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‘I was cavalry, probably on the opposite flank.’
‘Then we have nothing to discuss, have we?’ Gabrielle shifted her gaze from his face and looked out over the garden. Something, a frog perhaps, plopped into the pond, and a pair of magpies flew over, cackling wickedly. ‘Gray,’ she added, as though there had been no pause.
‘We must talk,’ Gray said after another silence that, peculiarly, seemed almost amiable. He found himself reluctant to break the tranquillity of the garden with speech.
‘You must, I suppose,’ she said with a sigh. ‘Then you will consider your duty done to my aunt and can return to England. I do hope you have some other business in Portugal, because this is a long way to come just for a talk.’
‘It is, however, the sole purpose of my journey.’ A talk and a return with one young lady who was already proving ten times more tricky than he had imagined she would be. ‘I could stock my cellars with port while I am here, I suppose.’
‘Of course.’ Gabrielle turned to him, something coming alight behind those mocking brown eyes. He had her serious attention at last and it felt like something alive, something vibrant. ‘What do you hold at the moment? Is there a weakness in young growths to lay down, or perhaps you are running low on wines to drink at the moment? Or are you interested in investing in some fine old vintages? I can let you have good prices, although naturally you will want to do some tastings and see what is available elsewhere.’
She broke off, apparently lost in calculation. ‘How long are you staying? I could take you to the Factory House, of course, make introductions and then go with you to the best lodges—not necessarily the biggest or best known.’
‘The Factory House? That is some kind of club, isn’t it? I had dinner there a few times when we retook Porto for the second time.’
‘It is where all the growers from the English and Scottish houses come together, along with owners of the lodges and the shippers. It is a cross between a club and a trading house and a mutual support society, I suppose.’
‘But you are not a member, surely? You are a woman.’
Gabrielle stood up, forcing Gray to rise, too. Despite being shorter than he, she contrived to look down her nose in disdain. ‘This—’ She waved a hand to encompass the garden, the house, the terraces rising above. ‘This is Quinta do Falcão. This is Frost’s, one of the great estates, and I am its owner. I would have to commit a far greater sin than failing to possess a penis, or being suspected of somewhat loose morals, to be barred from the Factory House.’
Gray took two long, slow breaths. He had faced charging French cavalry and been bellowed at by Wellington and had stood up to both. He was not going to be reduced to fuming incoherence by one young woman who said penis without blushing and who admitted to taking a lover.
‘Besides, there is the question of money,’ she added with what was suspiciously like a fleeting smile. ‘Ports are blended. This is not winemaking as in Burgundy or Bordeaux. We cooperate, work with the others to create our wines. It would be in the interests of no one to antagonise Gabrielle Frost of Quinta do Falcão.’
‘I see. It is a matter of trade and profits.’ He sounded like a stuffed shirt to his own ears. A pompous, disapproving outsider. Lord knew why he could not seem to get a secure footing in dealing with this woman. She was three years younger than his own twenty-eight, he knew that. He was an earl, he had been a colonel and yet there was nothing in his experience to give him the slightest clue as to how to handle her.
His own marriage had hardly been one of perfect tranquillity, but Portia, when unhappy, had sulked and brooded in a ladylike manner, not fought back with sharp words and a complete unconcern for propriety. But then, he reminded himself bitterly, he had made a poor business of marriage and he clearly understood nothing about the female mind.
‘Yes, trade,’ Gabrielle agreed now, far too sweetly. ‘The sordid business of working to create something wonderful which you aristocrats can enjoy and for which you may despise us, even as you pay your inherited money to secure it. I am in trade, my lord, just as surely as the tailor who makes your very fine coats to fit your torso to perfection or the bootmaker who moulds that leather to your calves or the gunsmith who creates the perfect balance for your hand.’
‘Are there any other parts of the male body you are going to enumerate this afternoon, Miss Frost?’ Gray enquired, hoping for a tone of reproof and probably, he thought irritably, merely managing to sound pompous again.
‘I will spare your
blushes and refrain from mentioning breeches, my lord,’ she said, with a comprehensive downward glance at his thighs.
Gray sent up a silent prayer that he was not blushing—and when was the last time he had feared that he was? Ten years ago?—and returned to the attack. ‘You are from an aristocratic family yourself, Miss Frost, hardly in a position to sneer at my title.’
‘I do not sneer at your title, Gray. I sneer at the nonsense of looking down on trade and industry and the creation of wealth.’ She smiled suddenly and his breath hitched in his chest. ‘You will join me for dinner, I hope, and sample our port.’
She was gone, her skirts whisking behind her with the rapidity of her steps, before he could reply. That was probably a very good thing because, he realised, he had been within a hair’s breadth of lowering his head and kissing those full red mocking lips.
‘Hell’s teeth.’ Gray sat down again, the better to swear in comfort. What the blazes had come over him? Barring lust, insanity and some sort of brain fever, that was. Gabrielle Frost was infuriatingly unlike any woman he had ever encountered and that included some very fast and dashing widows. She was independent, outspoken, immodest and outrageous. She was a damned nuisance to a man who had intended a rapid return to his own affairs, because he could not think of any way to extract her from her precious quinta short of kidnapping.
He had expected to find a lonely, struggling young woman bowed down by the burden of her inheritance and only too grateful to be whisked back to luxury and the glamour of the London Season. Gabrielle Frost appeared to be healthy, lively, prosperous and decidedly unbowed. She was no timorous innocent, but a woman of the world with an intense pride in what she did.
But he could not leave her here, not without making some effort to persuade her to do the right thing. He had promised his godmother to try to bring Gabrielle back with him and he could not break his word, not without a good reason. And he could see no reason other than her own stubborn inclinations—she was a young, single Englishwoman of good family and she should be back in England under her aunt’s protection until a suitable husband could be found for her. He was beginning to get an inkling of why no local gentleman had offered, he thought grimly.
She had already compromised herself thoroughly with this lover of hers, unless, of course, she was lying in an attempt to shock him so comprehensively that he left her here as a lost cause. But in that case, who was the memorial intended for? A friend? A man she had loved chastely?
Gray leaned back against the carved stone of the seat and attempted to think about the problem in military terms. If Miss Frost was the enemy entrenched in a fortress, how would he get her out? Starve her out? Bombard her defences until there was a breach in the walls and then storm in? Use an inside agent and have them unbar a gate? Use diplomatic means and negotiate a surrender?
He could not spend the time to sit on her doorstep for months until he wore her down, although what she was being so stubborn about he could not comprehend—surely she employed a competent manager who actually ran the place?
A siege would likely take years. Force was completely ineligible, which ruled out slinging her on to a boat and simply kidnapping her. An inside agent or diplomacy seemed the only feasible methods. He would begin with her lady companion, always assuming that the mature female his godmother had assured him was in residence hadn’t been driven out—or driven distracted—already. He would not put either past Gabrielle Frost.
Gray closed his eyes and considered how to use whatever support an obviously ineffective, woolly-minded and careless chaperone might give him. He opened them a heartbeat later. The image on the inside of his eyelids was not some browbeaten widow, but Miss Frost herself. And he could think about siege works and chaperones all he liked, but the honest truth was that he found the woman profoundly, inconveniently, embarrassingly arousing.
