Page 44 of The Lady's Last Mistake
The tears slipped, cutting down her cheeks. Angrily, she swiped them away.
Grant’s whole body strung tight with the urge to pummel something. To leap from the carriage and go back to Archambeau Manor and hunt down the dissolute cretin.
“Did he harm you?” Vehemence pulled his voice low.
“Leave it alone. Grant, please,” she pleaded again.
“I won’t. Talk to me, Cassie. I know what Renfry is like. Did he…”
“Stop!” The word broke on a sob. She dropped her chin and covered her face with her hands. “I can’t. Please, juststop.”
Incandescent fury swarmed. It had been a long time since he’d felt this kind of rage. Unhinged. Directionless.
Grant dragged in a breath but said nothing more. If she wanted him to stop speaking, then he would stop. For now. But he would have answers. If Renfry had harmed her… The black thought drove him mad. Why hadn’t Hughsaidanything? How could he have allowed the man to remain breathing?
The rest of the ride back to Grosvenor Square was silent. Cassie refused to look at him, and when Merryton pulledup to the residence and opened the door, she all but leaped out.
As soon as Cassie had been safely received through the front entrance by her footman, Grant knocked the carriage wall. “To the boxing club, Merryton.”
He wasn’t ready to go home, and he had the powerful desire to hit something.
Chapter
Thirteen
Ruth said nothing as she set the breakfast tray on the foot of Cassie’s bed. She didn’t need to speak a word for her concern to come across plain as day. The lady’s maid could control her tongue, but she’d never mastered controlling her expressions. The furrowing of her brow and the nibbling on her bottom lip gave her worry away.
“I’m not unwell, Ruth,” Cassie assured her as she pushed herself up from where she’d been lying stretched on her side, staring out the window into the milky mid-morning sunshine. She sat against the bolster pillows and accepted the cup of tea her maid offered.
“Forgive me, milady, it’s just that you’re usually up long before now.”
“I suppose I needed a morning to laze about,” she said, hoping it would placate her.
Lazing about wasn’t something Cassie did well. She liked to be busy, not bored. But that morning, she’d found all motivation sapped right out of her as soon as she opened hereyes. It was as though the muscles in her legs and arms simply didn’t want to work. Sleep beckoned her, causing her to wake then fall asleep again, however light the slumber was. It was how it had been all night. After returning from the art showing, she’d gone to her room and held herself together while Ruth undressed her. Once the maid had finally taken her leave for the night, she’d crumpled. Literally.
The soft, thick pile of the carpet had padded the strike of her knees as she’d folded, sobs and tremors wracking her body for what felt like hours. Eventually, she’d crawled into bed and, exhausted from crying and from the overwhelm of seeing Lord Renfry again for the first time in years, fallen into a black, fathomless sleep.
But when morning arrived, the truth was waiting for her. It was why she’d stayed abed so long. She’d wanted to avoid it.
Cassie sipped her tea without tasting it. “I’m not hungry, Ruth. If you’ll draw me a bath, I’ll get ready.”
There was no point avoiding anything now. Her unexpectedly wonderful meeting with Madame Archambeau and Miss Stone, all thanks to Grant, had been tainted by the appearance of Renfry and her disappointing inability to control her reaction to him. She thought she’d overcome everything that had happened. Countless times, she’d imagined what it would be like to meet with him again. The cold, stony glare she would level him with, how she would exude detachment and serenity, as if she thought nothing of him. Her poise and disinterest would assure Renfry that he was nothing to her.
Instead, she’d frozen. Her pulse had throbbed in her neck, her breaths becoming stilted and panicked. In thatmoment, with Renfry looking at her like she was something amusing, making her feel small and filthy, she’d been transported back years in time, to the very moment she’d read the wedding banns in the society pages for Lord Winston Renfry and Miss Evelyn Rothchild, the exorbitantly wealthy daughter of a shipping merchant. This, weeks after he’d promised to visit her brother Philip at Fournier Downs in Hertfordshire to ask for Cassie’s hand in marriage. Weeks after he’d bedded her while whispering vows of love. And three days after she’d realized she was carrying his child.
All that pain, disappointment, and fury had surged up again last night and threatened to drown her. To make things cataclysmically worse, it had all happened in front of Grant Thornton.
She hadn’t been able to look at him, too afraid he’d see the truth in her eyes. But of course, he needn’t have made eye contact with her to know something had occurred between her and Renfry. His stifled anger, his hot confusion, had filled the carriage on the way back to Grosvenor Square. At least Grant had done her the honor of respecting her plea to stop asking questions.
It would not last.
She set her tea down and stood from bed. Her legs still felt heavy as she went toward the window. Looking out over the square, she could only think about what a tenuous life she led. Within a glass room, it seemed, where one crack in the thin wall could send the whole thing into shambles. First, her secrets about Hope House, and now, about Renfry and the baby. Good God, what would Grant think of her if he knew everything? As soon as she thought the question, she shook it off. Why should that matter? He might not be as depraved at Renfry, but he wasstill using her for his own gain. Would he truly go to Michael and reveal everything he knew about Hope House if she no longer played along with his scheme? Cassie didn’t want to believe it. But she’d been wrong before. She’d made an awful misjudgment of character with Renfry. What a fool she’d been!
She would not make that same mistake with Grant Thornton.
Cassie bathed and dressed, and then jotted a letter to Emily Strafford, apologizing for what occurred the previous day. She thought to send it to the shop directly but after wondering if Mrs. Lindquist might open it, crumpled the letter and rewrote it. She wrote as Miss Banks instead, who had just heard from Lady Cassandra of the mix-up. She expressed hope that she was getting on well in her new position. There was no way to know if Emily would be able to infer the truth from the cryptic letter, and after sending it off, Cassie rubbed her eyes. Once again, she questioned how much longer until her life in Spitalfields erupted into her life in Mayfair.
Concerned though she was, she still set out for Crispin Street. Elyse was in, and when she saw Cassie, she drew her aside, into the privacy of her small bedchamber.
