Читать книгу A Lady In Need Of An Heir - Louise Allen - Страница 11

Chapter Two

Gray straightened up, not at all certain he could believe what Gabrielle Frost had just said.

‘Your lover? Your betrothed, you mean? Which regiment was he in?’

‘No, you did hear me correctly, my lord. My lover. And, no, I am not discussing him with you.’ She bent to brush a fallen leaf from the stone, then walked away from him, seemingly unconcerned that she had just dropped a shell into his hands, its fuse still hissing.

Lover? She was ruined. His godmother would have hysterics because no one, surely, except some bankrupt younger son, bribed to do it, would take Gabrielle Frost now. What the hell was she doing, admitting to it so brazenly?

Gray pulled himself together and strode after her out of the grave plot, letting the little wrought iron gate clang shut behind him. The garnet skirts swished through the grass ahead. Her legs must be long for her to have gained so much ground. He lengthened his stride for the dozen steps it took to bring him to her side.

‘Miss Frost, stop, please.’ It was more an order than a request and all the effect it had on her was to bring up her chin. As though he had not spoken she continued until she passed through an arch cut in a high evergreen hedge.

‘Here is the rose garden. If you are going to rant at me, my lord, at least we are out of sight of the house here.’ She made her way to a curving stone bench and sat down. It was a charming spot that overlooked a pool and fountain set in the middle of the curving rose beds, but Gray was in no mood to appreciate it.

He stopped beside her, his shoulder dislodging the petals of a late, deep red bloom the same colour as her skirts. The petals fell like bloodstained confetti on to her hair and he repressed a shudder at his own gruesome imagery. Thinking about that battle must have released memories he had buried for four years or more.

‘Is this widely known?’ he demanded. ‘I heard no gossip, no whispers in Porto.’

‘Of course it is not known. Do you think me a loose woman to brag of my...adventures?’

‘Then why tell me, a total stranger?’

‘Because you are the total stranger who has been sent to lure me back to England, I suspect, and now you know a very good reason why I should not go. You are also an English gentleman and you will not, I think, gossip, whatever you think of me.’ She looked up at him, her head tipped slightly to one side like an inquisitive cat as she waited for his reaction.

‘You shock me, Miss Frost.’ Had the woman no shame?

‘Then I am sorry you have had such an affront to your delicate sensibilities, my lord.’

‘I do not have sensibilities, Miss Frost. Your aunt, however, does.’ And they wouldn’t have to be delicate to be outraged by this.

She shrugged, provoking a strong desire in him to give her a brisk shake. ‘Yes, of course, I am sure she is all fine feelings. However, my aunt is a long way away and I do not care about her opinion.’

In the face of that brazen indifference there seemed little point in attempting to remonstrate with her. Besides, the horse was well and truly bolted and attempting to close the stable door was pointless.

Gray watched her face. Miss Frost was thinking, it seemed. Her eyes narrowed. ‘Did you fight at Campo Maior, my lord?’

‘I did. Why? And call me Gray.’ There was no point in being at odds with her and he hated being my lorded.

‘Why do I ask? You might have been close by when he was killed.’ She said it without overt hostility, more, he thought, as though she was calculating carefully which of his ribs to slide a knife between for the tidiest extermination.

‘Which regiment?’ he asked.

‘Infantry,’ she unbent enough to admit.

‘I was cavalry, probably on the opposite flank.’

‘Then we have nothing to discuss, have we?’ Gabrielle shifted her gaze from his face and looked out over the garden. Something, a frog perhaps, plopped into the pond, and a pair of magpies flew over, cackling wickedly. ‘Gray,’ she added, as though there had been no pause.

‘We must talk,’ Gray said after another silence that, peculiarly, seemed almost amiable. He found himself reluctant to break the tranquillity of the garden with speech.

‘You must, I suppose,’ she said with a sigh. ‘Then you will consider your duty done to my aunt and can return to England. I do hope you have some other business in Portugal, because this is a long way to come just for a talk.’

