The Secrets of a Lady

stroll around the park with Audrey and his parents, pretending she hadn’t kissed or touched him. “I believe I’ll stay here and out of the heat.”

His mother looked at him out of the corner of her brown eyes. With a smooth smile, she said, “I’ll remain with Griffin. Why don’t the three of you go ahead?”

Lord Ashton shrugged, looking at Audrey and Noah with a grin. “Shall we?”

After a flurry of finding hats and arranging carriages, the three departed. Griffin turned from the front door to find his mother staring at him with an intensity in her brown eyes he rarely saw.

“Come back to the morning room,” she said gently. “A bit of food will help settle your stomach and take away the headache too much alcohol has left behind.”

Griffin opened his mouth to protest her accusation, but she only arched an eyebrow with a smile, challenging him to deny the truth. He chose not to do so and instead took her arm and returned to the room as she’d asked.

She sat while he took a few muffins from the buffet and a small pile of eggs.

“What puts you in such a state, Griffin?” she asked when he returned to the head of the table. “Or have I already guessed the reason?”

With a frown, Griffin took a bite of his muffin. “Since I don’t know your guess, I couldn’t tell you if it’s correct or not. And I never said anything was bothering me beyond a slight pain of the head.”

“But you weren’t drinking at the ball last night,” she reasoned. “So that leads me to believe that you drank here. Alone. One who drinks alone makes liquor a partner in his troubles. What are yours?”

Griffin pursed his lips. As if his mother could ever understand.

“Audrey?” Her voice was barely above a whisper.

He jolted at her correct guess. Were his feelings so plain to the world? His mother knew, Noah… even Douglas Ellison suspected.

“Why would you say that?” he asked, determined to close the discussion.

“It’s in your eyes when you look at her. And in her eyes when someone says your name,” she said with a soft smile. “I would be more than pleased at the match, but I see it brings neither of you happiness. So what’s keeping you from each other?”

Griffin rubbed his eyes and tried a sarcastic laugh. It came out more as a sigh. “Mother, you’re an incurable romantic. Did it ever occur to you that love is not for everyone?”

“Don’t judge love on a bad experience with Luci,” she said with an angry frown. “Don’t shut out love because of fear.”

He rose to slam his empty plate back on the buffet. “I’m not afraid of anything.”

“You’ve been afraid for months!” his mother argued, rising out of her seat to face him. “You hide at Bentley Square, torturing yourself over a child…” she dropped her voice. “Who wasn’t even your own. And now you have love right in front of you and refuse to take the happiness you’re offered. A happiness others long for but never get the chance to find.”

Griffin shook his head, stunned by how much his mother had guessed. “You speak of what you do not know. I no longer wish to have this discussion with you.”

He turned to leave, to walk out on his mother for the first time in his life. Her soft hand on his sleeve held him back.

“Griffin.” The heat was gone from her voice. “Please. I’m sorry to pry, and perhaps you’re right. Perhaps I don’t know. But think about what I’ve said. Don’t discard something that could change your life for the better.”

He sighed and took his mother’s hands in his. She didn’t understand. She couldn’t understand the torture in his heart when it came to Audrey.

“Your counsel is always one I take with much consideration. But right now I’d much rather walk in the gardens and talk about happier subjects. Will you join me?”

Her eyes softened as she nodded and took his arm, but he didn’t fail to notice the troubled expression that lingered as well.

Chapter Eighteen

Audrey glanced at the man beside her with a grimace she could only hope resembled a smile. Lord knew the last thing she needed was for Douglas Ellison to suspect her disgust for him was growing by the moment.

He motioned to the tea set on the side table between them. “I’d like a drop more tea, my dear. Do you remember how I like it?”

Her nostrils flaring slightly, she gave him the most sweet and tender look she could muster. “Why with a drop of cream and two lumps of sugar, of course.”

“Exactly.” His fingers stroked the top of her hand. “It pleases me that you remember.”

“How could I forget?”

Her thoughts returned to how she’d taken copious notes on all of Ellison’s habits, memorizing them over the months she and Noah had been investigating the man.

She knew when he rose in the mornings, what he ate at meals, where he bought the expensive jackets and dandified shirts he wore to court her… the only thing she didn’t know was who the hell he worked with.

There were rumors he possessed a list with the names of his main associates and monetary backers, but no spy had found it yet. Even Jean, who she knew to be an exemplary, meticulous searcher, had come up empty handed on the one occasion he’d managed to get into the Ellison Mansion. With guards and high fences, the place was a stronghold.

“My dear,” Ellison’s voice ripped her from her reverie. “Your hands are shaking. Are you quite well?”

“What?” Audrey set the teapot back on the service with a clatter. “Yes, fine. I’m sorry, my mind was wandering.”

“Hmmm.” He took her cold hands in his own. “How I’d like to know where it went so I could bring it back to us.”

With an inward smirk, she wagered he would like to know her innermost thoughts. If he realized how much she despised him, how his touch sickened her every time she was forced to endure it, he would recoil from her. And if he knew her main purpose in life was to bring him and his allies to their knees, he would want her dead.

She drew her hands away with a modest blush. “It’s back to us now.”

One of the most amazing results of this act she was playing was that she no longer hated the norms of Society. As a girl she’d never quite grasped the rules and regulations that had governed courtship, but now she thanked the heavens for them nearly every day. Her blushing denials of Ellison’s advances were easily explained. She didn’t dislike him, no… she only wanted to maintain her dignity and morality.

“Very good.” His smile turned to a frown as she poured him his tea. “Because there is an important subject I wish to discuss with you.”

Two lumps of sugar fell from her spoon into his cup. She wished they were rat poison. “Really? And what is that, Douglas?”

“The ball at Burlington House,” he explained, nodding as he slipped the cup from her hand. His long, cold fingers rested on her skin for a fraction too long.

“Tomorrow, in honor of Wellington?” she asked, as if there were any other. Thousands of people had been invited, and if even half arrived it would be a jammed event indeed. It was all she and Noah had been able to talk about.

“Yes.” His voice had taken on the angry edge it always possessed when the subject of the Prince or his allies came up. “For Wellington.”

“What about it?” A shiver wracked her at the look of hatred in his eyes.

At the fete at Buckingham House a few days before, Audrey had watched as the handsome Wellington had