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‘I’ll not leave you, not in this.’ Giles got up on the step of the carriage to block the open door to three countrymen, singing and staggering, ale pots in their hands. ‘No, friends, this is not the stage.’ He dug in his pocket. ‘Here, drink to my health.’ They reeled off, shouting their thanks.
‘Then get two riding horses and I will come with you. Binham will feel safe with Dryden and your coachman and grooms, won’t you, Binham?’
‘Yes, my lady,’ Binham said faintly, but with a sideways glance at Dryden sitting silent and solemn beside her.
Catching that wedding bouquet had a lot to answer for, Laurel thought, leaning out of the window to talk to Giles.
‘It’s another twenty miles,’ he said.
‘I can do that and I can ride in this skirt. If I become tired, we can stop at some respectable inn and I’ll take a private parlour, while you go on. I insisted on coming and I am not going to be the cause of you being delayed.’ She would never forgive herself if Giles arrived too late.
‘I’ll see if they have anything—and a side saddle.’ Giles gave orders to the grooms who climbed down and stood one at each door, then fought his way across the yard to the long stable range.
Laurel had one of the valises brought down and found stronger gloves and a pair of half-boots. She pushed her small knitted reticule with a few coins into the front of her pelisse and was ready when Giles came back with an ostler behind him leading two horses, one with a battered side saddle.
He tossed her up and checked the girths while she got the skirts of her walking dress and pelisse organised and gathered up the reins. The horse stood placidly despite the uproar around it and she only hoped it did not prove to be a slug, but once they were clear of the congested streets and the racket of the fair with hurdy-gurdies and buskers and stallholders crying their wares, the two horses settled down into a steady canter.
Giles kept his mount level with hers and, despite everything, Laurel had to hide a smile at the way he looked across, studying how she rode, then, with obvious relief, looked forward and quickened the pace. Riding had been her chief recreation during those long years when he had been away and she rather prided herself on her seat.
* * *
They rested after an hour at a hamlet just beyond Romsey where an ancient tavern stood on the village green overlooking the stocks and a duck pond. A freckled youth brought out horn mugs of ale to them as they sat in the shade of a beech tree and let the horses stand after a drink in the pond.
‘I would enjoy riding with you like this if only we had no care for the time,’ Giles said. He put out his legs, linked his hands above his head and stretched with a groan of relief. ‘I am used to days in the saddle, not restrained rides in the parks.’
‘Do you miss it? Portugal?’ The ale was thin and sour but refreshing and Laurel drank again, watching her husband’s long body with a mixture of pride and desire.
‘I am glad to be home, but I miss the freedom when I was away from Lisbon. I would be alone, living on my wits, making decisions that might be life and death and yet it felt less onerous than what I am beginning to handle with the estate. The weight of expectation, I suppose.’ He shrugged. ‘All those ancestors watching me, all those tenants, all those staff.’
‘But what you were doing in the Peninsula was life and death for others as well as yourself, surely?’ Laurel put down her mug as she twisted on the bench to study his face. ‘And you were on missions that would have an impact on the campaign. Those are huge responsibilities.’
‘I know. It was the adventure, I suppose. Very shallow of me.’
‘No, you were young, you were brave, you had freedom, independence and purpose. Now you are asked to be conventional and sensible and yet you are still a young man.’ She smiled at him when he grimaced ruefully. ‘There are so many expectations, it must be hard, but I know you will meet every one of them.’
She had hoped her sympathy would cheer him a little, but it only seemed to make his expression grimmer. ‘I will help all I can, Giles, you know I will.’
‘Yes, I know.’ He caught her hand and raised it to his lips. ‘You, my dear, are what stops me losing my sense of perspective and becoming buried under piles of estate papers and agricultural reports. I had no idea that marriage could be quite so delightful.’
‘And you, my lord, are the most complete courtier. Why, I do declare I have never been so flattered as now, when you express a preference for me over the Journal of the Society for Agricultural Improvements.’
As she had hoped, it made him laugh and he was still chuckling when he tossed her up into the saddle again and they rode on.
The tension rose as the landscape became familiar. They splashed across the headwaters of the Ellingbrook, up through the Home Wood and there, in the distance, was Thorne Hall.
‘Go,’ Laurel urged. ‘I’m on familiar ground now.’ She held the tired bay mare to a slow canter in Giles’s wake, turned from the grass woodland path on to the main carriage drive and strained her eyes to see the front of the house. Were the draperies drawn across the windows and was the huge old iron door knocker draped in black crepe?
‘No. Thank God,’ she said, reining in to a walk when she was close enough to see. The Marquess was alive.
* * *
Giles was at his father’s bedside when Laurel climbed the fine Jacobean oak staircase and tapped on the bedchamber door.
‘Come in, my dear! Come in. No need for that solemn face, I am suffering from a twisted knee and a lump on my thick skull, that is all.’
‘We were anxious.’ She approached the big bed and bent to kiss his cheek. ‘The doctor was uncertain what had caused the fall.’ But her father-in-law looked highly unlikely to be troubling Saint Peter in the near future, she had to admit.
‘It was the bang on the head that made me forget what happened. All came back this morning—a deer shot out of the bushes right in front of me, Max shied and I went over the top like some confounded novice. Never been so ashamed of myself in my life. Still, no real harm done.’ He sank back on the pillows and beamed at them.
