The Earl's Practical Marriage Page 8

  Laurel surged to her feet in a flurry of skirts and parasol and outrage, all their fragile harmony destroyed. ‘Give me a fear? You arrogant man—as though I would allow two adolescent youths to influence my adult life. I certainly developed a distaste for having my father arrange my future. But Mama died and Papa remarried and Jamie was not happy, so I looked after him and then we lost Papa, so he needed me even more. It was very satisfying, seeing him grow up to be such a fine boy.’

  ‘It must have been,’ Giles agreed diplomatically, privately appalled. What had her family been about, allowing her to become, effectively, a governess? And it was no life for a lad either, tied to her apron strings. ‘What has happened to him now?’

  ‘Jamie has gone to be a midshipman,’ Laurel said with a smile that held both pride and heartbreak. ‘So I am now free to do what I want—not that I was not free before, of course—and I choose to come and live with my aunt. Stepmama and I are not particularly compatible.’

  ‘So this is not just a long visit? You are now Lady Cary’s companion?’

  Lord, but she does need rescuing. A few weeks of Bath tedium and she will overcome any aversion to marriage.

  But he did not have weeks, not if he was to be certain of her within the time limit.

  ‘Certainly not a paid companion. We will be living together on equal terms, as two independent ladies.’ Her chin was up, she met his enquiring gaze straight on.

  ‘But you had your London Season, of course?’ She certainly had the poise and finish of a lady, not a companion.

  ‘No.’ Laurel smoothed down her skirts, furled up her parasol. This time her evasion was obvious.

  ‘Why ever not?’

  ‘I saw no point. I was not looking for a husband.’

  ‘I fail to understand why you would not wish to marry.’

  ‘I am two years younger than you and you are not married,’ she retorted. ‘I would like to go home now, it is becoming a trifle chilly.’

  It was no such thing, but one did not contradict a lady. One could patronise her though, which was tempting if the lady in question was Laurel, and he could goad her into losing her temper and saying something revealing.

  Giles offered his arm and said, with deliberate provocation, ‘But men may marry later and most do. We have other things in our lives beside family and we may father heirs into our sixties if we have to. For women that opportunity for a family is far shorter.’

  As he expected, Laurel bristled at this. She was too good at hiding behind a façade when she was in control, he realised, but when her temper was roused the mask slipped. ‘Are you saying that a woman’s only purpose is to be a wife and mother and that anything else is a waste of time, whereas for men marriage is entirely secondary because you have a full and satisfying life anyway?’

  ‘Yes, that is it exactly,’ Giles said, heaping on the coals. He was not entirely sure he believed it himself, but seeing Laurel angry, flags of colour flying in her cheeks and her dark eyes glaring at him, was arousing and surprisingly tempting. He thought fleetingly of Beatriz, schooled in court etiquette, who was always perfectly poised and refined, until that evening when he had held her weeping, breaking her heart on his shoulder.

  ‘All I can say, Lord Revesby, is that you are a very good reason for not marrying—one would have to live with a man with attitudes like yours and that would be intolerable. I would be obliged if you would escort me home this minute.’

  On impulse Giles took one of the side paths. If he remembered correctly from the map he had seen at the hotel, this led to the labyrinth.

  ‘I thought you were taking me home,’ she said, still bristling.

  ‘This is simply an alternative route,’ Giles said to soothe her suspicions. That was true enough. In the enclosed space of the garden all paths would, eventually, lead back to the entrance.

  Her quick, irritated steps carried her along with him until he slowed and she looked around and saw they were on a narrow path bounded by tall close-clipped hedges.

  ‘No, it is not an alternative. This is the labyrinth. Now how do we get out of it?’

  ‘Do not be alarmed, Laurel, I will rescue you.’ Giles, tongue in cheek, somehow managed to keep his voice serious. This was working out very well and he realised he was beginning to enjoy himself.

  ‘Rescue, you beast?’ she demanded with a rapid descent into childhood abuse. He bit the inside of his lip to keep the smile off his face. ‘I have absolutely no need of rescue, I can get myself out.’ She shook off his hand, turned around and swept off back along the path, passing, he was pleased to see, the opening they had turned in on. If she had gone that way it would have taken alternating left and right turns and she would have been out.

