The Disgraceful Lord Gray Read online

  ‘Every human has flaws, but unless you allow yourself to properly get to know a gentleman, warts and all...and he, you...and cease being instantly suspicious or stand-offish, you will never come to know if they are minor flaws you can live with or major ones which will make you want to grind their face under your heel when they dare to say good morning. If you want to fall in love and be loved in return, then you have to give it a fighting chance to blossom. Nothing blooms in the desert. You have to take that gloriously abandoned leap of faith. Your greatest flaw is that you dismiss people out of hand instantly.’

  ‘I do not.’ Surely she wasn’t that pernickety? ‘I judge every man on his merit and give them all adequate time to show it. A little cautious suspicion gives them the opportunity to prove their mettle.’

  ‘Adequate time to prove their mettle? Really? Then I assume you are prepared to give our new neighbour a proper chance? Youngish. Handsome. Solicitous and local. His appearance is very fortuitous, seeing as you have given up all hope of any of the other bachelors in the county meeting your high expectations. Perhaps he is the one? He seems...’ Harriet grinned ‘...quite lovely.’

  It was Thea’s turn to roll her eyes. ‘And typically, you judge a book solely by its cover.’

  ‘Not at all! While I’ll grant you he has a splendid cover, he was most pleasant after we caught him so magnificently naked—and his dog clearly adores him. We humans could learn a lot from dogs. Animals are rarely wrong.’

  ‘He’s a shameless flirt.’

  ‘I didn’t see him flirt.’

  ‘Well, I can assure you, he was certainly shamelessly flirting with Aunt Caro a few moments ago.’ Something which bothered her, despite her infinitely better judgement and professed lack of interest.

  ‘He’s here?’

  ‘Indeed he is. With his frowning cousin in tow.’

  Harriet was up like a shot. ‘How positively splendid! Let’s hunt him down and monopolise him. I’ll dutifully extol your virtues like a good friend and you can probe with pertinent questions which matter to you. Start to get to know him... Why, we don’t even know if he is married or betrothed! And a young man who voluntarily lives with an older relative would naturally be more sympathetic to your dutiful attachment to your uncle. How serendipitous is that? The fates appear to be miraculously aligned for once.’

  This needed to be nipped in the bud. Especially as Harriet was beginning to sound reasonable. ‘No, thank you. He doesn’t interest me in the slightest. Nor I him. He made no effort to impress me, yet every effort to charm my aunt.’ A lie; he had tried then lapsed into silence after she had been stand-offish because Impetuous Thea had been interested. ‘I’m afraid I have his measure already—and he comes up woefully short. If I’m being brutally frank, I’m not even sure I like him.’ Although she had, before she reminded herself of all the reasons why she couldn’t entertain it. She still had a penchant for parts of him.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Until you mentioned him, I had forgotten he existed.’ She held Harriet’s gaze, determinedly ignoring the image of Lord Gray’s pert, bare buttocks and broad, bare back which had apparently seared itself on to her mind.

  ‘Hmm...’ Harriet looked sceptical, then shrugged. ‘Only I cannot recall a time when I have ever heard you sound so waspish over a mere man after such a short acquaintance.’

  ‘That’s because it’s his fault my hair looks like this!’ Thea petulantly pointed at her head, but she was already talking to her friend’s retreating back. ‘It might have been a short acquaintance, but it was certainly eventful. Cavorting in the brook in his birthday suit was disgraceful!’ And thrilling. It had been quite the highlight of her dull year. Drat it all to hell.

  ‘All I ask is that you give the fellow a fighting chance, Thea! This might be exactly what the doctor ordered!’ Harriet stopped, spun and inhaled deeply. ‘I can positively smell the romance in the air.’ Then she was off again, striding with such purpose there was no point attempting to reason with her. There was nothing Harriet loved more than meddling. Especially in what she considered was for a person’s own good. As a mark of protest, sensible Restrained Thea remained exactly where she was and would remain so for the foreseeable future despite the baking sun.

