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‘They had once been very close.’ Giles shrugged as though to say, Who knows? Perhaps... He took a snuff box out of his pocket, looked at it as though he had no idea where it had come from, then put it back. He kept his hand in his pocket, toying with something.
Stepmama is embarrassing him, playing the chaperon so obviously.
It was not like Giles to fidget like that. He had always seemed to her to have an extraordinary capacity for stillness and concentration, even as a boy.
‘So what do you want to do with the estate?’ he asked, taking her by surprise.
‘Me?’
‘It is yours.’
‘Until the wedding,’ Laurel pointed out, unable to suppress the sharpness in her tone. ‘And then it becomes yours.’
‘Ours,’ he said, with a smile that had an extraordinary effect on her toes, making them curl up in her slippers. ‘Shall we live here?’
‘Do you not want to be with your father?’
To live here with Giles. How very strange that would feel. And yet, she was hardly unused to seeing him in this setting—he had run tame here as a boy, accepted as one of the family.
‘My father and I would probably brain each other with the decanters after a few weeks. Talking of relatives...’ He raised his voice a little and took his hand from his pocket as he stood up, holding it out to her. ‘Shall we take a stroll on the terrace, Laurel?’ He spoke softly again. ‘I have something to tell you that will probably have you uttering a most improper word.’
‘Yes, the fresh air would be pleasant,’ she said demurely, her thumb rubbing over an odd callous on his forefinger. Perhaps it was from fencing, or using a gun, it was not in the right place to be caused by reins. She forgot it, even as the question flitted through her mind, and they made their way out, ostentatiously leaving the doors from the salon wide behind them. There were no comfortable seats on the terrace, only stone benches, and there was a slight breez
e off the lake, so provided they stayed in view for most of the time they were safe from Stepmama following them out.
Chapter Thirteen
‘What is it that will have me swearing?’ Laurel asked.
‘The ladies who so accidentally encountered us in the Gardens—I do not think that it was coincidence they were there at all. I suspect that your aunt put Mrs Atkinson on our track and, it occurs to me now, Lady Druitt is an old friend of my father.’
‘You mean that Phoebe and your father conspired to have us caught in a compromising situation?’ He nodded. ‘That is outrageous!’ Laurel took a few agitated steps along the terrace, then came back. ‘On the other hand...’
‘On the other hand that, hard on the heels of the attack, did help you make up your mind. I thought I should mention it in case it made a difference.’ His mouth was set in a hard line. ‘I would not have you entrapped into this marriage.’
‘Oh, Giles, that is very sweet of you. And very scrupulous and honourable.’ Oddly, his expression did not lighten at the praise. ‘I could give them both a piece of my mind for interfering, but they meant well and I am happy that your father is so strongly in my favour.’
‘Thank you, it is a relief that you feel like that. And while we are on the subject of relatives—do you wish for Lady Palgrave to live with us when we are married?’ Giles asked bluntly, surprising an equally frank reply out of her.
‘No! Most definitely not. I am not certain that we would hit each other with the decanters like you and your father, but I fear embroidery hoops at ten paces is quite likely. Besides, it would be difficult for her to surrender control of a house where she has been mistress for years and yet continue to live there. I am sure she will be very comfortable in the Dower House where she can create her own home as she likes.’
‘At a safe distance from us.’
‘Precisely,’ Laurel agreed, straight-faced.
‘We have not discussed a honeymoon,’ Giles said, with another of his rapid changes of subject.
‘Do we need one? It seems like a great deal of work to organise something at such short notice, as well as all the wedding preparations.’ Giles made a sound suspiciously like a snort. ‘What have I said now? Oh, am I supposed to want a honeymoon? I never really understood what they are for.’
This time it was definitely a gasp of laughter. ‘I believe—not that I have any experience, of course—that a bridal tour enables the newlyweds to meet one another’s relatives.’
‘We know them. All the ones we would want to, that is. I realise that it is a long time since we encountered any of them together, but they will hardly be strangers to us.’
‘Or the happy couple might wish to be romantically alone amidst the splendours of nature—the Lake District, Italy...’
‘We have agreed that this is not a love match,’ Laurel pointed out, perhaps a little tartly. She tucked her hand under his arm in a conciliatory manner, much as she might have done if they’d had a childhood falling out.
‘True,’ Giles agreed equably. Reminders about that did not appear to discompose him. ‘Or the real reason, I always suspect, is so that the blushing bride does not have to face familiar staff and servants in the mornings for a while.’