  Giles turned and carried on, alternating the turnings until he arrived in the centre. From the distance came the sound of a raised female voice uttering curses that became, to his ear, more and more unladylike as Laurel drew closer.

  ‘Over here,’ he called. ‘This way.’

  * * *

  Five minutes later Laurel arrived, bonnet askew, her hem trailing twigs, her face pink with what was probably a mixture of exercise and frustration.

  ‘I told you I would rescue you. And you are not chilly any more either.’

  ‘Oh, you—’ She marched up and delivered a thump with a clenched fist in the middle of his chest. ‘I could hit you!’

  ‘You just have,’ he pointed out. And kissed her.

  She gave a little gasp of surprise against his lips, which was curiously arousing, and stepped back sharply. Giles told himself to let her go, that this had been a mistake and he should apologise. And then she moved back, put her arms around his neck, knocking off his hat in the process, and kissed him.

  Chapter Eight

  It was a more accomplished kiss than Giles had been expecting and he adjusted his expectations rapidly, even as he gathered her in against his body with one hand and untied her bonnet ribbons with the other. Laurel was not experienced, but she was a grown woman, not some adolescent innocent, and her body knew what it wanted, even if she had presumably always been too ladylike to act on those urgings.

  She started in surprise when he slid his tongue between her lips, but she did not move away, or even, as he was braced for, bite him. Her own tongue moved cautiously to meet his, a touch that spoke of trust and curiosity and the promise of future sensuality.

  Giles pushed her bonnet clean off her head and speared his hand through her hair at her nape, releasing the scent of rosemary rinse and warm woman. Warm woman who wanted him at that moment as much as he wanted her. That knowledge was almost more powerfully erotic than the feel of her curves against him or the taste of her on his tongue. And he must stop. This was too much, too soon.

  It seemed that Laurel had come to the same conclusion and that her will was less fogged with desire than his was, because she uncoiled her arms from around his neck and blinked up at him, bemused and indignant. ‘Giles, I had absolutely no intention of... I cannot imagine why I—Oh, for goodness’ sake! Why on earth are we kissing each other?’

  ‘Because whatever our minds are telling us, our bodies want something different,’ he suggested, shaken. He was going to marry Laurel because he had to, not because he loved her or thought they would have an easy or happy marriage. Finding himself aroused and aching over sharp-tongued Laurel Knighton was as baffling as it was surprising.

  But she is very lovely now, he told himself. Those deep brown eyes, the rich brown hair, the elegant line of neck and shoulder. Very desirable.

  The thought of mellowing that sharp edge with kisses and more was...tempting.

  ‘I have no wish to discuss my body—and certainly not yours. And you have only just explained to me what goes on in the swamp that is your mind, Giles Redmond!’ She stepped back, her hands up as though to ward him off although he made no move to touch her. ‘I�
�What was that?’

  That, he saw when he looked down, was the soft sound of a foot crushing an expensive straw bonnet, pressing silk ribbons into yielding turf.

  ‘My bonnet,’ Laurel wailed as she twisted to extricate her foot in its half-boot from the wreckage of her hat. ‘You dropped my bonnet on the ground!’

  ‘I did not intend you to step on it,’ Giles protested. ‘I will buy you a new one.’

  ‘That was a new one. I only bought it yesterday.’

  ‘After your encounter with me in the Pump Room?’ Even as he said it Giles realised that it was probably not the most tactful thing in the world to suggest that a lady might have been so affected by meeting him that she had rushed out and bought a hat to look beautiful in for his benefit.

  ‘Yes, immediately afterwards, as it happens. And do not flatter yourself that I wanted you to admire it, you arrogant man. I was so put out by that exchange that only a new bonnet would do to soothe my nerves. You are expensive as well as exasperating.’ She dangled the bonnet from one bedraggled ribbon. ‘Now I have to walk back through the streets of Bath without a hat, like some doxy.’

