The Earl's Practical Marriage Read online

  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.

  Laurel caught Giles’s gaze across the heaped pillows and rolled her eyes. He grinned back. No harm done, just hours of anxiety, an exhausting journey and worry that had dug lines around Giles’s eyes.

  ‘You must rest,’ she told the older man. ‘And I am going to ring for hot water for two baths and then Giles and I will have dinner and leave you to yours. I am certain your doctor wants you to be quiet and have an early night. You and Giles can talk all you want in the morning.’

  ‘Managing, isn’t she?’ the Marquess remarked.

  ‘Very,’ Giles retorted. ‘It is just what you need, sir. I will send in your man and will see you after breakfast.’

  ‘Old devil,’ he said to Laurel once they were outside.

  ‘I expect he had an unpleasant time of it, especially if his mind was confused after the fall,’ she said pacifically. ‘He is enjoying having you back.’

  ‘I am enjoying being back,’ he said, following her through into their suite and collapsing into an elegant, boneless sprawl on the big bed. ‘Ignore all my gloom and complaints earlier. I was tired and worried.’

  ‘And feeling guilty,’ Laurel said as she tugged the bell pull.

  ‘What?’ Giles sat up abruptly.

  ‘About being away for so long,’ Laurel said, surprised by the sharpness of his reaction. ‘Giles, this morning, just before the post arrived, you said there was something you had to tell me? Or perhaps it was say to me—I can’t quite recall. You were interrupted.’

  He flopped back flat again. ‘It was the wrong moment. Come here and I will tell you when we have all our clothes off—damnation! Yes? Come in.’

  ‘Hot water and two baths,’ Laurel said, with a smile for the footman who had answered the bell and a secret smile for Giles’s words. He could not be feeling too exhausted if he wanted to make love.

  Giles ordered the two baths to be set together in the middle of the bedchamber and not in the separate dressing rooms where they were kept. Laurel listened to the sound of his voice as he talked to the footman standing in for Dryden who, with Binham, was probably still making his slow way towards them. She was being unlaced by one of the maids, silent with nerves despite Laurel’s best efforts to set her at her ease, and the girl was taking what seemed like an age.

  Come on, Laurel urged silently.

  What was it that Giles wanted to tell her, the thing that would be right to talk about when they were making love? Finally she was out of her clothes and into a robe. She sent the flustered maid scurrying off and waited for her husband to emerge from his dressing room which he did, just as she dropped the robe and stepped into the bath.

  ‘Aphrodite,’ Giles said, advancing on her with an obvious intent that became even more obvious when he shrugged off his banyan.

  Laurel sank down into the water. ‘Bath first. I smell of horse and I am going to be as stiff as a board in the morning if I do not soak now.’

  Giles growled, but got into his own tub, scrubbing as though in a race. Laurel soaped and sponged and let herself drift off into an anticipatory daydream involving a clean wet husband and a big bed and—‘Oh, bliss.’

  She hadn’t heard him climb out of his bath or come over to hers, but he was kneeling behind her, his soapy hands massaging her shoulders, slipping lower, gliding over her breasts and teasing her nipples. Somehow she managed to hold on to some practicality, although goodness knew why she should, she told herself. ‘I haven’t finished washing.’

  ‘Let me.’ He went round to the foot of the tub, water still gleaming on his bare skin, and began to wash her feet, his fingers sliding between her toes, rubbing the arch of her feet, sliding upwards to soap her legs. Then h
igher.

  ‘Every little crevice.’ Giles came up on his knees, bending over her, one hand braced on the edge of the tub, one hand exploring intimately, soaping every crevice, teasing every fold until she was squirming and the water was splashing everywhere.

  ‘Are you clean now, Laurel? Quite clean?’ He bent over further, caught her left nipple between his lips.

  ‘Yes. Giles! Oh, yes...’

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Laurel was still disorientated with pleasure when Giles lifted her, slippery and gasping his name, carried her to the bed, pressed her down with his weight and took her with one, long, masterful stroke. And then stopped, quite still above her, raised on his elbows.

  ‘Giles?’

  ‘The thing I was going to say at breakfast.’

