Chapter 14

Fourteen

The note Cassie sent ahead to Thornton House, informing Grant that she would be visiting him that night, had been somewhat cryptic—T.H., rear entrance, 11 o'clock—but she hoped the meaning would be clear to him.

She also hoped it would prevent him from having his mistress present when she arrived.

Her stomach flipped at the thought of the woman's name: Miss Martha Devereaux. Why had Jane felt the need to tell her about her?

As Patrick pulled his carriage down the mews lane behind Thornton House, she swallowed the urge to call for her driver to turn around. If not for Isabel's dire situation, she would not have come at all. Visiting an unmarried man's home this time of night, alone, in such a manner was precarious. If anyone were to learn of it, their false, short-term courtship would not be able to end as planned. Not without disastrous consequences for her.

Cassie squared her shoulders and, grateful for the pitiful lamplight in the mews, slipped up to Grant's tradesmen's entrance. After a single knock, the door opened, and she was looking up into the physician's face. A single candle illuminated his expression of censure.

"You are asking for trouble by coming here, Cassie." He took her arm and pulled her inside swiftly before shutting and locking the door. They stood in a small vestibule off the kitchen.

"I assumed your servants would be abed by this hour," she said, inhaling the air between them, trying to trace any lingering scent of perfume. The more she thought about his keeping a mistress while they were pretending to court, the more it began to rankle.

"They are," he said. The single taper in its holder was the only light in the kitchen beyond the vestibule. "But you may have been seen, or your carriage could be spotted in the mews."

"I'm having Patrick drive around. He's going to keep checking the lane, and I said we'd place a candle on the step outside when he's to come back."

The plan did little to assuage Grant's discontent. But he turned and began to lead her through the kitchen without a word. His anger over her presence was slightly insulting. The risk of being found with her here was no less severe than when they'd been huddled together in Lady Dutton's closet. His aversion to having to marry her was likely causing his sour attitude.

"Have I interrupted your evening?" she snapped as she followed him through a door and a short set of stairs, into a corridor.

She'd been in his home once before, shortly after Hugh and Audrey had uncovered a debased secret society near Vauxhall where a few women had been killed. Grant had been with them, and he'd been beaten badly, a few of his fingers broken. He'd endured torture rather than give up the location of his friend. Cassie had seen then his loyalty, and it had impressed her. She and Audrey had come to visit him, to be sure he was recovering. But in true Grant fashion, he'd brushed off the injuries with humor.

Though now, he didn't show a single drop of humor.

He pushed through a pair of doors, and Cassie followed him into a room similar to his Church Street surgery.

"Yes, in fact, you have," he answered.

He stalked through his home surgery and rolled open another pair of doors, these leading to a study. Annoyance rippled off him in waves as he went directly to a decanter on his desk and poured.

Coming here had been a mistake. With a sinking stomach, Cassie stood in between the surgery and the study. Firelight lit the masculine space. She could easily imagine him entertaining a woman on the wide leather Chesterfield before the fire. With that image in mind, the study seemed more like a den of sin.

"Your mistress had to leave early, I take it?"

He stilled the decanter.

"If I am not permitted to see other suitors, then I think it only fair you should not see Miss Devereaux."

Grant looked over his shoulder at her. He made no reply and went back to pouring. He filled a second glass, presumably for her.

"You won't deny she is your mistress?" Cassie pressed.

"I won't." Grant came back toward her and extended the drink. "How do you know of her?"

She stared at the glass but didn't take it. Couldn't look at him as a whistling sound filled her ears. "Jane. She said you frequent a sporting club on Bond Street where… Is that where you were coming from the other afternoon when I saw you?"

He lowered the drink. "I box at Gentleman Jack's, which is also on Bond Street, and had just left there when I saw you." Before she could start to feel miniscule for having asked such a question, he added, "But Mrs. Riverton is not wrong. The club is called the Fallen Arch. I have met Miss Devereaux there in the past."

Her fingernails bit into her palms as she clenched them.

"However," he went on. "I have not partaken in Miss Devereaux's special attentions since our deal was struck. Nor any other woman's if that is what has you all twisted up in knots."

Her fingers relaxed, her nails likely having left indentations. "I'm not twisted up." She grabbed the drink from his hand, perturbed with herself. And a little injured. He didn't want her here. He was downright angered by it.

"Give me your candle. I'll place it outside for Patrick." She held out her other hand, waiting for it.

"You are not leaving," he said. "Not until you tell me what was so bloody important that you'd risk coming here."

"You came to my study through my tradesmen's entrance," she reminded him.

"That was different."

"How so?"

Grant sipped his drink, his eyes not leaving hers. "You had the safety of your staff on hand. A lady's maid who knew I was there and who stood just outside the door. There is no one here now to protect you from me."

