The Earl's Practical Marriage Page 7

  Did you, indeed? And what do you know about Lord Revesby?

  It seemed as though everyone was conspiring to throw her together with Giles—Nicol and Binham and even her aunt, who could surely have produced some acceptable reason why Laurel was not free that morning.

  She came downstairs with her best society smile, the one she produced when her stepmother had dragged her away from the schoolroom and Jamie’s lessons, or the library and the company of a good book, in order to make stilted conversation with callers.

  ‘Charming. You look like a sprig of spring foliage.’ Giles was at the foot of the stairs, waiting for her.

  ‘Does that mean that you consider this outfit too green?’ she demanded, society smile slipping. Compliments from Giles had always needed examining with care and now she was not prepared to believe a single flattering word he uttered.

  ‘Not at all.’ He was suspiciously straight-faced. ‘If the hat had been green itself and not simply cream straw trimmed with matching ribbons, you might have looked rather like a topiary figure, but as it is, you hardly resemble one at all.’

  ‘I knew Stepmama was wrong about making the entire pelisse green and not just the bodice,’ she confided before she recalled that she did not like him or trust him and that he had just insulted her, even if she did agree with him.

  Nicol was holding the front door open with what, in a butler, was a positive smirk. He obviously saw himself as matchmaking now he had a young lady in the house, or perhaps he was hoping for lavish tips from a host of gentlemen callers. Laurel thanked him frostily.

  You should be on my side, she thought. Then told herself to be fair because he doubtless thought he was.

  One of the attractions of Laura Place was that it was so close to the Sydney Gardens, a short stroll away along Great Pulteney Street. Laurel had heard of them, of course, famously the largest pleasure gardens outside London, and Phoebe had promised that there would be an eligible programme of evening entertainments for them to attend. For daytime, she had explained, the hexagonal grounds held walks, a labyrinth, a sham castle and grottos.

  Giles offered his arm and Laurel reluctantly slipped her hand into the crook of his elbow, put up her parasol—green again, although by some miracle he refrained from commenting on it—and allowed herself to be guided up the incline towards the Sydney Hotel, through which one gained admittance to the grounds.

  ‘Why have you called?’ she asked abruptly, cutting through Giles’s polite small talk about the weather. ‘Why have you asked me to walk with you?’

  ‘For the pleasure of your company?’ he suggested.

  ‘Giles, we last met nine years ago in the midst of an appalling family row when I refused to marry you because I found out that I had been grievously misled in my opinion of your character.’

  ‘Grievously misled? You sound like a maiden in a melodrama, Laurel. You discovered no such thing, simply misunderstood something that you had no business overhearing. Instead of finding out the truth you promptly threw a tantrum and caused chaos. It was a miracle that your godfather or your father didn’t end up putting a bullet in me and that my father did not have a seizure. No, let me finish.’ She almost recoiled at the sudden hardening of his voice. ‘We need to discuss it and clear the air, certainly, but I am not going to do that either in your aunt’s house where you can storm off and leave me, or here and now on the street.’

  I could storm off and leave you here, halfway down Great Pulteney Street.

  She almost said it, but curiosity and a sense of fairness, admittedly deep-buried where Giles was concerned, stopped her. Matters had deteriorated into a shouting match almost immediately so she had never heard an explanation—or an excuse—from him. It might help her to hear what he had to say. In fact, hearing him flail about trying to find an excuse for his behaviour might be positively amusing, she told herself, struggling to keep her brittle defences up.

  They passed through the entrance to the Sydney Hotel where Giles paid their admission and into the foyer which opened into the gravelled area surrounded by pavilions and booths that would, Laurel supposed, be packed during the evening entertainments. Now, mid-morning, a couple strolling in the distance and a gardener sweeping the grass with a besom broom seemed the only inhabitants.

  ‘There, I think.’ He pointed to a rustic seat in the dappled shade under a spreading lime tree. ‘We should be undisturbed.’

  Speak for yourself, Lord Revesby. I am already exceedingly disturbed.

  She kept reminding herself that this physically attractive man, whose body heat she could feel where their arms rested together, was Giles, her childhood friend, the young man who should have grown up to be her husband, the young man who had broken her heart.

  Had he?

  She caught the thought. No, it had not been a broken heart. She had loved him, but not as an adult woman with a heart to lose, with a mature understanding of what marriage might be. This had been a betrayal of something much purer and simpler—friendship. Perhaps that was why it was so difficult to forgive and forget.

  Chapter Seven

  ‘It was all because of what you overheard, eavesdropping that afternoon in the barn,’ Giles said as soon as they had sat down on the bench.

  So, he was going to attack this head on, was he? ‘Of course it was.’ There had been nothing before, nothing that had sullied her perfect trust and faith in him. ‘I was not eavesdropping,’ Laurel said, defensive. ‘It was hot and I went in to find some shade and to see if the stable-yard cat had brought her kittens in there. I sat down, right at the back under the hayloft, and the next thing I knew, you and Gray started talking in the loft right above my head.’

  ‘You should have said something, called out.’

