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