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She probably shouldn’t rush it. Better to give it time, think it over. Surely a woman shouldn’t just spring something like that on an unsuspecting man.
Even if he was her husband.
She dropped the dogs off with Eloise, who was busy in the rose garden, and let herself in at the East Entrance the family used, pausing just inside the door to check the soles of her trainers. Unlike the tops, the soles were clean, wiped off by all that running across the damp grass. She wouldn’t be tracking mud up and down the fine old floors and carpets. She took off for the stairs to the first floor.
And then she heard the voices. They were coming from the Blue Drawing Room not far from the stairs: a woman’s voice. And Rafe’s. Her heart did that leaping thing and got lodged in her throat again.
“Never change,” he said, his tone warm and easy.
And the woman laughed in a husky, intimate way. “No danger of that.”
Genny veered from the stairs and over to the wide-open doors to the drawing room. Rafe and a slim, dark-haired woman stood over by the Palladian window that looked out on the wide swathes of open parkland rolling away from the north front of the house.
Rafe spotted her. “Gen—there you are.”
The woman turned to smile at her.
It was the woman he’d kissed on the boat jetty eleven years before.
Genny’s mind went blank—and then started spinning. What was going on here? She didn’t like it—no, worse.
She hated it.
She hated herself for hating it.
He held out his big hand. “Come here, love. I want you to meet Melinda Cartside.”
Melinda. So that was her name—a name Genny had heard recently. Hadn’t she? Melinda...
Right. The shop owner in Chelsea that Brooke had gone on about. The woman who’d grown up right here, in the village.
Rafe had spoken so fondly to her. Too fondly. And the way she had laughed, so husky and teasing...
Did he still have a thing going on with her, after all these years? He’d just come from London. Had he been with this woman there?
Genny wanted to scratch the woman’s wide brown eyes out. Not only was she much too good-looking to be laughing intimately with someone else’s husband, she had a really fabulous sense of style. She wore an ankle-length full skirt, of all things. The skirt was a swirling pattern of red and fuchsia-pink. Into the skirt, she’d tucked a crisp white oxford shirt. And she had sky-high, very ladylike black pumps on her delicate feet.
Genny poked at her sweaty, falling-down ponytail. The elastic came loose and she stuck it in her pocket, then swiftly raked the tangled mess behind her ears. She wanted a shower and to put on something really pretty.
And then to kill Melinda Cartside.
All these overwhelming emotions. Was this what falling in love did to you? It wasn’t fun in the least, and she was growing so tired of it.
“Gen?” Twin lines drew down between Rafe’s black brows: worry. He looked worried.
And he should be worried if he was fooling around with this Melinda person. They might have gotten married because of the baby. He might not love her the way she’d begun to love him. But still. They were married. She needed to have a little talk with him about what marriage meant to her.
And what it had better mean to him.
He was still watching her, still looking worried.
Genny put on her friendly face and entered the Blue Drawing Room. “Hello.” She aimed a thousand-watt smile at the other woman. Rafe put out a hand to pull her close to his side. She jerked away. “I’ve been out running, throwing sticks for the dogs. You’ll be covered in mud.”
“I don’t mind.” He pulled her close anyway, up nice and snug against his beautifully cut jacket and gray silk trousers. It felt so good—his warmth and size, the smell of his aftershave that was fresh and green, a little bit musky. And so, so manly. “Gen. Melinda.”
The woman gushed, “Your Highness. I’m so pleased.” She actually managed to sound sincere.
“You must call me Genny,” she said, and thought she sounded friendly and gracious and not the least bit murderous after all.
“Melinda grew up in the village,” Rafe said. “But she lives in London now.”
“I own a shop,” Melinda provided. “Women’s fashion.”
Right. The shop. Brooke had mentioned the shop and all the clothes that she’d bought there....
“I hear you’ve made a big success,” Rafe said.
“It’s going rather well, I must admit.”
Genny needed more information. “And what brings you to Hartmore?”
“I invited her,” said Brooke from the doorway—which meant that Rafe hadn’t.
Good. And Genny should have remembered that. Brooke had said that the woman was coming for a visit.
