you are saying our grandmothers are now plotting our own downfall?’
Adam could not help but let out a brief bark of laughter at Royston’s horrified expression. ‘The three ladies have always done things together. Their coming-out Season. Marriage. Motherhood. Even widowhood.’ He shrugged. ‘My own grandmother’s less-than-subtle attempts at matchmaking these past few months leads me to believe it is now their intention that their three grandsons shall be married in the same Season.’
‘Is it, by God?’ The duke slowly sank back in his chair. ‘And have you made any decision as to how you intend fending off this attack upon our bachelor state?’
‘I see no need to fend it off when my uninterest is so clear.’ Adam frowned.
Royston eyed him pityingly. ‘You are obviously not as well acquainted with my own grandmama as I!’
‘No,’ Adam stated, ‘but I am well acquainted with my own!’
‘And you agree that marriage for either of us is out of the question?’
His mouth tightened. ‘I can only speak for myself—but, yes, totally out of the question.’ His nostrils flared. ‘I have no intention of ever remarrying.’
‘And I have no intention of marrying at all—or, at least, not for years and years.’ Royston looked at Adam searchingly. ‘Even so, I cannot believe that even the dowager duchess would dare—yes, I can, damn it.’ He scowled darkly. ‘My grandmother would dare anything to ensure the succession of the line!’
Adam gave a slight inclination of his head. ‘My own grandmother has also expressed her concerns as to the fact that I have only a daughter and no son.’ Not that he had taken any heed of those concerns; Adam felt no qualms whatsoever about his third cousin Wilfred inheriting the title once he had shuffled off his own mortal coil.
‘But I take it you do not intend to just sit about waiting for the parson’s mousetrap to snap tight about your ankles?’
‘Certainly not!’ Adam gave a shiver of revulsion.
Royston tapped his chin distractedly. ‘There’s not much happening in the House for the next week, so now would seem to be as good a time as any for me to absent myself from town and go to the country for a while. I have it in mind to view a hunter Sedgewicke has put my way. With any luck the grandmothers will have lost the scent by the time I return.’
‘Highly unlikely,’ Adam drawled derisively.
‘But, as I am genuinely fond of the dowager duchess, and as such have no wish to be at loggerheads with her over this, it is definitely worth pursuing.’ Royston stood up decisively. ‘I advise you to do something similar, for I assure you, once my grandmama gets the bit between her teeth there’s no stopping her. Oh, and, Hawthorne…?’ He paused beside Adam’s chair.
‘Yes?’
‘I make it a point of principle never to dally with married ladies,’ Royston declared.
His meaning was not lost on Adam as he answered cautiously. ‘That is a very good principle to have.’
‘I believe so, yes.’ The other man met Adam’s gaze briefly, meaningfully, before nodding to him in farewell, pausing only to briefly greet several acquaintances as he made his way out of the club.
Leaving Adam to mull over the predicament of how best to avoid his own grandmother’s machinations and to consider his unexpected, and totally inappropriate fantasy earlier regarding Elena Leighton’s sensuously plump lips and the uses they might be put to!
Elena assured herself of the neatness of her appearance one last time before knocking briskly on the door of her employer’s private study, having received the summons in the nursery a short time ago, delivered by Barnes, requesting she join Lord Hawthorne downstairs immediately.
‘Come.’
To say Elena was nervous about the reason for Lord Hawthorne’s summons would be putting it mildly—the sudden tension that had sprung up between them yesterday, and their unfinished conversation, were both still very much in her mind. She had no idea what she would say to him if, as she had suggested, he had decided to check her fake references and somehow found them wanting.
She did not see how he could have done so, when she had been so careful in her choice of an alias, her acquaintance with the Bambury family allowing her to write as accurate a reference as possible, considering she was not really Mrs Leighton. But that did not stop Elena from now chewing worriedly on her bottom lip. If Hawthorne chose to dismiss her—
‘I said come, damn it.’ There was no mistaking the impatient irritation in his lordship’s voice.
Elena’s cheeks felt flushed as she opened the door and stepped gingerly into a room lined with bookcases halfway up the mahogany-panelled walls, with several original paintings above them, and a huge mahogany desk dominating the room.
At least…it would have been the dominating feature of the study if the gentleman seated behind that desk had not so easily taken that honour for himself!
Tall and broad-shouldered in a superfine of the same dark grey as his eyes over a paler-grey waistcoat, his linen snowy white, the neckcloth at his throat arranged meticulously, his stylish hair dark as a raven’s wing above that austerely handsome face, Lord Adam Hawthorne effortlessly filled the room with his overwhelming presence.
But it was a presence that Elena did not find in the least frightening, as she did so many other men following her cousin Neville’s cruelty to her. Indeed, Adam Hawthorne, despite—or because of?—his air of detachment, was a man who inspired trust rather than fear…
His mouth thinned disapprovingly as he leant back his chair. ‘Did you have some difficulty just now in understanding my invitation to enter?’
‘No. I—’ She breathed out softly through her teeth before straightening her shoulders determinedly. ‘No, of course I did not,’ she answered more strongly. ‘I merely paused before entering in order to…to adjust my appearance.’ It took all of her considerable self-will to withstand that critical gaze as it swept over her slowly, from the neat and smoothly styled bun at her nape, the pallor of her face, down over the black of her gown, to the toes of her black ankle boots peeking out from beneath the hem of that gown, before once again returning to her now-flushed and discomforted face.
He observed her coolly. ‘Might I enquire why it is you still choose to wear your widow’s weeds when your husband died almost two years ago?’
Elena was visibly taken aback by the directness of his question. Nor did she intend—or, in the circumstances, was able—to explain that she chose to wear black out of respect for the death two months ago of her beloved grandfather, George Matthews, the previous Duke of Sheffield!
He raised a dark brow. ‘Perhaps it is that you loved your husband so much that you still mourn his loss?’
‘Or perhaps it is that I am simply too poor to be able to replace my mourning gowns with something more frivolous?’ Elena felt stung into replying as she easily heard the underlying scepticism in his derisive tone.
Adam eyed her thoughtfully. ‘If that should indeed be the situation, would it not have been prudent to ask me for an advance on your wages?’
Elena’s
