You May Kiss the Bride(60)

The sea voyage alone, out of Falmouth, would be a lengthy one.

He had even booked his passage, which gave him a wonderfully solid feeling of certainty, although he could not deny that certain other, logistical issues had arisen.

When exactly would Livia be sent to the Hall? How would he get her there without giving rise to scandal? In what terms would he explain it to Grandmama? Should he let young Hugo Penhallow know he was definitely—definitively—the heir?

He looked at Livia again.

And realized, with an odd kind of shock, that it wasn’t only desire which drew him to her.

It was herself.

She annoyed him, bothered him, enraged him. Interested him; fascinated him. She made him think, smile, laugh. In so many ways, she was unlike any other woman he’d ever met.

It was going to be harder than he thought, saying goodbye to her.

Then again, nobody ever said the Penhallow way was going to be easy.

He heard again his grandmother’s voice in the Orrs’ garden, when she had grudgingly consented to his reckless engagement:

Never let it be said that a Penhallow failed to perform a necessary act, no matter how distasteful.

Livia said, jolting him out of his reverie:

“What will happen to Daisy after—after the wedding?”

“I’ve purchased her. I had thought she would be conveyed to Surmont Hall.”

“Yes, good,” Livia said, although she didn’t, in fact, give the appearance of being particularly pleased. Just then Daisy stumbled slightly over a dip in the gravel path, and Livia wobbled precariously in the saddle.

Immediately Gabriel reached out for her but she leaned away from his hand, managing to right herself on her own.

He felt absurdly hurt, but concern for her safety made him say, “I’m not certain you’re quite ready for the ride to Stanton Drew tomorrow. It’s all of thirteen miles.”

He saw her eyes narrow, and for a moment he would’ve sworn she was just about to agree with him; but she lifted her chin and replied with familiar, exasperating, endearing stubbornness.

“I have long wanted to see the Druidical monuments.”

“Then go in the carriage with Grandmama.”

“I won’t. She despises me.”

He started to disagree, but there was no doubt that relations between Livia and his grandmother had radically deteriorated, especially now that Miss Orr had come to Bath. Lovely, charming, proper Miss Orr, who would have made him the ideal wife; who would never dream of stepping foot in the kitchen, or snatching up a dirty mongrel on a crowded street, or kindly sitting with an obscure spinster at a ball. The safe, perfect, dull Miss Orr who, he remembered, was to be one of the party making their way to Stanton Drew, along with her lump of a brother and his dour fiancée.

Oh, it was going to be a delightful day. He glanced over at Livia, looking as cool and proud and aloof as any Penhallow. Deliberately he said, wanting to ruffle her, “Well, you have been making things rather difficult, haven’t you.”

Livia smiled at him, but mockingly. “Oh, sir, ’twas yer granny who said it first, after all! I’m naught but a pig’s ear, don’t ye see? Ye can’t make a silk purse out o’ me, I fear!”

They were riding side by side, but they might have well as been a million miles apart.

Grimly Gabriel set his jaw and did not reply.

There really was nothing else to say.



At the last minute Grandmama changed her mind about going to Stanton Drew. “I’m going to Great Pulteney Street,” she announced, “and partake of Dr. Wendeburgen’s cold whey baths. I’m in need of fortification, especially with tomorrow’s evening-party. We can expect the house to be filled to capacity.” She fixed a gimlet eye on Livia. “Maria Tenneson is driving in her landau with a Mrs. Thorland, and so your group shall be properly chaperoned. Try to consort yourself suitably.”

The weather was pleasantly cool and breezy on the road to Stanton Drew, and the sun alternately showed its face and disappeared behind the banks of clouds massing high in the sky. Livia began the journey riding next to William Thorland who, having tried and failed to accompany Cecily Orr (she blatantly ignored him), allowed his horse to drop back and amble alongside Daisy.

Livia discovered that she’d been correct about his soulful manner: she introduced the topic of poetry and saw his mournful face brighten. While he recited some lines of his own—an epic historical poem after Homer, actually quite interesting but rather long and sprinkled with a number of terms in the original Greek which were unknown to her—Livia’s mind began to wander, although she was careful to keep her eyes politely on Mr. Thorland’s face.

Last night, after she had dismissed Flye, she’d found her heavy boots and put them on. How ludicrous she looked in the mirror, clad in her frilled cambric nightgown and wearing those incongruous old boots. She had all the appearance of a comic actress in a farcical play. All she needed, she’d thought sardonically, was a chamber pot on her head to complete the stupid picture of herself.