Page 80 of Tamed By her Duke

It didn’t surprise Grace to learn that her family hadn’t cancelled the ball. It did surprise her how much it stung to learn that they hadn’t cancelled the ball.

When she’d realized that she and Caleb would be in London for this year’s event, which she only did when an invitation with perfect penmanship and the highest quality paper appeared in the post, she wondered if they should give up their whole mission and just return to Montgomery Estate, to avoid the headache of it all.

Indeed, she put the idea to her husband one morning over breakfast.

“We could find ourselves suddenly called back on an urgent matter of business?” she suggested hopefully.

Caleb gave hera look.

Things had changed between them, ever since he’d opened up about his past, his family, his brother. She had felt that they were becoming partners, people who were united in their goals and who knew how to be honest with one another. She might even say that she was becomingfriendswith her husband.

Friendship was why, she reasoned with herself, she was incandescently angry to hear about how his father had mistreated him.Friendshipwas the reason she indulged in vicious little fantasies about destroying whatever marked the late duke’s grave, so that he could molder in the groundunnoticed, until he was dust, and nobody even recalled his name.

She would imagine resurrecting and re-murdering anyone who hurt her friends, wouldn’t she?

(She resolutely ignored the fact that she had never had similar fantasies about, say, Theodore Dowling, who had hurt both Grace herselfandDiana, not to mention Andrew. That was obviously immaterial.)

In any case, the increased honesty between them had deepened their rapport, which had made their time together more pleasant, even before one counted that she could not make love to her husband in the daylight, which provided a great number of appealing things to look at.

All of which meant that she was confident in her ability to parse that look.

“No,” she said, whining just a little—but not too much, of course. She was a duchess. She had her dignity. “Come on. YouhateLondon events, and this istheLondon event. It will be so crowded that we’ll scarcely be able to walk.” An idea occurred to her. “You know, we could probablysaywe’d attended and just stay home. It will be so busy that nobody would be able to say for certain that they hadn’t seen us.”

“We’re going,” he said.

“Ugh,” she said, hanging her head. “You know, I donotcare for this little reversal of roles between us. Quick, growl at something before I become too disoriented.”

He ignored this. She’d been growing braver, bolder with her teasing, and though he still gave her quelling looks in response, he gave them in a way that made her suspect he was secretly enjoying himself. If she kept at it, she might even wear him down enough to make him smile in a mere two- or three-years’ time.

“We’re going to the ball,” he said, “because it will be our best chance to spy on your father.”

Grace paused. “To do what?” she asked politely.

“I understand if ye don’t like the idea—” Well, that wasn’t the problem at all; Grace had waited a lifetime to be free from repercussions of annoying her father, and marriage gave her that wonderful bit of leeway. “—but I’ve thought about it, and I think he’s the most likely man to have some information.”

Grace focused on what he was saying, even if itwashard to tear herself away from the mental image of rifling through her father’s things—the ones she’d been sternly forbidden from touching, looking at, or even thinking about since childhood—like a child at Christmas.

“Because he’s so well connected,” she said, nodding along. “You think he might know something we don’t, might be keeping track, say, of who is selling land where.”

“Aye,” Caleb agreed. “And ye told me that yon madwoman, the countess of wherever, she took part in this whole scheme because she fancied him, aye?”

“Yes,” she said, nodding. “You think someone else is blackmailing him? Or, not blackmailing, I suppose—that someone else sought to use me to punish him for some other transgression?”

Caleb’s expression was grim. “I daenae know what I think,leannan. Not yet.” Something about his face told her that he might notknowwhat he thought, but he certainlysuspectedsomething. “That’s why I want to know more. Normally, I’d say we just ask the man before resortin’ to skulkin’ about, but…”

“But it’s my father,” Grace said dully. “He’d not tell us, not even if he knew.”

“Aye. I may have ruined that when I spoke against him.”

“No,” Grace said, waving a hand to dismiss that concern. “He’d never have done so anyway. He’s always said that knowledge is the greatest weapon in the world, that controlling how to reveal that knowledge—how to tell a story about it—is more powerful than any sword, rifle, or cannon.”

“Man’s never faced down a cannon, I gather,” Caleb observed.

Grace’s lips twitched into a brief smile. “No, he has not.”

Caleb gave an evocativehmph.

Grace spent the remainder of the day trying to think up reasons that they should still not go to the ball—interspersed with pleasantly imagining how Caleb’s father would be burning in the fires of hell—but came up empty.

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