A Dangerous Expectation (The Gentlemen Next Door) (6 page)

Now that was threatened.

Gray stopped pacing and picked up his coat.

He couldn’t be a coward. Couldn’t run away. One did not run away when one’s home was threatened and unlike his father’s house, Cassandra was more of a home than he’d ever known.

He quit the cottage and strode back to the house, up to the front door, up the stairs toward her bedroom.

Gray thought of her, lying in bed, hair unbound, and swallowed back the desire…but the sensations rose again with memories. The taste of her skin, the tentative touch of her lips at his ear, the quick flicker of her tongue against his when she’d first tried it, and all the gasps and exclamations and comments that she’d made along the way.

Oh, why does that feel so good?

Gray, please, try that again.

I want you closer—how can we get closer?

He knew how, but also knew it was too soon. But he wasn’t sure how he would react once he reached her bedroom, once he saw her there—

His breath came heavily as he imagined it and he forced his heartbeat to settle as he threw open the bedroom door—

—and saw an empty bed.

Gray swore under his breath and tore through the house to the sitting room—also empty. Then the kitchen. And the library.

Finally he roused the housekeeper.

"Didn’t you hear it, my lord?" she said. "The carriage leaving not ten minutes past? She’s left to go to London."

"It’s nearly dark." He shouldn’t glower at the poor woman, he realized, and she likely was also aware of the time of the day, but Cassandra wasn’t here and he had lost his mind.

"There’s a note."

"A
note
?" Gray wasn’t one for physical displays of frustration, but he was seriously considering an exception.

"Yes, upstairs."

Gray sprinted back up the stairs, taking them two at a time, to the bedroom. He flung open the door—no note on the neatly made bed. To the bathing room, then—the coils were missing and had been pulled from the wall. The floor was littered with tools—how had she managed this on her own?

There, in the tub, was a piece of paper with her messy scrawl—a scrawl he realized must have come from learning to read and write quite late in life. He felt a piercing in his chest for the girl that Cassandra had been—poor, homeless—and wished for all the world he could protect her. Not just now, not just in the future, but for all her life and all her existence and everything she had ever been and ever was. Gray had never felt such fierceness over anything or anyone.

As he picked up the note and read it, he realized for all his talk of wanting to protect her, Cassandra was the one who trying to protect him. The piercing in his chest transformed, swelled out, rolled in waves over his entire being like an armor that would keep him from any harm.

Suddenly his father didn’t matter. His past didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but getting to Cassandra and telling her how he felt.

Before placing the note in his pocket, he read it one more time.

I am going to London to cut the strings.

Chapter Six

"Do you have any idea what time it is?" her sister asked as Cassandra was ushered inside. "I’m going to have your coachman sacked!"

"For doing what I asked?" Cassandra hugged Chastity tight.

"For charging double, at the least," Chastity joked. She sent the tired footman a quick wave as she pulled her sister close. "All is fine," she assured him over Cassandra’s shoulder.

"All is rarely fine in the dark of night," he muttered as he returned to his quarters.

Chastity pulled away, her attention drawn to the coachman lugging the metal contraption through the door. "I suppose his rate makes sense given the cargo. What is that?"

"That is our salvation," Cassandra said. "Leave it here by the door, as I’ll need to have it moved tomorrow morning." The coachman gleefully collected his exorbitant fee from a reluctant Chastity before leaving.

"What have you come up with now?" her sister asked, studying the mess in her hall.

"You mean, what have Gray and I come up with," Cassandra corrected with a twinkle to her eye.

"Gray helped build this?" Chastity stepped forward to study it. "Isn’t this from Lucas’s bathing room?"

"How do you know what is in his private bathing room?"

"Never mind that," Chastity snapped. "It will cost a fortune to replace. I suppose it’s fortunate we at least have a fortune."

"We may not if Gray’s father has his way."

"What could the Duke of Rivington possibly do to the Drummond Shipping fortune?"

"He could claim in the best interest of England’s military strength that we never receive our favorable shipping trade line to the East," Cassandra said.

"Did he threaten so?" Chastity pulled her robe tighter around her waist. "He
is
chair of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee. But why would he threaten the company that could be his son’s heritage?"

"Because he wants his own shares."

Chastity rolled her eyes.

"It always comes down to shares, doesn’t it?" Cassandra said.

"Not for Lucas," Chastity said with a tender smile that made Cassandra yearn for Gray. But she couldn’t go back to him—not until they were free to be together as they deserved.

"Speaking of Lord Willoughby," Cassandra said, "how amenable is he to real estate transactions?"

* * *

As the carriage rolled into London just past the supper hour, Gray made a mental note to add the loan of this carriage to the list of items that placed him permanently in Lady Chesterley’s debt. The primary item on this list being, of course, his wife.

His
wife
.

A week ago that word held little meaning for him, and now it meant everything.

His foot tapped the carriage floor, his fingers drummed against his thigh, all in anticipation of seeing her again.

He had no idea where to find her.

London was rather populous, after all.

But her sister’s home seemed the most likely possibility.

Thankfully, Lady Chesterley’s driver knew the location, as he had taken his mistress there on many occasions for card games, which Chastity was notorious for winning. As they pulled up to the street he realized the house was on the same block as the home of his friend Lucas Willoughby, and as the carriage came to a stop in front of the door, he realized it was the very next door to Lucas’s.

He made a quick decision and went to Lucas’ home instead, and knocked soundly.

He was greeted not only by a butler, but by chaos. A half dozen working men were rushing through the house. Rugs were being rolled and beaten. Furniture was being rearranged and dragged down the halls.

