“Lady Calliope is a child.” Jack said.
Perhaps Jack would get lucky, and the widowed duke and his very marriageable daughter would cancel due to the weather.
“She’s nearly eight and ten, and don’t give me that look,” his grandmother warned.
“You aren’t getting any younger, Jack.” His grandfather offered unhelpfully. “Your grandmother is right. It’s time you settle down. Before you know it, you’re best days will be behind you.”
“Not if I take after you,” Jack countered.
His grandmother clicked her tongue. “I had hoped you would fall in love again, but it’s been years since that nasty business with Christina and Lord Meyers. Tell me you’ve fallen for some woman in London, and I’ll not say another word. If she’s a respectable lady, I might even keep my promise.”
“Sometimes we don’t see what’s right in front of our eyes,” His grandfather philosophized.
Hot and cold spread out from Jack’s heart, immediately followed by thoughts of one woman in particular—a woman with a ridiculously vivid imagination.
“Have you, dear?” His grandmother’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Is there someone?”
Other sensations, not images exactly, but—feelings—slammed into him.
Love.
“No,” he answered. He’d hated leaving her. He’d loved having her in his bed. But he’d only known her for one night. “Of course not,” he added.
“I remember the day I met your grandfather,” Jack’s grandmother reminisced. “He was the most arrogant, annoying gentleman I’d ever met.”
“And yet,” his grandfather prompted her. Because, of course, he knew the story well.
“And yet, I knew I loved him by the next day.”
“How?” Jack asked without thinking. “How did you know?” Because all day long, he’d felt off. He’d felt as though he’d made the worst mistake of his life.
“Your grandfather staked a claim in my heart, and I couldn’t imagine my future without him—not one that I looked forward to, anyhow.”
“I felt as though I’d come home.” His grandparents’ gazes fixed on one another. “And any adventures I’d take after that would mean nothing if I didn’t have you at my side.”
“We married a week later.” This was the part of the story that Jack was familiar with. They’d been betrothed for years before laying eyes on one another.
The fact that they’d fallen in love was a lucky one.
“I don’t want you to wait too long, my darling.” Jack’s grandmother was watching him again. But her powder-white complexion was a little pinker. And the glance she shot his grandfather almost flirtatious.
“It’s lucky for me,” Jack joked, uncomfortable with the subject. “Otherwise, I might not be here.”
His grandfather cleared his throat, perhaps realizing that the conversation had become more personal than usual. “Clean up, then, my boy. I’ve got a few tenant issues for you to address.”
Jack nodded. His grandfather had handed over most of the running of the estate to Jack a few years back, and although Jack could manage most of the goings-on from his Mayfair townhouse, there were always issues that inevitably required his presence.
“Of course.” Jack rose. Ruminating other people’s problems was precisely what he needed tonight. Doing that would be far easier than dealing with his own.
He was willing to do almost anything to get his mind off the rustic little inn he’d left behind a few hours ago—more specifically, the brown-eyed lady who’d shared his bed.
Ten
“Iknow some companions expect special privileges,” Mrs. Finke, the housekeeper at Thorncliffe Abbey said. “But you’ll be rooming upstairs in the servant’s quarters. A bell has been strung up so the countess can summon you day or night.”
Delia nodded, clutching her newly-purchased reticule like a lifeline to her past. Her knuckles had turned white from the harrowing drive up to the castle, and more than once, she’d been terrified they were going over the edge.
Thorncliffe Abbey sat atop a giant rock, or rather a small mountain, making for a drive that provided spectacular views but also more than one steep drop-off.