Page 18 of The Lady's Last Mistake
Grant frowned; it was on the tip of his tongue to ask how the devil she’d learned that skill when maids and footmen had done it for her since she’d been born. However, he bit back the comment and lit a few candles as she fed kindling and crumpled broadsheets into the cookstove. He touched a lit taper to her work and heard the rush of fire consuming the dry wood and paper. Cassie moved back, brushing some sootfrom the sleeve of her dress. Their eyes clashed briefly before she averted hers.
“Tell me what happened.” Grant was surprised by how calm he sounded. He didn’t feel it. He smoldered every time he envisioned some faceless, violent man attacking her in that alley.
“I’ve already told you,” she replied, walking the circumference of the room, pretending to inspect the small kitchen with its few cabinets and shelves and its even fewer food stores.
“You haven’t. All that has been said is that you were attacked. What does that mean? How did he…” Grant ground his jaw. “What did he do?”
She paused at the fireplace and glanced toward him. “He came up behind me. Covered my mouth, so I couldn’t scream. Then he asked where she was. That is all. Honestly, I am not the one in danger, Isabel is. He was there for her.”
“And yet, you were the one he put his hands on.” Fire breathed to life in his chest.
She eyed him warily, as though she could see the glow of it through his shirt and waistcoat. But then gave a dramatic sigh. “I have only a few scraped knuckles, while he may have some deeper gashes to his face. I’d say he bore the brunt of the encounter, not me.”
Grant had to admit, it had been swift thinking to defend herself with that hair comb.
“He’s quality,” Cassie said after a moment. “I could hear it in his speech, and he smelled of soap and cologne. I was too startled in the moment to think of it, but I remember now. And his gloves.” She covered her lips as the man had done, as if trying to remember more clearly. It sparked another emberof fury in Grant’s chest. “They were kid. Soft and expensive.”
Needing to move and disburse the bottled-up ire, he went to the fireplace and crouched.
“Isabel is terrified of him,” Cassie added.
“And sheltering her has made you a target.” He tossed kindling into the grate. “How many other women at Hope House are you hiding from violent men? You’re putting yourself in danger.”
“So, I should kick them all to the street? Protect myself, not them? Are they not worth helping?”
He straightened and faced her. “I didn’t say that.”
“Whatareyou saying?”
“That you shouldn’t have been in that alley to begin with! You don’t belong there!”
The words burned as he let them fly, and his gut cinched with instant regret. Especially when her eyes dulled from fire to ice.
She gave him her back. Then, after some silence, said, “Isabel cannot stay here alone.”
He’d expected some other cutting retort, some argument. But instead, she’d shut him out.
A knocking on the back door—two raps, a pause, then three more—severed the tense moment.
“It’s Tris,” Cassie said, going to unlock it. “That’s our code at Hope House.”
The driver entered, his hat in his hand. “It’s safe. No one’s followed.”
Cassie shut the door again. “Good. As I was just saying to Doctor Brown, Isabel cannot stay here alone. I wouldstay?—”
“Your driver knows who I really am, and there isn’t a chance in hell you are going to stay here.”
She sliced him with a glare. “I would stay,” the little hellion began to say again, “but if I do not come home, my staff will worry. And as they report to the duke, he may hear of it before dawn.”
Grant almost wished Fournierwouldhear of it. The duke would certainly put a stop to this madness.
“I need to leave. I have a dinner I cannot miss tonight,” he said, even though the last thing he wanted to do after this tangle of an afternoon was play nice for the marriageable ladies the marquess had invited.
Pick a wife,James had told him.Be done with it.
As he watched Cassie, nibbling her bottom lip as she tried to solve the problem of who would stay with Isabel, Grant’s pulse slowed. If Fournier did hear of her connection to Hope House and her precarious work there, she’d be finished.
What would she do to prevent that from happening?
