Page 67 of The Lady's Last Mistake
Grant frowned. “It’s nothing. A dusting at most.”
“It’s going to increase,” Harold, ever the fusspot, argued. “I think we’d be better off leaving for Town sooner rather than later.”
The marquess scoffed. “Stop stewing over the weather and act like a man, for God’s sake.”
Harold’s wife, Priscilla speared her father-in-law with a look of animosity. It had never been much of a secret that she did not care for the marquess or his unrestricted ridicule. Just as it had never been much of a secret that the marquess did not care for Priscilla. OrPrissyas he tended to call her, both behind her back and to her face.
“Now, Lady Cassandra, what will you have? Peters, bring the lady a glass of wine.”
The footman stationed near the table of decanters leaped to his task.
“Perhaps you could allow the lady to choose her own drink,” Grant said, his jaw tight.
His father waved away the suggestion even as Cassie’shand on his forearm flexed. Then, as if realizing that she still clung to him, she released him and stepped away.
“Ladies prefer wine, son. Or sherry. What of that, my lady, would you prefer sherry? Peters! Sherry.”
The footman had already poured the wine but now lowered the carafe and reached for the sherry.
“I’ll have a whisky,” Cassie said. The room silenced.
Instantly, Grant recalled the intoxicating taste of whisky on her tongue as it curled around his Friday night. He swallowed a groan.
The marquess did not say a word as Peters splashed a finger of the good single malt into a glass. Penelope and her husband Alfred exchanged an amused look as Cassie took the whisky. In contradiction, Lawrence and his wife, Mary, could not mask their matching sneers. It was a rare thing for Lawrence or Mary to differ in opinion from the marquess, and right then Lindstrom was arching a brow in distaste.
“It isn’t often a lady in Lindstrom House partakes inuisge beatha,” James said, shifting his entertained grin toward Grant. Thought she was in confinement, James’s wife Vera was the luckiest of them all for getting to sit out this dinner party.
Grant was scowling at his brother when he felt Cassie’s hand glide against his. Startled, he stared at their joined hands, their fingers lacing together. He looked up and saw the glint of mischief shining in her eyes.
“I find that I prefer to toast good news with the water of life, Lord James,” she said with a fetching grin as she affected an adoring gaze on Grant.
“And what good news do you bring, my lady?” the marquess asked.
A prickle of premonition arrived too late. Grant could not open his mouth and deflect her answer fast enough.
“I have accepted your son’s offer of marriage, Lord Lindstrom,” Cassie said as she stared into Grant’s eyes, watching for his reaction.
He stopped breathing, but sound tolled through his ears—the rush of blood and shock and not a small amount of panic.Offer of marriage?The infuriating little hoyden! She’d promised to convince the marquess of her interest in his suit, andthisis what she had settled on?
As he met her acerbic smile with a menacing grin of his own, voices began to feed back into his eardrums. His brothers’ stiff congratulations and Penelope’s genuine exclamation of surprise were pops of sound that grated on him. But his father’s voice was the loudest. Even though Cassie had just shoved Grant one step closer to giving the old man what he wanted, he didn’t offer well wishes but more criticism.
“Glad to see you’ve finally drummed up some sense, boy. That perpetual keening over a woman, dead nigh on a decade, was becoming rather tiresome.”
The scornful remark was nothing new for Grant and so it did not lash at him as it had the first several times the marquess voiced it. However, Cassie’s triumphant gleam snapped off, and she jerked a look of horror toward the marquess.
“How could you say something so cruel?”
The pleased grins all around turned to stone and cracked. The pressure of Cassie’s fingers increased around his as she glared at his father. Grant gently squeezed her hand.
“Don’t pay him any mind. He says what he thinks without concern for how it might sound,” he told her. Sheblinked, the color rising in her cheeks. It wasn’t embarrassment. No, he knew this particular shade of pink. It lit her face whenever she was provoked, and Cassie was truly appalled at Lord Lindstrom.
“You clearly do not know your future husband as well as the rest of us, Lady Cassandra. He’s a stubborn, melancholy profligate that I expect you to take in hand.”
She rocked back onto her heels, stunned anew. Grant should have warned her what his father was like. The threat to cut him off financially had not been a manipulative tool. It had been sincere as a bullet to the heart. Now at least she would believe him.
Coming through the drawing room doors, Harding announced dinner. Everyone leaped to flee the unexpected tension. Penelope came toward them, interest bowing her lips.
“Lady Cassandra, why don’t you walk with me?”
