Chapter Twenty
To Reginald’s great delight, Jessica’s mouth had fallen open.
“When you said ‘hall,’ I thought—”
“Oh, you didn’t expect this?” he said with a grin, helping her descend from the carriage.
It was not exactly cruel of him—cruel would have been to lie, and he had not lied. He would never lie again to his beautiful woman, even if it meant telling the truth beyond what perhaps other couples would expect.
But he had never lied about this.
“Llyne ‘Hall,’ you called it,” Jessica said, whirling around with a look of accusation in her eyes. “Llyne Hall!”
“And that’s the name of my home,” Reginald said innocently, though he couldn’t completely remove the grin from his face. “You don’t like it?”
“‘Like it’?” repeated Jessica in a sort of daze as she turned back to the house.
Reginald looked over her shoulder at the home where he had, eventually, been raised.
It was splendid, even he had to admit. The high windows let in a great deal of light, which was perfect because the thick, stone walls rather prevented it.
The terrace along the front was designed to catch the sun, as was the solar at the top of one of the towers. There were three.
“The fourth tower was destroyed in the Civil Wars,” Reginald said conversationally, stepping away from the carriage that he had asked to stop at the top of the drive. “One of my ancestors considered rebuilding it, but there were other things to worry about.”
Jessica was still staring, her mouth open. “It… It’s a castle.”
“Oh, I suppose it is, by the general and vague definition of a castle,” Reginald said casually. “Ouch!”
His future wife glared, though there was a twitch to her mouth that told him she wasn’t exactly angry. “Reginald, it has a moat!”
“Yes, it does,” he said with a grin. “Though once you have seen one moat, they all look—now that hurt!”
“And you deserved it,” Jessica shot back with pink cheeks and wide eyes as she looked back at their future home. “I said, no secrets—Reginald, you live in a castle!”
It was a castle, and it had a moat. Reginald had relished swimming in there as a boy, learning to row, fishing when he’d been permitted to.
Aside from a slightly dangerous run in with a pike that had grown to a stupendous length, he had always had a wonderful time there.
It was nice to be back and to be showing it to someone who would, he was sure, learn to love it much like he did.
“It’s been in the family for generations. I think it was Empress Matilda who gave a Blakley the permission to build here, and the Llyne title,” he said bracingly. “The moat was added on early, I have been told, but precisely where the trebuchet was left—”
“Reginald!”
“Fine, fine, we didn’t have a trebuchet. Probably.” Reginald grinned. “You’d be astonished what we’ve found in the attics, though. And there are cannons along the ramparts.”
“‘Cannons’—‘ramparts’?” Jessica stared in almost disbelief. “You’re pulling my leg.”
“Wouldn’t dare,” he said cheerfully. Seeing her here, it awakened something in him. Something he had not expected. “And it’ll be ours, all ours, Jessica.”
Theirs. A place where they could be themselves, far away from the crowds and expectations of Society. Here, they could just be, wandering through the fields, the gardens, down to the sea. Bathing in the moat. Picnics under the wide sycamores.
Reginald’s pulse jolted. It was everything he had not known he had wanted.
“I thought you’d want to see it from here, at the end of the drive, which is why I sent the carriage ahead with your mother and our things.
Most accommodating of her, to allow us these few moments together,” he said quietly.
Jessica giggled. The viscountess had seemed quite aware of what her daughter had been up to since the previous night, but she’d feigned the need to get inside quickly and encouraged the young ones to take their walk without her.
“We can walk to it from here. It’s not half a mile. ”
The woman he loved turned to him with an astonished expression, but delight dancing in her eyes. “And I am really going to live here? With you?”
The eagerness in her tone shot fire through Reginald. Her delight in his company, her eagerness to be with him… There was nothing more intoxicating. Nothing more warming.
Well. Except perhaps last night, when she had crept into his room in the inn, wearing nothing but a chemise and a hungry expression.
That had been particularly warming.
“I did not think that you would be this surprised,” Reginald said conversationally as they started to walk down the gravel drive lined with reddening oaks. “I mean, I am a baron. I am Lord Llyne.”
“Yes, but there are plenty of gentlemen with titles with absolutely no money and no house to speak of,” Jessica pointed out, her cheeks becoming as red as the leaves cascading down around them in the gentle breeze.
