Page 57 of The Secrets of Lord Grayson Child
The older man started to heave his bulk from the comfort of the armchair, but Gray waved him back. “No need, sir.” He bent and offered his hand. “Izzy has mentioned you. It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”
Silas gripped Gray’s hand in a firm clasp, while his shrewd brown eyes studied Gray’s face. “Izzy’s mentioned you, too. I understand you’ve recently returned from America and that you’re not above involving yourself with trade.”
“No, indeed.” Gray released Silas’s hand and, at Izzy’s wave, claimed the chair beside Silas, facing the sofa to which she returned and sank gracefully onto the end. “In truth,” Gray continued, “I believe business—the sort I understand you’ve spent your life engaged in—will become increasingly important to the country’s future.”
Silas regarded him with interest. “You won’t get any argument from me on that score. How did you find it over there, heh? One hears things, but I’m unsure how much to believe.”
“Up to a point, I suspect most of what you hear reported is true, but I doubt it gives a balanced view of what it’s truly like over there.” Gray went on to verbally sketch a picture of American industry that elicited numerous questions from Silas and also a few from Jordan, all of which Gray answered, and that led to more questions—many canny and exceedingly shrewd from Silas—which both tested Gray and, through formulating his answers, clarified his own views.
During one exchange, Silas qualified his dry comments with “If you’ll excuse my plain speaking.”
Gray grinned. “Plain speaking was one facet of doing business in America that I grew to value. I’m finding having to revert to our less-direct Anglo-European ways more of an adjustment than I expected, so please don’t feel you need to cloak your words in furbelows for me. I rather miss the blunt and direct.”
Silas chuckled. “It sounds like I could do business over there, then, but truth to tell, I’m too old and fear I lack the energy for the voyage.”
Gray was about to ask what areas Silas was interested in exploring, but the countess seized the moment to ask, “And what about American society, my lord? I’m sure you spent a good deal of your time in the drawing rooms there. Is it much the same as here?”
While he could speak about business and industry with authority, Gray was on much shakier ground when it came to society—or at least the upper echelons to which the countess referred. “Yes and no. They lack any form of aristocracy, so the ton per se doesn’t exist. However, they do have their principal families, although their status is solely founded on wealth, which, in most cases, has been amassed via endeavors the British would regard as trade.”
“Oh.” Sybil looked bemused. “I hadn’t thought of that.”
“They have their grand balls and debutantes and so on,” Gray said, “but I suspect you would say that, in that respect, they’re still evolving.”
“But you must have seen something of the country, my lord.” Marietta was keen to hear more. “You mentioned you were in Boston. Did you also travel to New York?”
Cities, he could describe with ease. “I landed first in New York.”
Izzy sat on the sofa and listened as Gray entertained the company, capturing both Silas’s and Jordan’s attention with a few well-placed remarks even while he enthralled her mother and sister with his descriptions of the American cities he’d visited during his years abroad. That list was longer than she’d expected, including, in addition to Boston and New York, Philadelphia, St. Louis, New Orleans, Portland, and San Francisco.
Cottesloe entered and announced that dinner was served, and in pairs defined by age, the company repaired to the dining table. They sat, and the conversation continued unabated.
Izzy ate, watched, and listened, increasingly sure she would not be obliged to intervene and redirect. She’d hoped she could simply introduce Gray and sit back; he’d always had the ability to adjust to whatever company he found himself in. She suspected that was one of the skills fostered in him as a duke’s son; in many noble families, it was expected that the sons would develop the facility to rub shoulders with their workers—stablemen, grooms, tenant farmers, farmhands, and so on. When it came to managing estates, having that knack was an advantage.
She wasn’t surprised when, with her mother’s and sister’s questions about American cities exhausted, Gray embarked on an anecdote involving a donkey and a yacht. Whether he’d witnessed the incident himself or merely heard about it—or even made it up—the story was perfect for this audience and had everyone laughing until their sides hurt.
Deftly, Gray turned all attention to Marietta, challenging her to reveal the most outrageous moment of her schoolroom years. That proved to be when, while living in the country and confined to her room with arithmetic she’d hated, she’d escaped from the house and, in order to avoid the family’s workers, had gone roaming onto a neighboring estate, only to be chased by a bull into a stream, after which she’d been forced to return home, dripping and bedraggled.
With a smile of remembrance curving her lips, her mother admitted, “I’d forgotten about that.”
The moment harked back to better times, before Izzy’s father’s death had brought their world crashing down.
Gray seemed to realize that and turned to Jordan. “You, next. I’m sure you got up to something deplorable in your youth.”
Jordan grinned and promptly regaled the company with a tale from his Eton days.
As the laughter subsided, Gray cocked a brow at Silas. “Any advance on your juniors, sir?”
Silas glanced at the dessert plates, which were sitting empty before them, and her mother took the hint and suggested that the ladies withdraw and allow the gentlemen to savor their brandies.
Silas and Gray exchanged a glance, then both denied any wish for spirits, and Silas proposed that the company entire should return to the drawing room, where he promised to relate a curious tale from his youth.
Within minutes, they were comfortably ensconced in the drawing room, and Silas launched into his story, which fascinated everyone, as he rarely spoke of his youth at all.
Izzy noted that her mother, who, before Gray had arrived, had vacillated between being avidly curious and being frosty about him, had completely thawed, drawn in by his easygoing charm, his storytelling talent, and his subject matter, too. Since Jordan’s earlier foray, no one had spoken again of murder, and her mother was pleased about that.
At the end of Silas’s amusing tale, her mother seized the stage. “My lord, now you’re back in the country, what are your plans? Are you here to stay?”
Given the past, that could have been a barbed question, but her mother’s expression and her tone stated she was merely curious in the way of all society matrons, young and old.
