And she had no earthly idea how to feel about that or rationalize what she did. She certainly felt something, and it wasn’t quite the horror she had expected at such a declaration. Not that she had ever expected one. Since her father’s treachery and that incident in the alleyway, she had done everything she possibly could to repel male attention. Closed herself off from the possibility of marriage and all the silly, girlish dreams associated with it.
It wasn’t fear of men exactly, or fear of a repetition of what had happened that fateful night, because she understood most men weren’t like that. Thanks to Giles, she also understood that her body was quite capable of responding to the physical if the touch came from a man she desired. And she did desire Giles. Always had. There was no getting away from that. It was more fear of the power of men and the way they wielded that power over women.
That was visceral, forged over a lifetime of powerlessness thatshe had only just left behind. There was, without a shadow of a doubt, a great deal of panic matted amongst that fear. Panic that her first reaction to Giles’s confession was elation. Relief, happiness, and excitement had merged into something complicated and internal that had made her foolish heart swell irrespective of all her rational—or perhaps irrational—fears. Enough that if she were ever tempted to relinquish the tight control she held over her own destiny, if she were to consent to an eternity with someone, that someone would be Giles.
But to be that vulnerable with someone, to someone else’s whims and edicts, terrified her.
Was it a justified terror?
That was the quandary filling her mind now. Was she mapping her past experiences on her present and denying herself something she now wanted? Giles wasn’t anything like Alfred Merriwell. Nor was he like that brute in the alleyway or any of the legions of opportunists who had tried their luck at manipulating her in the past.
He was decent and funny, clever and kind. And he claimed to love her.
That was enormous.
Significant.
Terrifying.
Because if she allowed herself to love him back, trust him back, and he disappointed her, too, then what? Experience warned her it was best not to risk it even though her gut instinct—her reliably and usually irrefutable gut instinct—suspected he might be worth the risk.
Was that the root cause of her wariness? Did she no longer trust her own gut? Or was she too scared to trust it? Unfortunately,Diana knew herself well enough to acknowledge that this might well be the case. Could she learn to trust Giles when life had taught her not to trust anything? And, more important, did she want to?
She risked peeking over at him and instantly felt bad. He seemed so lost and lonely, leafing through the ledger in his lap like a man who no longer cared about their quest. He was hurting, and she blamed her bad reaction for that. He had been quiet and withdrawn ever since Vee had interrupted them, preferring to stare at the columns in front of him than glance her way. She should have said something, anything like he had begged, even though she still couldn’t think of a single thing to say and had no clue what the answer was.
“Have you found anything?” Vee pulled her out of her reverie. “Only you have been staring at that same piece of paper for the last ten minutes with a frown on your face.”
“I am not sure.” It was a convenient lie while she focused on the receipt properly for the first time in that ten minutes, then she frowned again. “Who died in March 1796, Giles? Your grandfather?”
She hated witnessing the effort it took him to compose his handsome features into an expression of nonchalance before he looked up. “No. He died several years before I was born.”
“And your grandmother?”
“When I was around twelve, I think. We never met, or we didn’t that I can recall.” He couldn’t hold her gaze and went back to the ledger. “She and the duke were quite estranged from my earliest memories. I assume that was because of the way she felt he had dealt with Gervais.”
“Well, whoever they are they must have been important to warrant a headstone this expensive. And the bill is in your father’sname, so he must have ordered it.” Diana squinted at the faded ink and spidery handwriting to try to decipher more. “Carved limestone… Inscription… St. Llyr… Llanyre—with twoL’s.”
“It sounds Welsh to me,” said Vee, unaware that the mention of Wales brought both Giles and Diana up short. “Lots of Welsh places start with twoL’s. The twoL’s are pronouncedThlannlike Llandudno and that really long one that I cannot for the life of me spell from memory but that sounds likeThlann vyre pooth gwin gith gogg-erra kweern drobbooth lan tuss-ill-yo goggo gaukif you say it phonetically.” She beamed at her own genius.
“That was marvelous.” Giles forgot to be miserable for a moment to be impressed at Vee’s pronunciation. “How on earth do you know how to say that?”
“I read, and because I cannot stand not understanding something, I went out of my way to learn.” She shrugged, slightly smug and unrepentant in her cleverness. “I adore the Welsh habit of using two of the same consonants to make sounds that make no sense in English. TwoD’s, for example are a ‘th’ and, conversely twoF’s sound like oneFhere, whereas oneFin the Welsh dialect is pronounced Vee—just like me.” She grinned then shrieked, knocking her chair over as she stood. “There is someone outside!” She waggled her finger at the window. “I just saw a shadow.”
As her baby sister had always had sensitive nerves, Diana rolled her eyes at her childish hysterics. “You are just being paranoid because of the attempted break-in. It’s probably just a bush waving in the wind.”
“Assuming bushes are man-shaped and carry lamps!” Vee rushed to the window with Giles, then the pair of them charged out of the room in the direction of the back door.
Convinced that they were both overreacting, Diana stayed put, then exploded from her chair, too, when she saw a dim light moving about outside.
By the time she reached the kitchen porch, Giles and Vee had plunged into the darkness after the intruder whose lamp was now nowhere to be seen. The only light came from the stars, which punched eerie holes in the night sky and cast the garden in menacing shadows.
“He went this way!”
Diana ran in the direction of her sister’s shout, but it was Giles she caught up with first. “Where is Vee?”
He shrugged, putting a finger to his lips while scanning the darkness for any sign or sound.
They both stiffened as a twig snapped close by, then Diana almost had an apoplexy when a bloodcurdling scream rent the air a split second before her sister flew through it.
