One Touch of Scandal by Liz Carlyle Read Free Book Online Page B

her feeling oddly bereft and a little cold. He occupied himself for a moment freshening his own tea, which, Grace noticed, hedrank with nothing in it. For no reason in particular, she made a mental note of that fact.
    After a time, Ruthveyn set his cup away, then resumed his almost feline posture on the sofa. “Your color has returned again,” he said calmly. “So let us return to the pressing business at hand, mademoiselle, and to my questions.”
    Grace was beyond quibbling with him. “Very well,” she said on a sigh. “What do you wish to know?”
    Some nameless emotion sketched across his face, so swift and so vague she might have imagined it.
    â€œI wish to know,” he said quietly, “if you loved Ethan Holding.”
    Grace looked at him in surprise. “Do you indeed?” she asked. “Does it matter?”
    He lifted one shoulder a fraction. “Perhaps I am merely curious,” he answered. “But one might argue that a crime of passion looks far less likely when there is…well, little passion.”
    She gave a withering smile. “How cruelly practical you are, Lord Ruthveyn,” she said. “No, I did not love him. Not in the way you mean. But I had a deep respect for him. And while some might have believed him hard, I knew him to be a fair man and a good father.”
    â€œI see,” said Ruthveyn. “And who is the Crane in Crane and Holding? Surely not the sister?”
    â€œOh, heavens no!” Grace tried to relax against the sofa. “Ethan’s mother believed women had no head for business. It is his stepcousin, Josiah Crane.”
    â€œA cousin?” said Ruthveyn. “That seems an odd arrangement.”
    â€œThe business was begun by the Crane family,” Grace explained. “Ethan’s mother was a widow who had inherited Holding Shipyards, a failing business. She married one of the Crane heirs when Ethan was small, and he accepted Ethan as a son. When his mother died some years after Mr. Crane, Ethan inherited the controlling interest.”
    â€œNow that is what I call a marriage of convenience,” said Ruthveyn. “And the noncontrolling interest?”
    â€œMr. Crane left 40 percent to his nephew, Josiah Crane, in his will.”
    Ruthveyn’s mouth lifted at one corner. “I wonder how Josiah Crane felt about that?”
    â€œBittersweet but grateful, I daresay,” said Grace. “Josiah’s father was the elder of the Crane brothers, but he proved to be a wastrel and had to sell his share of the family business to his younger brother. For a time, Josiah was just a junior clerk, working for his uncle. But there, that was a long time ago. It is old history now.”
    Ruthveyn set his head to one side and looked at her assessingly for a moment. “Yet what is time, Mademoiselle Gauthier, save an invention of man?” he finally said, his voice pensive. “Time can span into infinity. On the other hand, sometimes it is no more than a platitude— Time heals all wounds! —is that not what the English say? But envy—oh, trust me, mademoiselle. Envy can be eternal.”
    Grace managed to smile. “You are a far more esoteric thinker, Lord Ruthveyn, than I could ever hope to be,” she answered. “And I must hope, for my own sake, that time does indeed heal all wounds.”
    â€œSometimes, Mademoiselle Gauthier, it does not,” he said quietly. Then Ruthveyn seemed to stir from some sort of reverie. “And so Josiah Crane’s father sold his birthright, did he?” he murmured. “He was dashed lucky to get it back again.”
    â€œForty percent,” Grace reminded him. “Not the original fifty.”
    â€œAh, so the control Mrs. Holding wielded during her widowhood was significant.”
    â€œI gather she wielded nothing more significant than a darning needle,” Grace replied. “Ethan’s mother believed a lady’s