Page 12 of The Lady Who Said No to the Duke

Now half the thatch was off and a pile of new straw and a ladder were propped against the wall. One of the windows had been boarded up and most of the wood was in poor condition.

‘There’s work in hand,’ Hal remarked, gesturing to the thatcher’s equipment and one window where the paintwork had been freshly done.

They were standing by the front door when they heard voices approaching and swivelled, as one, to stare at the entrance gate.

‘…hope you will allow our man to come and talk to your head gardener while we are away,’ said a female voice, clear and penetrating.

‘Lady Chesford,’ Thea whispered. ‘They say she can be heard in two counties when she’s on the hunting field.’

‘I know,’ Hal said with some feeling. ‘I have met her.’

‘One would not wish to copy,’ the penetrating voice continued, ‘but it seems such a charming conceit, I am sure he can come up with a different design for me.’

‘I…reports… Brownlow’s Italian…’ Their godmother’s softer tones were more indistinct. ‘Too formal,’ came clearly and, by the sound of it, from just outside the gate.

Hal turned, twisted the handle of the summerhouse door and, as it opened, pulled Thea inside. He closed it silently and went to look out of one of the cobwebbed windows. ‘They are coming in.’

‘Surely we are safe in here?’ Thea looked around at what must be a heap of garden furniture under a dustsheet, a stack of workmen’s tools and an upturned bucket.

Safe? Hal was clearly unwilling to encounter the Chesfords again, but why was she hiding?

Because I don’t want them speculating why I am here and not in London, preparing for the Season , she thought.

Lady Chesford was a gossip, and it would not take much whispering to make bricks out of straw, or mountains out of molehills. What was Lady Thea Campion doing rusticating? Unwell, perhaps? Or removed from an undesirable attachment? Has anyone seen her in the past few months?

Reputation was a very delicate thing, far more fragile than those spiders’ webs festooning the windows.

The voices were coming closer. ‘Such a charming little house. I wonder what kind of shelter would suit my garden? A Grecian temple seems a trifle cold. A Swiss cottage, perhaps? I see you have a chimney. How large is the fireplace?’

‘Curse the woman, she’s coming in.’ Hal looked around the room. ‘Behind that stack under the dustsheet, quickly.’

* * *

Fortunately, there was space between the wall and the bulging heap, but Hal still felt exposed. He lifted the edge of the cloth and peered inside. Dusty, and he only hoped for Thea’s sake there were no rats or mice.

‘Get in,’ he whispered, and she wriggled past him without a word of complaint.

Wonderful woman , he thought as he followed her, folding his long legs into the cramped space under an upturned wickerwork loveseat.

‘How do you know them?’ she whispered.

‘Hmm?’ He was focused on the voices outside and replied without thinking. ‘I have met their daughter, Penelope.’

‘Oh. Penelope,’ Thea murmured, then, ‘Ssh!’

Which was somewhat unreasonable, he thought, given that she was the one who had started talking.

He could well do without the memories of Lady Penelope, all big blue eyes, fluttering eyelashes and rosebud mouth.

It was enough to bring a man out in a cold sweat, and he had certainly needed a good hour and a stiff drink to recover from finding himself in close proximity to her on an otherwise deserted terrace.

His retreat had been abrupt and decidedly unmannerly, but effective, and the looks she had cast him afterwards were reproachful.

The door opened, bringing a draught to stir the dustsheets, and several pairs of feet trod into the room.

‘There is still a long way to go renovating it, as you can see,’ Godmama remarked. ‘But I believe once all the gaps have been sealed and the roof lined and the chimney repaired, it will be quite snug.’

Hal was feeling more than a little snug himself. Thea was pressed close against his side, warm and soft, although he could feel the tension vibrating through her.

The cover over them was, he guessed, an old sheet made of worn cotton or linen, and it let the light through from the open door.

He turned his head a little and caught her eye as she looked back.

Her eyes were sparkling with mischief and he found the laughter bubbling up inside him so that he had to bite his lip and look away to stop it escaping.

What was the matter with him? The consequences of being found like this by one of society’s most vocal gossips were horrendous to contemplate. Any desire to laugh deserted him abruptly, leaving him all too aware of another desire, one caused by close proximity to a very attractive female.

Hal made himself concentrate on what Lady Chesford was saying.

Surely the wretched woman didn’t want to stand in a dirty cottage for half an hour talking?

He assumed her husband was with her but, as usual, His Lordship was silent, years of marriage having taught him that attempting to interrupt was useless.

Suddenly Thea gave a soft gasp and stiffened. Hal saw her gaze was fixed on the boards at their feet where a very large, very black spider was marching determinedly towards the shelter of her skirts.

He leaned forward, almost dislocating his shoulder in the confined space, and put his cupped hand over the creature. They didn’t bite, did they? He wasn’t sure and braced himself not to make a sound if it did.

Now one arm was over Thea’s thigh and his whole body stretched across and between her legs. Potential spider bites became much less of a concern in his mind—keeping still and not panting were much higher priorities.

Finally, after what seemed like an hour, but was probably only a few minutes, the door closed, plunging them back into gloom.

Thea wriggled rapidly backwards and he wasn’t certain whether she was escaping the spider or if she had sensed his arousal. Hal lifted his hand, the spider scurried away, fortunately in the opposite direction to Thea, and he followed her out.

‘Hal, you are an absolute hero,’ she whispered.

‘I know it is irrational to be frightened of them, but it is the way spiders move, that scuttle and those horrible knees… I think they are still looking at the garden,’ she added, with a wary look at the window.

‘No, they’ve gone, the gate is closed. Goodness, what an escape! ’

Hal opened the door and she followed him out onto the little raised porch that ran along the front of the cottage.

‘Look at the state of you, Hal! Stand still and I’ll brush the worst off.’

It was a kind of penance to remain motionless, thinking about icy streams and Latin verbs while Thea ran her fingers through his hair, brushed the dust off his coat tails with the flat of her hand, dusted his shoulders down.

‘There. Now you must do the same for me.’

She smelled of dust and orange blossom, cold air and the herbal rinse she used on her hair.

The dark red strands coiled themselves around his fingers as he tried to pin back a tumbled curl, and one long hair came away as he brushed a cobweb free.

He let it go with regret and it drifted off as the breeze caught it.

Fortunately, her skirts recovered enough when she shook them out briskly and he was spared having to touch those.

‘Next time, remind me to dive for cover behind the curtains and not bolt out of windows,’ he said, rather more grimly than he had intended, and Thea glanced at him, a little frown between her brows.

‘I had not thought you someone to stand so much on their dignity,’ she said. ‘Or was it the spider?’

‘Oh, definitely the spider,’ he said. ‘Next time, please ask me to rescue you from a fire-breathing dragon or a raging bull and I will do that with pleasure. At least those only have four legs.’

Thea laughed at him, her face alight with mischief, and he felt something shift inside him, just as it had when he had looked down at her from the top of the tower. Not vertigo, but desire and, he suspected, something more. Which was, to put it mildly, inconvenient.

Hal winced inwardly at the word, so wrong to be applied to anything to do with the emotions.

Godmama had clearly thought she was acting for the best when she was faced with Thea’s unexpected arrival, but now he wondered whether it would not have been better to have told him to leave before he even set eyes on Thea.

But then he would not have come to know her as a friend, would not have been able to give her the advice which, he was certain, would enable her to deal with the question of her marriage in the best possible way.

The risk to his own feelings had to be secondary—just so long as she did not come to hate him.