He stared, and when she would not meet his eyes he barked a laugh. “You thought I was penniless!”
“I thought you had little in the way of funds,” she retorted, her cheeks still pink, though she did at least meet his eye. Her smile was a little rueful. “Well, you marched into Stanphrey Lacey and asked for my hand without knowing a thing about me!”
“That is true.”
“And my dowry is not too poor, for all that I am the daughter of a viscount and not a duke,” Jessica continued with a giggle.
“It was the only thing I could think of at first that would have tempted you to ask a stranger to be your bride. I may not have Lilianna’s deep pockets, but I am a suitable match for anyone. ”
“Particularly a rogue baron like myself,” Reginald teased.
Just for a moment, he thought he had gone too far. Jessica’s smile faltered and she did not laugh with him, and he felt pain—the worst pain as he worried that he had hurt her.
Nothing would ever hurt him like the pain of losing Jessica. Thinking that she’d been out of his life… The only thing close, he was certain, would have been a bullet wound that refused to heal.
Going back to that… No. He would not do it.
Jessica slipped her hand into the crook of his arm. “Precisely. A rogue baron like yourself.”
It was a challenge to restrain his chest so that she did not immediately realize he had been holding his breath, but Reginald managed it.
He loved her. This woman, this complex woman, and though he knew she had forgiven him for the wretched way they had first found each other, Reginald also knew there was a bruise against her soul. He would not be the one to press against it.
He would not hurt his Jessica.
“I suppose,” she said quietly as they crossed the drawbridge and she peered down into the moat, “you have swum in that?”
“Many times. Peter was always a stronger swimmer than I was, but I can hold my breath for longer,” Reginald said, the tension around his ribcage slowly dissipating. “My sister—”
“Don’t tell me,” Jessica teased, “she was better than both of you.”
“How on earth did you know?” Reginald stared, genuinely astonished.
His soon-to-be bride giggled. “Just a feeling.”
As they stepped up to the great front door, the oak creaked open and a face appeared.
“Ah, my lord, how pleasant to see you again,” said Reginald’s butler, a short and stiff-backed man, with a deep bow. “Mrs. Tapper is escorting the viscountess to her rooms for her stay. And this must be the future Lady Llyne.”
Reginald was not surprised to see Jessica flush, though it did make him smile. Would there ever come a time when she would not color to hear her new title? A part of him rather hoped that it would never come. That she would always glow at the sound of his name attached to hers.
“Jessica, this is Evans. Evans, Miss Jessica Chance. So long as Mrs. Tapper is engaged, I’ll be giving the future Lady Llyne the full tour,” Reginald said, his pulse skipping a beat as he watched roses appear in the cheeks of his beloved.
“Any chance you could see that Mrs. Tapper arranges for tea and scones and cakes and the like in the orangery for about… Oh, I don’t know, an hour’s time? You may let the viscountess know.”
“Of course, my lord.” Evans bowed as Jessica stared in astonishment.
Only when the servant had disappeared behind a door did she hiss, “‘Orangery’? I did not know medieval castles had orangeries.”
“They don’t,” Reginald said blithely, taking her hand in his and relishing the sense of her fingers against his own. “At least, they didn’t. This one does. Shall we start in the drawing room?”
After being the houseguest of the Chance family at Stanphrey Lacey for so long, it was pleasant to be able to show Jessica that, though Stanphrey Lacey was grander, she was not exactly marrying into poverty.
There was the drawing room, after all, the large fireplace headed with a tapestry that had been in the family for six generations.
Then there was the dining room, with the suit of armor in the corner standing guard over his drinks cabinet, and the silver, which had been in the family seven generations.
Then there was the long gallery, which featured the seven generations themselves.
“My father and his fathers and all their fathers,” quipped Reginald as they stepped along it, the rushes beneath their feet giving a potent yet delightful scent to the air. “I come and walk here sometimes with my sister—I have no idea where she is, though. She must be somewhere about.”
“And your brother?”
He hesitated, and though it was only for a heartbeat, it was enough.
“I should not have asked. Father showed me the story in the paper, but I know it’s a sensitive topic for you.”
“No, I knew we’d have to talk about it sooner or later,” said Reginald heavily, though he squeezed Jessica’s fingers to show her that there was no topic barred, not for them. “He is a scoundrel, though perhaps not in the direction I had thought.”