Henry was fond of her. He’d protect even his nefarious uncle’s wife, no blood relation to him, simply because of that.

  “I like her, too,” Grace confessed as she lifted another letter. “She is coming to tea today, in fact.”

  Henry gave in to Tansy’s petulant pawing and gnawing and scratched her gently beneath the chin. “Is she?”

  “Yes,” Grace said as she opened a new letter. “She and Mercy got on like a house on fire during their brief conversation.” Probably because they both had had the experience of being the daughters of merchants who had married into the aristocracy. Perhaps Mercy would turn her fabric-draping demands to a new soul, and Alicia would come away with a few new exceedingly fashionable gowns for her pains. “I did her the service of warning her in advance that there would likely be several very loud children in attendance.”

  “I don’t foresee that being a problem. Aunt Alicia is very fond of children. Speaking of, where are the little devils?”

  “At the park. Flora broke a vase with her peashooter this morning, and the dowager duchess turned several shades of purple before she insisted that all the children be taken out to rid themselves of their excess energy. And she confiscated Flora’s peashooter, besides. Flora was just devastated.” Her brow furrowed as she scanned the next letter.

  “Do I dare to hope that the first time I was struck in the back of the head with a dried pea was also to be the last?”

  Grace snorted. “I wouldn’t place a wager upon it. The other children have still got theirs, and Flora will beg, borrow, or steal to—” She paused. Read again. “Henry,” she said. “I think I have it.”

  Henry jolted, braced his hands upon his knees. “You do? What is it?”

  Grace held the letter aloft. “Someone,” she said, “has written a letter to your uncle offering to sell him a passenger manifest for the sum of one thousand pounds.”

  ∞∞∞

  A passenger manifest.

  Henry’s heart slammed against the cage of his ribs. “Hell,” he said, his shoulders sinking. He braced his elbows upon his knees and dropped his head into his hands, scraping his fingers through his hair. “I suppose I had thought it would be…I don’t know, a letter from a former servant, or something of that nature. Perhaps a deathbed confession, or a diary, or—” Something less damning. Something less concrete. Something which might be explained away as the disgruntlement of a former employee, or else a convenient forgery.

  “You said your father was traveling when you were born,” Grace said carefully. “I suppose this alleged manifest will show something damaging?”

  “I imagine that it will show,” Henry said slowly, “that my father was still upon a ship bound for England on the date my parents were meant to have been married.” And that it would not, therefore, have been possible for him to have married Mother prior to his birth. Christ.

  “Henry,” Grace said softly. “It is going to be all right.”

  Henry shook his head, nausea rolling in his stomach. “I had thought it would be something less credible,” he said. “Something that might be explained away somehow. Something which, at worst, would have been grounds for disinheriting me alone.”

  “It’s only a passenger manifest,” Grace said, brows drawn. “It’s just—just names upon a list, isn’t it?”

  Henry flattened his lips into a grim line. “It’s evidence,” he said. “From a ship’s captain. Someone with no reason to lie, no material benefit to gain, no known vendetta to satisfy. It cannot be dismissed so easily. And furthermore, it’s not only evidence that I was born before my parents’ marriage—it is evidence of irregularities in my parents’ marriage.”

  “Oh,” Grace said, her hand flying to her mouth in horror. “You mean to say—”

  “If my uncle retrieves it, he has a decent chance of proving that my parents’ marriage ought not to be considered lawful. Mother will no longer be a countess. She’ll lose everything to which she was entitled by marriage, including her widow’s jointure.” Because she would no longer be, strictly speaking, anyone’s widow. “And Eliza—Eliza will be considered illegitimate, as well.” Her life destroyed before it had truly begun. Probably her friends would no longer wish to be associated with her. She would not make her debut in society as the daughter of an earl, but as the bastard of one. Her marriage prospects would be bleak.

  All because he had had the audacity to appear in advance of his parents’ marriage. How many lives had he ruined, in total?

