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‘You should have said something, called out.’
‘I would have done, but by the time I realised that it was a conversation that should not have been overheard...the things you were saying—I was too... And then I realised who you were talking about, who you had debauched.’
‘Damn it, neither of us had debauched anyone, Laurel!’ The gardener lifted his head and glanced across at them and Giles lowered his voice back to normal conversational tones. ‘It was fantasy, pure fantasy.’
‘Fantasy? What sort of experience did the pair of you have, that you could fantasise like that? It was positively obscene.’
‘None. No experience. We were virgins, for goodness’ sake, Laurel.’ Giles’s colour was up, probably more out of embarrassment at having to admit that, rather than shame at speaking of such a thing to a lady. But then this was a totally inappropriate conversation in any case. When she simply stared at him he shifted on the bench, took off his tall hat and raked his fingers through his hair, reducing a fashionable crop to something that recalled the hot, angry and dishevelled youth he had been that day.
‘Hell, how can I make you understand? Look, Laurel—young men think about sex a lot. All the time. Constantly. It is part of growing up, becoming a man. Youths will boast and brag and invent and lie like farmyard roosters flaunting their tail feathers to outdo every other juvenile rooster in the neighbourhood.’
‘All the time? All of you?’
‘Young men think almost exclusively about sex and food and drink. Or drink and food and sex, with regular diversions into horses, guns and joining the army and slaughtering the French while mounted on a fabulous black stallion. And then celebrating with food, wine and women. A lot of willing women.’
The picture should have been amusing. She found she was not amused. Laurel closed her mouth, swallowed and ventured, ‘And men grow out of this...obsession?’
‘On the whole, yes. We get some experience with both women and wine, we grow up, we learn about life and its realities. We get our appetites under control.’
‘But you were...fantasising about my cousin, about Portia.’
‘She was very beautiful,’ Giles said, as though that explained, and excused, everything. ‘
I imagine that every red-blooded male she came into contact with had those kind of thoughts, those kind of dreams about her. Neither of us would ever have behaved with the slightest disrespect to her, in word or action.’
‘Except in your heads.’
‘Except there,’ he admitted. ‘That is the nature of fantasy.’ He stood up and began to pace back and forth on the gravel path in front of her, one hand thrust deep into his coat pocket.
Men could do that, use physical activity to calm themselves, to work off emotions. Ladies were stuck on seats, pretending to be calm and collected and looking graceful, Laurel thought, clasping her hands in her lap as she made herself think about what Giles had said.
She herself would have been quite safe from being the subject of such fantasies, she knew that. She had not been beautiful, she had not even been attractive, just an awkward, gangly girl. Giles’s description of Portia just now had stung. Had she been jealous then, even though she was utterly unaware of ever wanting a man to desire her in that way? She must have been.
‘I didn’t realise. I thought that you had...that it had all been real. I tiptoed out, too shocked to say anything. When I ran back to the house there was your father and mine and Godpapa Gordon, Portia’s father, talking in the study with the window open, all about how they were drawing up a marriage contract for us for when I was eighteen and how Godpapa would witness it. So I rushed in and said I could not bear to be married to you because you were wicked and immoral and had a lover.’
She took a deep breath and made herself go on. ‘And they demanded to know who, so I told them what I had heard and Portia must have been listening because she came in shrieking and then you and Gray arrived and Godpapa Gordon was demanding that you marry her and she was hysterical and you were refusing to marry either of us and Papa was shouting that you had to marry me and I said I would rather die. And he and Godpapa almost came to blows. But you know all that. You were there, after all. I do not know why you have to ask me now. Why you think this is all my fault.’
‘Because I could not understand then, and I do not understand now, why, if you were so upset, so shocked, why you did not come and accuse me to my face? We had talked about just about everything, hadn’t we? Whenever we had a disagreement we fought it out, argued ourselves into a truce, at the very least. I thought we were friends, Laurel. I trusted you. I thought you trusted me. And yet you were prepared to believe the worst of me and to accuse me of it in front of our fathers.’
‘Because I heard it from your own lips.’
Because I was shocked. Because I was jealous, I can see that now. Most of all because I was jealous. Oh, Lord, what have I done?
‘We had never talked about that. About sex and men and women.’
‘Of course we had not.’ Giles looked scandalised. ‘You were just a girl still, an innocent. Even when you were older, it was not the sort of thing I could ever talk to you about.’
‘I was the same age as Portia and you could think about her like that.’
But I was plain and immature, and unaware of anything except that you were my friend. I was just a young girl to you, your little friend who you were kind to and indulged. The friend who was sexless in your eyes.
‘I knew the facts of life, I was brought up in the country, after all. I just had never thought about it like that. Not...not people I knew.’
‘So you were trying to protect Portia?’ Giles stopped pacing and faced her. ‘It was not that you wanted to attack me, or were looking for an excuse not to marry me?’
‘Of course not! Why would I ever do anything to hurt you? I had no idea Papa and your father were planning that match,’ Laurel said with complete honesty. She had thought it was all her own idea to marry Giles when she was grown up and it had never occurred to her that their families were plotting just that outcome. ‘And when I overheard you and Gray I thought it meant that you were very experienced with women and were corrupting Portia. I was so shocked.’
I was shocked and envious and hurting and betrayed. I hit out because I wanted to make you see that. I had no idea what damage I was doing.
