“Grace?”
She looked up and smiled.
“I’d like to ask you something.”
Grace closed the magazine, marking her place with one finger. Her expression was expectant.
Adam walked across to the sofa and sat down alongside her. “Did you tell anyone about what happened on Piccadilly? With Sir Arnold Gorrie?”
“That poor girl.” Grace’s smile faded. “No, I didn’t.”
“No one at all?”
Grace shook her head. “Only Aunt Seraphina.”
“Aunt Seraphina?” Adam nodded and stood. “Thank you.”
AUNT SERAPHINA WAS in the morning room, dozing on the chaise longue with a cashmere shawl draped over her.
“Oh!” she said, groping for her lace cap, which had slipped over one ear. “Adam, you startled me.”
“I apologize.” He waited while she composed herself and then asked his question: “I understand Grace told you what happened with Sir Arnold Gorrie and the young housemaid.”
“Such a dreadful thing for her to have witnessed! What was the man thinking of, behaving like that on a public street?” Aunt Seraphina felt around her, turning back the cashmere shawl. “Have you seen a book of poems?”
It lay on the floor beneath the chaise longue. Adam bent and picked it up. “Did you tell anyone, Aunt?”
“About what?”
“About Sir Arnold and the housemaid,” he said patiently. One of the pages was creased. He smoothed it and closed the book. Byron’s The Corsair, he saw, glancing at the spine.
Aunt Seraphina looked affronted. “Of course not! Such appalling behavior. And the girl was pregnant. It’s not the sort of thing one talks about with one’s friends.”
“I beg your pardon,” he said meekly, handing her the book.
Adam went back to his study and poured himself another glass of brandy. He stood at the window, warming the glass in his hand. Outside, it was beginning to rain. Fat drops struck the windowpanes.
He sipped the brandy meditatively, listening to the rain hitting the window, watching the pavement darken with water. If Tom had heard about Gorrie on Tuesday, it hadn’t been from Grace or himself. Which left Arabella Knightley and her maid.
If he was right about the timing. Perhaps he was wrong. Perhaps Tom had acted on the spur of the moment?
If Miss Knightley was at the Foxes’ ball tonight, he’d ask her. But not during a waltz.
Adam shook his head and took another sip of brandy. The taste lingered on his tongue, smoky. Outside, the rain began to fall more heavily.
Miss Knightley’s apology this morning had been as bizarre as it was unexpected. Sharpening her claws on him? Because the waltz brought out the worst in her?
What a very odd young lady she was.
Adam raised the glass and sipped again. He held the brandy in his mouth for a moment, savoring the flavor.
Presumably she’d been sharpening her claws when she’d extolled Miss Wootton’s fortune. And when she’d encouraged him to have a stream flowing down the center of the table at his wedding breakfast.
Adam chuckled in memory of her artless, enthusiastic vulgarity—and almost choked on the brandy in his mouth. He swallowed, coughing.
Yes, sharpening her claws was an accurate description of what Miss Knightley had done.
“Minx,” he said, under his breath. He turned away from the window. A very strange young woman, Miss Arabella Knightley. An enigma. As irritating as she was beautiful.
For a moment he saw her in his mind’s eye: the elegant bones of her face, the dark, expressive eyes, the soft mouth.
Desire clenched in his belly.
Adam took a hurried gulp of brandy. He strode across to his desk, opened the drawer that held his business correspondence, and pushed Miss Knightley firmly from his mind. But she crept back into his thoughts as he read the latest letter from his steward. The blackness of the ink reminded him of her eyes, the paper brought the pale creaminess of her complexion to mind, and the looping tails of each f and g and y made him think of dark ringlets nestling against smooth skin.
Adam squeezed his eyes shut. Get out of my head, he told Arabella Knightley.
IT WAS RAINING heavily by the time they reached her grandmother’s house in Belgravia. Arabella climbed the marble staircase with Polly one step behind, playing the role of servant. She was conscious of a sense of relief. By this time tomorrow, Jenny would be safe at the school in Swanley—and neither Sir Arnold Gorrie nor Adam St. Just would be able to find her.
She pulled off her gloves. The kid leather was slightly damp.
“Arabella.”
She turned. “Yes, Grandmother?”
Lady Westwick stood in the doorway of her parlor. A lace cap covered her white hair. She wore a lilac gown with vertical pleating on the bodice. The late earl’s painted eye stared out from the brooch on her bosom.
“I see you got wet,” her grandmother said, faint disapproval in her voice.
“Yes,” Arabella said, conscious of the distance between them, the congeniality they both feigned. She wants me in her house as little as I want to be here.
“I thought you’d like to know . . . your friend Helen Dysart—her husband has died.”
“What?” Arabella exclaimed. “George Dysart? When?”
“Last night, if the gossips are to be believed.”
“Oh, poor Helen!” Arabella turned and began to head downstairs again.
Her grandmother’s voice stopped her: “Where are you going?”
“To see Helen,” Arabella said, looking back at her.
“It’s nearly five o’clock.”
“She’s my friend, Grandmother.” The only friend I have in the ton, other than Grace St. Just. “I’ll be back in time for dinner.”
Lady Westwick’s mouth pinched slightly. “Very well.” She stepped back into her parlor and closed the door.
Arabella hurried down the stairs, pulling on her gloves. “Call back the carriage, Clough. I need to go out again.”
A WREATH HUNG on the door at No. 34 Curzon Street. The black ribbons were dripping.
Arabella watched as the footman jumped down from the carriage. Water splashed beneath his feet. Poor man, she thought, as he plied the door knocker. He looked as wet and bedraggled as the wreath.
The door of No. 34 opened. She saw the footman
