The Disgraceful Lord Gray

She wasn’t afraid. Not exactly. Reluctant, more like. When one had the amount of money in the bank that she had, the vultures tended to circle. At least here, close to home, she knew all of them, had repelled most of them and didn’t have to waste valuable time trying to identify them as vultures in the first place. London was the great unknown, stuffed to the rafters with wholly unsuitable men who had no scruples and who would move heaven and earth to get their hands on her fortune. Winnowing out the wheat from the chaff did not appeal. Especially when Impetuous Thea had such poor taste in men.

‘I need to be close in case something happens.’ That was at least a reasonable excuse. With a sham for a marriage, no children and a largely absentee wife, Uncle Edward was alone. If Thea wasn’t there, then he would have nobody but his manservant, Bertie, to keep him company from one week to the next. She couldn’t allow him to live like that. Not when he had taken her in after she had been orphaned, loved her unconditionally and been both mother and father to her for over half of her life.

So much so, he had transferred the bulk of his unentailed fortune to her while she had still been a child. Tens of thousands of pounds, cannily invested, continually multiplying and held in trust until she had reached her majority. He still managed her fortune for her and every year it grew bigger still, ever multiplying like the venomous heads of the mythical Hydra and twice as frightening. Not that she would admit such a thing to anyone, least of all her beloved uncle. He had gifted her a lifetime of financial independence and had never asked for anything in return. It seemed horribly ungrateful to loathe the generous gift he had saddled her with.

‘Very noble—but exactly how many more years are you prepared to wait for the worst to happen? It has already been three.’ Which coincidentally was the last time she and her uncle had really argued, when Thea had defied him to sneak out of the house past midnight to kiss the handsome officer who she had met at the assembly rooms the week before. With hindsight her uncle had been entirely correct in his censure. The man had been too old, too worldly and wholly focused on her fortune. He was taking flagrant advantage of her youth, her rebellious nature and her inexperience to further his own ends.

Unfortunately, at the time she had been too outraged at being forbidden to see him and too wilful to accept the edict. While Impetuous Thea was out, the worst had happened. If Bertie hadn’t been there to save him, her uncle would now be as dead as her father.

‘Edward’s condition has neither deteriorated nor improved. You need to face facts, Thea. While you sit around waiting, being the overly dutiful niece and the devoted daughter Edward never had, your own life is passing you by. Mr Hargreaves notwithstanding, you could be married already, living close by and still being the dutiful niece who visits daily, yet you have thwarted every potential suitor who has shown an interest.’

‘None of them was suitable. They all just wanted my money.’ She didn’t want to end up shackled to a vulture. ‘With great wealth comes great responsibility. I have to be sure I entrust it to someone worthy.’

‘Or perhaps your exacting standards are too high on purpose? You are the most suspicious person I know.’

That stung. ‘I’m an heiress! I have to be suspicious! Every fortune hunter, ne’er-do-well and chancer who ventures into Suffolk automatically seeks me out and plights his troth, keen to get his greedy hands on all that money. I have to be cautious.’

‘Cautious, yes. Not overcautious and determined to denounce them all as villains. Lord Selwyn, for instance, didn’t turn out to be a swindler as you suspected.’

‘But he was a fortune hunter.’

‘And Mr Taylor, the young widower, was in fact a widower and not a bigamist either.’

Thea threw her hands up in the air in exasperation. ‘Yet he was in debt up to his eyeballs and hopelessly in love with my fortune, too.’

‘Yes, granted, both saw the money before you, but Captain Fairway had his own fortune.’

‘And three illegitimate children by two separate mistresses. I knew he was a philanderer!’

‘There is always something wrong with them—fortune hunter, philanderer, scoundrel...what was the name of the chap you thought was a highwayman?’

‘Chisholm Hunter? I’m still not entirely convinced that he wasn’t. There was something very shifty about that man.’

Harriet glanced heavenwards and briefly closed her eyes before continuing in an uncharacteristically measured tone. ‘Your overly suspicious nature has given you an imagination as vivid as your hair, darling. In the absence of any real reasons to discount them you now have a tendency to make things up.’

‘You think I should have settled? For a man I have no faith in nor any true affection for? Leap first into marriage without any forethought or rigorous contemplation? Like my uncle did with Aunt Caro? Look how miserable that hasty decision has made them! Might I remind you, you also found fault with all those gentlemen, too, as I recall.’

Harriet rolled her eyes again. ‘Only because you continually hammered home their faults and I am a good friend and want to please you. However, while you continue to repel each and every gentleman who glances your way, the clock is ticking. In two more years you’ll be well on the way to being considered an old maid. And I don’t want you to leap into marriage. I want you to risk the leap of faith. It’s the most splendid feeling in the world, darling. You stand on the precipice, not ever truly knowing what is the right course of action, but you take that chance. You abandon your fears and leap.’ She sighed romantically. ‘I adore leaping. It’s the ultimate grand gesture. The test of true love is the grand gesture.’

