“After receiving your letter informing me you’d arrived in town, ’twas all I could do not to rush and bid you welcome.” Frances grinned.
The vouchers still lay on the table, and Amy’s cheeks pinked. “Pardon the mess. We just now received vouchers for Almack’s. Will you be in attendance next Wednesday, Miss Fennelwick?”
“Oh, no. I attended twice my come-out year.” She inclined her head at a sympathetic angle. “I am sorry to bear such ill tidings, but the place is a dreadful bore. It may be a bastion of exclusivity, but I prefer to remain home with a book.”
“But the status of having vouchers is important, is it not?”
Frances selected a biscuit. “I suppose Almack’s is as good a place as any to meet a gentleman. But I am a bluestocking. It is a badge I wear with pride, not the scorn others attach to it. I do not need a husband, so I am freed from playing by the stifling rules imposed upon marriage-minded females.”
“I do not require a husband, either.” As much as Gemma longed for adventure, a family of her own and freedom from Cristobel, she loved Petey and Eddie. They were enough for her. “I would simply like to experience all of London that I can.”
Again Stott entered the room with the salver. At Amy’s nod, he left and returned, Tavin at his heels, clad in another formfitting black coat, his gaze intense. Gemma’s breath caught—how foolish—and she couldn’t tear her gaze from his until the weight of another pair of eyes drew her gaze away.
Frances’s lips turned up in a smirk. Heat flooded Gemma’s cheeks.
She’d told Frances she didn’t want a husband, but it was obvious Frances didn’t believe her now.
* * *
Sitting still was harder than it should have been, considering a decent percentage of Tavin’s career was spent waiting, immobile. But standing. Even now, he would have preferred to stand outside the box at Astley’s Amphitheatre, keeping watch from the hall. But the boys had begged and it would have seemed odd to say no, so he took his seat in the box with Gemma and her family.
“Am-a-zing!” Petey cried as a trick rider galloped past.
Eddie looked up at Tavin. “That horse is as fine as Raghnall!”
Was he? Tavin hadn’t been watching. Not the riders or the pantomimes or acrobats who made the boys clap and laugh. Nor did he watch Gemma, although from the corners of his eyes he could see how she doted on her nephews, reading the program aloud to them and patting their arms. Love for the boys glowed on her features, adding an extra dimension to her beauty.
Not that he should think of that. He focused on the crowd, searching for a lone man peering at Gemma a second too long. Even though it was a waste. No one hunted Gemma.
Then Tavin saw the family in a box across the ring. His chest filled with dread. His aunt, the Duchess of Kelworth, was still beautiful, regal in bearing. A worthy duchess. Her husband, his mither’s brother, hadn’t joined her today, just the silvery-haired girls. While their eyes were wide as they watched the trick riders, they didn’t clap like Gemma’s nephews.
Beautiful girls, his cousins. Helena, the eldest, was near old enough for marriage now. How she’d changed from the little girl who’d begged him to push her higher on the swings. Would he have recognized her or her younger sisters if they had not been seated with their mother?
He stared too long. The duchess lifted her gaze. Heat rose up his chest as her gaze encompassed his party. Then she returned her focus to the ring, as if she didn’t know him.
Tavin’s fists clenched. His legs twitched. He needed to move. Needed to do something, be anywhere but here. His aunt was a gossip. No doubt she’d tattle to her friends he was in town and at the circus, of all places.
Worse, her whispers would reach his grandmother.
Tavin paced his grandmother’s gold-and-crimson Aubusson rug, no doubt wearing holes into the wool. By his best estimation, he’d waited thirty minutes to be received, twenty minutes past his point of patience.
His occupation demanded waiting, true. Hiding, observing and loitering in cold, in damp, in darkness, all for a case.
But waiting for a woman? That was another matter.
Perhaps he should sit down, but he’d never trusted the dainty-legged, feminine furniture in this room, all painted silk chairs and narrow pink lounges. He’d be seated when all other options were exhausted.
With the click of the latch, the door opened, revealing Groves, the ancient, snub-nosed butler. Striding past the servant in a rustle of plum-colored fabric, the tiny Dowager Duchess of Kelworth bustled into the room. Her lace cap framed her wrinkled cheeks, giving her a maternal appearance, but Tavin wasn’t fooled.
“How nice of you to condescend to visit your grandmother.”
“Forgive my overlong absence, Your Grace.” He bent to kiss the pale, rose-scented wrist of the woman he’d never called Grandmother. He wouldn’t have dared address her as anything but Your Grace or ma’am. Neither, come to think of it, had his mother.
The dowager settled into a Chippendale chair by the hearth. “Tea, dear boy?”
“How thoughtful.” He perched on the fragile-looking sofa where she had bade him to be seated, near enough to note the additional strands of gray peeking out from under her cap. “You are well?”
“I am never unwell. I wouldn’t wish to give my enemies the satisfaction.”
“Indeed not.”
“Nor did I admit to surprise when Caroline mentioned seeing you, at a circus, with children—”
The clatter of cups and silver sounded from the door. The dowager poured fragrant bohea and served buttered bread, which he took despite not wanting it.
“I was with Lord Wyling.” He hoped the explanation was enough. “The boys are his wife’s nephews.”
“Still no heir for him? ’Tis the fault of his wife, for certain. She is but what, a baron’s country relation? What a waste.”
His fingers rapped the arms of his chair. “The Countess of Wyling is a worthy wife to my closest friend.”
Her expression didn’t alter from bland courtesy. “How is your tea? It was our custom to enjoy tea every school holiday, do you recall?”
As if he could forget. Back then, he’d thought those years would be the worst of his life. He’d been a fool. “You taught me many things during those afternoons.”
Like how to pretend he didn’t have a Scottish father.
Tavin’s father might have been too lowborn to wed a duke’s daughter, but he was no pauper. Their home in Perthshire was large and fine, the land abundant with healthy herds of Highland cattle and black-nosed sheep. It was a glorious, rich place where Tavin—although yearning for more attention from his parents—was happy.
And he was Scottish. He had known nothing else, known naught of his English family, until the dowager duchess had appeared like a violent storm, rushing him south as if on a flood. She’d insisted he receive a proper education at Eton—a gift she had not provided his elder brother, Hamish, who was heir to Scottish land, not fitting for her cause.
His grandmother sighed, as if wistful. “I saw more of you in your school days, despite our residence in the same city now. One might be inclined to take offense.”
“I have been traveling on business, Your Grace.”
She waved her hand. “Men and their business. But you are here now. For how long?”
Until Garner freed him from