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‘Was it a bad skirmish? Did you lose many men?’
‘No, fortunately. Three wounded and those not seriously. It was a delaying tactic on their part and they didn’t press their advantage once they’d diverted us.’ He stared out over the darkening landscape. ‘Interesting how one views the countryside when one isn’t expecting to be shot at from every patch of cover.’
‘Are you glad now that you came back and can see Portugal in peacetime?’
The other day when she had asked for his impressions, Gray had said that it was a pleasure to see the country at peace and she was expecting a similar response this time. Which was why she had asked, she supposed. It was a safe subject for conversation.
* * *
Am I glad? Gray frowned at the passing terraces and tugged at the lobe of his left ear, an old habit while he was thinking. And I must stop doing that, he thought with a sudden burst of irritability. Portia had complained about it, saying he would end up with one lobe longer than the other. Strange how now the only clear memories he had of her were of complaints, or of weeping or sulking. I can hardly blame her, I must have been a most unsatisfactory husband.
Gabrielle cleared her throat and he remembered that she had asked him a question. ‘I am not sure that glad is the right word. It has made me think not of the war, but of the fact I was away from home. It has reminded me that I was a poor husband and that I could have been thinking a lot more deeply about what I was doing and why.’
‘A poor husband because you were away so much? But every man who was fighting was in the same position, surely?’ When he simply shrugged she had the tact not to pursue it. ‘You were fighting your country’s enemy, Europe’s enemy. Doing your duty, helping win the war.’
He had joined the army because it was a family tradition and because he was running away. Running from the mess he and Giles, his closest friend, had got themselves into. Running from the woman they had accidentally hurt and who his conscience had eventually driven him to marry.
‘Yes, I was doing my duty,’ Gray agreed, conscious that he had fallen silent for too long again. The carriage lurched over a rut and began to descend the slope again. ‘And I was enjoying myself. Most of the time. But I was the only son, the heir. My father supported me, but he must have been deeply uneasy.’ But had the army needed him? Would he have done better to have stayed in England? He could have gone into politics or increased the wheat yields on the family estates or joined a branch of government service as Giles, now Marquess of Revesby, had done for a while.
Instead, even after he had returned to England and married Portia out of a poisonous mix of pity and duty, he had left again and spent nine years fighting his way up and down the Peninsula. And he had enjoyed it, that had not been a cynical remark just then. No one in their right mind found pleasure in a battle, let alone its aftermath, of course. He had not liked being wounded, or suffering dysentery or narrowly escaping frostbite in the Pyrenees, but he had found just about everything else stimulating, satisfying. Addictive.
Now, seeing Portugal at peace, he knew he should be glad that he had contributed to that and to the freeing of Spain. He should have been glad of a marriage that had given him Jamie and Joanna. And, he supposed, freed him from the necessity to marry again. He was a fortunate man, healthy, wealthy, privileged. His duty revolved around the Yorkshire estates and London and that should be enough for any man. So why was he so damnably restless?
Chapter Seven
‘We have arrived.’ Gabrielle made no reference to his lapse into silent thought as the carriage came to a halt.
Gray pulled himself together. ‘I apologise. I had not realised how many layers of memory this has stirred up. I should have asked you more about our hosts this evening.’
‘Hector MacFarlane; his wife, Lucy; their son, Angus, twenty; and their daughter, Annabelle, eighteen. I’ve known them all my life. I do not know who else they will have invited, I’m afraid.’
The carriage came to a halt in front of another low whitewashed house, roofed like the Quinta do Falcão with red pantiles. This one was differentiated by a vast panel of the blue-and-white azulejo tiles on either side of the double front doors. During the war Gray had become familiar with the tiles, a style that could be found all across the Peninsula, and he made a mental note to comment on them if conversation became sticky.
‘Handsome house,’ he remarked as Gabrielle began to gather up her reticule and fan and twitch her shawl into order. ‘Not such a fine garden as yours, though.’
Gabrielle smiled. ‘You must say that to Jane. She is responsible for most of it.’
A pair of big—very big—sandy-haired men came out on to the front steps as the groom opened the carriage door. Gray handed Gabrielle down and turned to look at them. They had to be father and son—one greying now, his waist thickening, the other not yet in his prime, but both of them imposing. Hector and Angus MacFarlane, he assumed, resisting the instinct to square his shoulders in a show of primitive masculine rivalry. They looked as though they spent their leisure time tossing the caber or throwing the boulder or some other kind of Highland sport.
Gabrielle seemed not to find them in the slightest bit intimidating. She waved and called out, ‘Good evening!’ Then she abandoned him to run and kiss the older man on the cheek as though greeting a favourite relative. ‘Here is my guest, Nathaniel Graystone, Earl of Leybourne. You must sell him several cases of port while you have him at your mercy—I have been indoctrinating him on the subject. Gray, I must tell you that Mr MacFarlane has been like an uncle to me for as long as I can recall.’
Gray strode up the path, smiled and held out his hand. ‘MacFarlane, thank you for accepting such a last-minute intrusion on your evening.’
‘Our pleasure, my lord.’ The light blue eyes were assessing and, Gray thought, not quite as warm as the welcoming words. The pressure of the big hand on his was not subtle. ‘Allow me to present my son, Angus.’
The younger man’s expression was definitely wary. Then he saw Angus’s gaze move to Gabrielle and understood the underlying coolness.
Now, is that sexual possessiveness or neighbourly protectiveness?
‘Gray, please.’ He smiled warmly, allowed no speculation or reserve to show in his expression as he shook hands with Angus, managed not to flex his well-crushed fingers and then was swept through the door on Gabrielle’s heels, into a crowd of people clustered in the wide hallway.
‘We were all admiring the portrait of my wife that has just arrived from Lisbon,’ MacFarlane explained, gesturing to a full-length oil in an elaborate frame. The frame was not all that was elaborate. Gray schooled his expression into one of polite admiration as he regarded the ornate gown, the complex hairstyle, the abundance of jewels, all painted with considerably more skill than the wooden features of the lady in question.
She did not seem displeased with it, he thought as his host guided him to her where she stood beside the painting, holding court. ‘Gray, allow me to introduce Mrs MacFarlane. Lucy, my dear, the Earl of Leybourne, Gabrielle’s guest.’
Gray shook hands, commented politely on the portrait and observed that, fine as it was, it could not do justice to the sitter, which was true. Lucy MacFarlane was considerably more vibrant in the flesh than on canvas. Wearisomely so, he decided after five minutes of her sprightly conversation. And she, too, was putting on a bright social manner over considerable reserve.
They want Gabrielle for their son—and who could be surprised at that with such a fine estate located next door to their own? But they haven’t made their move yet, she is completely unselfconscious around Angus.