  ‘We will go back to the hotel and I will order you a chair to take you home,’ Giles suggested as he stooped to pick up his own hat and brushed a daisy flower from the brim, using the opportunity to get his breathing under control. Strategically holding the hat in such a way as to conceal his reluctantly subsiding arousal was probably also tactful. It should be a huge relief to discover that he could make love to Laurel with conviction, although the visible evidence was inconvenient. It seemed his body was just as undisciplined as any adolescent youth’s, responding more for the physical sex than the emotional tangle of his thoughts.

  ‘And how do I explain how this happened? I will not be able to show my face in the Sydney Hotel again after this,’ she mourned. ‘And Phoebe had promised such interesting entertainments there.’

  ‘Give it to me.’ Giles took the battered hat and impaled the brim on a small branch that was sticking out. ‘There.’ He jerked it free and handed it to her. ‘We were in the maze and the branch caught it, tore it off, it fell to the ground, you recoiled in shock, stood on the hat and so on. In fact, the management will probably feel so guilty about their faulty pruning that they will offer to buy you a new bonnet.’

  * * *

  ‘You always were the best person for inventing excuses,’ Laurel remembered. Strange how thinking of the distant past and Giles as a boy reduced her anger with him as a man. In some ways he had not changed at all. ‘Expecting them to buy me a new bonnet would be dishonest. But the story would serve to save my blushes.’ She cast him a sidelong glance, wondering if he felt anywhere near as confused as she did. It didn’t show. ‘Giles, what happened just now?’

  ‘We kissed. I rather thought you had noticed.’

  ‘Of course I noticed, stop playing with words.’ She turned and walked down the path out of the central space. That was cowardly, but it meant she did not have to look at him. ‘I mean, why should we do such a thing?’ she asked over her shoulder. ‘We do not even like each other any more.’

  ‘Do we not?’ He fell into step beside her, still holding his hat. ‘We had a misunderstanding and we explained ourselves to each other. I rather thought that we could cry friends again.’

  Once she would have been very happy with that, with being friends. What did she want now? And what did Giles want, swinging from anger and exasperation with her to teasing and kisses? ‘I do not make a habit of kissing men.’

  ‘No, I could tell that.’

  ‘Oh! You—’

  ‘That was a compliment, Laurel, not a suggestion that your embraces are not enjoyable. You are very properly inexperienced with lovemaking.’

  ‘A situation you are intending to remedy? Really, Giles, I do not know what your experience might have been in Portugal, but unmarried ladies in this country do not take lovers, not and remain respectable. I honestly do not know what came over me just now.’ He was silent as they came out into the open again, his expression as closed as if he had slammed a book shut. ‘Giles?’

  ‘I will tell you what came over us,’ he said, his voice harsh. ‘Simple desire. There is nothing wrong with that, nothing to be ashamed of. And naturally you would not kiss any man whom you did not trust.’

  ‘I can trust you?’

  ‘Of course,’ he said.

  What was there in that to make him frown so? ‘You kissed me on the Downs before you knew who I was, what I was,’ she pointed out. ‘We were total strangers, so we thought.’

  ‘We were, but sometimes, surely, we can give way to instinct, to snatch pleasure where we may, provided we do no harm. It was the merest touch of the lips.’

  It had been magical. An enchantment. And one that she was not sure had worn off yet, because otherwise, what was she doing allowing him to kiss her again? ‘But that might have caused harm. I might have fallen in love with you, gone into a decline pining for the handsome stranger who kissed me in the sunlight on top of the world.’

  He seemed to take her tone and her false laugh at face value, thank goodness. ‘I suspect that two old friends, long parted, recognised each other without realising it, don’t you?’ There was a pause and that shuttered look came over his face again. ‘I would never want to hurt you, Laurel.’

  But I hurt you with my lack of trust. Can you ever truly forgive that?

