Page 80 of The Ladies Least Likely

“I only asked her yesterday, and she said yes.” He leaned forward, placing a hand on the arm of her chair. Joseph wasn’t affectionate; their parents hadn’t been, either. Amaranthe still startled when anyone touched her.

Like the several times Malden Grey had taken her hand to help her in and out of the high carriage. The way his thigh brushed her skirts when the vehicle turned a sharp corner.

The way he’d taken her arm to escort her out of Mr. Karim’s bookshop. She still felt the imprint of his heat, as if he’d branded her.

She was being a wet goose, and none of this had to do with the current situation. She focused on what her brother was saying.

“—since I only decided last night, and I didn’t want to bring her to see you until I was certain. I…” He trailed off and patted the arm of the chair awkwardly, as if attempting to console her.

She stiffened. “You feared I’d disapprove?”

“Er, well, I shouldn’t have liked for you to grow attached to someone who meant to throw me over, like all the other times.

” He gave her the crooked smile that never failed to melt her heart.

“I can stand my own heart cast on a thorn bush, but not yours. I know you’ve steel in your backbone, old girl, but I wanted to have firm plans before I uproot you. ”

Amaranthe fumbled for her handkerchief and had it in hand before his meaning dawned. “Uproot me?”

“Of course, you’ll make your home with us and show Susannah how to go on. And when the children come, we’ll need all hands on deck. Susannah wants a rather large brood.” For a moment he looked nonplussed, and Amaranthe took the opportunity to tamp down her irritation.

“I might decide to keep my own premises, you know.”

“Live alone? Without a companion or chaperone? Not to be thought of.”

“Lots of women do, Joseph.”

“Not gentlewomen, and not my sister,” he said, frowning. “Besides, you’ll love Susannah as much as I do. We’ll find a nice little cottage somewhere, and I’ll—” His face went wooden, and he bolted to his feet. “Grey.”

Amaranthe sensed when he entered the room, though her back was to the library door.

Strange how another person could change the very atmosphere; she’d never noticed that before.

Perhaps it was his scent she’d picked up on, something dark and smoky, like old papers that had acquired the odor of tobacco.

And beneath that something sharp and darker yet, as pungent and striking as the oak gall in her ink, a scent she associated with absolute pleasure and freedom.

She rose and faced him. The most ridiculous sensation suffused her at the sight of him, tall, big, Malden. “You’re in time for tea.”

“I’d say I’m too late. The boys haven’t left a crumb.” His gaze raked her, the gleam in his pale blue eyes turning sharp. “What’s upset you?”

“Nothing of import. Joseph and I were simply discussing his—situation. And how we might help you.”

She was surprised he’d noticed her distress. Joseph only noticed her emotions when they smacked him across the face. Malden Grey seemed unusually attuned to the feelings of those around him, understanding more than their words. It was disconcerting, to say the least.

Or perhaps he was watching her for signs of wrongdoing. She couldn’t shake the fear that struck her in the bookshop, that he knew she was a liar and a thief. She felt his awareness of her, if such a thing were possible.

“Mr. Grey.” Joseph’s tone was cool. Her brother didn’t like the other man, and Amaranthe wondered why. “I have no excuse and no explanation for the appalling situation that was unfolding, it seems, beneath my very nose. If you demand my resignation, I’m willing to give it.”

“Resignation? By no means.” Grey’s eyes widened in alarm. “You’d put me to the fuss of having to hire another tutor, on top of everything else. I think not.”

Joseph exhaled in relief. “Thank you—sir.”

Ah. Amaranthe guessed the rub. Joseph knew of Grey’s parentage. He would show superficial courtesy to Malden Grey, as the children’s guardian and now the employer in charge of his salary. But he didn’t see the other man as worthy of his respect.

She couldn’t account for that attitude. Their father the rector had been the most tolerant of Christians, a man who felt God’s love embraced everyone, sinners and non-believers alike.

But Joseph borrowed more from Reuben’s hierarchy of social caste and worth, which deemed a man of irregular birth inferior, no matter how high-born his sire.

