cast around for a proper stick to throw and found one amidst the fallen leaves. He spent the next ten minutes running the dog from one end of the garden to the other until his arm ached. When he looked up, Ginny was standing at the window, her thin white hands pressed against the glass. He gave her a jaunty wave, as though the sight of her wasn’t a bit spectral.
“All right, Rufus. Fun’s over for us, I think. Time to return to town and face the Gorgon.” Not that Lady Kelby was Gorgonish at all. From what he’d seen when her hat fell off, her hair was not snakelike but molasses-brown. She was not exactly beautiful, but no single feature was objectionable. She was tall and well formed, her face a near-perfect oval with dark eyes and a wide mouth. He’d not seen her smile yet, but wanted to.
What in hell was the matter with him?
Oh, what wasn’t? He was beyond bored. Still. And in desperate need of an adventure. He must be desperate indeed, if he thought mounting grim Lady Kelby would be any sort of adventure. Where was Napoleon when one needed him?
Nothing might come from his trip in the country, and that suited him perfectly. It was rather repugnant to think of himself as that dancing circus bear. He might get some country air and shooting in though, if an antiquities expert was allowed to hold a modern gun.
Reyn rubbed his shoulder, wishing he could pluck out the ball inside. It was so inconveniently lodged that the army sawbones had been reluctant to go digging any further for it. After six years, it was a part of him, tangled in muscle and blood.
Everyone carried some sort of secret inside, didn’t they? Reyn wondered what Lady Kelby’s was. He supposed he’d soon find out.
Chapter 4
Maris sat on the divan in the hotel room, giving thought to the night before. Captain Durant had come to Mivart’s in person to tell her he had changed his mind. Again. And she’d had an additional request. It had been a tricky thing getting him to cooperate, and a horribly awkward conversation, but she had been adamant, insisting he see Henry’s London physician before he left the city.
She could see that Durant had been torn between humiliation and apoplexy. The muscle in his scarred cheek had jumped a mile. To his credit, the man did not lose his temper, although his black brows struggled to remain level. They really were quite terrifying things, like glossy, overfed caterpillars.
She’d been impressed with the control he’d exhibited, but then, he’d been a soldier. Soldiers were supposed to be stoic at orders they doubted, were they not? He’d opened his mouth and quickly shut it, nodded and held his hand out for the address she’d written on a piece of hotel stationery.
To her relief, he had said nothing about her meeting Mr. Ramsey, either. Perhaps it had been a bit underhanded of her to have enlisted the newspaper editor’s help, but Henry had depended upon the man’s discretion. Maris had asked him to continue to look for a suitable candidate, just in case, God forbid, Captain Durant didn’t come up to scratch after Ramsey’s little threat. Perhaps another gentleman could be found to perform in his place.
But that had not been necessary. Reynold Durant would join them within a few days if he were not afflicted with some gentleman’s gruesome complaint. The captain had been punctiliously correct at their meeting in her hotel suite last night, with nary a sign that he wanted to steal kisses or pursue “friendship” with her. Maris took that as a good sign. What was between them was no more than a business transaction—unusual business, to be sure—but there was nothing of a personal nature between them, nor could there ever be.
Maris stood. With the prospect of an heir for Kelby Hall looking somewhat brighter, she had delayed her own departure for home. Henry thought she was in town to do some shopping, so shopping she would go. There was no time to stand about in one’s underthings to get pinned and poked, but if she could find some ready-made garments, why not? She had not ordered new dresses in years.
It had not mattered what she wore lately—she was bound to drop ink on her skirts or trail a sleeve through fixative. She’d become adept piecing fragments of linen and stone together, her hands steady. Maris was proud of her hands.