed Bingham Ackerly standing at the foot of the stairs, deep in conversation with Sebastian. Not wanting to interrupt, Trevor politely gave the two men a wide berth and instead went back into the portrait room in search of some refreshment. Finding the room empty, he helped himself to a glass of brandy. He smiled with wicked intent at the portrait of Grace on the wall above the piano as he poured. The young lady had proven far more interesting than he had even begun to imagine when he had first seen her portrait. He recalled her spirited fury at the Assembly Rooms when he had told her what had happened to Mercy. Giving her likeness a last, lingering look, he sauntered back to the open doorway and leaned a shoulder against the frame to wait for Sebastian to conclude his conversation.

Grace appeared at the top of the curving staircase. She still wore the dress she had worn to the dance, a simply cut high-necked gown of shimmering emerald silk. A wide ribbon collar of forest green velvet encircled her slender throat, then ran vertically down the front of the gown to border the hem in broad, sweeping scallops. Cut to loosely skim the contours of her body, the dress really had no waistline at all, only small darts to lightly cinch it in, giving one a subtle impression of the slender curves that lay hidden beneath. She wore no jewelry at all, and styled her bright hair in a simple loose knot at the crown. Several wayward strands had escaped to curl around her face and shoulders, dramatically softening what would have been a rather severe hairstyle on such a small girl into one that both flattered and allured. The tips of dark green velvet slippers peeped from beneath the hem as she gracefully held up her skirts to keep from tripping as she made her poised descent. Recalling the unladylike way she had rushed from the carriage into the house, Trevor grinned at
the complete transformation she had undergone in the past fifteen minutes.

She stopped at the foot of the stairs for a moment, curtsied to Sebastian, then spoke quietly with her father, informing him of Mercy’s condition and prognosis. She felt Trevor watching her as he lounged in the doorway across the room, and glanced toward him. She fought the sudden inexplicable urge to lift her skirts, turn her back on the smirking earl, and sprint back up the stairs to the safety of her bedchamber. But remembering the way she had shrewishly raged at him at the Assembly Rooms, Grace felt, at the very least, she owed him an apology. After all, the accident truly had not been his fault, and he
had
merely tried to help.

One brow raised in amusement, Trevor watched her surreptitiously glance in his direction and hesitate, biting her lower lip as if in indecision. He could easily read the direction of her thoughts, for the changing expressions on her candid face revealed nearly everything. She knew she owed him an apology for the way she had spoken to him, yet she remained angry with him for not letting her know right away the reason he had come to the dance, so she therefore felt that
he
also owed
her
an apology. Apparently she managed to sort it all out in her mind. She excused herself to her father and Sebastian, squared her shoulders as if to bolster herself for an unpleasant encounter, and began to walk toward Trevor, the former cloudy look on her face replaced with a gracious, apologetic smile.

When she reached Trevor, she curtsied prettily, then extended him her hand, her face tilted up to his, her blue eyes sincere. “Please, my lord, can you forgive my earlier behavior? Mercy and I are very close, you see . . .” She left the sentence incomplete, her eyes turning grave at the thought of what might have happened to her young sister.
He watched her swallow hard. “I just wanted to thank you for getting her home so quickly,” she finished with a small catch in her voice.

The unshed tears that brimmed without shame in Grace Ackerly’s enormous eyes turned them from glittering sapphire to a startling, luminous turquoise. Usually a woman’s tears made Trevor feel one of two ways: annoyed when they were used as a manipulative tool by one of his mistresses, or very uncomfortable. Oddly, Grace’s tears inspired a far different reaction. He had the urge to gather her into his arms to try to soothe them away for her.

“It was really Sebastian’s doing,” he said, checking the impulse. Instead, he smiled down at her tenderly. In his mind he bent his head over hers and took her troubled, upturned face between his hands, gently kissing her slightly parted lips until she trembled in his arms and forgot her worries. Grace looked suddenly uncomfortable, and the vision vanished. Trevor ruefully realized that, while he had fantasized about kissing her, he had kept her small hand warmly imprisoned within both of his. Reluctantly he released it, watching her reaction closely, as though observing some sort of wild, exotic bird he had just released, one that might flit fearfully away at any moment. Without removing his eyes from hers, he gestured toward the two large chairs near the fireplace in the room behind him. “Would you care to sit and talk with me for a moment?”

Grace hesitated. She looked down at his burgundy-clad arm, then nodded slowly and placed her hand gingerly in the crook of his elbow.

Such a distrustful little creature, Trevor thought as he escorted her to one of the comfortable chairs. He made certain she was properly settled before seating himself in the chair opposite. As he sat, he noticed, for the first time, the portrait that hung on the wall directly opposite the picture of Grace. He had not seen this one before because he had
been so engrossed in Grace’s picture while Amity had described the rest to him. What he saw in that portrait made him grin widely, a sudden lazy smile that swept across his lips, making the rugged planes of his face almost boyishly charming.

Grace saw him smile. Puzzled, she looked over her shoulder in the direction of his gaze, then back at Trevor quizzically. He gestured at the portrait of two identical girls with the now familiar curly red hair and laughing blue eyes. “That portrait answers quite a few questions,” he said, shaking his head with a low chuckle.

“The portrait of Amity and Charity?” She raised a dubious eyebrow. “Whatever have they done now?” Amused tolerance softened her guarded features.

He gave a short, sharp bark of laughter when she said their names. “I’ve been introduced to Amity, and found her quite delightful, but I find it rather hard to believe that somebody actually named that little spitfire Charity.” He shook his head, still laughing softly. “I gather she’s a bit more excitable than her twin?”