took a step forward, found his foot entangled, glanced down and saw he was standing on a piece of fabric. He stooped to pick it up and found himself holding a garment he had no difficulty in recognising as a chemise. Neither young lady appeared prepared to help him out of his difficulty so he folded it neatly and placed it on the side-table. Keeping his face entirely bland, he looked up and found he had met his match in coolness in Miss Scott, whose expression showed not the slightest recognition that he had been handling a piece of intimate apparel. Miss Grey, on the other hand, appeared ready to give way to laughter. Her green eyes sparkled with amusement at his predicament and her lower lip was caught firmly between white teeth.
The thought of nipping that fullness between his own teeth struck him with a bolt of erotic heat. A flare of it must have shown in his eyes for instantly hers sobered, widened, and he wondered if she had read correctly the nature of his thoughts and was in tune with them. Then the moment of mutual awareness was gone and she was waving him towards the sofa.
‘Will you take tea, my lord?’
‘No, thank you. I have called simply with a message from Lady Parry.’
Talitha Grey answered the queries with a directness that reinforced his knowledge of her previously straitened circumstances. ‘Trunks? Why, just the one, my lord, and a valise.’
‘And several new bandboxes,’ the governess added drily.
‘Oh, yes. I was forgetting.’ She turned to him, smiling slightly. ‘I have been succumbing to the lure of shopping.’
‘Indeed? In that case I am surprised you have had the time to attend to your new business venture.’ He watched not Talitha but her friend and saw the look of surprise and speculation she directed at him. But to his disappointment the governess did not speak.
‘Ventures, in the plural. Yes, when one has been accustomed to working for one’s living, my lord, one can find plenty of time in the day for business. Shopping is hardly time-consuming.’
‘I suspect you may modify your opinion on that after a short experience of my aunt’s approach to the subject.’
Talitha merely smiled politely. It was intensely frustrating. Every time he spoke to her he had the impression that she was keeping a part of herself hidden from him and he only caught brief flashes of the real Talitha Grey. Now he had the question of her ‘business interests’ to add to the list for Tolliver to investigate.
It was not until Nick was halfway down the front steps that he caught himself wondering why he wanted to find out about that aspect of her life. She was being advised by Dover and by the bank; she was hardly going to do something imprudent. Nor was it his business if she did, as she had so frostily reminded him during that encounter in Gunter’s.
He was not given to self-deception and he did not indulge in it now. Finding out about Miss Grey’s ‘secret’ might have started out in his desire to protect his aunt. Now finding out everything about her had assumed an altogether different character. Nick Stangate smiled ruefully as he nodded to his groom and got up into his phaeton. This was becoming personal.
For Tallie, too, the encounters with Nick Stangate were beginning to feel very personal indeed. She felt gratitude, anger, fear and attraction in a disturbing mixture that was threatening to obsess her.
The degree to which she felt the various emotions he evoked varied wildly, depending on what he had just said to annoy or alarm her and also on those fleeting moments when their eyes met and locked and she felt as though a dentist’s probe had touched a nerve. When it happened her heart beat rapidly, her breath caught and she felt a strange heated ache deep inside. Tallie told herself it was fear: fear at what he might find out about her, fear of exposure. But she was very much afraid that it was another raw, basic emotion and one that young ladies, especially respectable unmarried young ladies, were not supposed to feel.
She could only be grateful that for the first week of her stay with Lady Parry in Bruton Street she did not meet him once.
‘Have you seen Nicholas lately?’ Lady Parry enquired of her son at breakfast on the Wednesday after Tallie’s arrival.
‘Hmm?’ William put down the paper he was idly conning and furrowed his brow in thought. ‘Twice … no, three times. You know Nick, he just strolls in when you least expect him. Now, when was it? Oh, yes, he dropped in at Watier’s when I was playing cards with Hemsley and some fellows on Saturday. And he arrived at Jackson’s Saloon just in time to see me pop a terrific right over Jack’s guard. That was Monday afternoon …’
‘Is Jackson the famous bare-knuckle fighter?’ Tallie enquired. ‘And you managed to hit him? My goodness!’
‘Lord, no.’ William blushed at her praise, but hastened to set her right. ‘No one lands a punch on the great Jackson unless he lets them. No, it was Jack Hemsley.’
‘Oh, I see. Still, I am sure you must be very good to be admitted to Jackson’s Saloon,’ Tallie said encouragingly. ‘Might I trouble you for the preserve? Thank you. And you saw Lord Arndale for a third time?’
‘Er, yes. Last night.’ William seemed disinclined to explain further, but Tallie, convinced she was beginning to see a pattern, persisted.
‘And where was that? I do enjoy hearing about all these fashionable places. I can hardly wait until I am ready to be going about in Society,’ she added artlessly.
‘This wasn’t the sort of place you would be going,’ William said with a harassed glance at his mother. Lady Parry, however, had returned to her correspondence and was busily slitting envelopes with her butter-knife.
‘Do tell,’ Tallie encouraged quietly, giving William the sort of look designed to convince him he was an exciting rake.
‘Well … it was a bit of a hell, if you must know. I was feeling rather uncomfortable actually.’ William was blushing. ‘Some of the young ladies there were … were …’
‘Not ladies?’ Tallie suggested. Bless the boy, he really was a decent young man.
‘Exactly that.’ He looked grateful for her tactful description. ‘I wasn’t sure how to leave, I mean, I’d been invited by one of the guests and it seemed rude just to walk away. And then Nick strolls in, looking bored to death, curls a lip and drawls that he’s been looking for me all over and had I forgotten we were going to White’s that evening? White’s! As if I’d forget that!’
His eyes gleamed and Tallie recalled that the club in question was the most exclusive in town and certainly one which a mere youth would not have the faintest hope of joining. The honour of being invited to spend an evening there by one of the members must have been overwhelming.
‘So you went with him?’ William was positively glowing. ‘I imagine Mr Hemsley was a little put out.’
‘Well, a bit. But you don’t argue with Nick, you know.’ It did not seem to occur to William that he had not told her he had been in the hell at the instigation of Jack Hemsley.
Tallie returned to her toast with a thoughtful expression. So, Nick Stangate was putting himself out to intervene every time William was in the company of the rakish Mr Hemsley. And he was managing to do so without his young cousin realising that he had a guardian angel at his heels. Very clever—and thoroughly admirable. She was sure that for a mature and experienced man about town, bear-leading an inexperienced youth must be a complete bore.
She took a bite of toast and wondered if Mr Hemsley was aware of just how closely his pursuit of a rich young lordling was being observed. She rather suspected he was, for he had not struck her as a fool, however unpleasant his character. Lord Arndale had better watch his back and take care.
It was one of his most admirable characteristics, she realised: taking care. He took care of William, of his aunt—and of naked models in garrets. She rather suspected that his irritating interference in her life was part of that too. She had become family, so she was going to be looked after whether she liked it or not. With a little shiver Tallie decided she