“Where are you headed?” he asked her. “Is your home nearby?”
“Goodness, no, but there is a quiet place nearby. One of my favorite places in London.”
She seemed genuine and so he gave his package—and hers—to the footman who waited next to his carriage. “Hold these for us until we return.”
She meant to object, but he gave her no chance. He had already lifted her satchel—damn it was heavy—and passed it off as soon as they were outside.
“What do you have in there? Bricks?” Then he belatedly realized what such a large package from an apothecary might mean. “I beg your pardon. Is someone ill?”
She smiled and he remembered how pretty her dimple was. Especially as her face was tilted to the sun. Hazel eyes, auburn curls, and the sweet rosy hue of cheeks dusted with freckles. How she shined in the sunlight. And how her lips grew dark after a thorough kissing.
“My lord?” she asked.
He jerked his attention back from his memories. “I beg your pardon. I was woolgathering.”
She chuckled. “At least I’m not the only one.”
No, but his distraction had gotten a great deal worse of late. “You were telling me if there is an illness at home.”
“No illness. We’re all healthy with appetites to match. That satchel if filled with Madame’s powders and possets. My father blesses them. Her customers like it when she says they have been prayed over by a man of the cloth.”
“So your father is well.”
“Well enough to pray,” she said. Then at his look, she sighed. “Losing his parish was hard. Where we are now does not have a wealthy patron to sustain us, and winter is very cold.” Then she brightened. “But it is spring now. He will do better.”
He heard the melancholy in her tone and knew that his father was at fault for their changed circumstances. And though Jonathan had vigorously opposed the act, it was still up to him to apologize. Indeed, it was time for him to say everything that he’d stored up for a decade.
But now that the moment was here, his words tangled into each other.
“I’m so damned sorry, Giselle. Your father didn’t deserve… My father was so angry. He could be so stubborn. I tried to stop him. But, God, he wouldn’t listen—”
His headache surged again, hard enough to make him flinch. And she seemed to jolt as well. As if his pain was her own, which was ridiculous. But even as a girl, she’d been remarkably sensitive. And…
Another flash of pain burst white across his vision.
“I guess that headache powder wasn’t strong enough,” he muttered.
“Or it’s a particularly stubborn headache,” she countered. “There’s a bench here in the shade. Shall we sit?”
“It’s nothing,” he said. “I am perfectly hale.” Though his eye was twitching from the pain.
“Then allow me to rest my feet beneath this beautiful old maple tree. He is strong and well able to protect us.”
She sat down, and he was grateful to settle beside her. The shade was nice, the breeze delightful. Better yet, it carried the fresh, lemony scent of her to him. She hummed softly as she sat. A low, tuneless kind of song. Something he recognized from when they were kids.
A fairy song, she’d called it, to calm the angry sprites. Except she usually said “spirits” rather than “sprites,” only to correct herself when he teased her about seeing ghosts. Though, now that he thought about it, the difference between ghosts and fairy spirits was negligible. But somehow back then, fairies had seemed plausible whereas ghosts were “stuff and nonsense.”
According to his very practical, very dour nanny.
Strangely enough, the song helped. His headache eased and he was able to relax back on the bench and look around.
“A graveyard?” he said. “This is your favorite spot in London?”
“It’s peaceful here. No one about.”
“Not even the ghosts?” he teased.
“Ghosts haunt people, not grass and trees.”