  “Henry. It is going to be all right.” Grace’s fingers slid through his hair in a soothing stroke. He hadn’t even realized he’d been bent nearly double, sent reeling by the sheer magnitude of the danger he was in. Those green eyes gazed down into his, and she looked so certain, so encouraging.

  He reached for her like a man tossed about in the middle of stormy sea would reach for a lifeline. Something stable and real in a world that had turned itself upon its head. She settled into his arms like a dream, perched across his knees, and turned her face to his.

  He believed her. Her nose hadn’t twitched. And still he took a much-needed comfort from the soft lips that bloomed beneath his, the stroke of her fingers through his hair. The sweetly floral scent of jasmine that drifted to his nose. Henry had begun to suspect that he needed her for more than the nimbleness of her fingers, for her experience with the arts of thievery and deception.

  He needed the warm weight of her in his arms. The plush softness of her magnificent arse in his lap. The lush sweetness of her lips beneath his. He needed her irreverence, her empathy—perhaps even the deceptive twitch of her nose to keep him on his toes. He needed her to keep him grounded, to hold his face in her hands as she did now, and to soothe his worries away.

  “Henry,” she murmured against his lips, and he loved the sound of his name upon them. “We’re in the drawing room. It’s the middle of the day.”

  “A moment more.” He bargained with himself more than he bargained with her. Even a kiss was an indiscretion past what could be borne. Though the children had been removed to the park, that still left too damned many people who might stumble in upon them.

  He had rigidly adhered to every single one of his principles since he’d been only a boy, and yet—Grace tempted him beyond reason, beyond morals or principles or even good, sound judgment.

  She was his Eve. At only the crook of her finger, he would have followed her into Hell itself. Begged upon his knees for just a few more moments of her favor. How had he resisted her so long? It beggared belief.

  But she gave him that moment he’d pleaded for, and with a sigh she tucked her head against his shoulder and turned her mouth to his. An eternity would not have been long enough. She tasted like liberally sweetened tea with a bright squeeze of lemon for just a hint of tartness, and the scrape of her fingernails across his scalp made him shiver to the soles of his feet. His hands caught in the laces at her back.

  A sharp prick of teeth upon his arm. A warning growl. Henry lifted his head at last.

  Tansy stared at him with narrowed eyes, her fangs still firmly caught within the wool of his coat. Her tail flicked back and forth, like the sway of a cobra.

  Grace muffled a laugh in her palm. “I suppose she takes her role of chaperone rather seriously,” she said.

  “I suppose she must.” His voice had gone hoarse, throaty. Carefully, deliberately, he let his arms fall free from Grace’s waist, allowing her to rise once more. Tansy, mollified, released her jaws and settled back into her spot beside him. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t know what came over me.” Now he was lying; he knew exactly what had come over him. She had, like a damned tidal wave, sweeping him out to sea. But it was the sort of thing one said when one acted in direct conflict with one’s usual behavior.

  “I have no complaints,” Grace said briskly as she settled once again on the floor near the table. “It’s simply not the sort of thing one wishes to be caught doing, you understand.”

  Caught. Yes. He hadn’t even cared about it in the moment. What sort of man was he becoming these days? What sort of man was she changing him into, with every hour he spent in her company? Someone who didn’t care that he might’ve been caught in flagrante delicto here in the damned drawing room, who had learned to palm cards and stack the deck in his favor. Someone whose tightly-held leash upon his behavior had become a little looser, just lately.

  A lot looser, he corrected himself silently as he caught sight of her kiss-bruised lips, pink and soft and moist.

  Grace’s brow furrowed as she scanned the letter again, turning it front and back. “There’s no address,” she said. “Only a time and a date.”

  Right. The letter. Henry braced his hands upon his knees. “When?” he asked.

  “Next week,” she said. “Friday. I suppose your uncle’s financial situation must not be quite as much a secret as he would prefer. There’s a rather nasty implication that he expects your uncle might require some time to gather the blunt.”

  “He?”

  Grace shrugged. “Could be a woman, I suppose, though by the handwriting I’d assume a man.” She held the letter closer to her eyes, examined it carefully. “The ink is cheap; the penmanship abysmal. This isn’t the sort of letter which would be written by an aristo—and it’s signed Cooper, and only that. Does that name mean anything to you?”

