Page 19 of The Lady's Last Mistake
A wicked, diabolical idea began to weave its way through his mind. It was low, greasy, and unquestionably offensive. But it might just get him out of this pickle with the marquess.
Tris raised his hand, lifting his hat. “I can stay. My brother, Patrick can drive for you while I’m here, my lady. It wouldn’t be a problem.”
Cassie exhaled. “That’s an excellent solution, Tris. Thank you.”
The driver nodded. “I’ll go to my brother’s now. It’s not far from here. I’ll bring him back, and then he can drive you home tonight.”
It was a muddle, but it sounded like their best option for the time being.
“I’ll just go inform Isabel and make sure she’s settling in.” Cassie started in the direction of the front hall and stairs.
“Don’t take long, my lady,” Grant said, earning another tightening of her back and neck. He smiled at the reaction. “There is something more we need to discuss.”
Chapter
Seven
What a wreck of a day it had turned out to be.
Cassie had known some women came to Hope House to evade the men in their lives, and when Lila—or rather, Isabel—had been so guarded upon her arrival, she suspected that may be the case. However, this was the first time any man had found the safe house.
On the drive back into Mayfair, Cassie removed her flannel cape and bonnet and replaced them with her velvet pelisse and finer hat. She lifted the cushion beside her and folded the Spitalfields clothing into the hollow underneath. Tris had helped to alter the bench so she could store them there.
“That’s convenient,” Lord Thornton said from the opposite bench as he watched her.
“Lord Thornton?—”
“You may call me Grant. We are past formalities, I think. Besides I already call you Cassie.”
“That is because you’re impertinent and have no respect for propriety.”
He only tucked up the corner of his mouth in a smirk.
During the hour it had taken Tris to fetch his brother Patrick, she’d avoided Lord Thornton—Grant—and whatever it was he’d wanted to discuss by helping Isabel settle into her room. It didn’t matter that Grant had offered to shelter her, or that earlier, he’d knelt before Cassie and taken her scraped hands into his with surprising tenderness. All she could hear was what he’d shouted in his clinic kitchen. That she didn’t belong there. It had cut her with startling ferocity, straight down to the bone of the unspoken burden she’d carried all year, ever since she and Elyse opened the doors to their refuge: She didn’t belong. This wasn’t her place. She was forcing her way into a world in which she had no part.
Usually, the tasks she busied herself with drowned out these thoughts. But hearing the same accusation on Grant Thornton’s tongue had exhumed them.
What a hypocrite! If she didn’t belong in the East End, then neither did he.
Cassie folded her hands, ignoring the pull of her scraped knuckles.
“There is something we need to discuss,” he said, the carriage lantern casting changing light over his face.
“So you’ve said,” she sighed. “What is it?”
“My apology.”
She peered at him, waiting for his well-practiced sarcastic grin. But it didn’t form. He was in earnest.
“Apology for what?”
He sat somewhat slouched on the bench, against the squabs. His hat was off, his ebony hair falling across his brow.With his long legs and broad shoulders, he looked a little like a giant on the dainty bench. The top of his head practically brushed the quilted silk of the ceiling. Cassie swallowed and shifted on her cushion when his incisive stare continued to hold hers.
“My temper, back at the clinic. I shouldn’t have shouted at you.”
“It was what you shouted that offended me, not your raised voice.” She sat taller. “I am well aware that I’m a fish out of water in that part of London.”
But she was a fish out of water here, too.