A quiver of apprehension went through her. "Do I require protection from you?"

The question sounded far more suggestive than she'd intended. Grant didn't answer right away. Instead, he took the time to sip his drink again. The corner of his mouth twitched, and the dimple in his cheek showed itself.

"Maybe," he said, but his grin assured her he wasn't serious. "Sit, Cassie. Tell me why you've come."

She broke free from his penetrating gaze and went to the leather Chesterfield, adjacent to the hearth. A fire leaped in the grate, lighting the cut crystal glass in her hand as her fingers traced the chiseled edges. "Elyse and I went to the clinic and spoke to Isabel." She perched on the sofa. "The man's name is Mr. Youngdale, not Young. She told us what happened and… Grant, it's just awful."

Cassie described what had been revealed about her aunt Lydia and Mr. Youngdale and also about the suspicious death of his first wife.

"She doesn't believe it was an accident," she explained. "He's threatened her, and she's frightened that he means to keep the baby once its born but dispose of her."

Grant scowled into the fire. "Youngdale," he murmured. Then, he set his glass on the hearth mantel and went to his desk. He pulled open a drawer and extracted a thick text.

"What is that?" Cassie asked.

"My copy of Debrett's. It should have something on the Youngdale baronetcy."

He brought the guide to the Chesterfield and took the cushion beside hers. As he opened the book and began to flip through, she considered that this was not at all the image of Grant entertaining a woman on said sofa that she'd had just moments ago. Some of the tension left her back. Cassie couldn't account for it. She shouldn't be at ease, not while she sat here, alone in his home with him at so late an hour. But his concern for Isabel was evident as he turned pages. He would help the young woman. So many others would never have lifted a finger to give aid, but he would. Even if he was upset with Cassie for being there.

"Why do you keep a guide to the peerage in your desk drawer?" she asked.

"I like to know a little about my patients before I attend them," he replied while turning pages. "Plus, I'm incurably nosey. Ah. Here we are." He stopped flipping and put a finger to the page. "Mister Gregory Youngdale. Third son of Sir David Youngdale, deceased and succeeded by his eldest son. Child number three, Gregory, is nearly forty years of age, according to the birth date listed for him. This is the 1818 edition, so a few years old now, but it looks like the wife, Mrs. Alicia Youngdale was still alive when this guide was published. Married in 1815." He closed the book and tossed it aside. "There's nothing more than that. Officially, Youngdale is not a peer, so he wouldn't be part of any upper-class society, at least none that I know of."

"The demimonde then?" Cassie suggested.

Grant leaned against the Chesterfield's back cushion, his arms folding over his chest. He wasn't wearing a jacket, or a cravat. Just his shirtsleeves and waistcoat, the latter of which he'd likely only kept on because he knew to expect her. Otherwise, by this time of night he'd have been in a state of dishabille. The image that flared in her mind wasn't ladylike. It was slightly alarming, in fact, especially when her attention drifted toward his unbuttoned collar, open to reveal the smooth skin of his throat. Thankfully, Grant didn't see her perusal. He was staring straight ahead, brows pressed low.

"Perhaps. I'll ask a few friends if they've heard anything about him." He shifted his gaze to her. "A part of me is relieved he's not as connected as a peer, but that also means his actions can go overlooked more easily than someone of more significance."

It was a good point. Anything could happen behind a closed door when no one cared enough to look.

"We must help her," Cassie said.

Grant sighed heavily. "I'm not sure what more we can do. Isabel can't be forced to marry him, but once the baby is born, if he is the father, he'll have a right to his child."

A surge of sudden, unchecked anger made her ill. "Why should he? After what he's done, he shouldn't have any right at all. He is violent. He killed his first wife!"

Grant held up a hand. "We don't know that for certain, and there is likely no proof."

"Isabel doesn't need proof to be afraid, or to know what kind of man he is. She has the right to protect herself and her child!" Cassie couldn't sit another moment. She got to her feet, the motion splashing the drink, still untouched in her glass, over the rim.

"I agree," Grant said calmly, his eyes following her as she set the glass on the flat arm of the sofa. Her wrist trembled. "However, there is little the law can do for her, and many would say she'd be better off married than unmarried when the baby is born."

"She should not be made to marry him!" Cassie said, her anger unspooling. "It isn't her fault that she doesn't have the sort of family who loved her or cared for her enough to keep her away from him, to understand that she didn't deserve to be punished with an unwanted marriage." She clasped her hands together, her fingers twisting as once again, she saw his face—Renfry's face—looking down at her at Archambeau Manor, all but leering as his mind took him back to the few times he'd successfully lured her into his bed. How stupid she'd been. How naive and desperate and silly. Her eyes stung as she stared into the fire.