‘It is, however, the sole purpose of my journey.’ A talk and a return with one young lady who was already proving ten times more tricky than he had imagined she would be. ‘I could stock my cellars with port while I am here, I suppose.’

‘Of course.’ Gabrielle turned to him, something coming alight behind those mocking brown eyes. He had her serious attention at last and it felt like something alive, something vibrant. ‘What do you hold at the moment? Is there a weakness in young growths to lay down, or perhaps you are running low on wines to drink at the moment? Or are you interested in investing in some fine old vintages? I can let you have good prices, although naturally you will want to do some tastings and see what is available elsewhere.’

She broke off, apparently lost in calculation. ‘How long are you staying? I could take you to the Factory House, of course, make introductions and then go with you to the best lodges—not necessarily the biggest or best known.’

‘The Factory House? That is some kind of club, isn’t it? I had dinner there a few times when we retook Porto for the second time.’

‘It is where all the growers from the English and Scottish houses come together, along with owners of the lodges and the shippers. It is a cross between a club and a trading house and a mutual support society, I suppose.’

‘But you are not a member, surely? You are a woman.’

Gabrielle stood up, forcing Gray to rise, too. Despite being shorter than he, she contrived to look down her nose in disdain. ‘This—’ She waved a hand to encompass the garden, the house, the terraces rising above. ‘This is Quinta do Falcão. This is Frost’s, one of the great estates, and I am its owner. I would have to commit a far greater sin than failing to possess a penis, or being suspected of somewhat loose morals, to be barred from the Factory House.’

Gray took two long, slow breaths. He had faced charging French cavalry and been bellowed at by Wellington and had stood up to both. He was not going to be reduced to fuming incoherence by one young woman who said penis without blushing and who admitted to taking a lover.

‘Besides, there is the question of money,’ she added with what was suspiciously like a fleeting smile. ‘Ports are blended. This is not winemaking as in Burgundy or Bordeaux. We cooperate, work with the others to create our wines. It would be in the interests of no one to antagonise Gabrielle Frost of Quinta do Falcão.’

‘I see. It is a matter of trade and profits.’ He sounded like a stuffed shirt to his own ears. A pompous, disapproving outsider. Lord knew why he could not seem to get a secure footing in dealing with this woman. She was three years younger than his own twenty-eight, he knew that. He was an earl, he had been a colonel and yet there was nothing in his experience to give him the slightest clue as to how to handle her.

His own marriage had hardly been one of perfect tranquillity, but Portia, when unhappy, had sulked and brooded in a ladylike manner, not fought back with sharp words and a complete unconcern for propriety. But then, he reminded himself bitterly, he had made a poor business of marriage and he clearly understood nothing about the female mind.

‘Yes, trade,’ Gabrielle agreed now, far too sweetly. ‘The sordid business of working to create something wonderful which you aristocrats can enjoy and for which you may despise us, even as you pay your inherited money to secure it. I am in trade, my lord, just as surely as the tailor who makes your very fine coats to fit your torso to perfection or the bootmaker who moulds that leather to your calves or the gunsmith who creates the perfect balance for your hand.’

‘Are there any other parts of the male body you are going to enumerate this afternoon, Miss Frost?’ Gray enquired, hoping for a tone of reproof and probably, he thought irritably, merely managing to sound pompous again.

‘I will spare your blushes and refrain from mentioning breeches, my lord,’ she said, with a comprehensive downward glance at his thighs.

Gray sent up a silent prayer that he was not blushing—and when was the last time he had feared that he was? Ten years ago?—and returned to the attack. ‘You are from an aristocratic family yourself, Miss Frost, hardly in a position to sneer at my title.’

‘I do not sneer at your title, Gray. I sneer at the nonsense of looking down on trade and industry and the creation of wealth.’ She smiled suddenly and his breath hitched in his chest. ‘You will join me for dinner, I hope, and sample our port.’

