Page 4 of The Secrets of Lord Grayson Child
If he’d been clear-headed enough to formulate a strategy to undermine her andThe Crier’sintentions, he might, indeed, have used their past, but he was still inwardly reeling, buffeted by a maelstrom of roiling emotions evoked purely by seeing her again.
Hearing her voice, drinking in her features.
He’d had no idea the mere sight of her would affect him to such a degree, as if his mind and his senses were wholly immersed in discerning and absorbing every little detail, every change and nuance about her.
It struck him that heyearnedfor her more avidly and in myriad more ways than he had all those years ago.
He literally felt giddy as memory sucked him back to the last time he’d seen her. He’d been younger, naive, so eager and full of love, and she had been, too—or so he’d thought. Yet the very next day, he’d overheard her talking with her mother and her aunt about how many pounds he would have per annum, and her aunt had instructed her to bring him up to the mark in short order. He could still hear Izzy’s voice as she’d blandly agreed. He’d been in her house, standing in the corridor outside the open drawing room door, and in that moment, something inside him had irretrievably smashed to smithereens.
He’d turned on his heel and walked away. Without a word; he’d never felt he’d owed her an explanation.
That had happened nearly ten years ago. They hadn’t set eyes on each other since.
He told himself it was the shock of meeting her in a place and in a context he could never have foreseen that had pitched him so far off balance.
He knew she was waiting, using the moments to study him. In an effort to spur his wits into action, he pretended to scan the room, using the moment to draw in a breath. Then he surrendered to impulse and met her guarded gaze. “I still can’t believe I’m having this discussion with you.” He waved his hand about the office. “What on earth are you doing here, Izzy?”
When she didn’t reply, he borrowed some of her calm and silently waited while she debated what to tell him; although her poker face had always been good, when arguing with herself, she had a habit of catching the inside of her lower lip between her teeth.
Eventually, she released her lip and raised her chin to an indomitable angle. “If you must know, I am, indeed, I. Molyneaux.”
Izzy saw Gray’s frown return, then his gaze fell to her left hand—to the plain gold band that adorned her ring finger—and she inwardly blessed her mother and their maid, Joyner, for insisting she always wear the ring when in her guise of Mrs. Molyneaux.
His frown darkened. “You’re married?”
His almost-accusatory tone flicked her on the raw. “What did you expect when you vanished as you did?”
Her flash of fury momentarily rocked him.
Seizing the chance to avoid his question, she continued, “Where did you take off to, Gray? The East? Or was it America? I eventually heard that you were believed to be somewhere in America, although no one had any certain information.”
His gaze rested heavily on her. “Those who needed to know knew where I was.”
Clearly, the silly female who’d believed they’d reached an understanding and that she stood on the cusp of entertaining a proposal of marriage hadn’t been among that number, but instead, had deserved to be left in complete ignorance of his change of heart and mind.
It took effort to rein in her temper, but she managed and coldly responded, “I see.”
The hurt and pain she’d buried all those years ago started to rise, and determinedly—desperately—she shoved it back down, deep, where neither he nor anyone else could ever see it.
She drew in a steadying breath; she couldn’t afford to indulge in emotional catharsis no matter how good telling him what she thought of him might feel. Besides, she was past all that—over him entirely—and with him sitting before her, potentially poised to wreak havoc on her life, she needed to keep her wits about her.
There was no sense revisiting their past. No sense remembering that while her elders—her aunt in particular—had approached the matter of her prospective husband in a calculating and mercenary way, she had steadfastly refused to do anything other than follow her heart, and when she’d met Grayson Child and lost her heart to him, nothing had mattered more to her than following what she’d believed had been her fated path into marriage with him. Given her family’s need at the time, that he’d been wealthy had seemed like Fate’s blessing.
Then he’d vanished.
Just vanished.
Leaving her bereft and without a heart to gift to anyone else.
She wasn’t going to say another word, wasn’t going to allow her anger and her hurt to tempt her into any further revelation. Her gaze steady on his face, she waited.
He waited, too, but eventually, his features hardened. They were significantly more spare, more chiseled and austere, as if the years had pared all softness from him.
He glanced at the doorway. “Where’s Molyneaux, then?” He returned his gaze to her face. “Or is this somehow wholly your province?”
She allowed a slight smile to curve her lips. “I’m”—masquerading as—“a widow.”
Gray had thought he’d got his emotions corralled, but his instant and intemperate response to that knocked him sideways again. Predatory eagerness shot through him—a widow being fair game—but in the next heartbeat, that was drowned beneath welling concern that, as a widow, she was facing life alone.