  ‘I would have done, but by the time I realised that it was a conversation that should not have been overheard...the things you were saying—I was too... And then I realised who you were talking about, who you had debauched.’

  ‘Damn it, neither of us had debauched anyone, Laurel!’ The gardener lifted his head and glanced across at them and Giles lowered his voice back to normal conversational tones. ‘It was fantasy, pure fantasy.’

  ‘Fantasy? What sort of experience did the pair of you have, that you could fantasise like that? It was positively obscene.’

  ‘None. No experience. We were virgins, for goodness’ sake, Laurel.’ Giles’s colour was up, probably more out of embarrassment at having to admit that, rather than shame at speaking of such a thing to a lady. But then this was a totally inappropriate conversation in any case. When she simply stared at him he shifted on the bench, took off his tall hat and raked his fingers through his hair, reducing a fashionable crop to something that recalled the hot, angry and dishevelled youth he had been that day.

  ‘Hell, how can I make you understand? Look, Laurel—young men think about sex a lot. All the time. Constantly. It is part of growing up, becoming a man. Youths will boast and brag and invent and lie like farmyard roosters flaunting their tail feathers to outdo every other juvenile rooster in the neighbourhood.’

  ‘All the time? All of you?’

  ‘Young men think almost exclusively about sex and food and drink. Or drink and food and sex, with regular diversions into horses, guns and joining the army and slaughtering the French while mounted on a fabulous black stallion. And then celebrating with food, wine and women. A lot of willing women.’

  The picture should have been amusing. She found she was not amused. Laurel closed her mouth, swallowed and ventured, ‘And men grow out of this...obsession?’

  ‘On the whole, yes. We get some experience with both women and wine, we grow up, we learn about life and its realities. We get our appetites under control.’

  ‘But you were...fantasising about my cousin, about Portia.’

  ‘She was very beautiful,’ Giles said, as though that explained, and excused, everything. ‘
I imagine that every red-blooded male she came into contact with had those kind of thoughts, those kind of dreams about her. Neither of us would ever have behaved with the slightest disrespect to her, in word or action.’

  ‘Except in your heads.’

  ‘Except there,’ he admitted. ‘That is the nature of fantasy.’ He stood up and began to pace back and forth on the gravel path in front of her, one hand thrust deep into his coat pocket.

  Men could do that, use physical activity to calm themselves, to work off emotions. Ladies were stuck on seats, pretending to be calm and collected and looking graceful, Laurel thought, clasping her hands in her lap as she made herself think about what Giles had said.

  She herself would have been quite safe from being the subject of such fantasies, she knew that. She had not been beautiful, she had not even been attractive, just an awkward, gangly girl. Giles’s description of Portia just now had stung. Had she been jealous then, even though she was utterly unaware of ever wanting a man to desire her in that way? She must have been.

  ‘I didn’t realise. I thought that you had...that it had all been real. I tiptoed out, too shocked to say anything. When I ran back to the house there was your father and mine and Godpapa Gordon, Portia’s father, talking in the study with the window open, all about how they were drawing up a marriage contract for us for when I was eighteen and how Godpapa would witness it. So I rushed in and said I could not bear to be married to you because you were wicked and immoral and had a lover.’

  She took a deep breath and made herself go on. ‘And they demanded to know who, so I told them what I had heard and Portia must have been listening because she came in shrieking and then you and Gray arrived and Godpapa Gordon was demanding that you marry her and she was hysterical and you were refusing to marry either of us and Papa was shouting that you had to marry me and I said I would rather die. And he and Godpapa almost came to blows. But you know all that. You were there, after all. I do not know why you have to ask me now. Why you think this is all my fault.’

  ‘Because I could not understand then, and I do not understand now, why, if you were so upset, so shocked, why you did not come and accuse me to my face? We had talked about just about everything, hadn’t we? Whenever we had a disagreement we fought it out, argued ourselves into a truce, at the very least. I thought we were friends, Laurel. I trusted you. I thought you trusted me. And yet you were prepared to believe the worst of me and to accuse me of it in front of our fathers.’

  ‘Because I heard it from your own lips.’

  Because I was shocked. Because I was jealous, I can see that now. Most of all because I was jealous. Oh, Lord, what have I done?

  ‘We had never talked about that. About sex and men and women.’

  ‘Of course we had not.’ Giles looked scandalised. ‘You were just a girl still, an innocent. Even when you were older, it was not the sort of thing I could ever talk to you about.’

  ‘I was the same age as Portia and you could think about her like that.’

  But I was plain and immature, and unaware of anything except that you were my friend. I was just a young girl to you, your little friend who you were kind to and indulged. The friend who was sexless in your eyes.

  ‘I knew the facts of life, I was brought up in the country, after all. I just had never thought about it like that. Not...not people I knew.’

  ‘So you were trying to protect Portia?’ Giles stopped pacing and faced her. ‘It was not that you wanted to attack me, or were looking for an excuse not to marry me?’

  ‘Of course not! Why would I ever do anything to hurt you? I had no idea Papa and your father were planning that match,’ Laurel said with complete honesty. She had thought it was all her own idea to marry Giles when she was grown up and it had never occurred to her that their families were plotting just that outcome. ‘And when I overheard you and Gray I thought it meant that you were very experienced with women and were corrupting Portia. I was so shocked.’