Amaranthe felt indignant on Grey’s behalf.

It wasn’t his fault he was born on the wrong side of the blanket, and it wasn’t fair to punish natural children for their circumstances.

Grey was already denied the inheritance that would have otherwise gone to him, and who knows what other obstacles his bastardy had put in his path.

Recalling the dismissive words of the Bencher they’d met in the bookshop, and Grey’s stunned reaction to the man, she could guess why the dilemma of the Delaval children had escaped his notice for so long.

Grey had been pouring everything he had into his studies and his ambitions to become a barrister, only to find out that what barred his advancement—again—had nothing to do with his efforts and everything to do with his circumstances.

“You can’t sack Mr. Joseph!” Ned brought the last of his slice of cake with him as he barreled across the room. “He lets us read travel stories as part of our geography lessons.”

“Indeed, Grey, we must retain him,” the young duke chimed in. “His grasp of Latin declensions is so much better than our last tutor’s.”

Amaranthe smiled to herself. So that was why Joseph asked her to drill him on Latin cases and had been heard muttering word endings to himself as he exited the house on his way to lessons. Would Susannah Pettigrew be able to help him in his work?

Oh, unfair. Miss Pettigrew’s appeal was obviously based on factors which had nothing to do with her grasp of Latin.

Whereas Amaranthe, who could not politely be called anything but plain, had learned to rely on her intellect.

But men like Joseph—men like Grey—noticed women for their more outward charms. Prized them for it, in fact.

She picked uneasily at a ruffle on her billowing skirt. When had she decided she wished to interest Malden Grey? That way lay thorny paths and dragons.

Keep to the straight and narrow, old girl .

“I’ve no intentions of sacking Mr. Illingworth,” Grey told the boys. “Unless he doesn’t set you directly back to lessons and give you something useful to do. Did you devour all the cakes, you ravening beasts?”

“Miss Illingworth!” Camilla charged in the door and ran straight to Amaranthe, slipping her tiny hand in hers. The contact surprised Amaranthe, and she cautiously curled her fingers around the girl’s.

“Mr. Illingworth.” Camilla gave Joseph a polite curtsy and regarded him with wide eyes. “How was the Quaker meeting? Did you bring me any more pamphlets?”

Joseph coughed. “I’ve no literature, I’m afraid, Lady Camilla, and perhaps we might discuss the Quaker meeting at some other time. It was quite, quite different from our Anglican tradition.”

Camilla gave Amaranthe an adoring look. “I’m ready to begin our lessons. Oh, hullo, Grey.”

“Thank you for acknowledging me, Millie,” Grey said.

“It appears we all want Miss Illingworth. I’ve a letter for her that was brought to our door.

” He met her eyes as he handed her a folded sheet with an address scribbled across the front.

“A boy brought it just now. The woman at your house sent him over with it.”

Amaranthe stared at the address, too stunned to speak. Joseph looked over her shoulder and read the name that froze her, his astonishment equal to her own.

“Penwellen! We’ve not heard from Cousin Reuben in an eon. I wonder what he wants?”

“How did he find us?” Amaranthe whispered, her lips as numb as her fingers.

“I imagine our solicitor would have told him anytime he asked,” Joseph said, puzzled. “He had to handle the transfer of my funds when I came of age, you know, and he’ll have to do the same for you again next year when you turn five and twenty.”

That had never occurred to her, that the solicitor who handled the trust from their parents would have contact with Reuben and could tell him where they were. She wasn’t safe, and never had been.

Reuben knew where she lived. He could find her at any moment. He could show up at her house, at her sweet and quiet home, and make his obscene demands, insist that?—

No . She reached for sense. She had Joseph to protect her, and servants about.

Reuben couldn’t hurt her, not anymore. He had already done the worst thing, which was steal her manuscript.

But her flesh crawled nonetheless at the thought of his heavy hand upon her in the stables of Penwellen, and despite the application of common sense, her heart darted in her chest like a frightened hare bolting for its den.

“Miss Illingworth. I gather you do not anticipate good news in that letter.” Grey stood before her, holding out a steaming cup of tea. His gaze moved over her face, reading her again.

