Читать книгу A Lady In Need Of An Heir - Louise Allen - Страница 14

Chapter Five

Gray wandered across the short grass beside the row of vines looking for Gabrielle. She was very quiet—he couldn’t even hear the occasional muttering that seemed to signify deep thought.

He was impressed by her work here, as he knew she intended him to be. She was proud of her quinta and she had every reason for that. If Gabrielle had been a man and his godmother was agitating for a return he would have told her, in no uncertain terms, to leave well alone. But she was not a man. How she had escaped the war unscathed he could not guess, although obviously the loss of both her brother and her lover must have left emotional scars.

Luck could last only so long. Sooner or later if she stayed here, she was going to need help and support, the strength only a husband could give her, but she seemed to cling to her independence and her control of the quinta, as a mother clung to a child, terrified to let it walk off on its own. If she chose her husband well he would surely place the estate in the hands of competent managers, although, given the distance from England, he supposed selling would be prudent.

A splash of colour under the angular arms of a fig tree betrayed her presence. Deep blue skirts today, with a similar linen undershirt and black waistcoat to yesterday. It seemed to be her working uniform, practical but feminine. And she was asleep, he realised. Only her chin, firm and decided, and her mouth were visible beneath the tilted straw hat. The lower lip was full and sensual, the upper curled a little as though she dreamed of something pleasant.

Gray moved silently across the parched grass, avoiding dry leaves, a twig, until he could fold down cross-legged, facing Gabrielle. Her notebook had fallen from her hands and lay open in her lap and he squinted at the pencilled notes, trying to read upside down.

3 ps on 2 rotten

3 wires?

5 wall—fox?

Blackmail

He blinked and looked again. The cryptic notes obviously referred to different terraces and ps probably meant posts, but blackmail? It was hardly an ambiguous word. Was someone trying to extort money from her, or did she believe her aunt was blackmailing her in some way to return? Perhaps she was marshalling more arguments to throw at him if he tried to persuade her again.

Arguments were not all she might throw, he thought whimsically. She had a knife in a slim sheath attached to her belt. It lay beside her now, a workmanlike blade that she had used to probe rot in a post and lop off a broken trail of vine.

The erratic shape of the fig threw a comfortable patch of shade just where he sat, but the October sunshine was warm on his back and he felt his muscles ease, his shoulders drop. Had he really been this tense? He supposed he must, because he could not recall feeling consciously relaxed since he had heard of his father’s death and had left the familiar army life for one of ancient obligations, new duties, half-understood roles.

Home had held the children, yes, but they had been upset and confused because their beloved Gran’papa was no longer there, only Gran’mama and she was sad. And he had felt himself struggle to feel at home in a house that held memories of his own marriage and his singular failures as a husband.

He thought he had left everything better than he had found it. Jamie and Joanna ran to him now when they saw him, smiled at him, held up their arms to be lifted. His mother was slowly coming to terms with her loss and he was throwing himself at all he had to learn as though the outcome of a battle depended on it.

But when he got back to England again he was going straight home and paying no heed to any demands but those of his immediate family and the estates. He was going to live for the present and the future. He’d had enough of guilt and regrets.

Meanwhile he could practise living in the moment by basking in the sun and looking at a lovely, if maddening, woman and listening to the birds and the rush of the river far below.

* * *

She had been asleep, Gaby realised. She felt too limp and comfortable to do much about waking up, not for a minute or two, although she opened her eyes just a little. The weave of her straw hat was a light open work and through it she could see Gray sitting cross-legged in front of her, shoulders in a comfortable slump. For the first time he did not look like an ex-officer, just a big, rather weary, distractingly attractive man.

And he was looking at her mouth. She licked her lips and his gaze sharpened, fixed and, in the moment, she was hot and there was a disturbing, throbbing ache low down. Then Gray moved, swivelled the satchel on his hip and took out the water flask and the heat ebbed, leaving only a distracting tingle.

He is the first new, interesting man who has come into your life since you have begun to recover from losing Laurent, she told herself.

One had to be practical and recognise this for what it was: a rather inconvenient attack of lust. To which the interesting man in question was contributing by tipping back his head to drink and showing off a long bare throat with a gleam of sweat and the slightest hint of dark chest hair escaping at the point where his neckcloth was pushed aside.

Gaby sat up rather too fast, pushed her hat back on her head and reached for her own water. ‘Have I been asleep long?’

Her voice sounded surprisingly normal without, to her ears, any hint of ‘let me bite your neck and discover what you taste like.’

‘Ten minutes.’ Gray pushed the cork back into the flask. ‘A catnap.’ He got to his feet, casually letting the satchel swing down in front of him, but not before Gaby was aware that she had not been the only one becoming a trifle...heated.

Mischief made her reach up to him in an invitation to pull her to her feet. His hand was big and hard with rider’s calluses and she had a sudden desire to see him on horseback.