  Henry shook his head. “Should it?”

  “Well, it would surely help, if it had. Either your uncle has got some sort of prior relationship with him, or this isn’t the first time they’ve corresponded. So your uncle must know where to meet him.”

  “But we don’t,” Henry said, his stomach sinking.

  “No,” Grace admitted. “We don’t. Yet.”

  “Yet?”

  “We may not know,” Grace clarified. “But Uncle Chris knows every underworld denizen worth knowing, and Uncle Rafe can find anyone worth finding. Betwixt the two of them, we’ll have it.”

  But would they? “Forgive me,” Henry said, “but I sincerely doubt Mr. Moore would be willing to aid me. For any reason.”

  “He will if I ask it of him—although he’ll exact a price for his services, as he always does. Uncle Rafe, however, will help only because he really is a nice man.”

  “And Mr. Moore is not?”

  Grace uttered a low laugh. “No,” she said. “But do you know? I rather prefer him that way. Nice is as nice does, but some of us have got to be a little wicked from time to time. It makes life a bit more interesting, don’t you think?” Over the top of the letter, she winked.

  A week ago, his answer would have been a resounding hell, no. But now? An unequivocal yes. Perhaps he had always needed her brand of wickedness in his life.

  Perhaps he had always just needed her.

  Chapter Fourteen

  He’s going to say no,” Henry muttered dolefully as he poked at his blancmange with the bowl of his spoon.

  Grace kicked the back of Henry’s calf beneath the table in silent reproach. “He isn’t,” she said beneath her breath. “Well—he might, at first,” she allowed. “But it won’t stay a no.”

  Henry had gone a bit green about the gills as the end of dinner had approached. Grace didn’t know if it was nerves alone or the possibility of rejection. Or perhaps just that Uncle Chris could be a mite intimidating when he wished to be, and she rather thought he wished to intimidate Henry.

  But still, Henry had come to a family dinner this evening anyway. Aunt Phoebe had been pleased as punch to offer him an invitation, as Grace had never requested one for any gentleman of her acquaintance before now. Uncle Chris was somewhat less than enthused. He’d made a passable show of politeness for Aunt Phoebe’s sake, but he had certainly gripped Henry’s hand entirely too hard upon greeting him.

  “I still don’t know how I let you talk me into this,” Henry said as his eyes scanned the sheer number of guests warily. “Is it always like this?”

  “Oh, no,” Grace said, hiding a smile beneath the corner of her napkin as she patted her mouth daintily. “Usually it’s much worse. Aunt Phoebe has got just dozens and dozens of nieces and nephews.” But tonight was just for the adults—which still amounted to well over forty people. “And I might have brought Tansy, if I had had a mind.”

  Henry’s head darted toward her. “Whatever for?”

  “Aunt Phoebe’s quite fond of cats.” Even if Tansy was not quite fond of her. “And Tansy is just fascinated with Hieronymus.”

  “Who the devil is Hieronymus?”

  “Uncle Chris’ terrapin. He’s got a pond out in the garden.” Grace allowed herself a tiny bit of private amusement at the startled look upon his face. Probably this sort of chaos, with conversation volleying back and forth across the great length of the table, was anathema to him.

  But Grace loved it. She always had. Her life had become so much richer for all the people—blood relations and otherwise—who had welcomed her into theirs with open arms. She had come into their lives a frightened, lonely girl, and though they had had no obligation to her, every one of them had embraced her.

  And that was how she knew that Uncle Chris would say yes…eventually. Any one of them would have, only because she had asked it of them.

  “Well,” Aunt Phoebe said with a smile as she rose at last as the servants began to clear away the dishes. “Ladies, shall we adjourn to the drawing room?”

  It had to be now. Grace pushed back her chair, abandoning Henry to the company of the rest of her relations as she wove her way toward the head of the table and Uncle Chris. “Could I speak to you?” she asked as she reached him, pitching her voice low. “In private?”

