The Earl's Practical Marriage

No, it isn’t familiarity, she thought. It is as if someone rubbed out a faint pencil sketch of a young man and then drew this one on the same sheet of paper with the ghost of the original showing through.

Which was ridiculous. The only person she had ever known with such lapis-blue eyes had been Giles Redmond and he had been an unprepossessing youth, his big feet and hands, large nose and ears all seeming to belong to someone else and not the mousey, scholarly young man. He had been thoughtful and sensitive though, always a loyal friend—and always failing to meet his father’s expectations.

Gentle, kind, fun to be with and tolerant of the neighbours’ daughter, two years younger than him: no one had suspected that sixteen-year-old Laurel Knighton could fall for such a plain and retiring youth, even if he was the heir to a great title. But kindness, humour and intelligence could be as attractive to an impressionable girl as good looks and confidence.

The Marquess of Thorncote, Giles’s father, had wanted a son from the same mould as himself for his heir—active, noisy, enthusiastically confident, a man who would hunt all day and wench and drink all night. Instead he had Giles, nose in a book, secretive and more likely to shoot his own foot off than hit a pheasant.

Strange that he had so little idea of what his son was truly like, any more than she had known. It had almost been funny, the expression on the Marquess’s face the day the worm turned and Giles showed his true colours and her friend had revealed himself for the treacherous, deceitful beast that he was.

But that was nine years in the past. The Marquess was ailing now, they said, not that there was any social interaction between Malden Grange, home of William Knighton, Earl of Palgrave, her late father, and Thorne Hall. Not since the day of the betrothal debacle.

Malden was not her home any longer, not now that she had no function beyond that of spinster stepdaughter. Laurel narrowed her eyes at the worn brown riding coat ahead as though its wearer was personally responsible for her change of circumstances and the move to Bath.

Which was unfair, she told herself.

Just let me get to Laura Place—the name so close to her own must surely be a good omen—and I will learn to be contented and useful again. I refuse to become a sour old maid. I will be happy, find happiness in all the little things.

She was simply resentful of the stranger triggering something in her memory of those long-ago days, she supposed.

They were still climbing, the horses labouring now as the wheels stuck in deep ruts or lost their grip on loose stones. Open grassland spread out on either side and Laurel dropped the window, filling the stuffy interior of the chaise with cool air and the sound of birdsong all around them.

‘It feels like the roof of the world,’ she said as they came to a halt and she realised the vehicle was on the level. Then she hastily adjusted her veil as the stranger brought his horse round and leaned down from the saddle to look through the open window.

‘The team needs to rest a while after that pull and the view is spectacular.’

‘I have been looking at it, thank you.’

Definitely not a gentleman if he persisted in talking to a lady to whom he had not been introduced.

‘Not on that side, this way.’ He gestured with his riding crop. ‘Come and see.’

Outrageous, of course. She should snub him and raise the glass and sit demurely in the carriage until the horses were rested. She was thoroughly bored with that carriage.

I am looking for happiness in small things, Laurel reminded herself, looking at the froth of white cow parsley in the sunlight, smelling the fresh scent of growing things. ‘Very well. Come along, Binham. Oh, do leave the dressing case. Who is going to steal it up here?’

With the maid’s stare heating the spot between her shoulder blades Laurel picked her way along a side track and was suddenly not only on the roof of the world, but on its very edge. The close-cropped grass fell away at her feet, the valley of the Avon spread out before her. The face of the Downs was marked with deep, wide, dry valleys, as though a giant had pressed his fingers into the earth while it was still malleable, and the grass was starred with the white shapes of grazing sheep.

‘Oh, how lovely.’ She flipped back her veil to see better, the breeze a cool caress on her cheeks.

‘Ouch! I’ve turned my ankle, my lady.’

Binham was glaring mutinously at the tussocky grass with its liberal sprinkling of sheep droppings. She had hardly taken a few steps, let alone enough to twist her foot. This was simply rebellion. Laurel was too weary of her to argue. ‘Go back to the chaise then, Binham.’

Beside her the stranger watched the retreating maid, then turned back to Laurel, his gaze sharpening as he took in her unveiled face. Surely she had imagined the fleeting puzzlement in his expression, because it was not there now. ‘Yes, it is lovely,’ he agreed. ‘I have missed England in the spring.’ So she had been right, he had been abroad. ‘Listen to the skylarks. See, there is one, so ridiculously high.’ He pointed, leaning right back to look up at the tiny speck far above their heads.

Laurel leaned back, too, following the line of his pointing finger. ‘So brave, singing its heart out, trying to touch the heavens.’

She lost her balance and stumbled. The man caught her, turned her and stood, his hands cupping the points of her shoulders. ‘Dizzy? I have you.’

Yes, yes, you do.

There was something about him, something so familiar, so dear and yet so tinged with regret and sadness—and yet, surely she had never met this man before.

She stood there, looking deep into the blue depths of his eyes, stood far too close, too long, his palms warm even through the thickness of her pelisse and gown. Then he took his hands away, as though freeing a captured bird, and, very slowly, giving her all the time in the world to run, he bent forward until his mouth met hers.

It was the merest brush, a caress without pressure, without demand. He stood still, lips slightly parted as hers were, exchanging breath in a way so intimate she felt an ache of longing in her breast.