‘This is almost the top terrace.’ She released his hand with a nod of thanks. One could tease a man too far and she had no intention of provoking anything. At least, she hoped she had not. ‘We can eat up there. The view is excellent.’

They climbed in silence, checked the final terrace, then walked along to where the shell of a stone pigeon tower gave both shade and a support for their backs. Gaby checked for ants and scorpions, kicked aside a few pebbles and settled down on a flat stone that had fallen from the parapet. Above their heads wild rock doves flew out in a noisy clatter of alarm.

‘I remember these towers.’ Gray eyed it, staying on his feet. ‘They were perfect for snipers.’

‘And they make good watchtowers. I think centuries ago they were both dovecotes and lookouts.’ She tried to keep her voice neutral. One could not, after all, go around flinching from a feature that was scattered throughout the length of the valley.

‘Yes.’ He sat almost reluctantly, as though he could feel the sights of a rifle trained on his chest. ‘I can see three more from up here.’ He pointed across the river and eastward. The furthest was the most tumbledown, a haunt for owls and jackdaws now.

When she did not answer Gray looked at her sharply. ‘What is wrong?’

‘That one.’ She pointed to the furthest, the half ruin. ‘That was where the French found Thomas. They had sent a scouting party down, and he was watching for them. He would have seen them, crept out intending to make his way down to the river, taken his small boat and let the current carry him swiftly down to Régua, where there were still Allied troops. You had not all fallen back on Lisbon then.’

‘But he didn’t make it?’

‘They must have known he was there. Someone had circled round behind him and they caught him as he left the tower. They beat him, shot him, left him for dead.’ She said it calmly, clinically, so she did not have to think about the reality behind those bland words, her brother’s battered, bleeding, abused body.

‘How do you know this? Were there others with him?’

‘He was alone. I know it because my lover brought him to me. He found him barely conscious and brought him home. He did not approve of treating idealistic boys as though they were hardened guerrilheiros.’

Gray would work it out in a moment, he was not stupid or slow.

‘Your lover was French?’

‘Yes, he was a French officer, although he was not my lover until later. I did not know him then.’ Gaby let her head fall back against the warm stones, closed her eyes. She did not particularly want to see the expression in his, just at that moment. ‘He found Thomas, gave him water, bandaged the gunshot wound, asked him where home was and Thomas trusted him enough to tell him.’

‘An honourable man, your French officer.’

That she had not expected. Gaby twisted round to look at him. ‘Yes, he was.’ For a moment she thought she saw sympathy, understanding even, before she realised that the very direct look held questions and suspicions. ‘And I am an honourable woman. An Englishwoman. I had nothing to tell him, no intelligence to give him, no safe harbour for him or his comrades and I would have given none of those things if I had. We were two people who came together in the middle of an...an earthquake. There was no politics, no war for us. It lasted a few nights over many weeks, that was all.’ She turned away again, hunched her shoulder in rejection. What did it matter what he thought of her?

‘How did you know of his death?’

‘I gave Laurent a locket. It had the crest of Quinta do Falcão on it and a lock of my hair. Six months after the battle, it reached me with a note inside. My hair was missing but there were a few strands of Laurent’s blond hair and a scrap of paper with the name of the battle and the date. He must have confided in a friend, told him what to do if he was killed.’

‘Did you love him?’ Any trace of sympathy, softness, had left his voice.

‘Do you think me wanton?’ She watched the sunlight on the water below. She had no need to read whatever his thoughts were in those steely eyes, she could guess. ‘That I would sleep with any man who happened by?’

Had I loved Laurent?

She would never know whether that potent mixture of attraction, gratitude, liking—need—would ever have amounted to love because she was never going to become emotionally entangled with another man, ever again. Thank goodness. There would be nothing to compare. But there might be the love for a child if she could only find her way through the maze of problems, actual and moral, that her insane idea was throwing up.

‘Are you going to report all this back to my aunt?’ That would certainly put the cat among the pigeons.

‘Hell, no,’ Gray said. He sounded properly outraged. ‘What do you think I am? A spy for her? She should have sent one of her moralising friends if that is what she wanted. She is correct. You should not be here, alone. You should come back to England, make a proper marriage. I promised her I would try to persuade you of that and give you escort, but I undertook nothing else. Certainly not to critique your morals.’

‘Thank you for that, at least.’

There was silence, strangely companionable. Gaby let out a sigh she had not realised she had been holding and let her shoulders relax back against the rough stones.

This was becoming all too comfortable. Confession was clearly a weakening indulgence. She sat upright again, opened her satchel and began to take out the food. ‘Would you like to come with me to a dinner party tomorrow night?’

Gray had found a chicken leg and paused in midgnaw. He really does have a fine set of teeth... A sudden flash of where those teeth might be employed made her grab for a bread roll.