  ‘Giles, this is no time for conversation! Will you please—’

  ‘This is not conversation. This is a declaration.’ The veins were standing out on his temples and the tendons in his neck were rigid with tension at holding back his body’s instinctive movement. ‘I love you.’ He began to slide within her, slowly, so slowly as she stared up at him, hardly daring to believe what she was hearing.

  ‘I have loved you all my life,’ Giles said. ‘But I did not realise that I love you now as a man loves a woman, totally, body and soul. I love you, Laurel.’ Then he was driving into her, possessing her, taking her with him as he went over the cliff. She heard his voice as they fell, over and over. ‘I love you, Laurel. Love you.’

  * * *

  ‘Did I dream that?’ Laurel asked. She lifted her head from where it had been butted in against Giles’s right armpit and peered at the room. It was in virtual darkness.

  ‘If you did, so did I.’ Giles heaved himself up against the pillows. ‘I love you.’

  ‘Giles, I—’

  ‘You don’t have to say it.’ He gathered her in against his chest and pulled a sheet over them both. ‘It is the truth and I had to tell you, but I do not want you to say things you do not feel.’

  ‘Shhh.’ She sat up and twisted round to look at him. ‘I love you, too. I always have. I loved you when I was angry with you, I loved you when I tried to tell myself I did not miss you, I loved you when you came back and I was still furious with you. I will always love you,’ she said simply and wondered if it was possible to be any happier.

  I do not deserve this, it is too perfect.

  ‘Whatever I do?’

  ‘Whatever. You aren’t a saint, Giles, let alone an angel. You are a man, thank goodness. It is highly possible there will be times when I want to strangle you, but nothing will stop me loving you. When did you realise how you felt?’ she asked, snuggling down against his long flank again.

  ‘It was something that Beatriz said, of all things. She asked me if I had loved you when you were a girl, before you were beautiful. And I said that of course I had always loved you. And then I realised what that meant.’

  ‘And you said nothing to me?’

  ‘It was only yesterday evening,’ he protested. ‘I had to pluck up the courage.’

  ‘You were frightened?’

  Surely not.

  ‘Terrified. What if you had laughed at me? What if you had been kind and told me that you were very fond of me?’

  There was self-mocking amusement in his voice, but Laurel shivered. ‘Yes, I see. Horrible. Giles, this is wonderful, isn’t it?’

  ‘It is heaven and we are going to sleep now and we will wake up and it will still be wonderful.’

  She felt his lips in her hair, felt the steady thud of his heart answering hers and slept.

  * * *

  In the morning it was still wonderful, despite two tubs of cold scummy water in the middle of the bedchamber and Dryden and Binham wanting to talk about their slow journey and how long it had taken to escape from Winchester and the faint, residual anxiety about her father-in-law.

  The worry subsided after visiting the sickroom and finding the Marquess attempting to get out of bed and generally giving his valet hell for preventing him. He looked fit enough, to Laurel’s eyes, to ride in a steeplechase and she said so, making him snort with laughter.

  ‘That’s a fine wife you have there, my boy. Listen to her and come and talk to me after breakfast—here, I suppose, if Gibbons is not going to let me out of bed.’ He shot the valet a dark look.

  ‘Doctor Harris said I was to hide your breeches if you attempted to rise before he has had a chance to examine you again, my lord,’ the valet said calmly and removed himself from the room.

  ‘Blasted doctors. Anyway, there’s some problems with the land drains in the lower meadows and I want your views.’

  ‘Certainly, sir.’ Giles closed the door on his father and grimaced at Laurel. ‘I know nothing about land drains and I want to spend the morning showing you how much I love you, but—’

  ‘You’ll have to get a grip on drainage instead. I understand. There was a message from Mrs Finlay asking if I would care to tour the house with her, so we will both do our duty this morning. My love,’ she added for the sheer pleasure of hearing the words out loud.

  Eating breakfast together should not have seemed fresh and different, but this was the first time they had done something so routine, so normal and domestic and knew themselves to be in love and loved. It was a delicious secret, something to be shared and communicated with a look, a touch, an inflection in the voice asking for marmalade or a fresh cup of coffee.

  It even made Laurel smile when Giles went off to talk to the Marquess, grumbling as he went about having to think about drains when there were other, much more important things to talk about. ‘And do,’ he added, with a look that sent anticipatory heat into places best not thought about in the breakfast parlour.

  * * *

  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—’