Chapter 22

Griffith had sought out more advice in the past three months than he could remember doing in the past three years. It wasn’t that he thought himself better than anyone else. It was simply that he had to be careful who he let guide him, and he’d always found seeking the answers in the Bible or the writings of biblical scholars such as Philip Doddridge and Joseph Butler to be more effective.

In this case, however, he was running into a problem. It didn’t feel like enough to know that God had a plan and Griffith needed to trust Him with it. It especially didn’t feel like enough to know that God would let him make his own decisions on this matter. He felt like he needed to know more than how important it was to maintain his integrity and purity of thought while trying to fight for the right to court Isabella.

The questions plaguing him now didn’t seem as direct. Should he continue pursuing Isabella despite the fact that she turned him down at every turn? Well, not every turn, but every time she realized what she was doing.

He pounded on the door at Ryland’s house on Pall Mall, still trying to determine what he was there to ask.

The butler, Price, waved him in. “His Grace isn’t here, I’m afraid. But your sister is available.”

The slight grin on the butler’s face let Griffith know he was recalling the last time Griffith had come by the house in an agitated state in the middle of the afternoon. He hadn’t thought to bring this matter to his sister, but she’d been right last time. Perhaps it would be logical to ply a feminine mind for answers.

He could do without plying four of them again, though. “Is she alone?”

“No, Your Grace. Both of your sisters are in the nursery.”

He could handle his two sisters. In some ways Georgina’s mind probably more closely resembled Isabella’s. “I’ll see myself up.”

Familiar voices grew louder as Griffith topped the stairs on the second floor. He followed them until he found his sisters sitting in the middle of a bright room with furniture catalogs strewn about the floor.

“Griffith!” Miranda rose to her feet with a groan. “That’s getting more difficult every day.”

Griffith lifted an eyebrow. “You could have chairs brought in here.”

“That’s what I said,” Georgina grumbled as she pushed to her feet with a bit more elegance and grace.

Miranda frowned. “That makes it harder to visualize the furniture. And Ryland wants this room completely emptied and refurnished before we go back to the country. Even though the baby probably won’t need it for a few months, he wants to be prepared.”

“What else would you expect of a man who spent ten years skulking about in a war?” Georgina scooped up a paper and held it toward a wall. “This would be a darling bed. The light wouldn’t be in his face when he takes a nap either.”

Miranda blinked but took the paper and held it up herself. “What a clever thing to consider.”

Griffith considered leaving his sisters to their room planning, but he decided to ask the question tormenting him. If he tried to leave without giving them a reason for having come in the first place, they’d hunt him down later, and the conditions might not be as private.

Trying to look less obvious in his desperation, he picked up a sheaf of papers from the floor and began to thumb through the drawings of chair options. “What would a man need to do, say, to entice a hesitant woman to marry him?”

Not exactly the question he’d thought he was going to ask, but the one he probably needed the answer to. He was still waiting to hear back from Ryland’s man, but he couldn’t imagine a thing he could learn about Isabella that would make her unsuitable. Of course, it was the things he couldn’t imagine that were likely to cause problems. More problems than he was experiencing already. Isabella was tying him in knots, and he lived in dread that one of her other suitors would finally drum up the courage to actually propose to her. If she accepted, he would be devastated. So he might as well beat the other suitors to the asking.

Unless, of course, they’d already asked and she’d turned them all down.

“You intend to ask Miss Breckenridge, I assume?” Miranda lowered her paper and grinned at him.

“Yes.” He flipped through the chair pictures again. “I find myself drawn to her, even though she’s an entirely illogical choice.”

Georgina coughed. “I wouldn’t lead with that. It doesn’t even work for fictional men.”

“Agreed.” Miranda shrugged. “Tell her you love her. If that doesn’t do it, you don’t want to marry her anyway.”

Georgina tilted her head as she considered Griffith with far more wisdom than he was accustomed to seeing in his baby sister. “It might take more than that. Half of the unattached men in London have probably made similar infatuated statements. You need to show her that you really know who it is you claim to love. Do something different than anyone else would think to do unless they knew her extremely well.”

She smiled and place a hand on his arm. “I have to ask, though—why do you want to marry her? I’ve never known you to do anything that didn’t make complete sense, at least to you.”

How to explain what he wasn’t sure he even knew himself? He began to pace, an easy thing to do in a room devoid of furniture. “I can’t abide the idea of her marrying anyone else. I can’t think of myself married to anyone else. Whenever I consider someone who seems to make more sense, I can’t imagine her in my home.”

“What if she sets all the furniture in the house at odd angles to each other?” Miranda smirked. Probably remembering the time she’d done that very thing and Griffith had nearly hit the ceiling every time he walked into a new room.

He stopped pacing and tried to give careful consideration to his sister’s question. Imagining Isabella shifting furniture behind his back. It was all too easy to picture her hiding behind a curtain, waiting to see his reaction so that she could laugh at his frustration before helping him put it all back. “I’d let her.”

