Page 78 of The Lady's Last Mistake
In truth, neither did he. Grant covered her mouth with his and pushed her back onto her desk, rucking up the hem of her skirt. He’d gathered it around her stockinged knees, exposing her garters, when a knock resounded on the office door. The spell gripping them shattered, and Grant stood straight, tugging Cassie off the desk, to her feet. Her skirts swayed into place as the door opened.
“Are you in here?” Miss Khan called as she popped in her head.
Cassie whirled away from the midwife and went behind her desk. Grant half-turned, entirely aware of the bulge in his trousers. “Oh good, Dr. Brown,” Miss Khan said, coming inside the office. “I wanted to thank you again for your assistance. Mrs. Rawling and her baby seem to be doing just fine.”
He kept his back to her as he swiftly reached for his things on the sofa. “I was happy to help.” He barely looked toward Cassie, who was pretending to be busy at her desk.Her flushed cheeks were telling, however. “But I’m afraid I’m late for another appointment. Send for me if there are any complications. Good evening to you both.”
He hastily departed the room, incensed they’d been interrupted, and yet also relieved. This was madness. It had to stop. He couldnottouch her again, not even once. As he took the stairs, the squalling of an infant sounded from another room. He thought of Mrs. Rawling and the strength she’d possessed to not hold her baby. One touch, and she might not have been able to give him up.
“Christ,” he muttered.
He was in trouble. Deep, deep trouble.
Chapter
Twenty-Three
Elyse had been invited back to Archambeau Manor to dine again the following Saturday—this time, with any luck, uninterrupted. Madame Archambeau and Miss Stone had shown great interest in Hope House during her first short visit before she’d been summoned back to Crispin Street, and afterward, Elyse had been walking on air. Cassie wished she could feel as buoyant, but her last few encounters with Grant had kept her trapped between rapturous bliss and agitated uncertainty.
He'd been slinking into her every thought over the last few days, and when the benefactress sent Elyse a second invitation, Cassie realized something. Having now met the marquess, Cassie knew the threat of severing Grant’s income was not an exaggeration in the least. However, at the art opening at Archambeau Manor, Grant hadn’t so much as uttered a word about Church Street. Instead, he’d put forward Hope House. He’d put forwardCassie.
“I suppose we should find some way to thank Lord Thornton,” Elyse had said the day after Caroline Rawlinghad her baby. Then, with a wry twist of her lips, she added, “Or perhaps that is what you were doing in your office when I walked in?”
The blood had rushed to the tips of Cassie’s ears, and Elyse had broken out in laughter. But then, more seriously, she’d touched her arm. “Be careful. I worry about his intentions.”
She hadn’t known how to respond, so she’d just promised that Elyse needn’t worry.
However, that seemed to be all Cassie had done for the bulk of the next few days.
Like Elyse,she was to attend a dinner Saturday evening too, this one at Violet House. Afterward, Michael would drag Grant into his study, pour him a scotch, and demand he ask for Cassie’s hand.
After staying the night at Lindstrom House, Michael’s already thin patience had snapped. Especially when a column earlier in the week inAll the Chatterhinted that the unexpected snow had pushed “Lord T”and “Lady C”into an inescapable position, in which the lady’s honor may even hang in the balance. Cassie was certain it was the marquess’s doing. He’d probably sent word to the gossip rag himself.
With the rumors at play, Grant needed to offer at the dinner Saturday night or cease courting Cassie entirely. He, of course, would not offer—gossip or no gossip. Michael would then toss him out and warn him against speaking to his sister again. The false courtship would be at an end.
Cassie should have felt relieved. She should have felthappy. What she most certainly should not have been feeling wasbereft.
If only she could go back to despising him. To believing he was a shallow lordling who practiced medicine but was not especially serious about it. But now… Now she knew Grant used riddles to distract his youngest patients from their pain. She knew he employed his dead wife’s sister against his family’s wishes. That he felt insecure about his father’s love and used humor to deflect those feelings. Cassie knew that he hated to think of her with another man and that he shouted when he worried over her safety. She knew that he gave pleasure freely, demanding nothing in return. Most importantly, she now knew what it was like to be the object of his desire.
She’d seen parts of Grant that he kept hidden from everyone else. And shelikedthem. All week, she’d grappled with that realization, half wondering if she should send a note to Thornton House, telling him not to come to dinner. She didn’t want him to have to face her brother.
Heaven help her, she didn’t want it all to end.
It was nearing four o’clock when the correct sequence of knocks at the back door of Hope House announced Sister Nan’s arrival. Cassie was glad for the timing. She needed to return to her residence to prepare for dinner. She hadn’t sent the note to Grant, knowing deep down that it would only prolong the inevitable.
“How is Mrs. Rawling?” Sister Nan asked as she came inside. She set a long wicker basket on the table. Cassie eyed it, knowing what it would carry away from Hope House. It was why she’d insisted on making the trip to Spitalfields that day. She’d told Ruth that she was havingtea with an acquaintance, leaving it vague, as she so often did. However, she continued to feel the thinning of the barrier between her two worlds.
“She’s recovering well. No signs of any infection,” Cassie reported. Sister Nan looked sideways at her. Her health wasn’t what the nun had been inquiring after.
“She won’t hold him,” Cassie said. “Mrs. Powers is still here, so he’s at least content.”
Mrs. Powers was a wetnurse that Mabel and Elyse both knew from the area, and she provided her services to infants whose mothers had either died or were otherwise unable to feed them.
Sister Nan sighed and nodded. “The sooner we take him from here, the sooner Mrs. Rawling can begin to recover.” She started for the corridor leading to the stairs, but then stopped. A hesitant frown creased the wrinkles on the bridge of the older woman’s nose. “I wanted to say again, how sorry I am to have sent Isabel’s awful man here.”
All week, Cassie had been frustrated by the fact that Mr. Youngdale had not been at his residence, and that Isabel had yet to be found. Hugh had kept her informed on the lack of news, as since Tuesday night, she hadn’t seen or heard from Grant. It was, of course, for the best. She still reeled from how Elyse had nearly found them on her desk. Her lack of decorum had been insupportable, her thoughtlessness disconcerting.
“You didn’t send Mr. Youngdale here,” she said. But the nun wouldn’t have it.
