The Louise Allen Collection: The Viscount's Betrothal / The Society Catch. Louise Allen
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there was anything she could do to help.
‘It won’t do you any good to sit and brood, will it, my dear? No, I did not think it would. But you must not exert yourself too much yet.’ Mrs Gedding thought for a while then said, ‘I know, pot-pourri. Come along.’
Joanna found herself shown out into the back garden, a basket over her arm and a pair of scissors in her hand. ‘Oh, how beautiful!’
The garden was a mass of roses, of old-fashioned flowers, of weeping trees and winding paths scythed through the grass. The scent was magical and almost took her breath away.
‘I love it,’ said Mrs Gedding simply. ‘It has taken me twenty years to make it look as though it just happened by accident. Not many people appreciate it.’
‘It is Sleeping Beauty’s garden,’ Joanna declared. ‘Is there a turret hidden in the midst of it?’
‘No, but that is an excellent idea. I must ask Mr Gedding to have one built as a summer house. Now, my dear, the sun has dried the dew off the roses, so if you will be so good as to start picking heads from the ones that are just open, they will be perfect for drying.’
Joanna spent an idyllic morning exploring the garden. The maid brought out a chair and a rug and some larger baskets and she wandered up and down the paths, snipping rose heads into her basket, smelling the other scented bushes, thinking about the perfect place to position Sleeping Beauty’s turret. Occasionally she would tip her basket into the bigger one by the chair and sit and rest for a little.
Mrs Gedding came out with some lemonade and they talked of their families and the contrast between village and town life, then her hostess went back inside and Joanna sat, surrounded by her baskets brimming with roses, and finally let herself think about the previous day.
She probed her memory like someone exploring a sore tooth, very cautiously, wincing as she realised just how careless and gullible she had been and what dreadful danger she had escaped. Giles’s words of praise were balm to her self-esteem, but her conscience continued to prick her when she thought of her parents’ anxiety.
And how, of all the miracles, had it been Giles who had found her? On the thought he appeared from the back door, carrying a chair and a folding table, the maid with a loaded tray behind him.
‘Hello.’ Joanna’s heart gave a sudden, hard thud and she found that all she could do was to smile back at him. ‘Mrs Gedding thought we might like to picnic out here. The Squire has come back to arrange for a clerk to assist us this afternoon: there is so much paper we are unearthing that we are going to have to get it listed and ordered before we can start to make sense of it all, let alone mount a court case.’ He set down the chair and unfolded the table. ‘May I sit down?’
‘Oh, yes, of course, I am sorry, my wits are gone a-wandering.’ He looked exactly as she remembered him from London. This morning she had been half-afraid that it was all a delusion and it wasn’t the real Giles. Now, sitting beside him, watching the dappled shade from the tree cast patterns over his dark blond hair and returning the smile that crinkled the corners of his grey eyes, she knew he was real and a ridiculous, hopeless wave of love swept over her.
‘Gi…Colonel Gregory…’
‘Giles will do very well, Joanna.’ He leaned forward and poured two glasses of lemonade. ‘How are you today?’
‘Much better than I deserve,’ she replied ruefully. ‘I cannot thank you enough. I was praying for a miracle, and there you were! But I do not understand how you came to find me.’
‘Well, your father is laid up with gout and your mama hurried round to the Tasboroughs’ town house in a fine state of alarm, as you might expect, hoping that Alex would be there. But, of course, she had not stopped to think about Hebe’s condition. Fortunately I was staying and I knew Alex would not want to leave his wife, so I offered to hunt you down. You gave me a fair run for my money.’ He lifted a plate and offered it to her. ‘Ham? A slice of bread and butter? Or I think that is a slice of raised pie…’
‘Ham and bread, please.’ Joanna cut up her food, thinking over what Giles had said. ‘Hebe is well?’
‘Oh, perfectly, but she doesn’t rest as much as she should, and I put the idea into Alex’s head that she is expecting twins, so you can imagine the state he is in. I should imagine he and your mama between them are exercising Hebe’s powers to calm and reassure to the utmost.’
Joanna digested this information, decided she could not possibly ask why Giles thought Hebe was expecting twins and said, ‘How lucky you were still in London. I thought I heard someone say you had gone to see your father. Is the General well?’
Giles shrugged and Joanna saw the anxiety in his eyes, although he kept his voice light when he said, ‘Not entirely. He does too much, will not admit he is not in the best of health and drives my mother distracted.’
‘But you came back to town despite that?’ Joanna bit her lip, wondering if she had overstepped the mark and was being intrusively curious, but Giles did not appear to find her question impertinent.
‘We had a blazing row and he disinherited me,’ he said with a smile that did not reach his eyes.
‘Oh, Giles! How dreadful!’ Joanna’s bread and butter dropped to the plate unheeded as she stared at him. ‘But why on earth?’
‘I told him I intend to sell out. Oh, and there is the question of my marriage, of course.’
‘Giles, you should not jest about it,’ Joanna said, shaken to the core. ‘Of course you are not going to sell out. Why, you are going to be a general—’
‘Not you, too!’ He got up and took two angry strides across the grass, then turned back with a shake of the head. ‘I am sorry, Joanna, I did not mean to shout at you. My father is a sick man who is not getting any younger. He needs my help and support with the estate, even if he won’t admit it. And we are at peace now: I do not want to spend the rest of my career as a peacetime soldier, always on parade, or worse, putting down industrial unrest in the north of England. I did not join the army to ride down starving mill workers or hungry farm labourers.’
Joanna put a hand on his arm as he sat down again, his lips tight, his eyes shadowed. ‘I am sorry. That was very stupid and thoughtless of me. Of course, you must do what is best for your family. But has he truly disinherited you?’
Giles smiled, this time with real humour. ‘He doesn’t mean it. He will be regretting it now, although I doubt if he is regretting the strip he tore off me and the lecture I got on doing my duty and settling down with a conformable, suitable wife!’
Joanna took a drink of lemonade as the best way of hiding her reaction. So, the old general did not consider Lady Suzanne a suitable wife. Why ever not? She seemed eminently eligible to Joanna, but perhaps he thought her too flighty to make his son a good match. A faint glimmer of hope stirred in her breast. Would Giles heed his father? Would the General’s opinions make him reconsider?
But, no, surely if he loved Suzanne he would not give her up, and much as it hurt, Joanna would not want him, too. She could only think less of him if he was the sort of man who could turn from true love under pressure.
‘You are looking very serious,’ he said after a moment. ‘How do you feel?’
‘Much better, truly,’ Joanna reassured him. ‘I was just worried about you and your father. Now you are even further away, and it is all my fault. What if he wants to contact you and make peace?’
Giles laughed. ‘My mama, who packed me off back to town to indulge in a course of carefully calculated dissipation, assured me it would be at least two weeks before he would admit to any regrets in the matter and another two after that to digest the rumours of my behaviour, which my assorted well-meaning aunts would send back.’
‘Dissipation? But what…?’
‘The plan, according to Mama, is that he will summon me back in order to engage me in some salutary hard work