And he would. He’d let her drive him crazy every day because the reward would be her smile, her laugh.

Georgina narrowed her eyes and stepped as close as she could get and still tilt her head back to look in his face. “What if she slurped her tea?”

“She doesn’t.”

“Let a dog in the house?”

“The maid can clean behind it.”

“Turned all the books upside down on the shelves?”

“It would help knock the dust off the top.”

“Decided she wanted to go to the opera instead of a ball when you were already in the carriage?”

“It’s a good thing I keep a box.”

“Sang the wrong words to ‘Lady of the Lake,’ off-key, at the breakfast table, while drumming her finger against her plate, causing the fork to rattle, and dangling her slipper halfway off her foot.”

“I can hire a music tutor.”

“Marry her.”

Griffith stuttered for a moment. “What?”

Georgina shook her finger at him. “She clearly is in possession of magical powers, and if you don’t marry her and keep her blissfully happy she might decide to turn everyone in London into frogs.”

His youngest sister spun on her heel and went back to the drawings of window dressings she’d been considering earlier.

Griffith shifted his gaze to Miranda, whose shoulders were shaking with mirth while both hands were clamped over her mouth below wide eyes. “Am I truly that bad?” he asked her.

She lowered her hands, but the wide smile remained proof of her delight in the conversation. “I wouldn’t say bad so much as particular.” Two steps brought her to Griffith’s side, where she wrapped him in a tight hug. “Although, the fact that you’ve been in this room for nearly ten minutes and have yet to stack the papers is akin to a miracle. I have to agree with Georgina. Marry that woman. As soon as you possibly can.”

“Special license!” Georgina chirped. “The archbishop’s office is still open, if you’re quick about it. You can have the whole thing secured by dinner.”

If only he knew she’d say yes, he’d be taking his carriage to Doctors’ Commons as fast as the traffic allowed. “What if she says no?”

Miranda wrapped her arm around his and dropped her head to rest against his bicep. “Then we find a way to turn her into a frog.”

Griffith’s mind was filled with the frippery of potential love until he walked into his study. Jeffreys, Ryland’s valet, was waiting for him, road dust still coating his clothing.

“Ryland sent you?”

The wiry thin man shrugged. “He said you needed the best and the fastest.”

God certainly knew what he was doing when he created friendship. Griffith couldn’t be more thankful. He gestured Jeffreys into a seat. “Would you care for tea?”

“Much obliged, Your Grace. I don’t have a great deal to report, though. Why would you need to know about a failing sheep farm in the wilds of Northumberland?”

“Failing, is it?” Griffith tried to keep the emotion out of his voice as he arranged for tea with the servant who answered his summons. “And the family?”

“Nice folks. A bit threadbare and living close to the bone, but nice.”

Griffith tried to sit in his chair behind the desk, but the more accurate description would be that he fell into it. Isabella was dancing through London in gems and satin, riding rumors of a great dowry and powerful family connections. And her family was barely eating? “Are you sure you had the right family?”

“Yes, Your Grace. That letter you sent them caused quite a bit a noise.”

The tea arrived and Griffith fell silent, watching Jeffreys quickly prepare his cup and start to guzzle it with the grace of a tavern regular. Let him have his tea. He needed to clear his parched throat of any remaining dust, because he was about to tell Griffith everything.

He was there. Tall and handsome, an oasis of calm in the middle of social desperation.

Isabella dragged her gaze back to the man currently talking to her. Lord Someone-or-another. It had gotten incredibly difficult to keep them all straight. As her uncle had predicted, a week away from London had done nothing but enhance her popularity. It was ridiculous, really, and didn’t say much for the individual decision-making abilities of the country’s leaders.

Seeing Griffith watch her but refuse to wade into the throng only made it harder. Did it mean he’d changed his mind about the things he’d said in Hertfordshire, or did he simply refuse to be one of the masses?

She escaped to the retiring room to catch her breath, wondering what she was doing in this mess. It had been difficult before, but now every dance, every dinner, every flirting smile or restrained laugh had become nearly impossible.

Miss Newberry slipped her feet back into her slippers as Isabella walked into the room.

“Enjoying the ball?” she asked.

It took a moment for Isabella to realize the other girl had been talking to her. Most of the girls didn’t want much to do with her, the unknown who had waltzed into Town and stolen their men’s attentions. And Miss Newberry certainly hadn’t had a nice thing to say to her at the house party last week. “Er, yes. It’s not too much of a crush tonight.”

“Much to Lady Wethersfield’s dismay.” The girl grinned.

“Many more people and there wouldn’t be room to dance.”

“And everyone would talk about it for days.” She shrugged. “It’s the way things work.”

Isabella fidgeted with the edge of her glove. “Does it ever bother you?”

“I don’t let it.” Miss Newberry leaned over to look in a mirror and adjusted a curl. “I have to marry, so I might as well marry as well as I can. We don’t all have our pick of the top tier.”

The smile she gave Isabella looked genuine but sad.

Guilt crashed through Isabella. “If you could choose, who would it be?”

