Not that Lily needed to see that arrogantly mocking face clearly to know what he looked like; each and every one of those dark and saturnine features was etched into her memory! Cold grey eyes beneath heavy brows, a long and aristocratic nose, hard and chiselled cheeks, the wide slash of his mouth invariably thinned with scorn or disdain, the strength of his jaw tilted at a haughty angle.
She moistened her lips before choosing to answer his initial challenge rather than the second. ‘It is impossible to do anything other than walk in the grounds of Castonbury Park when one has been visiting at the house, my lord.’
‘Indeed?’ he drawled in a bored tone, holding his skittish mount in check without apparent effort. ‘And whom, might one ask, can you have been “visiting” at Castonbury Park, when most of my family are away or in London at present?’
Lily’s cheeks flushed at the derision in his tone. ‘I came to deliver some of last year’s jam to Mrs Stratton from our own cook,’ she revealed reluctantly.
‘Ah.’ He nodded that arrogant head, a contemptuous smile curving his lips, no doubt at the knowledge that Lily had been visiting below stairs rather than above.
Now that she could see Lord Giles’s face better Lily realised that there was, after all, something slightly different about him than the last time she had seen him. ‘You appear to have a smudge of dirt upon your jaw, my lord,’ she told him with a feeling of inner satisfaction at his appearing less than his usual pristine self.
He made no effort to raise a hand to remove the mark. ‘I believe, if you were to look a little closer, you would find that it is a bruise, and not dirt,’ he dismissed in a bored voice.
Lily’s brows rose. ‘You have taken a tumble from your horse?’ It seemed an even more unlikely explanation than the dirt, as Edward had told her years ago that the duke had placed all of his sons up on a horse before they could even walk, and Lord Giles’s years in the army would only have honed his already excellent horsemanship.
‘Not that it is any of your business, but I chanced to walk into a fist several days ago,’ he drawled in cool dismissal. ‘Mr Seagrove is well, I trust?’
Lily would much rather have heard more about the ‘fist’ he had ‘chanced to walk into’ than discuss her adoptive father’s health, which had never been anything but robust. ‘My father is very well, thank you, my lord,’ she assured huskily, still staring curiously at the bruise upon his jaw. ‘How did you—?’
‘Please pass along my respects to him when next you see him.’ Lord Giles nodded distantly.
Obviously the subject of that ‘fist’ was not for further discussion, which only increased Lily’s curiosity as to who would have dared lay a fist upon the aristocratic jaw of Lord Giles Montague. Whoever he might have been, Lily knew a desire to shake the gentleman by that very same hand! ‘Certainly, my lord.’ Her tone was dry at the obvious omission of any of those respects being paid towards her; Giles Montague had not so much as raised his tall hat in her presence, let alone offered her polite words of greeting!
Because, as they were both only too well aware, there could be no politeness between the two of them after the frankness of their last conversation together. Not now. Or in the future. Lily disliked Giles Montague with a passion she could neither hide nor disguise, and he made no effort to hide the contempt with which he regarded her and her questionable forebears.
‘You have come home to visit with your father, my lord?’ She offered a challenge of her own.
Those grey eyes narrowed. ‘So it would appear.’
Lily raised dark brows at his challenging tone. ‘And I am sure His Grace will be gratified to know you at last feel able to spare him time, from what I am sure has been your … busy life in London, these past months.’
Giles’s expression remained unchanged at this less than subtle rebuke. A rebuke which told him all too clearly that Miss Lily Seagrove had heard something at least of his rakish behaviour in London these past nine months. ‘If I had known you were counting the days of my absence perhaps I would have returned sooner …?’
Colour brightened the ivory of her cheeks even as those moss-green eyes sparkled with temper at his obvious derision. ‘The only reason I would ever count the days of your absence, my lord, would be with the intention of thanking God for them!’
Giles looked down at her from between narrowed lids. As a young child Lily Seagrove had been as wild and untamed as might have been expected, given her ancestry. Her long curly black hair had seemed always to be in a loose tangle about her thin and narrow shoulders, smears of mud and berries invariably about her ruby-red mouth, her tiny hands suffering that same fate and her dresses usually having a rip or two about them where she had been crawling through the undergrowth with his brother Edward on one of their adventures.
Quite when that untamed child had become the composed and confident young lady Giles had met just over a year ago he was unsure, only knowing that he had returned home to find that his brother Edward was completely—and quite unsuitably—infatuated with the beautiful young woman Lily Seagrove had become.
The beautiful young woman she undoubtedly still was….
Her hair was just as black and abundant as it had ever been, but without her bonnet it was visibly tamed into becoming curls at her crown, with several of those shorter curls left to frame the delicate beauty of her face which boasted smooth, ivory skin, moss-green eyes surrounded by thick dark lashes, a tiny upturned nose, high cheekbones and full and sensual lips above her pointed and very determined chin.
She wore a dark brown velvet pelisse over a cream and fashionably high-waisted gown; her tall body was slender, the swell of her breasts covered by a wisp of delicate cream lace, matching lace gloves upon her hands, and tiny boots of brown leather upon her feet, the latter obviously out of deference to her walk about the countryside rather than fashion.
Yes, that wild and seemingly untameable child had grown into this beautiful and alluring woman of composure and grace. But, nevertheless, she was still one who had been, and always would be, a foundling of questionable ancestry and who was, and would ever remain, socially inferior to each and every member of the Montague family. It was an indisputable fact she still resented having heard from Giles’s own lips a year ago, if the anger that now burned so brightly in Miss Lily Seagrove’s moss-green eyes was any indication!
He gave a haughty inclination of his head. ‘I am sure your prayers this evening will not be quite so full of gratitude on the subject.’
‘I might always pray for your visit to be of short duration instead, my lord,’ she returned with false sweetness.
Giles permitted himself a hard and humourless smile. ‘I am sure that we both might pray for it to be so!’
She blinked up at him. ‘You do not intend your visit to Castonbury Park to be of long duration …?’
In truth, Giles had no idea how long he would be able to endure being in the home where he would be reminded, on a daily basis, of all that the Montague family had lost—namely Jamie and Edward, the eldest and the youngest sons.
He quirked mocking brows. ‘No doubt it would please you if that were to be the case?’
‘As you made so clear to me on the last occasion we spoke, my lord, it is not for someone as lowly as I to be pleased or displeased by any of the actions of a member of a family as superior to myself as the Montagues!’ Those moss-green eyes met his gaze with unflinching challenge.
She really was quite remarkably beautiful, Giles noted admiringly, as she stood there so tall and proud, with her cheeks flushed and those green eyes glittering angrily. In fact, Miss Lily Seagrove was far more beautiful than any of the numerous women Giles had known so intimately in London these past nine months.
It was a thought totally out of keeping with the strained nature of their acquaintance. ‘Even you must acknowledge it really would not have done, Lily …?’ Giles quirked a dark brow.