‘Yes. He had dinner with us the other night.’ Lady Revesby looked directly at Gaby, her gaze frankly curious. ‘Something is wrong with Gray.’
‘His son had an accident, I am sure he told you.’
‘He did and apparently the London doctor has given him a most satisfactory report and little Jamie is not suffering as much as a headache now.’ The other woman was still studying her with those candid brown eyes. ‘Will you come and talk with me? I am supposed to be sitting down or my husband will fuss. I tell him that I am three months pregnant, not sickening from some dire disease, but he takes no notice.’ She stood on tiptoe and scanned the room. ‘Look, that alcove near the string quartet is empty. There is only the one sofa and we can spread out and not be interrupted and the music will mean we can talk in confidence.’
‘We need to talk in confidence?’ Gaby enquired rather tartly, but she followed Lady Revesby none the less. ‘And if you are worried about Lord Leybourne, then I suggest you speak to him about it,’ she added as they sat down. Lady Revesby shifted uncomfortably on the sofa, her eyes on her reticule. ‘That was not an accident just now when you bumped into me, was it? You knew who I was and you intended to speak to me.’
‘Oh, very well, I admit it. Gray said you were intelligent—which is one of the few pieces of actual information we managed to get out of him. That and the fact that he obviously likes you. Even Giles couldn’t get to the bottom of it and he and Gray always used to tell each other everything.’
The bottom of what, exactly? ‘Then perhaps Gray does not want even his friends to interfere with his life.’
‘Ouch!’ Lady Revesby turned a reproachful face to Gaby. ‘It is not interference out of simply curiosity. I owe him something to make up for the fact that I misjudged him for years.’
‘Really? What could Gray possibly have done to earn such enmity? I thought he was generally considered above reproach.’ She knew she sounded sarcastic and brittle, but she could not seem to help herself.
‘Oh, don’t be angry and sharp about it.’
Gaby started to rise and the other woman caught her hand. ‘Please, don’t go. Call me Laurel.’ After that sudden burst of confidence Lady Revesby went back to examining her reticule with painful intensity.
‘You can call me Gabrielle, Laurel. Listen, whatever it is in the past that worries you so, I have no desire to hurt Gray. If you confide in me I most certainly will not break your confidence and I have to admit to being curious about his wife, if that is what this concerns.’
‘I thought you might be interested. He is so silent on the subject that it is enough to arouse the curiosity of a stone! Well, as I said, we all grew up together. I did not know it then, but my father and Giles’s father always intended for us to marry. All I knew was that Giles was my friend—I was too young to have any other kind of feelings for him.
&nb
sp; ‘Then one summer, when I was just beginning to be aware of men as something...different, and particularly aware of Giles, I overheard him and Gray talking in the hayloft. I know now they were fantasising as young men will. But they were talking about Portia, my godfather’s daughter. She wasn’t much older than I was, but far more mature and very, very lovely. I did not realise that what I was overhearing was wishful thinking—I thought the two of them had been... That they had seduced Portia. I was so upset I ran back to the house looking for somewhere to hide and overheard our fathers—mine and Giles’s and Portia’s—discussing Giles and me becoming betrothed.’
‘Goodness...’ Gaby breathed. ‘You must have been confused and upset to put it mildly.’
Laurel grimaced. ‘I stormed in, all righteous indignation about the pair of them and poor Portia. But she had been eavesdropping, too, I discovered when she promptly rushed into the room and had hysterics. It was dreadful. I refused to have anything to do with Giles. Godpapa was insisting that either Giles or Gray marry Portia. They were furious and humiliated and said they would do no such thing because they had done nothing to deserve it. That set Portia off again. Then the two of them took off to London—Giles joined his cousin who was off to Lisbon on a diplomatic mission and Gray joined the army.’
‘Good Lord. They must have been very young.’
‘Only just eighteen. Gray’s father supported him and bought him a commission, although Giles’s father was livid that his plans for the pair of us were thwarted. They were estranged for some time, although it is all right now. But Gray felt guilty about Portia because she almost refused to have her Season and was ice-cold to all her suitors when she did come out. So eventually he proposed and she accepted him which was a grave mistake by both of them because they really were not happy together.’
‘So he married her out of a sense of responsibility, even though he had done nothing beside indulge in some loose talk with his friend in private?’
‘She was lovely enough to turn a man’s brain to porridge,’ Laurel said ruefully. ‘Anyway, she died giving birth to the twins and, ridiculous as it might sound, I think he felt guilty because he did not love her.’
‘I can understand that, I think. All the time they were married he was probably wishing he had never proposed and that he wasn’t married and then, when she died, he would have felt awful because he somehow wished it on her. Poor woman.’
Poor Gray, trapped by his own sense of honour.
‘Poor both of them. Giles and I were lucky. We found each other again, years later.’
They sat in silence for a while as the string quartet worked its way through its repertoire of light music.
‘Is Gray unhappy now because of you?’ Laurel asked abruptly. ‘Have you turned him down?’
‘I—Oh, no, look. Gray is here.’
Chapter Eighteen
Gray emerged through the crowd by the doors looking starkly handsome, all in black and white except for a flash of ruby from his cravat pin and the gold of his watch chain across his admirably flat stomach. She knew how those muscles felt under her fingertips. She knew where the skin was unexpectedly soft, where the dark hair revealed and concealed, how Gray had twitched when her finger circled his navel and how he had laughed when she teased him for being ticklish.
He was not laughing now. His face was the bland mask he adopted for social occasions. There was a deceptive half-smile on his lips and that tiny frown line between his brows as he surveyed the room. Then he saw them and it deepened into a furrow as his eyes narrowed.
‘Oh, blast,’ Laurel murmured. ‘He’s seen us. He looks furious.’