But Grif was frowning—Miss Brody was no cook. Miss Brody was a bonny lass, and he’d wager it was her plump bosom that had Hugh drooling. All right, then, it was a lovely bosom, but nevertheless, they’d had an agreement! No gambling, no trawling about, and no women! Grif looked at Hugh, who still wore that silly grin on his face, and said in Gaelic, “I thought we agreed—no women.”
“Ah—” Hugh interrupted him, holding up a finger. “We agreed no women of questionable character. We said nothing of a cook.”
“A cook?” Grif laughed sardonically. “I’m no fool, MacAlister!”
“I agree,” Hugh answered amicably. “Quite the contrary, lad. Ye are far too clever to turn yer back on a woman who can cook.”
Grif looked at Miss Brody. He could not deny that whatever she was about, it smelled bloody fabulous. Still… “And how do we pay her?”
Hugh chuckled. “Now that I’ve given some thought,” he said, and there was a wicked glint in his eye. “Leave it to me.”
While Grif was loath to leave anything to Hugh, his nose and his belly overruled his good sense. “All right,” he said gruffly in English. “More importantly, when might we sample her efforts?”
Hugh laughed, clapped him on the shoulder. “Soon, mo caraid. Soon.”
Seven
B y the time the Valtrain ball rolled around, Grif’s trousers were a wee bit tight.
It turned out that Miss Keara Brody was indeed an excellent cook. She was not, however, a woman who was easily seduced by the likes of Hugh MacAlister. Miss Brody was Irish, had come from Dublin with her older brother in search of work. “Our parents are dead and gone,” she’d told Grif one morning over a plate of eggs. “Our sister looks after our younger siblings.”
There were six younger siblings at home, dependent upon what Miss Brody and her brother were able to send back. She seemed rather single-minded in her purpose and had no patience for Hugh’s interest.
But Grif and Dudley were too fond of her cooking to let Hugh’s lack of sexual triumph chase her away, and were, in fact, quite content to let his whining fall on their deaf but fully sated ears.
Unfortunately, Hugh had grown quite smitten with Miss Brody, and he was incorrigible. Miss Brody had, in fact, banned him from the kitchen entirely, which was why he was seated on a chaise longue in the master suite of rooms the night of the Valtrain ball, smoking a cheroot and eyeing Grif critically as he buttoned a white waistcoat.
“Diah, ye look like a bloody Sassenach, ye do,” Hugh said irritably as Grif donned the black-tailed coat.
Grif glanced at Hugh over his shoulder—his shirt-tails were out, his neckcloth dangled haphazardly down his chest. “And ye look like a man who’s hired his very own cook only to discover she willna touch his sausage and eggs.”
Hugh snorted, picked up a whiskey glass from which he had been sipping, and tossed back the contents. “She’ll come round,” he said, pointing the cheroot at Grif, and in the very next breath moaned, “Ach, I give the lass a bloody occupation, and this is the thanks I get? She’s such a bonny thing, Grif! Did ye see her? Hair the very color of a Scottish sunset? Eyes as green as moss?”
“I hadna noticed,” Grif said cheerfully, and straightening his snowy white neckcloth, he stood back, admiring himself in the full-length mirror.
“’Tis hardly fair,” Hugh continued morosely. “Night after night, ye have quite a time of it, while I’m forced to sit behind these walls as if I were a wretched servant!”
“But ye are a wretched servant, lad,” Grif reminded him. “Perhaps the most wretched valet in all of England’s history.”
Hugh cursed him in their native tongue for that, but Grif just laughed, adjusted his neckcloth once more, and strode out of the master suite, whistling a cheerful tune.
Fynster was waiting at the Fordham Gentlemen’s Club of Leisure on Regent Street, as they had previously agreed, and from there they took Fynster’s carriage to the Valtrain residence.
There was the usual mad crush of carriages and horses and people dressed in the latest finery, and that sent Grif’s spirits soaring. Unlike his brother, Liam, Grif loved balls. He loved women whose pastel-colored gowns swirled about their legs on the dance floor, loved their bright glowing faces and the shiny baubles they wore, the way they felt in his arms when he danced, so small and delicate, moving at the command of his body.
And he loved to be surrounded by fine things. In the weeks he’d been in London, Grif had seen splendor that went beyond anything he’d ever known or imagined. And Grif had imagined—he and Hugh both. They used to talk of owning their own bank or lending company, or perhaps shipping goods from Scotland across the Atlantic to Caribbean ports. As young men, they believed they’d be wealthier than their wildest dreams, that they would live a life of luxury. A turn of the economy in Scotland had grounded their dreams, but Grif still imagined himself in a position of importance one day, a man who would be invited to all the right events, attached to all the right women. He had imagined something like his life in London thus far….