‘So I should abandon all hope of finding a decent, upstanding, genuine man to love, and simply settle?’

‘Leaping isn’t settling, darling. It’s throwing caution to the wind and trusting your instincts and laying yourself bare in front of another in the hope they feel the same. But if you are seeking absolute perfection inside and out before you dare to jump, which I am coming to suspect you are, then you are doomed. It doesn’t exist. Nor should you use your aunt and uncle’s marriage as the benchmark to justify your exacting standards—or your fortune as a barricade to hide behind. Your uncle would never have given it to you if he’d had any inkling you would use it to shut yourself off. He despairs of your stand-offishness as much as I do.

‘Every human has flaws, but unless you allow yourself to properly get to know a gentleman, warts and all...and he, you...and cease being instantly suspicious or stand-offish, you will never come to know if they are minor flaws you can live with or major ones which will make you want to grind their face under your heel when they dare to say good morning. If you want to fall in love and be loved in return, then you have to give it a fighting chance to blossom. Nothing blooms in the desert. You have to take that gloriously abandoned leap of faith. Your greatest flaw is that you dismiss people out of hand instantly.’

‘I do not.’ Surely she wasn’t that pernickety? ‘I judge every man on his merit and give them all adequate time to show it. A little cautious suspicion gives them the opportunity to prove their mettle.’

‘Adequate time to prove their mettle? Really? Then I assume you are prepared to give our new neighbour a proper chance? Youngish. Handsome. Solicitous and local. His appearance is very fortuitous, seeing as you have given up all hope of any of the other bachelors in the county meeting your high expectations. Perhaps he is the one? He seems...’ Harriet grinned ‘...quite lovely.’

It was Thea’s turn to roll her eyes. ‘And typically, you judge a book solely by its cover.’

‘Not at all! While I’ll grant you he has a splendid cover, he was most pleasant after we caught him so magnificently naked—and his dog clearly adores him. We humans could learn a lot from dogs. Animals are rarely wrong.’

‘He’s a shameless flirt.’

‘I didn’t see him flirt.’

‘Well, I can assure you, he was certainly shamelessly flirting with Aunt Caro a few moments ago.’ Something which bothered her, despite her infinitely better judgement and professed lack of interest.

‘He’s here?’

‘Indeed he is. With his frowning cousin in tow.’

Harriet was up like a shot. ‘How positively splendid! Let’s hunt him down and monopolise him. I’ll dutifully extol your virtues like a good friend and you can probe with pertinent questions which matter to you. Start to get to know him... Why, we don’t even know if he is married or betrothed! And a young man who voluntarily lives with an older relative would naturally be more sympathetic to your dutiful attachment to your uncle. How serendipitous is that? The fates appear to be miraculously aligned for once.’

This needed to be nipped in the bud. Especially as Harriet was beginning to sound reasonable. ‘No, thank you. He doesn’t interest me in the slightest. Nor I him. He made no effort to impress me, yet every effort to charm my aunt.’ A lie; he had tried then lapsed into silence after she had been stand-offish because Impetuous Thea had been interested. ‘I’m afraid I have his measure already—and he comes up woefully short. If I’m being brutally frank, I’m not even sure I like him.’ Although she had, before she reminded herself of all the reasons why she couldn’t entertain it. She still had a penchant for parts of him.

‘Are you sure?’

‘Until you mentioned him, I had forgotten he existed.’ She held Harriet’s gaze, determinedly ignoring the image of Lord Gray’s pert, bare buttocks and broad, bare back which had apparently seared itself on to her mind.

‘Hmm...’ Harriet looked sceptical, then shrugged. ‘Only I cannot recall a time when I have ever heard you sound so waspish over a mere man after such a short acquaintance.’

‘That’s because it’s his fault my hair looks like this!’ Thea petulantly pointed at her head, but she was already talking to her friend’s retreating back. ‘It might have been a short acquaintance, but it was certainly eventful. Cavorting in the brook in his birthday suit was disgraceful!’ And thrilling. It had been quite the highlight of her dull year. Drat it all to hell.

‘All I ask is that you give the fellow a fighting chance, Thea! This might be exactly what the doctor ordered!’ Harriet stopped, spun and inhaled deeply. ‘I can positively smell the romance in the air.’ Then she was off again, striding with such purpose there was no point attempting to reason with her. There was nothing Harriet loved more than meddling. Especially in what she considered was for a person’s own good. As a mark of protest, sensible Restrained Thea remained exactly where she was and would remain so for the foreseeable future despite the baking sun.

