LITMIR.BIZ

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laughed. ‘At his club, taking refuge because I will not let him fuss over me, and if he stays at home he fidgets himself to death.’ Hebe paused, then, ‘How did your father react?’

      ‘Badly.’

      ‘Tell me,’ she persisted gently.

      ‘He demanded to know what had happened to make me lose my nerve and to want to sell out, like some coward of a Hyde-Park soldier,’ Giles said harshly. Hebe gasped.

      ‘He doesn’t mean it.’ Giles continued more easily now the shaming words had been said. ‘He expects me to be a general too—and even younger than he had been. I think in his heart he knows why I am talking of selling out and he is railing against his own weakness, not mine.’

      ‘I shouldn’t think that makes it hurt any less,’ Hebe said, lifting her hand to touch it softly to his face. Giles turned his cheek against her knuckles, comforted. Lucky, lucky Alex.

      ‘No. And of course he knows he has been unjust and doesn’t know how to put it right. So he managed to find yet another sin to throw at my head to justify his anger.’

      ‘What else?’

      ‘He wants to know what I think I’m about, flirting with Lady Suzanne Hall and not making her an offer. Damn good catch, the old boy says with considerable understatement, and he isn’t going to stand by hearing stories about me trifling with her affections.’

      ‘Are you?’ Hebe asked.

      ‘Flirting or trifling?’

      ‘Intending to marry her,’ Hebe said tartly.

      ‘None of those things. I’ve known Suzy since I was ten and she was toddling. She’s the sister I never had and I’d as soon marry a cage full of monkeys. I feel nothing but the deepest sympathy for whichever poor idiot marries her. That girl is the most outrageous minx I have ever come across.’

      ‘So you are not in love with her?’ Hebe persisted.

      ‘I love the girl—but just as a sister—and she and her parents know it. She has been practising flirting and wheedling on me since she was eleven because she knows I’m safe and her mother likes me to squire her about when I’m in town because she knows I’m safe. I scare off the bucks and the fortune hunters and Suzy can play the little madam to her heart’s content.

      ‘But she’s probably the best catch of the Season, as my father is all too aware. Some old pussy has been telling him I was seen with her driving in the park and dancing with her rather too often and that’s enough for him. And that’s another thing,’ he added bitterly. ‘Her father didn’t want her to learn to drive because his own sister was hurt in a bad accident, so what must she do but wheedle me into persuading the poor man that I can teach her.’

      ‘Well, you are a very good whip, Giles,’ Hebe pointed out.

      ‘Yes, and I’m well known for not letting ladies drive my teams, so Father puts two and two together, gets six and then finds no sign of me doing the right thing. And, of course, as he points out, it’s about time I was getting married and setting up my nursery and look at Lord Tasborough with one heir to his name already and that pretty little wife of his increasing again…’

      ‘Oh, poor Giles,’ Hebe said with indignant sympathy. ‘You have been giving your head for a washing, haven’t you? What are you going to do? Oh, listen, I think that’s Alex.’

      The door opened to reveal the Earl, his face breaking into a grin when he saw who was with his wife.

      ‘Giles! No, don’t get up, stay there.’ He bent down and gave his friend a powerful buffet on the shoulder, wrung the hand that was held out to him, and dropped to the carpet by his side. ‘Are you here to stay? Is that why I find you here flirting with my wife?’

      ‘He isn’t flirting,’ Hebe said, half-anxious, half-laughing. ‘He thinks I’m expecting twins.’

      ‘Good God!’ The Earl twisted round to regard both his wife and friend. ‘Are you serious? And what do you know about it, might I ask?’

      ‘He says he’s delivered a baby.’

      ‘But not twins,’ Giles hastened to say. ‘No, don’t hit me! It is merely that kissing your delightful wife is like trying to reach her over a pile of sofa cushions and either someone’s mathematics are out, or it’s twins. Or triplets…’ he added wickedly, ducking away from Alex’s punch.

      ‘Oh, stop it!’ Hebe cried, slapping at black and blond heads impartially. ‘I might as well have two more small boys on my hands as you men. Giles is staying until we go back to Tasborough: he is having a perfectly horrible time at home. Giles, tell him.’

      Giles recounted his story again. When he reached his father’s reaction to his plan to sell out, Alex went quite still, then simply reached out and gripped his arm. Giles found his vision suddenly blurred and rapidly finished the rest of his tale.

      ‘Just how angry is the General?’ Alex asked. No one ever referred to Lord Gregory by his title.

      ‘Angry enough to disinherit me.’

      ‘Can he?’ Alex enquired.

      Giles shook his head with a rueful grin. The morning’s final, painful, interview was beginning to seem less painful and more farcelike now he could talk about it. ‘There’s the entail, and the money I inherited from Grandmama Ingham—he can’t do a thing about either of those. If he really puts his mind to it he can find about sixty acres and a couple of farms—and the furniture, of course—to leave elsewhere. But he doesn’t mean it.’

      ‘What will you do?’ Hebe was still not reassured.

      ‘I am under orders from Mama to come up to town and embark upon a life of reckless dissipation.’ He twisted round to smile at Hebe. ‘I’d already taken rooms at Albany as a pied-à-terre, but they aren’t fitted out yet, which is why I had hoped you’d take me in.’

      ‘Dissipation? But why?’

      ‘She says he will soon hear all about it and order me back home to be lectured. At which point he will decide that the best thing for me is to rusticate on the estate for a while.’

      Hebe laughed. ‘How clever of your mama! Of course, if he thinks you don’t want to do it and would rather be in London, then helping with the estate will be just the thing to punish the prodigal, and after a few weeks he’ll be so used to it, and will enjoy having you there so much, that you will get exactly the result you want.’

      ‘Has it ever occurred to you that your mother is a better strategist than your father?’ Alex enquired.

      ‘Frequently. She always outflanks him and the poor man can never understand how she has done it.’ He shifted his position and one hand flattened a sheet of paper, which crackled. ‘Sorry, I appear to be crushing the letter you were reading.’

      ‘Oh, goodness!’ Hebe exclaimed, taking the crumpled pages. ‘I had quite forgotten in the excitement of Giles arriving. It is from Aunt Emily,’ she explained to the two men. ‘She sent a footman with it this morning, just after you had left, Alex. It is the most incredible thing. She says she is to send Joanna to stay with her great-aunt in Bath because she is in disgrace.’

      ‘I will go into the library.’ Giles started to get up. ‘You will want to discuss this in private.’

      ‘No, stay, please. You are one of the family, Giles, and besides, you are staying here and will have to know what is going on.’ She started to re-read. ‘And it is not as though it is anything actually, er, indelicate.’

      ‘What, not an elopement with the apothecary or the unfortunate results of an amorous encounter with the footman?’ Alex enquired, earning a look of burning reproach from his wife.

      ‘I still think I had better leave,’ Giles persisted. ‘I can go to an hotel until my rooms are ready at Albany. Your aunt will want to call and

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