  “Has it got to be now?” he inquired. “It’s cards this evening. Thought I’d see if yer lord has learned to properly recognize a cheat. See how much o’ his fortune I can help myself to.”

  Probably less than he hoped, though still more than he needed. But Henry might well prove himself a better cheat even than Uncle Chris could have expected, which might even win his respect. Or a portion of it, at least. “It really has got to be now. And he’s not my lord.” Though she thought—perhaps he might be. Just a little. A little more than he had been only yesterday, even. A little more hers, with every day that passed between them.

  “Hell,” Uncle Chris grunted. “My study, then. Two minutes.”

  In the pandemonium that was the mad rush from the table and the crush of bodies weaving through the room to their respective destinations—ladies to the drawing room and gentlemen to the library—Grace managed to shepherd Henry out into the hall and toward the stairs.

  He tugged at his cravat as they climbed. “My stomach is in knots,” he confessed. “I’m almost certain he already knows my situation. The broad strokes of it, anyway.”

  “It’s a possibility,” she allowed. “There was a time that Uncle Chris was involved in the business of extortion.”

  Henry’s feet stutter-stepped upon the stairs. “And you want to give him more ammunition?”

  “Untwist your smallclothes, if you please,” Grace said, planting one hand at the small of his back to urge him onward once again. “He doesn’t do it any longer. Aunt Phoebe would have his head.”

  Reluctantly, Henry began to ascend once again. “He doesn’t seem the sort to be led about by his wife.”

  “He doesn’t seem it,” Grace agreed. “But he is. Every one of us knows it.” Even Uncle Chris, who had just come to accept it as a sort of inevitability. “Here we are,” she said as they reached the study at last. “Have a drink. Uncle Chris will be along soon.”

  “I don’t know that making free with his liquor will endear me to him,” Henry muttered.

  “Casting up your accounts in his study will endear you less,” Grace advised. “You’ve been green since the second course.” When he failed to move, she swept around him toward the sideboard and poured a healthy glass of amber liquid from a crystal decanter. His nerves were catching, she thought. Her heart beat a rapid tattoo as the distinctive thump of Uncle Chris’ cane resounded in the hallway outside. “Drink,” she insisted as she shoved the glass into Henry’s hand.

  Henry managed only the tiniest of sips before the door flew open, and Uncle Chris walked in. He was already scowling. Not the best of omens, Grace thought.

  He slanted a glare at Henry as he strolled across the room toward his desk, bracing himself against it to lift his cane in a pointed jab in Henry’s direction. “If you’ve come to ask my blessing,” he said acerbically, “save your damned breath. I won’t give it.”

  Henry choked on his liquor.

  “It’s not like that,” Grace said, lifting her hands in entreaty.

  “What a clanker.” The words dripped with the scathing mockery to which Uncle Chris was often inclined.

  “Really,” Grace insisted. “This—us, I mean to say”—she gave a little gesture to Henry—“it’s just fiction.” Although it hadn’t felt quite so…fictional just lately. “And besides,” she added cheekily, “your blessing is not strictly required.”

  Uncle Chris’ scowl deepened. “It damned well ought to be.”

  “I believe Charity and Anthony have got that well enough in hand.” Grace pursed her lips together to smother a giggle. “You would have been proud. Anthony told the last suitor I refused to fuck off.”

  Somewhere behind her, Henry made a strange sound in his throat, like a cough that had gotten stuck. But at last, a reluctant smile from Uncle Chris. “Did ‘e, then?” he asked. “Never would’ve imagined.”

  “I beg your pardon,” Henry said, in a particularly scandalized tone of voice. “Did you just say fuck off?”

  “Gracie’s learned all the best words from me,” Uncle Chris said. “Daresay she could make a sailor blush. She’s fluent in the sort of language that even members of yer club wouldn’t dare to utter amongst themselves.” But by the sly smile that clung to the corner of his mouth, Grace suspected he was enjoying Henry’s discomfiture at present. “All right, then, Gracie. Pour me a drink and tell me what you’ve gotten yerself into this time.”