The truth was more than that. Arlo wanted to know if, like him, Delfine yearned for a sibling. But that was not something he was ready to share. So he told Marena the other thing he’d come to say. “I want to help her with the situation that forced her to leave the city.” She barely blinked at his words. “I will put the family’s name and influence behind that help, if necessary.”
Marena’s tightly crossed arms suddenly fell to her sides, and her sharp eyes assessed him once again. A thaw, a minor one, but still it was there. “I have to think about what you’re saying,” she said. “I need to talk to my mother…” She paused, lifting a hand in the air, palm out. “Not that I know where Delfine is.”
He knew that was false, but he would take this minimal concession as a win.
“Do you have a calling card?” she asked, clearly flustered, which brought an enticing red tint to her cheeks.
“Here,” he said, plucking one from his breast pocket and handing it over.
She looked at it for a long moment, then placed it face down on the counter. “If I have anything else to say, I will send word, Your Grace.” With that, she lifted a hand in the direction of the shop’s door. “I will unlock it for you,” she offered, already moving toward him.
It seemed he’d been dismissed. He should be glad he’d gotten closer to finding out where his sister was, but he felt unsettled. Like he’d opened a door which could not be closed, and it all had to do with the woman who was presently ushering him out of her little shop.
Marena Baine-Torres was not what he’d expected. Arlo’s life rarely offered thrills these days, but as he stepped out of Baine’s Apothecary, he could barely keep himself from asking her when he would see her again.
Chapter Two
Marena had been to Mayfair, of course. The herbalist of Haymarket made house calls when high society patrons did not want their peers to suspect them of needing assistance with certain ailments. The women especially would send their carriages with footmen and ladies’ maids to fetch her.
She’d been in these homes dozens of times. Houses with names recognized by Londoners as if they were city landmarks. She had been in them, but she had never done so for a personal reason. The short distance between the end of Portland Place, where she lived, and Hyde Park might as well have been the Atlantic Ocean. Mayfair was not Marena’s world. But that would not stop her from doing what she needed to.
After a long and stilted conversation the night before, her mother had confirmed that the late Duke of Linley was in fact Delfine’s father. He had not been the duke when he’d been in Haiti. He’d been the dashing Hubert Kenworthy, a colleague of Marena’s father. And after a short and furtive affair with Delfine’s mother, the thoughtless prick left her with child and sodded off back to England. Before her death, Delfine’s mother had told her the truth about who her father was, but it scarcely mattered since the man had never acknowledged her.
So now here Marena was, ready to be cordial and polite as was required of her. This man could be the key to bringing Delfine and Lluvia back home, and if that meant dealing with the likes of Arlo Kenworthy, she would do so. She stopped at the half-open gate leading up to the door of the Kenworthys’ townhouse. Then reminded herself it was actually called Linley House, and she was about to go see a duke. A vexingly handsome duke with eyes exactly the color of the Caribbean Sea, who had burst into her life twenty-four hours ago and was still lingering in her thoughts.
She stood back to take in at the stone monstrosity. It was on Park Lane, and if she turned, she’d get a view of the flurry of activity in Hyde Park. She’d looked the house up in the Cunningham’s guide. She knew the name of the architect who designed it, and even who built the stone gate. Having some piece of information that made her feel like she wasn’t completely in the dark put Marena at ease.
She supposed it was from those first years in London when everything and everyone felt like a mystery she would never unravel. When it seemed her accent and the color of her skin gave away her status as a foreigner before she got a chance to utter a syllable. She loathed feeling out of sorts, not knowing what to expect. And Arlo Kenworthy had her feeling extremely out of her depth.
Marena marched up the stairs, clutching her handbag so tightly she feared she might snap it in two. She was barely at the door when it opened to reveal a tall and handsome man dressed in uniform.
“Miss Baine-Torres,” he said in the accent she’d learned to connect to Jamaica. Every Caribbean island had its unique blend of West African, native, and colonizer languages. It was comforting to find a familiar sound in this house where she was about to do something that would surely be unpleasant.
Just speak, Marena. “I’m here to see His Grace.”
“Certainly. He’s in his study.” He lifted a hand to gesture beyond the foyer toward a pair of massive wood doors. “Please,” the man said, and Marena began to walk. Her heart was beating fast. She needed to get herself under control. Meeting a man who was used to getting his way while feeling peevish could only lead to trouble.
The butler walked and talked as they made their way through the house. “It’s through here,” he explained as they passed a large round malachite tabletop with a crystal vase full of hothouse roses.
He came to a stop when they arrived at the double doors, and promptly knocked as Marena held her breath.
Her hair was up. The mass of curls he had not been able to stop thinking about was now coiled into a crown of braids. A damned travesty.
Still, his skin prickled from the sight of her. Open your mouth, Arlo. Speak.
“Miss Baine-Torres,” he finally said with a terse nod, moving aside for her to pass. She gave him a look he could not quite decipher and stepped in. “Cyrus, would you be so kind to bring us a tray of tea?”
She raised an eyebrow at that, her shoulders straightening as if she expected to carry out this conversation while standing in the doorway of his study.
“Your Grace. I don’t mean to stay long.” She followed that with the most insouciant curtsy he had ever seen. He had to press his lips together to keep from laughing because the woman was truly irreverent and, blast it all, that only made her more appealing.
“Miss Baine-Torres, p—”
She held up a hand at him. “Please, call me Marena.” She shook her head, something resembling humor pulling at her lips. “I commend you for trying, but you butcher the Torres.”
His face heated and a sensation he could not quite identify pulsed in his chest, making him want to scold and ravish her all at once. But then she smiled, and the pulsing transformed into a different thing altogether. “Don’t fret, Your Grace. It was a valiant attempt. I find the Scots are the only ones who can do the Castilian rolled r’s any justice. Marena will do.”
Arlo could only be grateful she was the sole witness to the way his voice shook when he finally said her name. “Marena, please come in.”
He’d been expecting her, but he’d not expected her effect on him. No. That was a lie. He had not stopped thinking about that yellow dress or her brown eyes. And her mouth…the mouth was the biggest obstacle when it came to behaving like a human being when it came to this woman. As they made their way into the room, he noticed how the sage green dress she wore contrasted with her gold and brown hair. He was riveted by a few curls that had come loose from her braid to frame her face. He’d never been a gawker, but he could see now how people could fall into the habit. Life in the nobility oscillated between stodgy to maddeningly boring, and for Arlo, the only thing that seemed to provide any excitement was finding ways to scandalize his peers. He’d spent years wondering if anyone could spark a fire within him again. And here she was, glaring at him like he was a sodding fool.