Chapter 12 #2
“Why, Baron Winthrop.” Gabriel crossed to greet her father with warmth, wiping his hands off on his trousers. “You have caught me at my least ducal. Forgive the state of things. The afternoon escaped me. Had we planned this call?”
“We had,” her father said, smiling. The breeze blew his long white hair, which he usually wore in a queue but had gone without that day.
“But you are a busy man, Your Grace; I do not blame you for forgetting an appointment out of hundreds. You’ve cut them back properly.
Whoever advised you knew their business. My father was an avid gardener.”
“I had heard a thing or two about that, yes.”
Something in the way he said it made her father glance between him and Rosalie, though he was too well-mannered to remark on it further.
It was not long before Lady Chipping appeared on the terrace, gasping and waving.
She drew Rosalie in for a hug, then took her father off toward some discussion of art that Rosalie only half caught: a painting of Bologna her father wanted to purchase for his own collection.
This left her, for a moment, alone with Gabriel and his gardeners.
“This will do nicely for them,” she said, examining the nearest bed. “You have been thorough in your assignments, Your Grace.”
“I had excellent instruction.” He straightened, brushing the remaining dirt from his hands. She observed his fingers and had to look away when her stomach coiled pleasantly. “I really did not expect you today. Was there something particular you wished to discuss?”
“My father is discussing art with Lady Chipping. He invited me to come along. But now that I am here...” She took a few steps back from the gardening crew, not wanting to be overheard.
Gabriel followed wordlessly, and they quickly fell into step, walking down the lawn.
“There is a ball this Friday. I assume you have been invited to it?”
“You will have to be more precise.”
“How very in demand you are. It is being hosted by the Peacheys.”
“Oh, Good Lord.”
“Their daughter is getting married. The ball is in celebration of the couple.”
He paused once they were further away. The sun cast its golden light on him. It struck her how handsome he was, undone like this. “Should we attend?” he asked lightly.
“We could redeem ourselves,” she joked.
“Sensible.” A silence fell that was not entirely comfortable, and he broke it before she expected him to. “And how did you find your visit to Mr. Sinclair?”
“Pleasant, but I got a megrim.”
“Not from the man?”
“From the sun,” she quipped in return. “We are getting on well, if that is what you are wondering about. He has taken up painting again, in fact. He has built himself a studio.”
“How industrious of him.”
She did not offer anything further. It was not dishonesty exactly to say nothing more, only a private wish to leave Mr. Sinclair some small corner of himself that belonged to no one’s gossip—at least not until she had answers about his female visitor.
Gabriel’s jaw ticked, though his expression otherwise remained perfectly composed. “But yes, I am glad to hear it is progressing so well.”
“You say that, and yet...”
“What?”
She looked at the horizon. “Do you wish it were progressing faster?”
“Have I given you that impression?”
“You must answer my question first.”
“Ah. You would instruct me in manners as well as botany.”
“And hygiene, perhaps.” She tilted her chin at the dirt on his shirt and vest. “Though I suppose it’s rather a romantic sight, like in the stories.”
“You must read some funny stories—when you are not reading Shakespeare.”
“I never did thank you for that intervention at the musicale.”
He smiled, and it lit up his whole face, making him look younger. They were saved from whatever foolish remark might have come next by a footman, who called for his master from a proper distance away.
“Your Grace. Mr. Ashcroft has arrived and asks urgently for a moment of your time.”
Something shuttered behind Gabriel’s face. “The cousin, Mr. Ashcroft?”
“Yes, Your Grace. He is waiting in the entrance.”
Gabriel licked his lips. “Well then, show him to the study. I will be along directly.” He glanced at Rosalie. “Family business. I shan’t be long. Go and find your father.”
He excused himself toward the house, and Rosalie found herself drifting after him at a distance.
She was not deliberately shadowing him, only wandering in the general direction of the house as he had directed her.
It was hardly her fault that the doors to his study were on the way, and that they were ajar when she arrived.
You are eavesdropping for the second time today on conversations that don’t concern you, she scolded herself, leaning against the wall and inching closer, her hands running along the molding midway down.
Your good breeding went all out of you the moment you kissed the duke. Now with these raised voices...
“I have only until April’s end, Your Grace. I swear it on my life. Margaret is unwell, and the physician’s bills alone have already run us nearly to ruin. These laws, and the grain... We are bleeding more money than can be brought in.”
“But you asked the same of me in December, Peter, when I went up to Cambridge for Christmas.” Gabriel’s voice, when it came, was quiet but carried weight.
“And in August before that. And then so on. I gladly provided you relief every time, because I understood the circumstances to be exceptional. The war was not easy for any of us. But three requests in under a year does not describe exceptional circumstances. It describes some mismanagement. I saw the house—”