  Chapter Four

  Gray spent the better part of an hour with the Viscountess, being a very good spy, and learned nothing new whatsoever. She was amiable, if a little self-absorbed, her conversation mostly a ploy to receive a compliment. It was obvious she lived a small and inconsequential life. There was a brittleness about her, a need to be adored, which was quite sad for a woman her age and said a great deal about the state of her marriage. Gislingham himself had yet to make an appearance and his wife didn’t seem to know or care if he was likely to. Clearly, they lived completely separate lives, which meant she was unlikely to know anything significant about her husband’s nefarious business dealings. With Lord Fennimore the unwilling captive of the droning Colonel Purbeck and the deliciously smelling Miss Cranford mysteriously missing from the gathering, he found himself eager to move on as he extricated himself from the sofa.

  If nothing else, he could have a little snoop around. This rose-covered mansion in the heart of the countryside, a good forty miles from the coast, didn’t appear to be the likely lair of England’s most wanted smuggler. Nor did the aged servants seem to be his criminal accomplices—but appearances could be deceptive. Look at Lord Fennimore. To all intents and purposes the world thought him a crusty old peer. One who turned up diligently at Parliament to vote and was a reliably reluctant guest at society events—yet for over twenty years had managed to hide the fact he ran the King’s Elite. Not that anyone in society circles or outside of it would know about that organisation either. Therefore, where better to hide than here? Who would suspect a respected country squire of high treason? In another life, he certainly wouldn’t.

  Of course, in that other life he had no ambition either, other than to embrace whatever whims or pathways he took a fancy to and that had crept up on him unannounced. One minute he had been at a loose end on the cusp of leaving the merchant navy, the next he had accidentally fallen into working for the King’s Elite. Up until then, he had had no concept of possessing either the valuable skills necessary for covert espionage or the burning desire to see justice done. Yet because of things he had seen and his nagging conscience, he had approached the Excise Men with suspicions about the particular shipping company he happened to be working for at the time and inadvertently soon found himself spying on them.

  After the resounding success of that first mission, Lord Fennimore simply assumed he would continue and Gray hadn’t corrected his assumption. For the last two years he had been working beneath Seb Leatham in the Invisibles, blending into the background, pretending to be someone else. Learning the trade and loving it. With Seb now working in a wholly different way alongside his new wife, Gray wanted more than anything to step into his friend’s shoes, knowing they would be the perfect fit. After an aimless life of searching for nothing in particular beyond what was happening in the moment, he had finally found his place.

  If only he could convince old Fennimore.

  For the umpteenth time he huffed out an irritated breath at this morning’s incident. His thoughtless lack of propriety had not helped his cause, but at least it had got him here, thanks largely to Lady Crudgington. Miss Cranford had seemed horrified to see him and had introduced him around the room most begrudgingly. He had made a much better impression on the Viscountess, although prudence dictated he be cautious with her. She liked male company. More than liked it, if his suspicions were correct, which made aligning himself too closely problematic. If Gislingham was the jealous type, Gray risked alienating him. The first priority had to be getting closer to their chief suspect. Only once all hope of that was dead could he risk a dalliance with the wife to get what he wanted. Or the ward.

  Miss Cranford was
entirely off limits until he understood the lay of the land. For the sake of the mission, she had to be his last resort even though she was the family member he was most drawn to. As much as he was tempted to shamelessly flirt with her and was wildly curious to know whether her vibrant blushes ended just below her demure neckline or travelled all the way down those shapely legs to her toes, seducing a gently bred young woman tended not to go down well with protective male relatives with a cruel streak a mile wide. Doing so would not only alienate Gislingham, it would probably result in getting Gray killed.

  He could pretend to properly court her, he supposed.

