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‘I was not so enamoured of the state of marriage to feel any desire to re-engage with it and besides, I am not good husband material,’ Gray said with the certainty of a man informing her that the sky was up and the earth was, most definitely, down.
It was on the tip of her tongue to ask why he would not be a good husband. Gaby bit back the question.
Stop it. You like him, you desire him and you have to travel with him without it becoming hideously embarrassing for both of you, she lectured herself silently.
‘We are straying from the point,’ she said severely. ‘I intend travelling with you to London, accompanied by Miss Moseley. I trust, as this was presumably your intention in coming here, that this is acceptable to you?’
‘Perfectly.’ Gray reached for the coffee pot and refilled his cup, contemplated the sugar and, with some deliberation, added one very small lump. ‘You are running away, then? I had not expected that of you.’
‘No, I am not and you are trying to provoke me again.’ And why that should be Gaby was not sure she wanted to investigate. ‘What happened last night with the MacFarlanes was awkward and it could make for a difficult situation. A coldness between the two houses could lead to gossip and all the businesses are too intertwined for that to be healthy. No one will think anything of it if I go to London for a month or two. This is the quiet season and I can leave things in the hands of a good manager. It is hardly as though I am off to Brazil, letters will arrive within a week or so.’
She watched him drink his coffee, his good humour, it seemed, restored. That flash of darkness when he had spoken of his marriage had vanished behind what she was beginning to suspect was a carefully maintained mask. Perhaps an officer, someone who must lead men day after day through the most numbing routine and into the most terrible danger, needed such a mask.
‘A strategic retreat in order to regroup,’ she said and thought his smile was genuine.
&
nbsp; ‘You will stay with Lady Orford, of course.’
‘Stay in Aunt Henrietta’s London house and have George thrust at me morning, noon and night?’ Gaby rang for more coffee. ‘No, I will hire a house for the duration of my stay. What objection can there be to a lady setting up home with her chaperone in a respectable location? I am certain you can advise me on how to find a suitable agent and which areas are most eligible.’
* * *
Gray resisted the temptation to sink his head in his hands or ring for brandy and drink himself into oblivion. Probably drinking brandy was a capital crime in this part of the world...
Gabrielle Frost was rapidly driving him to distraction. The pull he felt towards her, physically, was hardly a surprise. He was not a monk. He was perfectly capable of finding himself aroused by a wide variety of attractive women—and was equally capable of either acting on that if it was returned and appropriate, or not. Gabrielle had him tossing and turning in his bed like a randy youth.
And it was not simply the sexual connection. He liked her, too, when she was not forcing him to confront memories and issues he had been quite effectively ignoring. How long would it take to get back to London? Less than two weeks. Three if they were unlucky. Then he would either have to deliver her—kicking and screaming, most likely—to his godmother or he must install her in an hotel, find her a house agent and reputable staff—and be berated by Lady Orford for doing what Gabrielle wanted, not what her ladyship ordained.
Life would be very much simpler if he left Gabrielle here, returned to England, wrote to his godmother apologising for failing to persuade her niece to visit and then retreated to Winfell, a safe two hundred and fifty miles away.
Coward, his conscience whispered. She is quite right. Leaving her neighbours to recover from the ruin of their dynastic plans is sensible. She is mature, intelligent and wealthy enough to cope with London, even demonstrating a degree of eccentricity. She needs you—and not in the way you need her. You’re a colonel of cavalry, a hardened veteran. Are you going to be routed by one young female?
Hopefully not, but those fine brown eyes and that lithe figure and his overheated imagination would be his undoing if he did not keep a firm hold on his willpower. It did not help that she made him smile. The fantasy picture of her laughing up as she lay beneath him naked, those long, long legs curled around his hips, that thick brown hair spilling over the pillows, those lovely breasts against his chest—that was almost irresistible. And it must be resisted. He needed a mistress, a practical arrangement. He did not want a wife and most certainly not a passing affaire with a young lady under his protection.
‘Of course. It will be my pleasure.’ He thought his tone conveyed nothing but willing agreement. ‘I do not envisage any difficulty finding something suitable—the Season has not started. You will require a suite in a reputable hotel for perhaps a week while we find the right house. The Pulteney is the most prestigious, but noisy, being right on Piccadilly, so I would recommend Grillon’s on Albemarle Street—just as well located and rather quieter. When do you want to travel?’
‘In three days, I think. That will give me plenty of time to make arrangements here.’ Gabrielle got up, stopped beside him on her way to the door. Gray stood and for a moment they were close enough for him to see the few freckles that dusted the bridge of her nose. ‘Thank you, Gray.’ She laid her hand on his shoulder, stood on tiptoe and dropped a kiss on his cheek, then she was gone and he could hear her calling to Baltasar from the hallway.
He thought he would probably be spending a great deal of time on deck when they sailed. He would walk up and down in the wind. The nice, cold wind.
* * *
Gray lounged on the colourful cushions in the cabin of the rabelo and contemplated the toes of his boots. They were dry, he was comfortable and they were making rapid progress downstream. It was all very different from his journey upstream. This was no working boat, but the quinta’s waterborne equivalent of a carriage with a small cabin amidships, comfortable benches, a tiny fold-down table and glazed windows. The steersman still stood on his high platform at the stern, wielding the long oar that kept them on course, but instead of looking over a load of barrels and pipes of port, the man was sighting across the roof of the cabin.
He was beginning to develop an eye for the wine-growing countryside, Gray realised. The terraces were subtly different as they moved downstream, the slopes less steep. ‘There are fewer vines planted here,’ he remarked as they passed the small town of Ermida.
‘And soon, none, or only patches for table wine.’ Gabrielle looked up from the paperwork she had been bent over for more than an hour. ‘There is more agricultural land and orchards, the closer we get to Porto.’ She signed a document, flapped it about to dry the ink, folded it and took a stub of candle and some sealing wax from her bag, struck a spark with a tinderbox and began to seal the pile of documents that she had been working on.
Gray watched, despite himself, as she sat carefully tilting the stick of red wax and the candle, pressing her signet ring into each puddle before it set. Her concentration was total, her fingers, deft. Finally she slid the heavy ring back on her left thumb, shuffled the letters and sat back. She looked up and caught his gaze. ‘There, all done.’
‘That is an old ring.’
‘It is the original seal of the quinta. Made for a man’s hand, of course. I usually wear it on a chain around my neck, but I will be doing business in Porto and I make a point of wearing it when I am there.’ She smiled ruefully. ‘The first time I was in a meeting and drew it out on the chain in order to seal an agreement I realised that every man around the table was staring at my—’ She waved her hand vaguely at her breasts. ‘That was a lesson learned, believe me.’
Miss Moseley gave a genteel snort. ‘They should not have been looking.’ She frowned at Gray, who had been keeping his eyes, and his imagination, well under control, and turned back to her contemplation of the riverbank, occasionally jotting a note in the book on her lap. Perhaps she was a more effective chaperone than he had thought.
‘There is a small hotel I use when I visit Porto,’ Gabrielle said as she corked her ink bottle and began to fit her writing implements back into the small wooden box she had produced from another of her capacious satchels. He was developing a grudging respect for her approach to business—focused, efficient, fast. It was grudging because she was a woman, for heaven’s sake. A lady. She shouldn’t have to know about business, let alone work at it. The fact that she was good at it and showed every sign of enjoying the process was neither here nor there, it was as wrong as setting a blood mare to pull a dung cart.