  I was shocked and envious and hurting and betrayed. I hit out because I wanted to make you see that. I had no idea what damage I was doing.

  She wanted to say it, but how could she admit that she had been jealous, that she had considered Giles to be hers, even then, when she had simply been a plain and awkward child? He would be appalled, embarrassed—and he would pity her. Or he would not believe she had no idea what she was doing. For a moment she wondered herself. Had it been unconscious spite? There was even less reason for telling him, if that was the case. Confession might be good for the soul, but she did not feel brave enough for that, it would be worse even than this guilt.

  * * *

  Giles watched the play of emotion on Laurel’s face. He suspected this was the first time since they had met again as adults that she was not guarding her expression. What could he see, besides a lovely woman dealing with some very unpleasant memories?

  She had shown embarrassment and real shock when he had confessed about those erotic fantasies. And perhaps, just a little interest, although that might have been wishful thinking on the part of his masculine pride. There had been chagrin when she had realised that her fears about what she had overheard had been false and shame over the hornets’ nest she had stirred up as a result.

  But he could understand her reaction, he realised, feeling almost a sense of shock at the crack in the little nugget of anger and resentment he had hugged to himself all those years. If he had been an unformed cub, then she had been younger still, a girl, innocent and idealistic. It was all forgivable and he realised he was already shedding the angry memories. No harm had come of it in the long term.

  Or had it? He had been estranged from his father for years, years during which the Marquess had gambled away their fortunes on those poor investments. Portia had been distressed to the point where she had spent months shut away recovering her spirits and had then married Gray when she was just eighteen. He must have somehow made his peace with her on his third leave in England after he joined the army. Being Gray, he had said nothing about his courtship, nothing about his brief marriage, although Giles was certain it had not been a close and happy one. Would they have made a match of it if it hadn’t been for that awful summer afternoon and Gray’s sense of duty and honour, driving him to do what Giles had refused to contemplate? And he had let his own sense of betrayal and hurt fester inside him, damaging his memories of home and childhood.

  But the past was the past and he was clear that Laurel had not intended harm. He could surely begin to court her without a qualm now they had cleared the air about this? She now understood what she had overheard, even though it had been outrageous of him to discuss it so frankly with her. He could forgive her for what, after all, had not been spite as he had thought, but instead shocked innocence and loyalty to her cousin. He could forgive himself, given time and thought. They could put it behind them now, but not before he made amends for his reaction on first knowing her again.

  ‘I was insulting yesterday morning. I apologise. I had never understood before why you did what you did. I had not realised I was holding on to so much anger still.’

  Laurel tipped her head, the gesture that had first stirred recognition in him when they had met on the Downs, reminding him now that somewhere behind that lovely face and graceful figure lurked the strange, gawky, fiercely loyal child who had always haunted his footsteps growing up. He had kissed her on the hilltop in the sunlight amidst the lark’s song. His body stirred, remembering the cool scent of her, the warmth of her mouth, the flutter of her eyelashes, dark against a pale cheek.

  ‘You were shocked at seeing me again without warning,’ she said, apparently offering him the comfort of an excuse. A first, tentative flag of truce, perhaps. There was no smile. He supposed he was still not completely forgiven for any of it. ‘And perhaps you had never come to terms with leaving your home and the country like that, even if you enjoyed yourself in Portugal.’

&n
bsp; She tipped her head the other way, regarding him. Her eyes narrowed in thought and she touched the tip of her tongue to her lower lip. He felt his body tense, harden, and then he stopped worrying about inconvenient arousal as she added, ‘I assume you lost your virginity there soon enough?’

  And I was worried about shocking her with the facts of life just now!

  But then, they had always been able to talk directly about whatever was on their minds, except that once. ‘Yes. Soon enough.’

  It had not been in Portugal. Both he and Gray had fled to London the morning after the confrontation, as far as they could go in that first instinctive dash to get away from Hampshire and the dire scenes they had left behind them. Both of them had been too young to cope with all those churning adult emotions, he could see that now. Gray had gone to his father and asked to join the army as an ensign, much to the Earl of Wickham’s delight, for the Graystones had always been a military family.

  Giles had taken refuge with Cousin Theobald and found him preparing to go out to Portugal. Theo had never had much time for Giles’s father and it had been easy enough to persuade his cousin to take him along as an unofficial part of his entourage.

  During that terrifying, exhilarating week of freedom in London he and Gray visited an exclusive and expensive brothel, escorted by Lord Wickham, who had no intention of allowing his heir go off to war without first learning something about the perils that awaited him away from the battlefield.

  Giles hauled his mind back from that first enlightening experience and studied the woman who would be ensuring his future faithfulness if she would only consent to do the sensible thing and marry him.

  ‘Why have you never married? Surely you did not allow that overheard conversation to give you a fear of marital relations?’ he asked without considering, allowing his thoughts to continue to their logical conclusion. He had been puzzling about Lady Cary’s remark all morning. Why should Laurel not want to marry? Then he realised what he had spoken out loud.