  The errant thought caught him unawares. Not because he wasn’t supremely confident in his abilities to thoroughly charm her, more because it terrified him to have even thought of it. He had willingly come within a hair’s breadth of marriage once before and had ended up broken-hearted and deceived. From the tender age of ten he’d had his future with Cecily mapped out. They were going to wed as soon as he turned twenty-one when he finally gained his financial independence; they would buy a nice house near their favourite beach in Wales and raise fine horses and the best Welsh lamb alongside their bushel of children.

  Then his father and hers had brokered a different deal, one Cecily had been given a choice in, and to Gray’s horror the love of his life decided she would much rather be a wealthier marchioness wedded to his elder brother than live on that farm with him. It had been that same week that the walls of Jericho had come tumbling down. Blind with grief and convinced she would change her mind if only he could quickly enlarge his fortune to supersede his pompous brother’s, Gray had taken every penny of the money his grandfather had left him in his will to London and the hells where the savvy owners, gamblers and card sharps had quickly relieved him of it. It had been the harshest way to learn his lesson—daring to dream was as pointless as regret, and risking your heart was for tougher men than him.

  He now avoided all serious overtures of intent, even if the serious overtures would be just a ruse to infiltrate Gislingham’s confidence. He couldn’t bring himself to toy with another person’s feelings as Cecily had done his. Heartbreak, it turned out, took for ever to get over. He avoided touching hearts with the same diligence that he avoided commitment and he wouldn’t trifle with Miss Cranford’s no matter how much his body wanted her.

  Assuming she would be interested, of course. Which she didn’t appear to be in the slightest. She had barely said three words to him between all those polite introductions, so he had given up trying. Probably because he didn’t have Trefor with him. She had adored Trefor... Good grief! Another pointless train of thought in the grand scheme of things. He needed to be a better spy, not jealous of his dog.

  He rounded the shrubbery and stopped dead. The object of his musings was lying flat on her back on a stone bench, a gauzy shawl draped over her face like a shroud leaving her fiery copper hair to crackle in the sunshine. One hand rested gently on her belly while the other was thrown over her head. The artful pose, reminiscent of one of the epic tableaux of the Renaissance where some ancient Greek heroine had been cut down tragically in her prime, was doing wonders for her bosom. Her covered face allowed him to gaze longingly at it for a few moments as her chest gently rose and fell with her breathing in her splendid, fitted coral gown. Bizarrely, despite that unexpected bonus, he missed seeing her smile. That stunning smile combined with her current alluring position would be quite something to witness.

  A sensible, dedicated spy would silently retrace his steps and take another route to continue his unhindered reconnoitre. But for some reason, his feet had already decided to head towards her as if pulled by some invisible cord. He was halfway across the lawn when he realised she wasn’t asleep, in fact, and much to his amusement, she was talking to herself.

  ‘Give him a fighting chance, darling.’ If he was not mistaken, she was snippily mimicking Lady Crudgington. ‘You are a little too buttoned up.’ The hand that had been on her belly wafted in the air. ‘I cannot recall a time when I have ever heard you sound so waspish over a mere man, Thea.’ Gray suppressed the spontaneous snort which threatened to erupt as she blew a raspberry so fat the floaty shawl quivered. ‘Settle for a wholly unsuitable man before you become so decrepit and wizened no one will ever fancy you and to hell with the consequences. Your exacting standards are far too high and your imagination is as vivid as your wayward, vertical hair. And while you’re about it, become a total scandal, why don’t you? Throw yourself at the fellow. Stand on the precipice and leap! The clock is ticking after all. Tick-tock, Thea. Tick-tock.’

  He did laugh at the second raspberry, making her sit bolt upright, the delicate shawl slipping to puddle at her feet and her lush mouth a delightful O of embarrassed outrage. ‘How long have you been there!’

  ‘Long enough to know that Lady Crudgington thinks you should give Mr Hargreaves a fighting chance, but that you are not so enthused by the idea.’

  She was simultaneously blinking and blushing furiously. ‘Yes... Mr Hargreaves...indeed...and you are correct. I am not at all enthused by the idea.’ Primly, she straightened and adjusted her clothing. ‘If anything, I am thoroughly unenthused.’

