Louise Allen - The Earl's Practical Marriage

Now he was furious. He recognised that it was as much with himself for being thrown off balance as with Laurel, the infuriating female. The fact that the gangly, plain, awkward fledgling of a girl had turned into a lovely young woman—at least, she was lovely when she was not glaring at him—only fuelled his own bad temper, for some inexplicable reason.

He arrived at the doorstep of the elegant lodging house and spent a good half-minute getting his breathing under control before he rapped the knocker.

The man who answered was clad in a respectable suit of dark superfine with crisp white linen and had the unmistakable air of being a retired gentleman’s gentleman. He ushered Giles in and escorted him upstairs with a few unexceptional remarks about the weather. At the top he paused. ‘The Marquess has taken all of this floor for his accommodation,’ he said, low-voiced. ‘He is having a good day today, I am happy to say, my lord. His gout has eased considerably and I believe the anticipation of your visit has raised his spirits.’

‘How bad is his health?’ Giles asked bluntly. ‘I would rather have the truth with the bark on, if you please.’

‘You will wish to speak to the medical practitioner who attends your father, my lord, to satisfy yourself. I would only venture to say that the Marquess’s condition is always vastly improved when his mood is good.’

In other words the gout was thoroughly unpleasant, but everything else was in his head, Giles mentally translated. Whether his father was looking forward to taking the prodigal to his bosom in an excess of forgiveness or was pleasurably anticipating giving vent to nine years’ accumulated disapproval remained to be seen.

‘This way, my lord.’ The landlord tapped on a door, then opened it. ‘Lord Revesby, my lord.’

Chapter Four

Giles stepped into a spacious sitting room with a pair of windows overlooking the square. His father was seated in a large winged chair with his left foot, heavily bandaged, resting on a gout stool and as Giles entered he turned to scowl at him from under heavy brows that had turned almost white.

But despite the grey in his hair and the white brows and the footstool this was not an old man, far from it.

He’s only sixty, Giles reminded himself. It must be maddening to find himself crippled like this, no wonder he is turning into a hypochondriac. He should be rampaging about the estate giving everyone hell and persecuting foxes and pheasants as he always did.

‘My lord,’ he said formally as he approached. ‘I am sorry to find you not in the best of health.’

To his alarm the Marquess lurched to his feet and pulled him into an embrace. ‘Giles. My God, it is good to see you again, my boy.’

When the grip on Giles’s shoulders relaxed he eased his father back down into the chair, restored his foot cautiously to the gout stool and sat down opposite, unbidden. He spent an unnecessary moment fussing over the cushion at his back so his father could deal with the tears on his cheeks. He had not seen his father weep since that awful day more than twenty years ago when both his mother and his just-born sister had died. ‘Sir, you should take care.’

‘Hah! I should indeed take care. Too late for that now,’ he added.

‘Surely not?’ Now Giles was here he realised how much he had missed his father, even at his blustering, noisy worst. He had loved him and hadn’t known it. ‘Father, your gout is obviously bad, but you are a young man still, in your prime. Nothing is too late.’ Even as he said it a superstitious chill ran through him. ‘Or is there something else, some disease you haven’t mentioned in your letters?’

‘No, there’s not a damn thing wrong with my health, only this hell-bitten foot and a lack of exercise giving me the blue devils.’ The older man shook his head, his expression strangely rueful. ‘Let me look at you. I cannot believe how you have changed, which is foolish of me. You’re a grown man now and you’ve the look of your mother’s family about you, and that is no bad thing—fine-looking men, the lot of them.’

‘I should have come home sooner,’ Giles admitted.

‘I do not think so. I can read between the lines, and your cousin Theobald dropped me a few discreet hints. You’ve been involved in more than Court affairs in Lisbon, I would guess. Scouting into Spain? Intelligence work?’ When Giles shrugged and smiled, his father nodded. ‘I thought as much. You would have probably been safer in a regular regiment, in uniform, damn it, than risking your neck without its protection, but you’ve been doing your duty for your country and I am proud of you.’

Giles could find no reply. His father had never said anything before to suggest that his only son was not a grave disappointment, a bookish, clumsy, serious boy. When he was younger, before he realised the implications of primogeniture, he had wondered why his father did not remarry and sire another son, a satisfactory one to inherit.

Now that had changed, it seemed. He sensed that it was not simply that he had somehow proved himself to his father with his activities in the Peninsula, but that there had been something in their exchange of letters, stilted though they had been, that had gradually built a bridge of understanding, of sympathy, between them. Perhaps that link would never have been constructed when they had been close enough to irritate each other in person.

Giles cleared his throat. ‘So is Bath proving helpful with your gout?’

‘The damn quack has me on a reducing diet and has ordered my man Latham to hide the port and it seems to be working, confound it, so I suppose I must admit he has the right of it, the arrogant, expensive, devil. But the gout’s neither here nor there. I wanted to see you urgently and thank the Lord—or more probably Wellesley, or Wellington as he is now—for ending the war and bringing you home, otherwise I would have had to send for you.’

The warm feeling inside him, the pleasure at his father’s pride and the relief that this encounter was not going to be the fraught affair he had been steeling himself to deal with, drained away. There was trouble brewing or, judging by the bleak look in his father’s eyes, it was already brewed, thick and dark. ‘What is wrong, Father?’

The older man shifted in his chair and when he did answer, it was oblique. ‘It was a bad thing that the marriage to Palgrave’s chit fell through.’

That old history, coming so close on his encounter with Laurel that morning? The sensation of a chilly finger on his spine was back. ‘Father, it is nine years in the past. She was far too young to think of marriage. So was I, come to that. Even without that misunderstanding we might well have grown to find we were incompatible.’ They certainly would be from the evidence of that morning’s encounter. Although the memory of Laurel’s lips persisted. ‘I will set about finding myself a suitable bride as soon as possible, I promise you.’ Giles put as much energy and commitment into the promise as he could muster.

The Marquess shook his head. ‘You know her father and I had planned that marriage between you for years, ever since you were children. It would have united the two estates. Even after everything went wrong and you left the country and there was a coolness between the two households, it seems that Laurel’s father still cared a great deal about that alliance. And now, I find, I care about it again, too. It would solve everything.’

Why bring this up now? Surely he doesn’t think himself in such bad health that he is worrying about the next generation of heirs?

And if his father really was becoming agitated on the subject, then surely he knew as well as Giles that a marquess’s heir should have no difficulty securing an eligible match?