She was gone, her skirts whisking behind her with the rapidity of her steps, before he could reply. That was probably a very good thing because, he realised, he had been within a hair’s breadth of lowering his head and kissing those full red mocking lips.

‘Hell’s teeth.’ Gray sat down again, the better to swear in comfort. What the blazes had come over him? Barring lust, insanity and some sort of brain fever, that was. Gabrielle Frost was infuriatingly unlike any woman he had ever encountered and that included some very fast and dashing widows. She was independent, outspoken, immodest and outrageous. She was a damned nuisance to a man who had intended a rapid return to his own affairs, because he could not think of any way to extract her from her precious quinta short of kidnapping.

He had expected to find a lonely, struggling young woman bowed down by the burden of her inheritance and only too grateful to be whisked back to luxury and the glamour of the London Season. Gabrielle Frost appeared to be healthy, lively, prosperous and decidedly unbowed. She was no timorous innocent, but a woman of the world with an intense pride in what she did.

But he could not leave her here, not without making some effort to persuade her to do the right thing. He had promised his godmother to try to bring Gabrielle back with him and he could not break his word, not without a good reason. And he could see no reason other than her own stubborn inclinations—she was a young, single Englishwoman of good family and she should be back in England under her aunt’s protection until a suitable husband could be found for her. He was beginning to get an inkling of why no local gentleman had offered, he thought grimly.

She had already compromised herself thoroughly with this lover of hers, unless, of course, she was lying in an attempt to shock him so comprehensively that he left her here as a lost cause. But in that case, who was the memorial intended for? A friend? A man she had loved chastely?

Gray leaned back against the carved stone of the seat and attempted to think about the problem in military terms. If Miss Frost was the enemy entrenched in a fortress, how would he get her out? Starve her out? Bombard her defences until there was a breach in the walls and then storm in? Use an inside agent and have them unbar a gate? Use diplomatic means and negotiate a surrender?

He could not spend the time to sit on her doorstep for months until he wore her down, although what she was being so stubborn about he could not comprehend—surely she employed a competent manager who actually ran the place?

A siege would likely take years. Force was completely ineligible, which ruled out slinging her on to a boat and simply kidnapping her. An inside agent or diplomacy seemed the only feasible methods. He would begin with her lady companion, always assuming that the mature female his godmother had assured him was in residence hadn’t been driven out—or driven distracted—already. He would not put either past Gabrielle Frost.

Gray closed his eyes and considered how to use whatever support an obviously ineffective, woolly-minded and careless chaperone might give him. He opened them a heartbeat later. The image on the inside of his eyelids was not some browbeaten widow, but Miss Frost herself. And he could think about siege works and chaperones all he liked, but the honest truth was that he found the woman profoundly, inconveniently, embarrassingly arousing.

He moved, a frustrated jerk of his shoulders, and rose petals fell on to his hands. He touched one with his fingertip: soft, velvety, infinitely feminine.

This time he did not swear. Gray buried his head in his hands and groaned.

* * *

Well. That had been stimulating, in much the same way that a wasp sting was energising. Gaby swept in through the back door and went straight down the stone steps into the cellars. The door at the top had been open and there was a wash of lantern light at the far end, so she knew her cellarman was working.

‘Jaime!’ she called into the gloom.

‘Sim, senhora?’ He peered around a thick pillar, a dusty bottle in his hand, his wire-rimmed spectacles perched on the end of his nose.

‘We have a guest for dinner this evening,’ she said in rapid Portuguese as she joined him. ‘An English aristocrat who needs port for his cellar.’

‘Needs it?’ Jaime queried with a grin.

‘Every English lord needs our port,’ she chided, returning the smile. ‘Whether he knows it or not.’

‘He is knowledgeable?’