Lucas was watching it all, his dark hair sticking up at sixes and sevens as if he’d run his hands through it a dozen times. His friend spun around and he grinned.

"You look exactly the way I feel," Lucas said.

"If you feel half as awful as you look, then we are
both
in trouble," Gray said.

"We are both involved with Drummonds, so I fear our handsome days are far behind us."

"Good riddance to them."

Lucas studied him with a speculative gleam. "Good riddance, indeed."

"Are you redecorating?"

"Moving," Lucas clarified. "For you, I might add, as this is now your home."

"It is?"

"Your wife bought it from me this morning."

"Ah," Gray said. "Pray tell me, where might I find my wife?"

Lucas raised a brow. "I can assume, then, that you did not know she was embarking on a late-night carriage ride to London?"

"You can," he replied dryly.

"You’ll find her having called a special private meeting with members of the House of Lords still in residence in London."

Gray blinked several times, certain he’d misheard.

"She mumbled something about cutting strings," Lucas added.

* * *

There must have been more than two dozen peers in the sitting room of Lady Chesterley’s home. Some were seated, their noses in the air. Some stood, tall and resolute. All were abuzz as to why they had been invited by the silent sister of Drummond Shipping—the peculiar one, whom it was rumored dabbled in engineering and mechanics.

There was also much buzz about the contraption in the center of the room, which Cassandra had spend the better part of the morning and afternoon rigging.

It was a metal coil roughly the size of a pedestal that had been rigged to a pipe shooting six feet into the air.

Cassandra just had to focus on the design. Not focus on those men, with their judgmental expressions, with their power to destroy her father’s company and send her back into poverty.

But, she realized, poverty no longer frightened her.

She marched into the room, head held high.

The gentlemen turned their attention to her, mumbling as gentlemen tended to do.

"Lady Abernathy," they said one by one with a bow.

Lady
Abernathy
.

She was a lady—how was it that she hadn’t realized until now that she was a lady? That her husband, estranged or not, was
Lord
Gray Abernathy, and not merely Gray, as she had come to think of him.

She fumbled a curtsey as a soft expletive left her lips, but she covered it with a cough and stood tall.

She was a
lady
.

"Will your sister be joining us?" one asked. Her sister was well known to manage the business side of Drummond Shipping in their father’s absence—or even presence, although that was less well known.

"She will not," Cassandra answered. "This meeting involves a matter of engineering."

All gazes flew to the coiled metal in the center of the room. The contraption that she and Gray had worked on day after day. It had given her such pause, wondering how to scale the model to the ships. But then that awful night, when Gray had walked away and he’d alluded to the misconception that she was making him play the puppet, the answer had come to her.

She had to cut the strings.

She’d been assuming the model should be scaled into a larger engine, when in actuality it should not. It should be performing independently, each structure feeding into the engine, creating redundancies and exponential strength so that if one failed, the others would still work. In essence, so that there were no strings between the value of the engine and its greater parts.

All eyes were on her, waiting patiently. She knew her next words would make or break her. That her next words mattered and for once, instead of fear, she felt power and courage.

"Drummond Shipping has invented a new engine design—one we are certain will increase our fleet’s speed by more than ten percent."

The murmuring and whispers grew and while there were some words of doubt, for the most part, the men believed her. They had seen the proof of Drummond’s superior engineering in the past.

"While we are certainly within our rights to privatize our design, Drummond Shipping would like to enter into a relationship with the Crown. A mutually beneficial understanding."

She outlined her trade—the design for the shipping routes—and as her resolve grew, so did the strength of her voice and so did the interest of the men around her.

She wondered if this was how Chastity often felt when she commanded the operations in port.

As the lords leaned closer, as their expressions grew more thoughtful, Cassandra knew she could never go back to silence again.

* * *

Cassandra snuck into Lord Willoughby’s home—no,
her
home—past the movers and maids. She knew the master bedroom was already prepared so she made haste there, eager to change before returning to Gray.

She had no sooner walked in than she felt a large, warm palm curve around her waist and turn her into a pair of strong arms. Gray pulled her against him, tightly fisting the folds at the back of her dress.

"When did you get here?" she asked, muffled, against his shirt.

"Not as soon as I would have liked." He pulled away, studying her, then pulled her back against him.

"You’re no longer angry with me?" she asked, unsure of how to read his reaction.

"I was never truly angry with you."

Relief melted her against him. She felt his lips play with the strands of hair at her forehead.

"What are you up to, wife?"

Cassandra shivered at the word—the way he said it. "Making use of your gift to me."

He pulled back, brows knit. "The engine design? It was more yours than mine."

"No, not the engine design—although that has saved our company and will protect us from your father. I meant your other gift—the gift of my voice," she explained. "The gift of being exactly who I am.
Lady
Gray Abernathy. Your wife."

He cupped his hand against her cheek. "Not just my wife. A force to be reckoned with. Quite possibly one of the brightest minds in England."

"If you insist," she said with a laugh.

He kissed her hard and with the unyielding pressure of his mouth, with the gentle feathering of his lips, she tasted his desire for her.

"Lower," she sighed.

He obliged, his tongue licking its way down her neck as his hand loosened the ribbon at her bodice. She pulled him backward until her knees buckled against the bed and they fell back.

His weight on top of her was strange and exciting all at once, was warmth and energy zipping through her blood.

"Lower," she said, her voice strangled.

He dipped his mouth to her collarbone, then his lips trailed to the tops of her breasts. She felt him hesitate, felt him waiting for her to stop him as she had in the past.

"More," she said.

He groaned, resting his head on her chest so the locks of his hair tickled her there.

"More," she insisted.