“Thank you so much.” She grabbed what she assumed was the same christening cup that had anointed baby Giles’s head and gulped the contents down, relieved that despite his shock at her actions her fake husband still had the wherewithal to behelpfuland deposit both the parish record books back into their chest before he fanned her face with his hand for a few minutes while her touch of the vapors subsided.
They managed to walk out at a sedate pace arm in arm, quickening it only to cross the graveyard, then giggling like naughty children, they made a mad dash down the lane.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Giles could not explain quite how he felt beyond relieved. It made no difference that that came on the back of technical wrongdoing, or that he had found and lost Ffion in the same day. The burden on his shoulders was a little lighter, his future seemed a smidgen brighter, and Diana’s actions gave him hope that she cared about him a great deal just as Vee had said. Not that he was in any position to do anything about it, but it was nice to know, all the same.
His buoyed mood was clearly infectious because the three of them had enjoyed a splendid dinner and at Vee’s instigation were now doing something fun to round their night off despite it being almost one in the morning.
“It’s a play!”
“We have already established that!” Diana glared at him in exasperation while Vee reenacted her charade for the fourth time. “Thrice! It’s a play. Two words.”
“And the first word isthe,” added Giles, grinning around a mouthful of shortbread just to vex her. For a woman whose acute investigative skills set ne’er-do-wells quaking in their boots, shehad neither the talent nor the patience for a game even a child could master.
Vee nodded, rolling her eyes at them both as if they were the thickest dunces in a schoolroom, then held up two fingers.
“Second word,” muttered Diana through gritted teeth while he sniggered on the sofa beside her because they knew exactly what was coming. Then chuckled some more when she nudged him. “Will you stop distracting me while I am trying to concentrate!”
Vee didn’t disappoint and for the fourth time started to stomp around like a madwoman waving her arms in the air, wiggling her fingers for all she was worth, then pretending to recoil from something above. And just as she had four times previously, while a frustrated Diana dropped her head in her hands and groaned, she suddenly paused what she was doing, mimed an exaggerated belly laugh, and began to run around like a headless chicken being stung by a thousand wasps.
“And… your time is up.” Dalton had been given the task of timing each round.
“Lord give me strength.” Diana sounded like a broken woman. “How on earth is this fun? Put me out of my misery, Vee. What the devil was all that arm-waving nonsense about?”
“Obviously it isThe Tempest!” Vee shook her head as she huffed, and began to act it out again as she explained while Giles stifled a laugh. He had worked out it wasThe Tempeston the first mime but had enjoyed Diana’s furrowed brow and foot stamping far too much to have spoiled his splendid entertainment prematurely.
“This is the howling wind and the pouring rain.” Vee stomped in a tight circle waving her wiggling fingers. “This is the thunder and lightning.” She recoiled, covering her eyes with her arms.“And this”—she replicated her exaggerated silent belly laugh—“signifies that it is one of Shakespeare’s comedies rather than his tragedies.”
“Forget about tragedy, that shocking mime was a Shakespearean travesty.” Diana scowled first at Vee and then at him as they both collapsed in a fit of giggles. “I loathe parlor games.”
“Only because you are useless at them.” Vee wandered to the biscuit plate then rolled her eyes at him. “You have eaten them all again, Giles, haven’t you?”
“I couldn’t help myself, Miss Vee. Biscuits are in my blood. We are definitely going to need some more.” As he shrugged, unrepentant and quietly pleased that he finally had such a tangible link to at least one of his parents, Dalton stood with undisguised belligerence.
“I suppose you’ll be expecting me to fetch them?”
“I shall help you and I shall heat some hot milk for us to dunk them in.” Vee herded the scowling butler to the door grinning in her unsubtle matchmaking way. “I am sure I can trust the pair of you alone for a minute.”
The second she was gone the atmosphere in the room changed, although this time it did not feel quite so chilly. That might have something to do with Diana’s heated blush, which had begun blooming the second her sister exited the room.
“It’s been quite a day.” She couldn’t quite look at him. “A day for revelations.”
“In more ways than one.” Giles hadn’t meant it how it sounded and wished he could claw the sentence back and reword it so that it did not sound so loaded when he saw her pained reaction. “That wasn’t a dig at you, by the way, at what I stupidly said to you. More acomment on the other revelations concerning my parents than it was about…” His voice trailed off and he shrugged his awkwardness. “Perhaps I should apologize again for dragging that up, and then we can finally put all that behind us where it belongs?” Although he did not fool himself it wouldn’t always be there. Lingering like a bad smell and spoiling everything they had had right up to the point he decided to pour out his heart.
“About that…” He might have known something would come along to spoil his good humor. “I am not sure we can put it all behind us. Things have been different since that—” She flapped her hand, her cheeks positively glowing crimson.
“Kiss?” Someone had to say it. Be the bigger person and try to fix the mess he had made from the foolhardy moment he had instigated. “Do you have any bright ideas how we can get past it? Because I really do want us to get back to being the unlikely friends and unconvincing enemies that we’ve always been, Diana. I cannot imagine not having your prickly presence in my life and I would hate it if you tried to avoid me.”
She sat a little straighter and stared at the door rather than at him as if keeping watch. She chewed her lip. Blew out a shaky breath. Wrung her hands in her lap for all they were worth then swallowed. “Perhaps we shouldn’t try to get past it.”
What did that mean? “You want to cut your losses and run?” The very thought made him anxious. “Wash your hands of me forever?”
“Not exactly.” She was staring at her busy fingers now as if her life depended on it.
“Then what exactly?”
“I was thinking that… well… perhaps instead of putting itall behind us we should… um…” This was a Diana he did not recognize. The forthright, reckless, indomitable, outspoken harridan he knew and loved seemed to have left the drawing room and been replaced by hesitant, vulnerable incarnation who was having a great deal of trouble speaking. Her eyes darted briefly to his and she screwed them shut, but not before he witnessed the battle going on in those emotive emerald irises.
