Page 68 of The Secrets of Lord Grayson Child
On tremulous limbs, she stepped past him and opened it.
He met her eyes, then smiled in his usual charming fashion but with a light in his amber eyes that warmed her.
Facing forward, he stepped onto the porch, paused to settle his hat on his head, then went quickly down the steps and strode away.
She watched him until he rounded the corner and was lost to her sight.
Then, slowly, she shut the door. After staring at the uninformative panels for several seconds, she turned and, leaving her mother and her sister to think what they would, went quietly upstairs.
Gray reached Edgware Road before he succeeded in wrenching his mind from the mesmerizing events of the past ten minutes.
He hailed a hackney and directed the jarvey to Jermyn Street. The carriage was rattling down Park Lane before he managed to shift his focus to the wider events of the day and all they’d achieved—and all that was yet to come.
From the first, when he’d walked into the printing works and discovered Izzy was the editor he’d come to see, where she was concerned, he’d followed the prodding of his instincts. It was a habit he’d acquired over the years, listening to that inner voice and paying attention to its promptings.
Acting on instinct, he’d kissed her tonight, and plainly, that had been the right thing to do.
And out of that, what had started as an instinctive urge to protect her had transformed into an unshakeable determination to keep her safe no matter what threats confronted them over the coming days.
Them.
It had been a long time since he’d thought of “them”—of her and him or, indeed, of him and any other woman.
After her…there’d never been another who had seized his awareness and focused his senses as she so effortlessly did.
For him and, he hoped, her as well, the writing was on the wall, and he knew how to read it. There was no longer any question in his mind over what he wanted, over what his future should look like. Courtesy of this evening, his desired future had crystalized in his mind.
As the hackney rattled deeper into Mayfair, he realized that, regarding that much-desired future, there was really only one question remaining.
Can I convince her to marry me—the her as she now is and the me as I am now?
Chapter 10
Izzy sat at the breakfast table, staring at the empty chair opposite, and wondered how it could possibly be that in just a few days, Gray joining her had become her expectation. Enough so that, now he wasn’t there, she felt as if she missed him.
She shook her head at herself, dusted the toast crumbs from her fingers, and rose.
After donning her coat and bonnet, she went through the door Cottesloe held open and halted on the porch, blinking at the strapping young man who was holding her carriage door and smiling at her.
Then she remembered; he was Gray’s footman-cum-guard.
She descended the steps, and he very correctly offered his hand to help her into the carriage. She grasped his hand, then paused and asked, “Your name?”
He grinned and bobbed. “Tom, my lady. Tom Corby.”
Izzy inclined her head and climbed into the carriage.
Tom shut the door carefully, then she felt the carriage dip as he swung up behind, and Fields started the horses trotting.
Resigned to being guarded, she made no demur when Tom dogged her steps through Mrs. Carruthers’s house, into Woburn Square, and all the way to the printing works, always a respectful pace behind her, like the well-trained footman he apparently was.
While unlocking the door to the printing works, she glanced at him. “Do you want to come in? I warn you it will be chaotic, and someone will probably put you to work.”
He grinned. “His lordship said you were running the press today. I wouldn’t mind seeing that, and I don’t mind lending a hand.” He shrugged lightly. “Better than sitting in some tavern being bored.”
She had to agree. She opened the door and walked in and suggested he sit on the bench by the counter until the staff arrived. Then she found herself being greeted by two young constables, who had been waiting to leave after guarding the workshop overnight. The pair informed her that the Lipsons, father and son, and Jim Matthews had left a few hours earlier, but would return at their usual time to get the press rolling. Izzy thanked the pair and saw them out.
After hanging up her coat and bonnet, she went to her desk, sat, and got ready to do the accounts—her usual chore while the presses clanged and clanked in the workshop. Mary soon joined her, and they opened the ledgers and disappeared into a world of numbers and amounts.
