“I really don’t, Dalton!”
Dalton rolled his eye and carried on regardless. “Seeing as we already know Gervais has a talent for following you, I could hightail it to Gretna Green this morning with the carriage as if you are all in it while you all race to Presteigne after. If what you seek is there, the quest is done. If it isn’t I’ll still have first claim on the truth in Scotland before that grog-snarfing scallywag Gervais is any the wiser.”
“That is actually not a bad idea, Giles.” Diana caught his hand and smiled. “Why don’t I have some horses saddled?”
“Your Grace, I am at my wit’s end!” The door crashed against the wall as Mrs. Townsend slammed through it again. “If you had planned a house party, it is beyond the pale that you neglected to tell me! Were I the son of God, and able to perform miracles, I could conjure a banquet out of five loaves and some fishes, but I only have a quarter of a side of bacon and the butcher’s shop is closed today so I am at a loss how to feed the five thousand!”
Giles blinked at her and threw up his hands, looking ready to explode himself. “I have no idea what you are talking about, woman!”
Mrs. Townsend pointed a quaking finger to the hallway and looked ready to burst into tears at any moment. “You have morevisitors. Four of them, and I have no earthly clue what I am supposed to do with them.”
“I swear this place is busier than Piccadilly Circus!” Giles started toward the door then froze when a livid Hugh strode through it.
Chapter Thirty-Three
“You lying, duplicitous snake!” Hugh grabbed him by the lapels. “You gave me your word you had no designs on Diana, and all the while you were plotting your seduction!”
“I really wasn’t plotting anything of the sort, old boy.”
“He really wasn’t, Hugh.” Diana rushed to intervene but was blocked by the twin juggernauts of Minerva and Olivia, who were equally as incandescent with rage. “I insisted on coming to help him because Giles is in trouble. Huge trouble. Isn’t he, Vee?”
The youngest Merriwell’s gaze darted between both her sisters, her loyalties clearly split. “He is in trouble. That’s the truth.”
“Really?” Hugh pushed him away then shook a letter in the air before he shoved it at him. “Then how do you explain this?”
Giles winced as he scanned Vee’s neat handwriting, informing whoever found the letter not to panic that she and Diana were not at home, because she had thwarted their plans to run away together to Shropshire and had accompanied them to act as their chaperone instead.
“Why would Diana need a chaperone if you had no intentions toward her—honorable or otherwise.” Hugh spat Giles’s reassurances back at him with such venom his eyes bulged while a stony Jeremiah loomed behind him, his jaw clenched so tight it was a wonder he still had any teeth. “What the bloody hell is running away together the second my back is turned if it is not dishonorable? And what sort of an effective chaperone is an eighteen-year-old girl around a practiced seducer like you?”
“Not a particularly effective one, as it turned out.” Vee pulled a face as Diana glared. “Well, that is the truth, too, isn’t it? Especially after I caught the pair of you this morning?”
“And where did you catch them?” Minerva had a maniacal glint in her eyes. One that stated quite clearly that Giles’s days were numbered. It was so ferocious that Vee caved instantly under the intense pressure.
“In his bedchamber. In the altogether.” She covered her face with her hands as if she was picturing it all over again, only the glowing tips of her ears visible as she hammered in the final nail. “He ruined her but says that he won’t marry her.”
“Yet!” screamed Diana, clarifying. “He is being noble and trying to protect me from the scandal.”
“Noble?” Jeremiah’s growl dripped menace. “If you ask me, he made you the scandal, Diana.” He took several intimidating steps forward, his fingers flexing as if he was pre-warming them before he wrapped them around Giles’s neck. “And now I am going to pummel him!”
Hugh stopped his stepfather’s determined advance with his gloved palm. “You can have what’s left of the Judas after I’ve finished with him.” He turned back to Giles, his face contorted as he peeled off the glove and tossed it to the floor. “Choose your weapon!”
Giles stared at the crumpled leather, which had landed with the first two fingers poking upright as if even the glove were horrified by what he had done. “I know this all looks bad—”
“Bad!Bad!You’ve ruined my sister and refuse to do the right thing!” Minerva grabbed him by the lapels and shook.
“I haven’t refused. I adore the harridan. I’ve loved her since the moment she lambasted me with her first pithy set-down and really cannot wait to spend all eternity shackled to the prickly minx. She feels the same.” He smiled at her and she smiled back. “Don’t you?”
“He’s my fungus.”
Giles grinned and blew her a kiss as everyone else frowned, touched by such a gushing public declaration from a woman who liked to pretend she had no heart but actually had the biggest one he knew. “And I am the fly in her ointment.”
“Please never say that again.” Vee winced as she covered her face.
“So propose to the girl!” Olivia screamed this.
“I will—eventually—you have my word.”
“Your word is worthless!” Hugh jabbed his chest with his index finger. “As this debauched situation confirms!”