"It isn't her fault her aunt didn't love her enough to send her away for her confinement before anyone could notice her increasing. To formulate an excuse that the whole family upheld to protect her. And then to bring her home afterward and continue to pretend…"

Her voice caught, and she couldn't go on. She shouldn't have said so much. Her whole body flushed as she realized what she'd done—and that it might not have been a mistake. The smallest part of her, a part she'd avoided listening to, had wanted to confess. Wanted to know how Grant would react. If he chastised her, despised her, she could hate him again.

The flames in the hearth entranced her as she waited with her back to him. Grant didn't speak as she heard him rise from the sofa. He continued to stay silent as he approached. Without looking, she knew he stood behind her. The warmth of his body pressed against her back. His hands touched down on her arms, bracing them, and her nerves lit with a galvanizing stir.

"Look at me, Cassie," he whispered. "Please."

She sniffled and blinked back the stinging tears. "I don't want to."

His palms tightened around her arms, and he closed more space between them. He angled his head toward her ear. "Why don't you want to look at me?"

Because she knew she wasn't going to see disdain or disappointment. She wasn't going to see censure or repulsion. And then she wasn't going to be able to hate him.

Slowly, she allowed him to turn her. And even more slowly, Cassie lifted her eyes from the sliver of skin at his unbuttoned collar. His green eyes, usually clear and pale, were now dusky. There was a tenderness in them that she hadn't expected. And yet, glaring fury too.

"You are no longer talking about Isabel," he said softly.

She gave her head a small shake. The muscles of his jaw jumped, and Grant tucked his chin, unblinking. "It happened to you."

She closed her eyes, feeling as though she was about to step over the edge of a precipice, not knowing what lay below, or how far the drop would be. A tear slipped free and wet her cheek. It was too late to reverse course now. He knew. Even if she said nothing, he would know. Cassie gave another jerky nod. Just one. Grant's grip on one of her arms released so that he could bring his thumb to her cheek.

"You're still not looking at me," he said as he cleared the dampness from her skin.

She gathered all her mettle, all the strength she'd convinced herself she possessed these last many years and split her wet lashes apart. Grant nodded, still holding her in a direct stare.

"It was Renfry?"

God, why was she doing this? Why did she want to tell him?

Her lips quavered uncontrollably. "Yes," she managed to whisper, the single word a hiccup.

Grant's hands fell away from her. His chest heaved as he took deep breaths, his expression suddenly devoid of any tenderness. Instead, it tightened with barely contained wrath. He strode several steps away, rubbing the back of his neck. Cassie rocked back onto her heels, her pulse beginning to throb in her ears.

"I shouldn't have told you," she said, the words tinny from panic. How could she have been so bloody daft? "We worked so hard to keep it secret, and I've never told anyone else, I don't know why I…"

Grant spun back around and closed the space between them, taking her arms again. "The truth is safe with me. Breathe, Cassie. Just breathe."

She inhaled a shallow breath, then another. It took a third for the chiming in her ears to subside. All the while, Grant's palm stroked her arm, elbow to shoulder and back down again.

"You said ‘we'," he said after a moment. "Who knows? Not Renfry?"

"No, God no." A shiver worked down her spine, though it might have been from the soothing scrub of Grant's hand. The slow, intimate caresses had tempered her panic.

"Hugh and Audrey?" he guessed.

Cassie nodded. "And Michael and Genie."

Grant's hand stilled. "That is surprising."

"Michael loves me, even if he is inflexible and conventional to a fault. He would never have forced me to marry the man who lied to me. Who used me and…and threw me over."

Again, Grant stepped away, his aggravation visible in the flexing of his hands, into fists and out again. Cassie brought her arms around herself, her hands replacing where his had been soothing her. It didn't work half as well.

He raked a few dark strands of hair from his forehead, appearing overwhelmed. So was she. Never in a thousand years would she have thought the first person she'd tell, outside her protective family circle, would be Grant Thornton.

He seemed to hesitate. But then met her eyes. "The child?"

The child. Those two words blasted apart the glass casing she'd erected around her heart. There had been cracks in it, of course, fissures and fault lines. But Grant's simple inquiry ruptured them all. Cassie barely made it to the Chesterfield before her legs disappeared beneath her. She leaned forward, burying her face in her hands as the memories of that wretched day swarmed. The horrible pain, the relief of it ending, and then more stabbing pain in her chest when she'd seen her. She could still hear her daughter's shuddering wails as she was cleaned and bundled by the midwife, and then laid into Cassie's arms for the first, and what would be last, time.

