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She needed an heir—or an heiress, she wasn’t fussed which—and the child needed to be legitimate or, rather, to appear so. She could not afford the risk of marrying because the man would take everything by law so... I need a convincing husband to kill off.
‘What did you say?’
‘Hmm?’ Oh, Lord. Had she been thinking aloud?
Gray was staring at her. ‘You said something about killing someone off.’
‘Scale insects.’ Gaby flipped over a badly mottled leaf to show him the tiny dark brown lumps. ‘They are the very devil to kill off because they have a sort of shell, a bit like limpets. But they suck the goodness out of the leaves and spread diseases, so we have to try.’
They carried on.
Supposing I find a suitable man, one I can bear to lie with, one with intelligence.
She was thinking along the same lines as breeding livestock, she realised with a little inward shudder, but brains appeared to be something that were inherited and this child was going to need their wits about them.
‘Can you hold that wire taut?’ she asked. Gray took a firm hold on the one she indicated and she went to the other end of the row and gave it a twang. As she thought, loose. ‘Thank you,’ she called and made a note.
So, find the right man, think of a way of ensuring that when I come back here as a pregnant sorrowing widow people will believe in the marriage.
A hawk screeched overhead, a lonely sound in the vastness of the sky. Gaby tipped back her head to watch it and met Gray’s gaze as he looked up to do the same thing. He grinned and pushed the broad-brimmed straw hat further back on his head.
Something was niggling at her. Could she use a man like that and then simply vanish with his child? Wouldn’t he have the right to know he was a father? Would she want anything to do with a man who did not care if he was? This scheme was full of pitfalls. So, to square her conscience she would have to discuss it with him, make certain he had no scruples. Was it even ethical to use a man as a stud in this way, even if he was perfectly willing, or was she being absurdly overscrupulous? Men married to breed heirs every day of the year. Her wretched conscience. How much easier to simply not care about how her actions affected anyone else...
‘This banking looks unstable to me,’ Gray called and Gaby went over to where he was crouched down at the foot of the terrace wall. ‘Something has been digging.’
‘A fox, I expect.’ Another note. She carried on along the foot of the terrace wall.
‘Rights?’ Gray had come up close at her shoulder without her even realising. ‘The rights of man? Rights of way?’
Hell, I must be thinking out loud again.
‘Water rights.’ Gaby improvised as he strolled off to look at a clump of late orchids. ‘We can cut up to the next level from the end here. We do not need to walk right back along the terrace.’
She had to find an intelligent man who would happily give up his rights in his child and who would not turn round and blackmail her. She clambered up the stones at the far end and walked slowly back until she found she was standing above Gray. He had leaned back against the stone wall, hat in hand, and was looking up, watching the hawk and its mate circling high above them. His hair was thick, curling slightly at the crown, thick and virile and temptingly touchable.
There was a fig tree at the back of the flat area and Gaby went and sat under it, took a long drink from her flask and checked her notes against Jorge’s. That was better than thinking about how a man’s hair would feel between her fingers, how his weight would be over her, how those broad shoulders would...
Stop it.
She made a few annotations, but the sun was in her eyes and Gray was still somewhere below. She tipped her hat down over her nose and closed her eyes against the glare, the better to think.
Chapter Five
Gray wandered across the short grass beside the row of vines looking for Gabrielle. She was very quiet—he couldn’t even hear the occasional muttering that seemed to signify deep thought.
He was impressed by her work here, as he knew she intended him to be. She was proud of her quinta and she had every reason for that. If Gabrielle had been a man and his godmother was agitating for a return he would have told her, in no uncertain terms, to leave well alone. But she was not a man. How she had escaped the war unscathed he could not guess, although obviously the loss of both her brother and her lover must have left emotional scars.
Luck could last only so long. Sooner or later if she stayed here, she was going to need help and support, the strength only a husband could give her, but she seemed to cling to her independence and her control of the quinta, as a mother clung to a child, terrified to let it walk off on its own. If she chose her husband well he would surely place the estate in the hands of competent managers, although, given the distance from England, he supposed selling would be prudent.
A splash of colour under the angular arms of a fig tree betrayed her presence. Deep blue skirts today, with a similar linen undershirt and black waistcoat to yesterday. It seemed to be her working uniform, practical but feminine. And she was asleep, he realised. Only her chin, firm and decided, and her mouth were visible beneath the tilted straw hat. The lower lip was full and sensual, the upper curled a little as though she dreamed of something pleasant.
Gray moved silently across the parched grass, avoiding dry leaves, a twig, until he could fold down cross-legged, facing Gabrielle. Her notebook had fallen from her hands and lay open in her lap and he squinted at the pencilled notes, trying to read upside down.
3 ps on 2 rotten
3 wires?
5 wall—fox?
