bother a groom.”
He shouldn’t. He absolutely should not. He’d already spent too much time in Kathryn’s company. That he’d shared such intimate thoughts and invited her to go on an outing with him was a prelude to disaster. What the devil had he been thinking? He needed to make himself scarce, but the words needed eluded him, and instead he heard himself say, “I believe I shall.”
Chapter 5
While their horses plodded along Rotten Row, Kathryn continually stole glances at Griff on the other side of Althea. Propriety dictated his sister serve as a barrier between the two of them, yet Kathryn was disappointed he wasn’t nearer to her, that conversing with him here would not be the intimate encounter it had been in the garden, when for the briefest of moments, she’d thought perhaps he was contemplating kissing her. For the briefest of moments, she’d wanted him to.
He sat a horse well. Whenever a lady passed by, he tipped his hat while giving her a smile certain to leave her a little unsteady in the saddle. She’d never noticed he had such a charmingly wicked smile that promised fun and adventure. Might all the teasing she’d so abhorred be an innocuous sort of flirting? His nature was not to take anything seriously—or so she’d thought.
But based on what she’d observed since coming to spend several days with Althea, perhaps all his lightheartedness was merely like ivy that climbed ever higher to hide a wall behind which a person could feel safe.
In the garden, they’d spoken longer than they ever had before, and she’d enjoyed it. More than that, she’d been a little cross with Althea for interrupting, for bringing a halt to the conversation that had revealed a man who believed a woman should be more than an ornament.
She had sat there mesmerized as he’d laid out what he wanted in a wife as though he’d given it intense and thorough consideration, when she would have thought that he’d not given it a single minute of deliberation. He cared about a woman’s heart and soul. He wanted her involved in his life, as a part of it. Not on the periphery. Not an afterthought.
While it was highly unlikely that he was doing so, Griff could have been describing her. She didn’t want to examine why she hoped he had been, why she had thought If only you would gain a title. Why her heart had seemed to shrink and expand at the same time. For the span of their time in the garden she’d felt that he truly saw her. Understood her need not to be overlooked but to be valued not for her physical attributes but for her mind, her heart, her very soul.
Something inside her had twisted and turned, bunched up and unfurled, until she’d seen him in a very different light. He was far more complicated than she’d ever imagined, and she wanted to unravel the threads in order to more thoroughly examine all the various shades that made him who he was. She was beginning to think bits of silver and gold were woven through the tapestry that comprised Lord Griffith Stanwick.
“Look steady, Kat,” Althea said. “I do believe that’s the Duke of Kingsland headed our way.”
She’d been giving so much examination to their time in the garden and watching Griff now that she’d hardly noticed her surroundings, but, yes, indeed that was in fact the duke trotting toward them with such smooth movements that he and the horse seemed as one. Shouldn’t her heart speed up with the prospect of speaking with him? Shouldn’t she care that the man she hoped to marry was approaching? Shouldn’t she want to unravel his tapestry?
They brought their horses to a halt just before he reached them. His gaze swept over them before landing on Griff. “Good afternoon, my lord.”
Griff tipped his head slightly. “Your Grace. Allow me the honor of introducing my sister, Lady Althea, and her dear friend, Lady Kathryn Lambert.”
He removed his silk hat, black as a raven’s wing, from his head. “Ladies. I understand congratulations are in order, Lady Althea. Lord Chadbourne is indeed a fortunate man.”
“Thank you, Your Grace.”
Then he was studying Kathryn, as though she was a puzzle in need of deciphering. “Lady Kathryn, are you spoken for?”
“That’s a rather impertinent question.”
“But it gets to the heart of things, does it not?”
Out of the corner of her eye, she detected Griff stiffening, and she wondered exactly how he might have garnered the information