‘Yes, very much, thank you. But will your hosts not mind an uninvited stranger?’

‘Not at all. I will write a note when I get home. It is only up there, see? To the left of that big rock on the shore? The next quinta along. Their house is close to our boundary and the estate stretches away to the east. They are another Anglo-Scottish-Portuguese family, the MacFarlanes, and they have been here as long as the Frosts.’ Gaby stuffed the roll with cheese and found a tomato. ‘I like him a lot. She is a terrible snob, so she will be delighted to have an earl at her table, but other than that and the fact that she wears pink too much, she is tolerable.’ She bit into the tomato, then sprinkled salt on the exposed flesh and decided she had been fair to Lucy MacFarlane. ‘Her husband, Hector, has been like an uncle to me. They throw big dinner parties so there will probably be at least a dozen other guests.’

‘Will they not have invited a gentleman to balance you?’

Gaby shook her head, her mouth full, and swallowed. She never tired of the sweet tang of the tomato juices on her tongue, the warm pungency of the cheese, the springy resistance of the fresh-baked crust of the bread. Here in the sunlight, with the scent of herbs and the distant sound of the river, was a kind of sensual little heaven.

‘There are so many spare gentlemen around, what with visiting buyers and partners and officials from the government making inspections,’ she explained as she split another roll. ‘The ladies are always outnumbered.’

‘Stops the gentlemen becoming complacent.’ Gray reached for another chicken leg.

She was not going to watch him eat it. Her imagination was doing a perfectly good job of visualising those muscles moving in his neck as he chewed and swallowed, his tongue coming out to lick his lips and savour the herb-infused oils it had been cooked in.

‘The gentlemen are much more concerned with discussing the harvest, debating whether or not to declare a vintage, garnering information and downright gossip about rival quintas, rival lodges. The ladies are so much ornamentation as far as they are concerned.’

‘Except you.’ He said it seriously, not as though he was mocking her, which was a pleasant surprise.

Gaby risked a look. The chicken leg was nothing but a bone now, dangling from long, lax fingers. ‘Except me,’ she agreed. ‘I spend the evenings carefully not flirting, not gossiping, not discussing the things the men consider feminine concerns. Then when the ladies withdraw I stay put and they simply pretend I am not female. Obviously I must put something of a crimp in the conversation if they are dying to discuss mistresses or boast of their sexual performance or relieve themselves, but they can always take their cigarillos out on to the terrace and do all of those things.’

Gray gave a snort of amusement. ‘I do not think your aunt has the remotest idea just who she is expecting me to bring back to London. I look forward to watching you. Do you scandalise the other ladies?’

Gaby shrugged. ‘They are used to me. This will be a social evening only, I think.’ Some of the other women she even thought of as friends, although she had little in common with their day-to-day lives. ‘Wine?’ She passed him the flask of red.

‘Good. Yours?’ Gray wiped the neck with one of the napkins Maria had wrapped the food in before passing it back to Gaby, then ruined the civilised effect by scrubbing the back of his hand across his lips.

The soldier, not the society gentleman, Gaby thought, repressing a smile.

‘No. This is a MacFarlane vintage. They make more table wine than I do. You’ll have to talk to them at dinner tomorrow—I’m sure Hector MacFarlane would be delighted to sell you—’

She broke off as a flicker of darkness scuttled out from a boulder beside Gray’s left boot. The knife was in her hand ready to throw, then she realised that he had slid his own blade from his boot and had it poised in his hand. They both watched the scorpion, then it skittered off over the edge of the terrace and they relaxed in unison, shoulders touching as they leaned back.

‘These days I don’t like killing anything I don’t have to, even those wicked little devils,’ Gray said as he slid his knife back out of sight.

‘Neither do I,’ Gaby agreed. There was a mark on her blade, a smear of sap, and she rubbed it clean with her thumb.

‘How well can you throw that?’ Gray asked.

‘Very well. Old Pedro, my father’s steward, taught me when I was only ten. See that dead plant over there?’ A large, desiccated thistle was silhouetted against a post on the edge of the terrace.

‘You can hit that from here?’ He sounded politely sceptical.

Gaby shifted the knife into a throwing grip and sat up. Beside her Gray stood and out of the corner of her eye she saw him draw his own knife again. His throw followed hers in a fraction of a second. Hers skewered the head of the thistle to the post, his cut the stem beneath the head.

‘I’m impressed.’ He walked across to retrieve both knives.

‘So am I. Shall we go back down again now? Now, what was I saying? Oh, yes, Uncle Hector is sure to offer to sell you wine.’

She thought she heard him mutter, ‘Everyone in this damn valley wants to sell me something,’ but when she looked at him he grinned back.

Really, the man was all too easy to like—she couldn’t recall now why she had found him so severe, so difficult, when he had first arrived. Perhaps she could survive a week of his company, after all. Provided she could stop looking at his mouth. Or those shoulders.