Page 25 of The Lady's Last Mistake
A hot blaze ran up Grant’s back, under his tailored coat. The muscles in his legs tightened, ready to spring him to his feet. “Intended?”
“I heard it at Brooks’s. He plans to make an offer. The duke is more than amenable. A good thing too. I’m told the chit needs to be taken in hand.”
Heat continued to build under Grant’s jacket as he staredacross the house. She damn well did need to be taken in hand. Not one mention of this Forsythe fellow had crossed her lips. Had he been the one she’d been running from the other week at Lady Dutton’s ball? If so, why would she agree to attend the opera with him now?
Grant held his glare on Cassie. He willed her to feel the burn of his attention, to break her concentration from the stage and seek out the source of the eyes searing holes into the side of her devious face. He’d stood in her study a few nights ago and proposed a courtship. A fake one, yes, but the little pest could have at least done him the honor of mentioning that she was already courting someone.
He did not relent, even when his father snapped at him to stop staring like a madman. Finally, awareness distracted her gaze from the stage. Cassie turned her head to search the crowds seated below. She held still, then at last lifted her eyes. As if pulled by some magnetic force, they collided with his. Surprise rippled over her countenance, and her lips parted. She retracted her hand from the railing, as if Grant had reached across the void between them and touched it.
Forsythe, ignorant to her astonishment, said something, and she used the excuse to nip her eyes away from Grant. She tried to ignore him for another full minute but gave in and sneaked a peek in his direction. He had not so much as blinked.
She bridled, her lips forming a tight seam. Pleasure at vexing her sealed him to his seat, and he settled in for the remainder of the first act. He didn’t pay an ounce of attention to the operatic performance, and he noticed Cassie’s fixed concentration faltered too. The few times she peered toward the Lindstrom box, it was to find Grant still watchingher, which only made her narrow her eyes on him further. Then there was the baron’s son, Mr. Forsythe, and the bothersome way he kept leaning toward her ear. He was smitten with her, no doubt. The fool.
The curtain closed on the first act, and Grant shot to his feet, determined to hunt Cassie down in the corridors.
“Miss Green,” the marquess said.
Grant stopped and stared at his father. “What?”
“You will call on Miss Green.” He showed the bottom row of his teeth, the way he did whenever he had reached the limitations of his temper.
There was nothing to do but smile tightly, so Grant did and, without agreeing, left the box. Arguing with his father wasn’t more important than tracking down Cassie and pressing her for answers. The crowds were thick in the narrow, carpeted halls circling the house, and it was slow going as he slipped between men and women, making apologies when he brushed against them. Cassie would not stay in Fournier’s box for the intermission. Forsythe, the lovesick idiot, would want to fetch her punch or the like, and she would not wish to remain where Grant would know where to find her.
So, he made for the base of the stairs that came down from the fourth-tier boxes. He arrived just in time to see her emerge into the crowd, her swanlike neck craning in search of him. As soon as her eyes clapped onto him, she spun and disappeared into another throng of black evening suits.
The hunt had never interested him. Yapping hounds and boasting men, salivating to run down a fox or buck, had always struck Grant as base and bloodthirsty. And yet, Cassie’s attempt to flee ignited a bloodlust he’d not feltbefore. He followed her as a hound did the scent of its prey. Upon catching her, he would need to show some civilized behavior, but civility was all but absent within him as his eyes locked on the back of her golden crown of hair. It pulled him through the crowd, into the refreshments room, where she was at last cornered.
She knew it, too. As Forsythe predictably left her side for the teeming punch table, she folded her hands in front of her and met Grant with an icy stare.
“I’m relieved you don’t yet have a glass in that hand of yours,” he said once she was within earshot.
“What do you want?” she rejoined, her chin high as she pretended to observe the crowd.
“An answer,” he replied. “I’ve given you three days to think over my proposal?—”
“It isn’t a proposal, it is coercion.”
“And I would like to know what I will be doing tomorrow,” he continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “Will I be penning a note to the duke, or will I be paying you a call and inviting you for a drive on Rotten Row?”
Cassie stifled her fury, though poorly; a passing lady took a long, concerned look in her direction before whispering to the man at her side.
“You, my lord, have had these last three days to see the sense in your obscene proposition and every opportunity to retract it.”
“I’m not retracting anything.” He snagged a glass of champagne from a passing server’s tray. “And I rather think you don’t want me to.”
Curiosity tempered her glare. “How do you mean?”
Grant raised his eyes toward the refreshmentstable and the baron’s son waiting patiently to edge his way in. “What are you doing here with that oaf?”
“He isn’t an oaf,” she said in swift defense. “He is a historian and an archaeologist. Mr. Forsythe is extremely interesting.”
“Yes, which is why you haven’t paid him a moment’s attention all evening.” She’d been too occupied looking at Grant. Something he found himself surprisingly triumphant about.
“Only because you’ve been watching me like…likethat.”
He laughed. “Like what?”
“Like you wanted to leap into my theatre box and…” She stopped herself.
