Mr. Garfield completed his review of his credentials.
“You quite understand, do you, Mr. Garfield?” Drake asked again, to assure himself. “I want to know everything you might learn of Lord Ardencaple. What is his fortune? From where does he come? What are his intentions in London?” Drake asked as he pushed an envelope containing several banknotes across the desk to him.
Mr. Garfield picked up the envelope and slipped it into his coat pocket. “I quite understand, sir,” he said, and removed his monocle, placing it in his pocket. “If there is something to be learned about this man, I shall find it.”
“Very good,” Drake said. “I’m to travel to Featherstone in a few days. Perhaps you might have a bit of information for me when I return next week,” he suggested, leaning back in his chair.
“I shall endeavor to do so,” Mr. Garfield said as he rose to his feet and extended his hand. “Your private matter shall have my undivided attention.”
Drake did not stand, merely reached for the man’s hand and shook. “Very well, Mr. Garfield. You know the way out?”
Garfield nodded; he quit the room, leaving Drake to stare at the long row of windows in the library, hoping that Garfield would indeed give this matter his undivided and expedient attention. Certainly Drake had.
Twenty-two
T he drive to the Featherstone estate, while a relatively short journey, felt interminable to Grif.
Not on account of the roads, which were remarkably passable due to an unusually dry spring—this Grif knew because of Lucy and her preoccupation with the weather. Nor was it the coach, as Grif had hired the best in order to maintain the appearance of a well-to-do Scottish earl, which the old Lockhart coach did not convey.
It was made interminable on account of Hugh, the would-be valet, who whined the entire two-hour journey along the Thames about Keara Brody, who refused, even under Hugh’s constant duress, to appreciate the numerous and considerable qualities that Hugh believed he possessed and made him irresistibly attractive to the fairer sex.
Even Dudley, who this very morning had given in to Grif’s pleadings to return to Scotland, where Fiona might look after his gout, had snapped at Hugh like a turtle as they had put him in a public coach bound for Glasgow, imploring Hugh to kindly put his mind to being a valet instead of an arse, to which Hugh had replied, very hurtfully, that this was a matter of the heart, and therefore he could not simply stuff it away to be forgotten. And then Hugh had sulked instead of preparing the coach they’d hired for the journey to Featherstone.
Grif tried to ignore him, tried to block out his complaining by thinking of something else, but his thoughts inevitably wound their way around to Anna again, and his mood turned correspondingly dark, for that afternoon in the drawing room had sent Grif privately reeling.
It seemed that for a time all he could taste or hear or see was that moment, that incredible moment when he had wanted her to feel pleasure more than he wanted it for himself. That fantastic moment had been followed by a thousand moments more, all tangled together, in which he hungered to touch her again, to feel her skin, to feel her body surround him and draw him in.
Yet in the days that followed, he dared not touch her, no matter how badly he desired it, for fear that he would slide deeper into an enchantment with the one woman in all of Britain he could not have.
Oh, aye, of that he was convinced, notwithstanding the remarkable sentiments stirring in him. The sentiments terrified him, for he had not the slightest notion what to do with them—he was not a man to yearn for a woman. All his life, he’d left the pining to the ladies, and this was the first time that the tide had turned. What made it so horribly frustrating was that she was—for him, at least—unattainable.
Flirtations aside, Grif was quite certain that there was nothing in the world that could entice her to leave her prominent family for the likes of him and Scotland.
In the last few days, he’d felt as if he’d somehow slipped into a quiet space between the dreams of Anna that had began to haunt him at night and the harsh reality of his days, in which he lived an outrageous lie. But it was a small space in which he could believe that he might be quite content in the company of one woman all his days. That wasn’t something he’d ever really believed of himself—he’d always thought that sort of devotion was reserved for better men than him, men who had the capacity to put others before themselves.