Chapter Four (#uaa404237-9cfb-5b94-9c2e-e2d8376d9704)

Gray spent the better part of an hour with the Viscountess, being a very good spy, and learned nothing new whatsoever. She was amiable, if a little self-absorbed, her conversation mostly a ploy to receive a compliment. It was obvious she lived a small and inconsequential life. There was a brittleness about her, a need to be adored, which was quite sad for a woman her age and said a great deal about the state of her marriage. Gislingham himself had yet to make an appearance and his wife didn’t seem to know or care if he was likely to. Clearly, they lived completely separate lives, which meant she was unlikely to know anything significant about her husband’s nefarious business dealings. With Lord Fennimore the unwilling captive of the droning Colonel Purbeck and the deliciously smelling Miss Cranford mysteriously missing from the gathering, he found himself eager to move on as he extricated himself from the sofa.

If nothing else, he could have a little snoop around. This rose-covered mansion in the heart of the countryside, a good forty miles from the coast, didn’t appear to be the likely lair of England’s most wanted smuggler. Nor did the aged servants seem to be his criminal accomplices—but appearances could be deceptive. Look at Lord Fennimore. To all intents and purposes the world thought him a crusty old peer. One who turned up diligently at Parliament to vote and was a reliably reluctant guest at society events—yet for over twenty years had managed to hide the fact he ran the King’s Elite. Not that anyone in society circles or outside of it would know about that organisation either. Therefore, where better to hide than here? Who would suspect a respected country squire of high treason? In another life, he certainly wouldn’t.

Of course, in that other life he had no ambition either, other than to embrace whatever whims or pathways he took a fancy to and that had crept up on him unannounced. One minute he had been at a loose end on the cusp of leaving the merchant navy, the next he had accidentally fallen into working for the King’s Elite. Up until then, he had had no concept of possessing either the valuable skills necessary for covert espionage or the burning desire to see justice done. Yet because of things he had seen and his nagging conscience, he had approached the Excise Men with suspicions about the particular shipping company he happened to be working for at the time and inadvertently soon found himself spying on them.

After the resounding success of that first mission, Lord Fennimore simply assumed he would continue and Gray hadn’t corrected his assumption. For the last two years he had been working beneath Seb Leatham in the Invisibles, blending into the background, pretending to be someone else. Learning the trade and loving it. With Seb now working in a wholly different way alongside his new wife, Gray wanted more than anything to step into his friend’s shoes, knowing they would be the perfect fit. After an aimless life of searching for nothing in particular beyond what was happening in the moment, he had finally found his place.

If only he could convince old Fennimore.

For the umpteenth time he huffed out an irritated breath at this morning’s incident. His thoughtless lack of propriety had not helped his cause, but at least it had got him here, thanks largely to Lady Crudgington. Miss Cranford had seemed horrified to see him and had introduced him around the room most begrudgingly. He had made a much better impression on the Viscountess, although prudence dictated he be cautious with her. She liked male company. More than liked it, if his suspicions were correct, which made aligning himself too closely problematic. If Gislingham was the jealous type, Gray risked alienating him. The first priority had to be getting closer to their chief suspect. Only once all hope of that was dead could he risk a dalliance with the wife to get what he wanted. Or the ward.

Miss Cranford was entirely off limits until he understood the lay of the land. For the sake of the mission, she had to be his last resort even though she was the family member he was most drawn to. As much as he was tempted to shamelessly flirt with her and was wildly curious to know whether her vibrant blushes ended just below her demure neckline or travelled all the way down those shapely legs to her toes, seducing a gently bred young woman tended not to go down well with protective male relatives with a cruel streak a mile wide. Doing so would not only alienate Gislingham, it would probably result in getting Gray killed.

He could pretend to properly court her, he supposed.

The errant thought caught him unawares. Not because he wasn’t supremely confident in his abilities to thoroughly charm her, more because it terrified him to have even thought of it. He had willingly come within a hair’s breadth of marriage once before and had ended up broken-hearted and deceived. From the tender age of ten he’d had his future with Cecily mapped out. They were going to wed as soon as he turned twenty-one when he finally gained his financial independence; they would buy a nice house near their favourite beach in Wales and raise fine horses and the best Welsh lamb alongside their bushel of children.

Then his father and hers had brokered a different deal, one Cecily had been given a choice in, and to Gray’s horror the love of his life decided she would much rather be a wealthier marchioness wedded to his elder brother than live on that farm with him. It had been that same week that the walls of Jericho had come tumbling down. Blind with grief and convinced she would change her mind if only he could quickly enlarge his fortune to supersede his pompous brother’s, Gray had taken every penny of the money his grandfather had left him in his will to London and the hells where the savvy owners, gamblers and card sharps had quickly relieved him of it. It had been the harshest way to learn his lesson—daring to dream was as pointless as regret, and risking your heart was for tougher men than him.