A quick shake of her head sent Miss Newberry’s carefully adjusted curls bouncing. “I try not to think about it. Alethea talks constantly about the merits of one man versus the other. I simply want a comfortable home and secure future. There’s a lot of men here who can give me that.”

“What of love?” Hypocrisy layered over the guilt until Isabella wondered if she was going to be ill.

Miss Newberry sighed and hugged herself. “I danced with Lord Ivonbrook once. He’d just come back from observing the workings of a new steam engine. I didn’t have the slightest idea what he was talking about, but it was nice to see someone . . .”

“Excited?”

“Care.”

Isabella had been in London for more than a month, and this was the first time someone, outside of Frederica and Griffith, had seemed like a real person, had shown any sort of vulnerability.

She wanted to ask more, but at the same time she didn’t. Already she knew she’d never look at Lord Ivonbrook the same way again. Every time she danced with him, she’d wonder if Miss Newberry was unknowingly losing her secure future for Isabella’s family’s future. It didn’t seem like a very fair trade, especially not when someone else was making the decision for you.

The door opened, and two more girls tripped in, giggling. They looked young. Too young. Were they even eighteen? Isabella felt old, knowing these ladies thought her to be nineteen like them, but she suddenly felt ten years older instead of only five.

Any chance of conversation was lost, and Miss Newberry gave Isabella another smile, this one the practiced, cold one Isabella had seen on so many of the other faces in the ballroom. Then she rose and left the room without another glance.

If Isabella wanted a distraction, she’d certainly gotten it, but it wasn’t the kind she’d been looking for.

She slipped back down the passage and into a door on the side of the ballroom.

“Will you dance with me?”

That deep voice was the last thing she needed. Even as it rolled over her, making the hairs on her skin stand up at the very idea of being the one to finally dance with him, it fed the ball of misery in the pit of her stomach. “I can’t.”

“Why not? You’ve hardly left the floor all night. And I know you don’t keep a dance card.” Griffith pushed away from where he’d been leaning against the wall. He angled his body so that anyone looking their way would see only his back. No one would know she’d returned. Her cream silk skirts would be visible on either side of his legs, but they probably looked like the skirts of half the other women in the room as well.

“I can’t.”

“You said that already.”

“And it’s as true now as it was five seconds ago.”

“Oh.”

He fell silent for a moment. Isabella could have walked away. He wasn’t touching her or caging her in. He wasn’t even standing all that close, but somehow she felt trapped, glued to the floor until he decided to let her go. Only, if she were honest with herself, it wasn’t his will keeping her there—it was her desire that things could be different.

She stood, feeling her heart beat, focusing on keeping her breaths shallow so she wouldn’t inhale too much of his cedar and grass scent.

“How about now?”

“I beg your pardon?” Her gaze flew to meet his. A mistake, as she got snagged in his deep emerald gaze.

“Is it still true?”

Despite herself she smiled. “Yes. I’m afraid it is.”

“Can’t is such an interesting word.” He tilted his head but kept his eyes on hers. “So many times we confuse it with the word won’t.”

She swallowed. “Very well. I won’t.”

“Won’t is also an interesting word. It means there’s a chance I can change your mind.”

Again she smiled, realizing she’d been neatly maneuvered but having trouble caring. “You won’t.” She swallowed, the curve drifting off her lips. “You can’t.”

One eyebrow winged upward, and for a moment he looked every inch a man capable of holding his own against anyone—up to and including the ruling monarch of the country. And she was trying to take him on in a battle of wills.

“That’s a rather bold declaration. I am a duke. There isn’t much I can’t do.”

“You can’t do this. I won’t let you.”

A shadow slid over his face, taking away the playful glint in his eyes and the teasing crease at the side of his mouth. “You’re probably the only person who could stop me. I’d like to call on you tomorrow.”

“I’ll tell Osborn that I’m not home.”

“Then I’ll call on Frederica.”

“If you like.” Isabella wanted to cry, to scream, to growl, to do something that would release a small bit of the frustration caused by the clashing of the light moment with her dreadful guilt and the nagging voice at the back of her head that was getting harder and harder to silence. “But she won’t be home either.”

If he thought to come visit her uncle, there would be nothing she could do to keep him away, but somehow she didn’t think that he wanted to bring Uncle Percy into this. Her name had dripped from many a tongue, but to her knowledge, it had never been linked with the duke’s in more than a cursory fashion, and he seemed to want to keep it that way. It made her wonder about his declared intentions. If he truly wanted to court her, why wasn’t he doing it openly?

“Etiquette says that once you’ve turned someone down, you shouldn’t dance the rest of the evening, lest you make him feel like you’re rejecting him personally.”

She pressed her lips together, trying not to laugh at his overly innocent expression even as a little bit of her heart broke at the thought of hurting this man. “I suppose I’ll just have to assure you that it’s personal, then. We wouldn’t want anyone to walk around with erroneous assumptions.”

Then she curtsied and walked around him, taking great care to not look back until she’d been swallowed up by the crowd.