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Lily knew she would never forget this pleasure for as long as she lived.
“You are magnificent,” Gabriel looked up at her to praise wondrously. “A rare and precious diamond.”
At that moment, Lily felt like one.
Gabriel’s rare and precious diamond.
CHAPTER NINE
“I did not even know that I had a Great-Uncle Frederick, let alone that he had made a fortune in the Indies, which, having no other living relatives, he has now left to me!”
Lily made no move to rise from the chair where she sat reading a book in front of the window in the family’s small private parlor situated at the back of Truro House.
She did look up, her gaze guarded as she watched her father literally quivering with excitement as he waved about the letter he held in his hand. A missive which Lily knew had been delivered a short time ago and which her father had apparently now read, informing him of what appeared to be his unexpected good fortune.
Appeared to be, because—
“Oh, my dear, how wonderful.” Her mother put her embroidery aside, for once smiling happily as she rose to her feet to take the letter from her husband and read the good news for herself. “Twenty thousand pounds!” she gasped, raising a hand to her throat.
“It is a fortune,” the earl agreed.
“This means that Lily and I might have some new gowns this Season, after all.” The countess looked at her husband. “That we might buy a third carriage so that I can snub my nose at Lady Deidre Hanworth, who only has two! We might also provide Lily with a small dowry to sweeten and tempt a suitable but perhaps penniless gentleman into marrying her,” she added without a thought for whether, or how much, her words might hurt a listening Lily.
“My dear, we must not spend it all at once,” the earl reproved. “Otherwise, we will once again quickly be without funds.”
“It is twenty thousand pounds, Edgar!” the countess dismissed before turning to Lily. “You do not seem excited by our sudden good fortune, miss.” She frowned her disapproval.
That was because, unlike her parents, Lily was more interested in the source of this sudden good fortune rather than the spending of it.
When she was growing up, one of Lily’s many governesses had thought it a good idea for Lily to make a chart of her family tree, from Norman times to the present. The governess had done so because she believed everyone should know “from whence they came and to whom they are related.”
Lily had duly made the chart. It still hung on the wall in the now-abandoned nursery.
Which was how she knew, without the shadow of a doubt, that her father did not have, nor had he ever had, a Great-Uncle Frederick, living in the Indies or otherwise, who might have left him a fortune.
She and Gabriel had not made a definitive agreement as to when they would meet again after their last passionate tryst. They had only agreed that Gabriel would contact her again when he had arranged for them to do so.
Lily believed a meeting between them needed to take place now.
“Lady Lily Tremayne is here asking to see you, Your Grace.”
Gabriel felt his heart falter in his chest upon hearing his butler’s announcement.
Lily was here?
There had to be some sort of mistake.
Gabriel’s thoughts raced as he slowly leaned back in the chair behind the desk in his study.
He had been keeping himself and, consequently, Jacobson, busy by writing letters to his estate managers in response to their monthly reports on the half dozen country estates owned by the Duke of St. Albans. He had done so in the hope of distracting his thoughts from thoughts of seeing Lily again.
The distraction had not been a successful one.
His thoughts had not strayed from thinking of her, even for a moment.
“Are you sure she did not ask for my daughter?” Gabriel knew Chloe had gone out for a ride in the park after luncheon, accompanied by two grooms. He had assumed it was her intention to meet with friends there.
If it was, then it would appear Lily was not one of them.