Then he stepped back abruptly, his face as neutral and guarded as if they had never stopped talking about birds and landscape. ‘The horses will be rested sufficiently now. We had best be on our way.’

Laurel blinked at him, dazed, then caught herself. She was behaving like some bemused village maiden when she was a sophisticated, experienced lady who had been kissed dozens of times. Well, six at least, by partners at local Assemblies and once, embarrassingly, by the curate emboldened after three glasses of the New Year’s Eve punch.

She lifted her chin and walked away towards the chaise without a word, lowering her veil as she went.

The postilions got up from beneath a hawthorn bush where they were sharing a clay pipe between them. Neither looked very happy at such a speedy return. Doubtless they thought she had disappeared for a prolonged period of dalliance, leaving them to their leisure, Laurel thought, thankful for the concealing veil.

Although who vanishes into the countryside to misbehave with a chance-met stranger with their maid on their heels?

It had been the merest chance that Binham had turned back in a sulk, the merest chance Laurel had almost fallen and he had caught her.

Or perhaps she was being naïve and he had lured her out and unbalanced her on purpose. She certainly knew very little about dalliance, inside or in the open.

The track wound its way downhill, the carriage lurched and swayed, and Laurel, searching for something to take her thoughts from that magical moment on the hilltop, could appreciate why the turnpike trust had given up on maintaining it and opened up the longer, gentler route. They passed other lanes, a few farms, and then after perhaps twenty minutes drew up on the level in a small hamlet in front of an old inn, sprawling under a canopy of trees.

The horseman wheeled his mount and bent to speak to her through the window. ‘Here you may try the famous Sandy Lane pudding at the Bear Inn, as favoured by none other than the late Beau Nash himself, or press directly on to Chippenham. The roads are metalled again from this point so your journey should be smooth.’ He did not sound like a man who had just kissed a complete stranger on top of the Downs.

‘Thank you, sir. I will press on, if you would be so good as to tell the postilions.’ She did her best to sound as politely indifferent as he did. ‘I appreciate your suggestion and your guidance, it has saved me a long detour.’

‘My pleasure, ma’am.’ He touched his whip to the brim of his hat, then called out instructions to the men before urging the grey horse forward.

‘A small adventure,’ Laurel commented to Binham, who pursed up her mouth in response. An adventure and a lesson not to be so suspicious and grumpy. The chance-met stranger had been a not-quite-harmless Samaritan and only slightly a dangerous rake. She had no excuse for regretting his departure, she told herself firmly, resisting the temptation to run her tongue over her lips.

* * *

The Earl of Revesby shifted in the saddle and thought longingly of sinking into a deep, hot tub at the Christopher Hotel. But first he was going to see where the discontented traveller with the mysterious deep brown eyes and the glossy dark hair and the cherry-sweet lips was bound for. He dug into the pocket of his greatcoat, found the worn lump of pewter inside and turned it between his fingers, the infallible remedy for impatience, restlessness, nerves.

Arthur, the big grey, named for the Duke whose nose resembled his, cocked up a rear hoof and relaxed, and his rider slapped his neck. ‘We’re both tired, a stable for you soon, boy.’ He had waited for the chaise to pass him, as patient as any highwayman in the shelter of a copse, then had followed at a distance all the way to Bath, driven by curiosity, arousal and a nagging sense of familiarity.

What was he doing kissing a chance-met lady? His head reminded him firmly that, besides any other considerations, that kind of thing led to consequences which could range from a slapped face to a marriage at the end of a shotgun wielded by a furious father. But there had been a compulsion, a spur-of-the-moment irresistible impulse far louder than the competing voice of common sense.

He’d had no difficulty ignoring the many lures thrown out to him on his way home from Portugal, yet now he had fallen victim to a pair of fine brown eyes. Again, he reminded himself savagely. He appeared to have developed a dangerous partiality for dark brown eyes and, given how much trouble simply smiling at the owner of a fine pair of them had got him into, it was madness to escalate to snatching kisses.

As he watched, a footman hurried out of the elegant house on Laura Place, followed by a grey-haired lady who embraced the passenger almost before she set a foot on the ground. Neither of them looked round as the horse walked past down Great Pulteney Street. The irritable lady with the sense of beauty and the tantalising gaze was safe and he knew where she was. That was quite enough for one day.

Chapter Two (#ufe639add-7f17-5946-9f85-ce03e8c98afb)

‘Darling Laurel, here you are at last! Welcome to your new home, my dear. I expect you would like to freshen up a little before we have some tea—Nicol, show Lady Laurel and her maid to her rooms—and then we can be cosy and talk.’

Aunt Phoebe, the widowed Lady Cary, spoke as rapidly as ever, Laurel thought. Slightly breathless after her first encounter in years with her mother’s sister, she followed the butler up two flights of stairs. She had been given a suite of rooms, he told her and she found it took up the entire floor—on one side a bedchamber and dressing room overlooking the garden at the back and on the other a sitting room with a view of Laura Place with its fountain in the middle of a railing-encircled patch of grass and shrubs. Behind the sitting room was a bedchamber for Binham, who was pleased to give it a stately nod of approval. Laurel took off her bonnet, gloves and pelisse, washed her hands and face then went back down again, leaving Binham to unpack.