‘Probably not about the detail, or the business. I imagine he has a good palate.’ Although how she knew that she was not certain. The fact that the man had the taste to dress well in a classic, understated style should have nothing to do with his appreciation of fine wine. ‘He was here fighting during the war.’

Jaime grunted. ‘You want to serve him the best, then?’ He would approve of any Englishman who had fought against the French. He had been with the guerrilheiros. So had his son who had not come back.

‘Yes.’ Although not because she wanted to honour the earl’s military service. ‘And the new white.’

The cellarman’s eyebrows rose, but he nodded and followed her as she walked along the racks of the unfortified wines, selecting bottles to accompany the food. One did not distract the palate from good port by eating at the same time. By the end of the evening, unless the Earl of Leybourne was a philistine, he would appreciate why she must stay here, comprehend the importance of her work.

And then he would go away and stop distracting her with thoughts that were absolutely nothing to do with vines and more about twining herself around that long, muscled, elegant body.

Laurent. Gaby bit her lower lip until the prickling behind her eyelids was under control. She had not been so naive as to think that the numbness of loss would last for ever. They had been lovers, friends, but not in love, after all. She was a young woman, and one day, she had supposed, there would be someone else who would stir her blood. She had not expected it to be an English officer.

But at least, she thought as she climbed the steps back into the daylight and dusted the cobwebs from her hands, it was only her body that was showing poor judgement, not her brain. That knew peril when it saw it.

She would listen to what he had to say after dinner, allow him to recite his message from Aunt Henrietta, then refuse whatever it was he was asking—presumably a demand that she move to England. She would say no politely this time. She should not have teased him in the rose garden. She had made him colour up, but she did not mistake that for anything but shock at her unmaidenly behaviour. This was no blushing youth, this was a mature, experienced, sophisticated man.

Lord Leybourne could hardly remove her by force—she would put a bullet in him first if he tried—but he had the power to disrupt her hard-earned tranquillity and peace of mind and those she could not protect with her pistols.

* * *

‘Lord Leybourne.’ Baltasar wrapped his tongue efficiently around the awkward vowels as he opened the dining room door and ushered in her uninvited guest.

Add exceedingly elegant to sophisticated, experienced, mature, et cetera. Gaby fixed a polite social smile on her lips and rose. Beside her Jane placed a marker in her book and stood, too. Elegant, but no fop, she added mentally, watching the way he moved.

‘Lord Leybourne, may I introduce you to my companion, Miss Moseley. Jane, Lord Leybourne, who is making a short stay.’ Very short.

Of course he had managed to pack evening clothes in those few portmanteaus and of course they had to emerge pristine, despite the fact he was not accompanied by a valet. And doubtless, those skintight formal breeches were at the pinnacle of whatever fashion was this month in London.

‘Miss Frost, Miss Moseley.’ He sat down when they did and smiled at Jane. ‘Are you an enthusiast for port wine production as well, Miss Moseley?’ Gaby gave him points for civility to a hired companion of middle years and no great looks. For many gentlemen Jane was, effectively, invisible. Not that she thrust herself forward to be noticed, and as a chaperone, she was indifferent to the point of neglect, which suited them both very well.

‘No, I would not say that I am,’ Jane replied, blunt as usual.

‘That must make living in the midst of such intensive focus on the wine business somewhat dull for you.’

‘Not at all. The effect of soil and rocks on the quality of the grapes and the effect of such a standardised form of agriculture along the valley is most interesting from a scientific point of view.’

‘It must be.’

He really was making a very good job of sounding interested, yet unsurprised, Gaby thought. Most people were silenced by Jane in full flow. Many were intimidated or dismissive. She decided to take pity on him. ‘Miss Moseley is a natural philosopher, my lord.’

‘Gray,’ he said, frowning at her. ‘Please call me Gray, both of you.’

He should frown more, Gaby thought whimsically. It rather suited him with those severe features and dark brows.