  The hotel concierge was appalled that Lady Laurel’s charming bonnet had fallen foul of the undergrowth and a sedan chair was produced within minutes to whisk her the short distance home. Outdated they might seem, but sedan chairs continued to flourish in the spa town, snuggly conveying old ladies from hot baths to lodging houses, or ferrying gouty gentlemen up the hills, safe with the strong arms of the Irish chairmen.

  Giles paced alongside and, as the chair swayed, she watched him through the glass, trying to read his expression, grateful to be spared the need to talk, to touch him by taking his arm. Inexperienced though she might be, she was certain that kiss had been one of genuine desire, but it had also felt strangely safe. Was that because of their old friendship, or because Giles was a true gentleman? Or perhaps it was the difference between men and women. He could kiss without commitment, without necessarily wanting the person—only the caress.

  So what do I want?

  She understood now what she had overheard, all those years ago in the barn. She could accept it for what it was, although it felt deeply uncomfortable to realise that young men’s heads were so full of such shocking and uncontrolled fantasies. She could forgive Giles, she supposed she already had, but she wondered if she could forgive herself.

  But how could I be expected to know about these things?

  If Giles had told his father that it was all fantasy, surely the older man would have understood?

  We are all to blame, she concluded gloomily. Giles should have reined in his temper and explained to our fathers. His father should have thought back to when he was his son’s age. My father and Godpapa Gordon should have stopped working themselves up into a rage over their daughters’ virtue and honour and allowed everyone to calm down...

  It took only moments to reach Laura Place. Giles swept her inside, hatless, to be met in the hallway by Phoebe, who had obviously seen their arrival through the window and was considerably agitated.

  ‘Where is your bonnet, Laurel? What have you been doing to her, Lord Revesby?’

  ‘Lady Laurel had an encounter with unruly foliage in the labyrinth,’ Giles said, straight-faced. ‘The hat came off and was, unfortunately, trodden upon.’

  ‘Unruly foliage.’ Phoebe looked from one to the other and then, to Laurel’s amazement, giggled. ‘How very original. I have never heard it called that before, Lord Revesby. Good day and thank you so much for returning Laurel before she encountered any shrubbery in a state of actual riot.’

 
Giles’s mouth twitched appreciatively. ‘Good day, Lady Cary. Good day, Lady Laurel, and thank you for your company this morning.’

  The two of them stood in the hallway as the door closed behind Giles. ‘Oh, dear, I should not have been so frivolous about that,’ Phoebe said, pink in the cheeks. ‘The man is just so charming and so good looking and when he says outrageous things with such a look in his eye... Did he, I mean, was he, er, forward in any way?’

  ‘Absolutely not,’ Laurel said as she crossed her fingers behind her back. ‘We have discussed what happened nine years ago, we understand each other very well and I think you might say that a peace treaty has been signed.’

  Although not between me and my conscience.

  ‘I rather think that everyone involved should have taken a deep breath and counted to five hundred.’

  She knew she was going to lose sleep over this, not least because she could see all too clearly that she had managed to make a martyr out of herself, ending up unmarried and miserable. She had done what she had thought was the right thing when she should have trusted Giles enough to ask for his side of the story first.

  ‘What will happen now?’ Phoebe asked, cutting into her self-flagellating thoughts.

  ‘I imagine Giles will go to the family’s country house. It does not seem that his father’s condition is as perilous as he was given to believe and I am sure that the Marquess would much rather that Giles was looking after the estate than kicking his heels waiting on him in Bath. He will probably go to London as well, re-establish his social life.’ Despite the kiss and his apparent forgiveness, he certainly would not want to see much more of her now. As far as Giles was concerned the past had been explained, forgiven and could now be put behind them.

  ‘I see.’ Phoebe seemed as downcast as Laurel felt. ‘Things will be less lively in Bath without Lord Revesby here. I am sure all my friends are agog with envy over us having the acquaintance of such a handsome and eligible gentleman. Oh, well.’ She gave herself a little shake. ‘We must not repine over the loss of one gentleman, I suppose. Come into the drawing room, Laurel, the post has arrived and there seem to be any number of invitations. We can sort through them before luncheon. I do hope nobody is expecting an introduction to Lord Revesby if he is leaving Bath.’