Page 29 of Inconvenient Honor
He reached out one hand to greet Aunt Marianne with perfect ease, bowing over her fingers, and turned to Lily. She clasped her own hands tightly together to prevent any similar greeting. Glenaire’s eyebrow rose slightly.
“Miss Thornton,” he said with a nod. He did not say she looked well.
“My lord.” She did not say, “Welcome.”
His gaze held hers for but a moment before he turned to Heaton and Stewart.
“I see you gentlemen did not receive the message I left for you at the office,” he said.
The two gentlemen shifted in their seat, murmured excuses, and rose. Both bowed over Lily’s hand.
“We’ll see ourselves out,” Stewart said with an uneasy glance at Glenaire. Lily felt grateful she didn’t have to endure lengthy good-byes, but resented the marquess’s high-handedness all the same.
“You’ve scattered my admirers again, my lord,” she chastised when they were gone.
“Like geese, again,” he agreed.
Their eyes caught in shared memory of their first encounter at Chadbourn Park—and what came next.
He did not, she noted, scatter Baron Ross, although he had skewered the baron with a pointed look.
“Hello, Richard,” the baron said, still at ease. “Didn’t expect to see you here.” He snatched up another teacake.
Richard? Who dared call the Marble Marquess by his Christian name? Not another of Glenaire’s spies, then. Does the man actually have normal friends?
“Jamie,” the marquess nodded in greeting. “Enjoying the Misses Thornton’s hospitality, I see.”
The baron grinned back. “Their cook makes fine cakes.” His grin rearranged itself into something like that of a naughty boy. “But I think it’s time I take my leave,” he said.
“Please stay seated, Miss Thornton. I will escort the baron out,” Glenaire ordered.
Lily saw that Aunt Marianne had nodded off in her comfortable chair in the far corner. She rose carefully, took hold of the back of her chair, blinked to banish dizziness, and watched the backs of the two departing men through the open door of the drawing room.
The marquess tipped his head to listen to Baron Ross, who spoke softly. Once, she saw, the baron looked back toward the drawingroom, his face set in compassionate lines, and turned to say something to the marquess. At the outside door, Lily watched as Glenaire laid a hand on the baron’s back, a gesture of support to a friend unlike anything she expected of him.
Odd that. Perhaps Glenaire wished his friend sympathy in his grief. Except the baron had shown no signs of overwhelming grief.
When the baron turned his face to smile up at Glenaire, it held no sadness.
His smile looks genuine, and not some cheeky grin, she thought. And, unless I misunderstand, the man looks grateful.
As Lily watched, something passed between hands. Glenaire passed banknotes to the man discreetly.
I’m right. The baron does not eat regularly. He isn’t the first member of fashionable society to rely on invitations just to eat.
The idea of Glenaire as a generous friend altered her image of the man. She would have to digest that new information later. The marquess himself watched her from the drawing room door.
“Do sit, Miss Thornton. You look as if you need to.”
Lily slid back into her chair and closed her eyes. She opened them to a pair of blue ones studying her.
“My friend’s assessment is correct. You are not well.”
“It’s nothing. A slight discomfort,” she said. I pray it is something I ate. “Did you send him to spy on me?”
The firm line of his mouth bent subtly upward. “‘Spy’ is an ugly word. Jamie possesses too much sympathy and too little discretion,” Glenaire said. “I give him little—,” he spread his hands in an expansive gesture, “—errands, for want of a better word.”
“So you can pay him,” Lily finished. “Well done of you, my lord.”
