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He went to argue, paused, and then shouted some more. “You knew I wanted to talk to you before I left!”

“About ‘this,’ as I recall it. ‘This.’” Lottie stood and folded her arms in case she was tempted to fling them around his neck and thank him for coming, which would not do at all until all her hopes were properly confirmed. “Whatever ‘this’ was supposed to mean.”

“Well, by ‘this’…” He flapped an awkward hand between them again, his voice rising. “I obviously meant that I wanted to talk about us!” The hand rotated ahead. “Going forward. And I wanted to show you around the estate properly. And you bloody well knew that I wanted you to help me train Hercules!”

“And he bought your family all those peas,” said a grinning Kitty, butting in.

“Yes, I did.” His angry, ice cream–covered finger jabbed again.

“I bought your family blasted—” He stopped shouting for a moment and winced again, remembering that that was yet another thing he had neglected to mention to her in the last few days.

He raked a hand through his hair, oblivious that he was coating it in icing and melted ice cream, and sucked in a calming breath. “Lottie… I—”

It was at the precise moment that the constable charged in.

“Is this the rude gentleman that you would like me to remove?” The constable looked first to the waiters and then to her.

How steam didn’t shoot out of Guy’s ears was a miracle. “I am not a rude gentleman, I am her fiancé! And I’d like to see you try and remove me!”

“Is he?” The constable frowned at Lottie.

“Not that I am aware,” she replied as a giggle threatened to escape. Before it did, Guy’s temper snapped.

“If you think that you can just ruin me for all other women and not marry me, Lottie Travers, you have another bloody think coming! We are getting married, Valkyrie, and that is that!” Noticing that his arms were flailing, he folded them and glared.

“Give me one good reason why.”

His brows knitted into one dark, solid line and he threw up his palms again. “Because I bloody love you, don’t I.” Most of her insides melted on the spot as both Kitty and Portia sighed beside her. “And you love me too, don’t you?”

She wanted to say yes but Miss P’s words of caution still echoed in her ears. She could not make him do something that he would ultimately regret. She would not be able to bear that. “Your mother does not approve of me.”

He walked toward her and took her hand. His stormy eyes intense. Vulnerable. His thumb caressing the sensitive flesh of her palm and instantly setting her nerves dancing. “Do you love me, Lottie?”

“I am a companion and you are a viscount and—”

“For the love of God, woman, just answer the question.”

Should she be honest or should she, like Miss P had with her marquess, set him free of all the obligation he felt so that she wouldn’t have to be that obstacle between him and his family? “I don’t know.”

He grabbed her arms from where she had hidden them behind her back. “Say that again where I can see that your fingers are uncrossed, because I know you cannot lie if they aren’t.”

“She loves you.” Kitty interrupted again.

“Stop trying to be noble and just tell him the truth, Lottie.” Then as an aside to Guy, her incorrigible friend said, “She’s been in bits since yesterday.

Absolutely heartbroken. In all the years I have known her, I have never seen Lottie so besotted by a man. ”

“Me neither,” added Portia begrudgingly. “But I’ll make sure you’re the first to the guillotine if you break my friend’s heart!”

“Oh, do shut up, Portia,” said Kitty, dragging her away. “You are ruining the most perfect romantic moment.”

“Well?” Guy smiled as he traced a finger down Lottie’s cheek, coaxing a smile from her too. “Do you?”

“I might.” His smile quickly stretched into a grin while Lottie’s faded. “But your mother—”

“Let me deal with my mother.”

There was a cough and suddenly Longbottom appeared from the crowd.

“On the subject of Lady Wennington…” He held up a letter, which Guy went to snatch, but the butler pulled it away.

“I was told that I had to hand this personally to Miss Travers at the opportune moment, my lord. Her and no one else.”

He handed it to her with a wink. “You’ll want to open that now, Lottie, and know that I would have told you if I could have, but Lady Frinton pays my wages and I have mouths to feed too.”

Lottie cracked the seal, then read the missive’s contents with an increasingly dropping jaw.

My dearest future daughter-in-law,

Please forgive me for all the horrid things that I said to you yesterday.

I never meant a word of it. However, we both know how stubborn my exasperating son is.

It was obvious to me that there was a frisson between you that first day you threw all that soup over him.

But when Longbottom informed my sister that he had caught the pair of you kissing and then Guy ran away sulking, we knew that we had to intervene.

I will confess, Almeria and I did everything we could to thrust the pair of you together, but neither myself nor my sister had any hand in Miss Maybury’s and Lady Lynette’s malicious complaint.

However, once they made it, it seemed a waste not to use the great gift that those two awful idiots had given us… after all, if I want my son to turn left, he will always stubbornly turn right!

But you were right too, dearest Lottie.

Guy always had to leap off the cliff himself. But he turns thirty today and I am impatient for him to start his life with you, so please do not hate me for pushing him to that cliff’s edge. Or for tossing you so shamelessly over it to encourage him to follow.

You will understand all my necessary machinations better when you become a mother too. Tell my irritating son that I sincerely hope that he makes that day come as soon as possible as he owes me a house full of grandchildren!

With love,

Your Meddling Future Mother-in-Law

P.S. Kindly tell my stubborn son that it was all for his own good and he is welcome!

As Guy had read the same words as she had over her shoulder, Lottie turned to him and waited for him to explode. Except he didn’t. He simply shook his head as if all his mother’s machinations were par for the course and grabbed her hand.

“Now that that problem is dealt with, can we go back to Kent where we belong? I loathe blasted Mayfair and all the blasted people in it.” He glared at all the gawping diners for a moment before he started to drag her toward the door.

Expecting her to meekly follow when she had never been meek a day in her life and wasn’t about to start now.

“Wait!” She planted her feet before they left the shop. “I am not sure I can marry you. Not with the gaping chasm between us.” She held out her hands a foot apart.

He frowned even harder than he had been, if that was possible. “You know that I have never been one for airs and graces and I have certainly never given a damn that you are a confounding companion, Lottie Bloody Travers. You know that!”

“Just as I’ve never given two figs that you were a vexing viscount.

” She was going to enjoy teasing this quick-tempered man for eternity.

“I was more thinking about the unbridgeable chasm between our outlooks. I’m a delightful ray of sunshine and you wander around with a perennial angry storm cloud hanging over your head—and I worry that we are going to drive each other to distraction as a result. ”

“Of course we are!” He more growled that than said it. “You’ve driven me to distraction since the day you knocked me off my blasted horse, woman, and I am resigned to the fact that you likely will until the day I die. But—”

He hauled her into his arms, not caring that he was smearing her in ice cream and chocolate cake too, or that absolutely everyone, inside Gunther’s and out, was staring at the scandalous public spectacle he was willingly creating.

“You do know what happens when sunshine collides with a storm cloud, don’t you, my infuriating, headstrong, reckless, and equally vexing Valkyrie?

” His scowl morphed into that rare smile she adored so much.

The twinkle in his dark eyes a sinful promise as they dropped to her lips. “Bloody rainbows, that’s what.”