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“It’s a recent interest,” Giles said lightly, as he conducted a frantic search for something on the marble plaque worthy of comment. Perhaps a genuine enthusiast would commend it. A mere layman couldn’t for the life of him discern anything noteworthy in old Obadiah’s laconic epitaph.
“Funny you never mentioned it.”
Yes, that was funny. Deuced odd, in fact.
“I feared you’d mock me.” He assumed a disappointed expression. “And I was right.”
“So what’s so special about this one?” Paul folded his arms and regarded Giles with a skeptical eye. “Looks dull as damned ditchwater to me.”
Looked damned dull to Giles, too. “But you’re no connoisseur, are you?” He struggled manfully on. “The elegant simplicity of the carving makes this an exceptional example.”
“Is that so?”
“Indeed. The plain square shield and unadorned text combine in a moving memorial to a brave man who died far from home.”
Paul continued to sound unconvinced. “If you say so, chum. Although the family story is that old Obadiah was stabbed in a brawl in a brothel the night before the battle. That’s why not much fuss was made of his memorial. He was always a bad ‘un.”
Wouldn’t you know it? Bloody Obadiah.
Desperate to avoid Paul’s searching regard, Giles headed for the vestry. “I’ll still raise a glass in his honor, when we get back into the warm. If Serena has an ounce of sense, she’s in the house, toasting her toes by the fire.”
Paul shot one last look around the empty church, despite it being conspicuously Serena-less, and shrugged. “I may as well search for her there as anywhere, I suppose. The chit’s been dashed elusive since I arrived.”
Now that was much more interesting than a memorial to some disreputable Talbot. “She’s helping her mother manage a house full of people. I wouldn’t take it personally.”
“I don’t.”
Giles burned to pound away Paul’s smug smile. Of course he didn’t take it personally. Serena had always been under his thrall.
So where did that leave that interloper Giles Farraday, Marquess of Hallam? Out in the cold? Or promising to change from the race’s dark horse to hot favorite?
Before those kisses, he wouldn’t have wagered a groat on his chances. Now? Now he wondered who she’d been thinking about when his tongue had been in her mouth. The man she dreamed of? Or the one who woke her to sensual pleasure?
He’d give half his considerable fortune to find out.
Chapter 5
The remnants of fear bitter as bile on her tongue, Serena heard Giles and Paul leave through the back of the church. She remained hidden where she was, grateful for Giles’s quick thinking, although she couldn’t imagine anyone crediting that he’d become a specialist in church architecture. Now she’d sampled his searing kisses, the idea seemed almost blasphemous.
Only as her heart slowed and her terror of discovery receded did she have a chance to wonder at her reaction to Paul’s arrival—and to Giles’s kiss.
How interesting that not even a girl in love with another man could resist a rake’s wiles. Clearly Giles had learned a lot from the worldly London ladies. The first kiss had been pleasant, but once he’d enlisted her participation, the results had been extraordinary, an emotional flight way beyond the mere physical. And the physical had surpassed anything she’d ever known.
If she felt like that with a man she barely liked, imagine how she’d feel when Paul kissed her.
Except her first reaction when Paul interrupted the shameful experiment—they were in a church, for heaven’s sake—had been annoyance. She’d wanted him to go away, so she could go back to kissing Giles.
That didn’t seem right. Just as the way the sinful heat lingered in her blood didn’t seem right either.
Giles Farraday must be an extremely skilled kisser.
A wanton question arose, before she remembered that it was Paul she wanted. What else might Giles teach her?
***
Torver House was crammed to the rafters with Christmas cheer—and Giles had slunk away like a guilty man to sit beside the library fire, desperate to escape the jollity. Everyone but him was in a party mood. There were games in the drawing room, and dancing in the great hall. With the family reunited to celebrate the season, dinner had been uproarious.
From the first, Giles had enjoyed staying with the Talbots. They welcomed him with a generosity that he’d always known was exceptional.
