AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She resolutely put such thoughts from her head as she accompanied the housekeeper on her tour of the house. ‘You will know all the public rooms, of course, my lady, being so familiar from your childhood,’ Mrs Finlay observed as she opened the door of the Long Gallery for Laurel to enter. ‘And either the Marquess or Lord Revesby themselves will want to show you the portraits. The Marquess’s pride and joy, this gallery,’ she added as Laurel slowed to look up at the portraits as they passed.
Those before the early seventeen hundreds were small and not particularly well painted she noticed. With the arrival of George I and the family’s elevation they became imposing, large and considerably better executed. ‘Here is Lord Revesby, my lady, but of course, you will recognise him.’ Mrs Finlay stopped before the last picture in the row, Giles as a young man, serious and, Laurel suspected, thoroughly uncomfortable at having to pose.
‘The Marquess will be wanting to have your portraits painted as soon as may be,’ the housekeeper added with the confidential air of an old family servant. ‘He is so happy about the marriage, my lady.’ She hesitated. ‘These last few years, he’s been fretting for Master Giles to come home, fretting badly. He said to me once, “If my boy would only return, he’ll make all right again. I’ve been a damn fool—” excuse the language, ma’am “—and it will break his heart if I’ve thrown it all away.” And then he cheered up and said that Master Giles, I’m sorry, my lady, Lord Revesby, would make all right. I suppose he was blaming himself for the quarrel when Lord Revesby left home.’
‘Yes, that must be it,’ Laurel said. His heir’s defection would have hit the Marquess hard, because the title and the land were things he was passionate about. Giles felt the same way, she knew. Even as a boy, rebelling in his own stubborn way against his father, she had been aware of his abiding love for this land. Her own father had felt the same deep, visceral tie to the estates and to the land and it had been hard for him to accept that he would not hand them on to his own son.
‘Will Lord Revesby be taking luncheon with the Marquess in his room, my lady?’ Mrs Finlay asked, jolting her out of he
r reverie.
‘Oh, I did not think to ask. I will go and find out.’
‘I will send a footman, my lady.’ Mrs Finlay was clearly shocked at the thought of her hurrying off on an errand.
‘No, it is quite all right. I have just thought of something I need to say to my husband,’ Laurel said. I love you, would be that message and it was too tempting to resist delivering it. ‘I will meet you in your office for our tour, Mrs Finlay. I won’t be a moment.’
I probably look like a lovesick ninny, she thought, hurrying along the corridors. I probably have a silly smile on my face and Mrs Finlay is having a quiet chuckle to herself. And I do not care because he loves me.
There was no sign of the valet when she entered the Marquess’s sitting room, but the door into the bedchamber was ajar and the sound of male voices was clear. It did not sound as though they were discussing drains, she thought, amused. In fact, the moment they had found themselves alone they had probably started talking about something far more interesting, like hounds or brandy or the war in the Peninsula.
Laurel trod across the deep central carpet and opened her mouth to cough a warning that female ears were approaching.
‘...absolutely for the best. I know you had scruples about asking Laurel to marry you and I understand why.’
What?
She closed her mouth and took another silent step forward.
‘I am proud of you,’ her father-in-law said, his voice disastrously clear. ‘You did your duty, you dug me out of a pit of my own making—’ His voice broke and there was the sound of him clearing his throat, some low-voiced comment from Giles. ‘Palgrave was a stubborn devil and he put you in a damn awkward position, making the land and the debt contingent on the marriage, but all’s right in the end.’
What debt? Contingent on the marriage... Giles married me knowing about the trust and that I would receive Malden? Is that the land? But...
‘I have never been more glad of anything in my life than that I married Laurel,’ Giles’s voice was quite clear now and she caught her breath. She had misunderstood, he hadn’t proposed for gain. ‘But I wish I could have found some way to do it without deceiving her. I never lied, I would never lie to her, but I should have found some way—’
Laurel backed away across the soft silk of the Chinese carpet, one hand to her mouth, the other groping behind her for the door.
‘I may have damned myself, but I will—’
Then she was outside, its heavy door panels closing on the sound of her husband calmly discussing deceiving her. Laurel stood and breathed.
In and out. In and out. I will not cry or faint or rush in and shout at him. I love him. I trust him.
But she had just heard, with her own ears, that he had deceived her. At what point did trust become foolishness?
Evidence. You do not throw away what you have without evidence. You do not condemn without evidence.
Laurel scrubbed the back of her hand across her eyes, although they were dry, she found. How strange, she thought she had been sobbing. There was a footman in the hallway and she smiled at him. It was probably rather thin, but he bowed and hurried forward.
‘My lady?’
‘Remind me the way to his lordship’s study, would you? I have to find some papers for him. And please give Mrs Finlay my apologies and tell her that I must postpone our tour.’
* * *
The Marquess, like her father, kept a vast, old-fashioned desk with rows of pigeonholes for documents that could be shut off behind locking doors. And, like her father, he left them unlocked, it seemed.
Of course, the evidence she was looking for might well be with his solicitor, or shut away in the steward’s office, but it sounded as though the matter was very much on his mind, something he would want to keep to hand.