The sofa cushion beside her dipped with Grant's weight. He didn't touch her, but his presence was enough.

"You needn't tell me anything," he said softly. "However, nothing you do tell me is going to change how I already see you."

Cassie moved her palms to uncover her eyes but continued to cup her wet cheeks as she peered at him. "How is that?"

Right then, she felt like a disaster. Weak and vulnerable. She didn't want anyone to see her this way.

Grant leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his thighs just as Cassie was doing. His hands clasped together, and he knit his brow in thought. "Brave," he said. Then, "Caring to a fault. You're strong and stubborn and a warrior for others."

She shook her head, even as his compliments made her feel the slightest bit radiant. "I'm not strong. I'm broken, and I feel like I'm breaking apart more and more every day." A sob caught in her throat, squeezing off that last word.

He nodded and rubbed his palms together, but he remained quiet. He didn't push her to say more, or console her with well-meaning words. He simply sat next to her, waiting for her to either say more, or not. The purposeful silence said it was to be her choice.

"I don't want to talk about Renfry," she finally said. "He doesn't matter. He is nothing."

And that was the truth. He'd injured her, to be sure, but it had been the product of that injury—the child—that had scarred her, not his ill treatment.

"I will never say his name again if that is what you want," Grant said.

It was perhaps even more generous than the words he'd just used to describe her. She sat up a bit straighter and rested her hands in her lap.

"Philip sent me to Stockholm, to be in the care of friends there. The Olssons. They were kind, and they found a family for the baby. I tried to prepare myself, but when she was born…" She shook her head, more tears welling. "I knew I could not keep her, but giving her away, coming home without her… I left a piece of my soul behind." Her throat closed off again, feeling as though it was being crushed.

Grant reached for her hands, which were twisting the fabric of her gown over her knees. He laid his palm over them, his large hand easily encompassing her own. His skin was coarse and warm, and the touch instantly calmed the tremors shuttling up and down her spine. Cassie looked at him, and to her surprise, his eyes were glistening. They were full of pain and sympathy, and she felt suddenly wretched for not considering that he knew a similar pain.

"When I wrapped my daughter in her burial shroud, I felt a part of me die too," he said, his voice a rasp. "It's why I cannot attend births anymore. I'm too afraid."

He shifted his position on the sofa to face her. "And yet, here you are, helping women going through something you've endured. Every time you walk through the doors of Hope House, you face your pain. You're not weak, Cassie. You are stunning."

He lifted his hand and with the ridge of his knuckles, brushed her cheek. She turned into the touch unthinkingly, only wanting to feel the comfort of it. Just as she had the evening in his clinic. And like then, the reckless desire for Grant to kiss her erased every other thought in her mind. His lips were so close, the fullness of his lower lip mesmerizing. She couldn't draw her eyes away from his mouth, or her imagination from how it might feel to kiss his lips. The senseless, imprudent yearning for him to fit them against hers overrode all reason.

But unlike Cassie, it seemed he wasn't without reason.

Grant dropped his hand from her cheek and launched to his feet, breaking the spell. He cleared his throat roughly and pulled on the points of his waistcoat before fidgeting some more by smoothing the deep green fabric with his palms.

Cassie's legs quaked as she, too, got to her feet. Her mind reeled and her cheeks flushed. "I should go."

"Yes, it's late," he replied swiftly. Grant stooped to pick up the copy of Debrett's that he'd tossed onto the floor. "We'll speak to Hugh tomorrow. He might know something regarding Mr. Youngdale."

As he led her from the study, back through the surgery and into the corridors toward the kitchen, he stayed a few steps ahead. Telling him the truth had been bewilderingly easy, and his response, even more puzzling. He'd been supportive and kind. And yet, he'd pulled away before he could kiss her.

Gracious, she was such a fool. Why would he wish to kiss her now that she'd admitted to having a child out of wedlock? To being ruined? It was the very reason why she'd never allowed herself to become close to any man. Intimacy would be impossible. Her brother wanted her to marry, but the moment any husband saw her bare stomach, he would know the truth. The baby had left marks on her skin. Unassailable evidence. She would be betrayed on her wedding night, and the man would know himself to be betrayed too. While Grant may have been sympathetic, it had likely altered whatever attraction he might have felt for her. Even if it was a frivolous and fleeting attraction.

They entered the mews lane outback just as Patrick was driving past the entrance to it. He turned and drew up to them. Grant opened the door for her.

"Cassie," he said as he helped her onto the step. She forced herself to look at him. In the dark, at least he couldn't see her blushing. "Thank you for trusting me."

She nodded, but as he shut her into the carriage and told Patrick to carry on, she feared it had changed everything. And she wished she'd kept her damn mouth shut.