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‘I suppose Malden. That would be easiest for you, would it not?’
‘My convenience is a minor matter.’
‘I would not want to impose upon Cousin Anthony and his wife by inflicting an entire wedding on them. And I suppose it would seem like a snub to Stepmama if I am not married at Malden.’
‘You do not sound very happy at the thought. Is it the house or your stepmother that makes you hesitate?’ Of course, she had no idea that the house would be hers on her marriage to him. Now he had a stepmother-in-law problem to solve. Hopefully the Dower House was in good order and Lady Palgrave willing to retire to it with good grace.
‘Stepmama,’ Laurel admitted.
‘I will sweet-talk her,’ Giles promised. ‘So, Malden Grange in a month?’
‘A month...’
‘Is there any reason to delay?’
‘No, I do not suppose there is.’ Laurel tightened her hold on his arm. ‘We will be married in a month, I can hardly believe it.’
* * *
Lady Cary, it seemed, had no problem believing their news. The butler had the front door open before they set foot on the steps and she was waiting in the drawing room almost quivering with anticipation. One look at them and she gave a shriek and tottered back into a chair. ‘Lord Revesby, your face! And, Laurel, whatever has happened?’
Giles made sure Laurel was sitting down and sent Nicol for hot sweet tea and then let her tell the tale. She seemed to need to talk and he was concerned for her.
‘Oh, thank goodness you accepted Lord Revesby, dearest! So brave, such a hero!’
At least, that was what he thought Lady Cary was repeating over and over, but as she was hugging Laurel in an all-enveloping grip her voice was a trifle muffled. ‘She took so long to make up her mind,’ she said to him, rather more intelligibly when she finally let go. ‘I am so relieved, dear Giles. I shall call you Giles, for you are to be my nephew and, after all, I knew you as a child.’
Giles, emerging from another of her enthusiastic embraces, straightened his crumpled neckcloth and assured her that he would be honoured.
‘I would have done anything to see you so well established, my dear.’ She turned back to Laurel. ‘I believe you two are made for each other.’
‘I should tell you, Lady Cary, that we had an unfortunate encounter in the Gardens with a number of ladies, some of whom I believe are known to you. They encountered us in the Wilderness, embracing in the aftermath of the attack, and created quite a scene, despite being assured that we are engaged to be married.’
‘Mrs Atkinson, for one,’ Laurel said. ‘She was positively smirking. Anyone would think she was delighted to have discovered us behaving indiscreetly, not shocked.’
‘I am sure they meant well, dear.’ Lady Cary looked exceedingly flustered to Giles’s eye. Presumably she would have the coven descending on her at any minute twittering about poor chaperonage and making her life a misery.
He was certainly not going to be around to add fuel to the flames. ‘I must leave you and go and report to the constables, then break the good news to my father. I hope you will both dine with us this evening, but I must see how his health is first. I will send a note.’ He held out his hand to Laurel and, when she took it, raised it to kiss her fingers. ‘You have made me very happy.’
* * *
Giles dealt with the constables and the resident magistrate easily enough and was assured that he would be informed in ample time of the date of the trial at the next Quarter Sessions. A visit to his room at the Christopher set his clothing to rights and Dryden cleaned the cut cheek and applied an infallible lotion of his own devising which stung like the devil.
Now he should go directly to break the good news to his father and take the dead weight of worry and guilt off his shoulders. Giles strode into the High Street and then up Bond Street, intending to cut through Quiet Street into Wood Street and from there into Queen Square.
Instead he found his feet had taken him into George Street, heading away from his father’s lodgings. With a shrug he turned into Gay Street, went around the Circus and out on to Crescent Fields with the view out to the south across the city and the River Avon.
Giles sat down on the dry grass and stared at the sheep grazing in the pasture below him, incongruous with the elegance of the Royal Crescent at his back. They reminded him of the sheep dotted across the Downs when he had stood with the woman whose name he had not known and had been seized with the impulse he still did not understand to kiss her.
He flexed his grazed knuckles and let the last of the fight ebb out of muscle and nerve, but he could not relax. It did not take much thought to tell him what was so disturbing him—his conscience was giving him hell. His first duty was to his father and to his inheritance. He knew that, with an understanding that went bone-deep, back to the very first t
hings he had learned as a child. It meant he must marry well and appropriately and he was prepared to do that, even though he had now lost any element of choice in the matter. None of this was new, a suitable marriage was what was expected of aristocrats.
Laurel was most certainly suitable—and, it turned out, she was the only choice compatible with his duty. So far, so...satisfactory. Giles grimaced at the choice of word. What of Laurel? Why had she accepted him? He did not deceive himself that she had been swept off her feet by the sight of him fighting. He thought he had been very clear about not being able to offer her love, so it was not that which was making his conscience so uneasy. He had not lied to her, he was certain, racking his memory in an effort to reassure himself that he had not uttered any actual falsehoods.
Except by omission. He knew about her inheritance and he stood to gain by that, far more than she was aware. And if it was not for that inheritance he would have avoided her after that fraught encounter in the Pump Room and taken his bitter memories of her away with him.
So, some good had come of this. Giles leaned back on his elbows and stretched out his legs, eyes narrowed against the sunshine. He and Laurel were friends again, each understood what had happened all those years ago, each forgave the other. The sun was warm. Giles put his hands behind his head, tipped his hat over his eyes, shut out the sight of Bath and surrendered to the wave of sleep that washed over him.