She stuffed the letter into her pocket and took the tea. Her hands trembled.

“It’s from our cousin, the baronet,” Joseph said. “He has little to do with us.”

“Sir Reuben Illingworth. I’ve not heard of him.” Grey regarded Joseph with the same perceptive look that made Amaranthe shy from him.

“A baronet,” the young duke said. “How did he gain his title, if I might ask?”

“An Illingworth stood for the Royalists during the Civil War and was granted the baronetcy by Charles II for his service,” Joseph said.

“Cornwall was the scene of much fighting between the Royalists and the Roundheads. We ought to study the history. I’m afraid that since then the Illingworths have done little to distinguish themselves. ”

“The Hunsdon title goes back to the time of Queen Elizabeth,” the young duke said. “Hugh Delaval was one of her favorites, they say, so she made him a lord.”

“He was one of Henry VIII’s bastards, and the queen made him a baron so he had to come to court where she could keep an eye on him,” Grey said, his tone deceptively mild. “It was the first George who made your great-grandfather a duke.”

“I know that.” Young Hugh’s cheeks turned faintly red.

A brief silence followed this. The dukes of Hunsdon did not seem very long-lived nor prolific, Amaranthe thought. And the knowledge had to grate on Grey that, while a royal bastard could be granted titles, men like him could elevate themselves only through great virtue or great luck.

“If his cousin is a baronet, then Mr. Joseph is not so far below us as you said, Hugh,” Camilla remarked.

“Yes, you’ll need to take back a few of your petty remarks, won’t you, Huey?” Ned grinned.

His elder brother flushed a bright red. “I am sure I could have said nothing derogatory about Mr. Illingworth. You must have mistaken me.”

“Yes, mistaken you for someone who isn’t a complete prat,” Ned exclaimed. “Miss Illingworth, while you’re here, I want your help deciphering a curious manuscript I found.”

“I want her!” Camilla demanded. She darted to the table and withdrew The Pythagorean Diet of Vegetables Only . “The translator keeps popping off Greek phrases, and I’m sorry, Mr. Illingworth, but you admitted you’re rubbish at Greek.”

“I don’t read it near as well as my sister does, very true,” Joseph said.

“Children, far be it from me to pull rank on you,” Grey interposed, “but I need to speak with Miss Amaranthe about the household accounts, and?—”

The rest of his words were lost to Amaranthe’s ears as Ned moved to one of the built-in bookshelves and bent to rummage through a drawer at its base.

He hauled out a quarto-sized volume upon which Amaranthe recognized at once the worm-eaten edges of sheep leather.

A strange gilt stamp looked up at her from the cover when Ned thunked it on the table.

There had to be hundreds of pages crammed inside the bulging volume, and from the look of the spine, it had been torn apart and rebound, not carefully and not well.

Blood pounded in her ears, and she heard nothing of the conversation around her as she moved to the table, drawn by instinct.

What Ned had discovered among the old duke’s cache of medically inclined and medically adjacent texts was either worthless or very, very valuable. Of incalculable worth, she guessed.

She wiped her fingertips on her gown before gingerly lifting the cover to look at the title page, plain and unadorned, covered in faded brown scrawls.

It wasn’t the Book of Secrets Mr. Karim had heard rumors that the old duke held. It was something incomparably better.

It was the ticket, potentially, into the future she had dreamed of and worked toward for years.

She looked up, her ears still clogged with the rush of thoughts, to find everyone watching her.

The children were curious, Joseph surprised, and Grey stood transfixed.

He watched her closely, and Amaranthe felt as she had when she was small and Joseph dared her to walk out onto the surface of the small pond behind the village church that froze perhaps once a winter.

The smooth cold ice, laced with crystals, only looked solid, and at any moment the fragile surface might splinter and a trespasser find herself tumbling into the freezing cold below.

Incomprehensibly, unlooked-for, the thing she most desired had just been handed to her. And in plain sight of Malden Grey. This book held the key to her livelihood, and now, with those cool blue eyes watching her far too closely, she couldn’t do a thing about it.