Then he did smile and it was positively disconcerting how difficult it was not to smile back. ‘I became so used to it in the army that I find myself looking round to see who this Leybourne fellow is.’

Now his attention had returned to Jane. ‘Are you familiar with the map that William Smith produced this year, Miss Moseley? It delineates the stratigraphy of England and southern Scotland.’

A miracle, the man is as interested in rocks as Jane is.

Gaby settled back in her chair and let their conversation wash over her. While he was talking about natural philosophy—and they had got on to the subject of Erasmus Darwin’s strange ideas and his even odder poetry now—he was not thinking about ways to persuade her to go back to England.

‘Madam, I have the wine.’ Baltasar was back with the dusty bottle she had chosen earlier.

‘An aperitif,’ Gabrielle said and the other two stopped discussing fossils and looked across at Baltasar opening the bottle.

Again, as she had instructed him, Baltasar showed the label to Gray.

‘A white port?’

‘Yes, and a single quinta port, which is very rare.’ She took the wine and poured it. ‘Almost all port is blended so that we combine the grapes from different soils, different aspects, to give a richer, more complex result. I have experimented with using only our own grapes, but from both sides of the river and from different heights on the slope. I am really very excited with the result.’

Gray took the glass, sniffed, tasted and raised his eyebrows. ‘That is very fine. I had never thought much of white ports before, but this is superb.’

‘I think so.’ She could say so without false modesty. It was essential to be critical of what she did, and this was, indeed, a triumph. ‘Now we have to see how it matures, because I intend leaving it on the wood for another three years. Meanwhile we will begin again this year and treat twice as much the same way.’

‘Three years?’ Gray’s assessing gaze moved from the wine glass to her face. He was not insensitive, he must have heard the commitment in her voice.

‘Yes.’ She met his gaze squarely. ‘The satisfaction of personally developing and nurturing wine like this is what I live for.’

And you are not going to wrench me out of this place.

‘That sounds very like passion to me, far more than satisfaction,’ Gray said. His tone was neutral, as though he was making a commonplace observation, but there was something in his eyes, a glimmer of warmth, that made passion and satisfaction strike a shiver of erotic awareness down her spine. His gaze moved to her mouth and Gaby realised she was biting her bottom lip. Perhaps it had not been her imagination back there in the garden when she had thought for a fleeting moment that he was about to kiss her.

‘Jantar está servido, senhora.’ Baltasar had given up on English.

Gabrielle finished her wine. ‘Shall we go through?’

Gray offered his arm to Jane, which earned him a look of grudging approval. Jane might be used to dismissive bad manners, but that did not mean she enjoyed them. Not that she allowed any annoyance to show. When subjected to such neglect Jane was more than capable of producing a book and reading, ignoring the visitors in her turn.

* * *

Dinner was surprisingly enjoyable. Gray showed an intelligent appreciation of the unfortified local wine she served with the food and made flattering comments on the various dishes. His words would make their way down to the kitchens and please Maria, as he clearly intended. And he kept strictly off the subject of England and her aunt, much to Gaby’s relief.

When the meal was over, she rose and he politely came to his feet. ‘Will you join me for a glass of port in the drawing room, Gray? We do not drink it in the dining room, where the smell of food dulls our palates.’

If he was surprised at not being left to enjoy the decanters by himself, he managed not to show it, but followed her and Jane out. He did look somewhat taken aback when Jane bade him goodnight and turned to the stairs.

‘Miss Frost, your chaperone has abandoned you.’ He stood at the door, holding it open.

‘My companion has clearly decided that you are not bent on seduction this evening. Do come in and close the door. You are quite safe, you know.’

‘I am? That is hardly the point in question. You should not be alone with me, Miss Frost.’

‘As we are the only occupants of the house except for my very loyal servants, I hardly think we are going to cause a scandal, Gray. Now, come in, sit down, try this very excellent tawny port and listen while I tell you that whatever you have to say I am not going to England. Not now. Not ever.’