  ‘I’m exceedingly glad to hear it. Having had to listen to him for the last half an hour, I found his conversation quite...’

  ‘Sycophantic? Insincere? Grinding?’

  He smiled at her accurate assessment. It was refreshing she didn’t mince her words. ‘Yes. To all. You can do much better than him.’

  She beamed again as she had this morning and the sight of it did odd things to his heart. ‘Thank you, Lord Gray! That is exactly what I keep telling Harriet, but she is determined to meddle.’

  ‘Well, I dare say the meddling is necessary. You are on the cusp of decrepit.’

  ‘You heard everything, didn’t you?’ The blush on her cheeks mirrored the deeper one staining her collarbone and disappearing beneath the lace edging her close-cut bodice. ‘It’s very rude to eavesdrop.’

  ‘Surely eavesdropping involves listening to an obviously private conversation between two or more people. As you were loudly talking to yourself, out in broad daylight, I didn’t think it counted. It gave me a very interesting insight into the young lady you are beneath that impenetrable exterior.’ She looked attractively flummoxed and guilty at his assessment, which was very intriguing. ‘Besides, like you, I sensibly came out here to hide and get some fresh air, so the eavesdropping was merely an unanticipated bonus. How could I resist it?’

  ‘For a big man, you move with impressive stealth. Was it your intention to sneak up on me?’

  ‘You credit me with too much talent, Miss Cranford. All I did was walk across the grass. If you hadn’t been talking so much, you would have heard me. Do you mind if I sit—or is that grossly improper? If it is, I can hide somewhere else.’

  She hesitated, then wrapped the filmy shawl around her shoulders, her jaw set and her eyes riveted on a distant spot across the lawn, feigning complete indifference politely. ‘We are in view of the house and Harriet will be back presently.’ Gray decided to take that as acceptance and sat on the opposite end of the seat to her.

  ‘Why are you hiding? When I left you, you seemed to be having a high old time. My aunt appeared most enamoured of your charm.’ He detected the hint of disapproval and decided to pry. These little rifts and obvious censures, leaked in confidence, proved time and time again to be fertile hunting grounds for spies.

  ‘Your aunt obviously enjoys socialising.’ A very delicate way of saying the woman basked in the glory of being the centre of attention, particularly when surrounded by a bevy of eager, much younger gentlemen.

  ‘She does. More so than my uncle, so he indulges her.’

  ‘I was hoping to meet your uncle before I outstayed my welcome. Will he be rejoining the party later?’

  Her dark eyes clouded as they stared straight ahead. ‘My uncle’s health
is not good, my lord, and hasn’t been for several years. He managed much of the first hour, but prolonged socialising does take its toll on him. He needs his rest and sleeps like the dead most afternoons. I do not expect Uncle Edward will make another appearance today, I’m afraid. You shall have to meet him another time.’

  He could tell by the worried look in her eyes she believed this to be the case and felt a rush of anger towards the man for his duplicity. Poor health was a convenient and ready excuse to disappear to do his dirty work. He’d wager every hard-earned coin in his purse that Gislingham was currently up to no good somewhere on this estate—or elsewhere—while his niece worried over him unnecessarily. ‘That is a shame. Perhaps my cousin and I would do better to call upon him in the morning?’ Before he left today, he needed to do a thorough reconnaissance of the grounds and as much of the bottom floor as he dare. His gut told him Gislingham ran his operation from this house and Gray needed to know exactly where.

  ‘He is at his best in the mornings and enjoys small, intimate company. I know he is keen to meet you—especially as Harriet has already apprised him of this morning’s unfortunate events.’

  That didn’t sound good. ‘Should I expect a thorough telling off when I come calling?’

  ‘Not at all. Uncle Edward has a very warped sense of humour and found the state of me upon my arrival home hilarious. I fear Harriet brings out the worst in him.’ Gray sincerely doubted that. He had lost many comrades thanks to The Boss at his worst.