Gabriel glared at the groom, who quickly dropped his own gaze to the ground, and then at his tiger, who was younger and only grinned his appreciation.
“Miss Neville, I’ve kept you waiting. How bad of me,” he said, and then watched as she turned her head to him and gave him a quick glance of impatience before managing a smile and curtsy.
“Nonsense, sir,” she replied sweetly, “I haven’t been here above a moment. I’m only glad it wasn’t me who kept you waiting. I hear you spent a restless night. It wasn’t the turbot served at dinner, was it?”
It might be too soon in Gabriel’s mind for mention of the buttered fish and spiced mussels, but he wasn’t going to let her know that, especially since he felt certain she’d somehow learned he’d poured himself into a bottle the previous evening.
“Lovely bonnet, Miss Neville,” he answered, motioning for the tiger to hop up on the back rail of the curricle as he personally helped Thea up onto the seat. “Are you quite sure it will protect your nose from the sun? Her Grace is most concerned about your freckles.”
She didn’t answer until he’d walked around the curricle and taken the reins handed up to him by the groom. “Her Grace would also like me half a foot shorter, but there are some things that are impossible. And I rather like freckles. I’m told they’re unusual with hair dark as mine.”
This statement of course compelled him to look into her face as the footman released the horses and they headed around the circular drive. “Debutantes take great care, even extreme measures, to avoid freckling. I doubt many of them so much as see the sun for weeks on end.”
“This may be my first exposure to English Society, sir, but I am far from a debutante. I was presented at a Christmas ball when I was only just past my sixteenth birthday.”
“Young but not unheard of.” Gabriel turned his attention back to his horseflesh. “Two and twenty now, sixteen then. That’s a half-dozen years, Miss Neville. You didn’t take? No wonder your mother was so ready to unload you on Her Grace. You’d about run out of possible suitors in Virginia, hadn’t you?”
He really should be hanged. Or at least gagged. But right now he was not in charity with the young lady, fetching freckles and long legs notwithstanding. She had sealed his fate, and she didn’t even know it.
But she only laughed and asked him what species of trees lined the drive ahead of them. She was too bright not to know he’d insulted her, which put him less in charity with her because she’d ignored his jab and left him feeling lower than a worm and now beholden to treat her better.
“Those, Miss Neville, are black mulberry trees. As opposed to white mulberry trees. A difference we English learned to our disappointment during the sixteenth century. They grow quickly, are easily replaced if one dies and one of the earlier dukes liked them, even though their berries are useless, either as juice or jam. Unpleasant would be putting it mildly. Worse, silkworms don’t like them.”
She looked again at the row of dark-leaved, fairly squat trees. “Silkworms? I didn’t know the English were part of the silk trade.”
“That’s because we aren’t, although certainly not for lack of determination. Our first King James ordered a field, farm, nursery of trees—whatever you’d call it—installed at Buckingham Palace. He followed that planting by ordering landowners all over England to purchase and plant ten thousand more of the trees. We were going to rival China in the production of silk, even sell our silks to France, rather than the way it was—and is—with France smuggling silks across the Channel to us.”
They’d left the black mulberry trees behind them as Gabriel turned his horses to the right, following the carefully constructed circuit that meandered about the estate, for the use and pleasure of ladies visiting Cranbrook Chase.
“The trees look healthy enough,” Thea remarked. “What happened?”
“Nothing, Miss Neville. Absolutely nothing happened. It seems the king was badly advised. Silkworms are attracted by white mulberry trees. Not black.”
“Oh, that is unfortunate. Could they not be persuaded to like black mulberry trees? If they were the only ones to hand, I mean.”
“Apparently not.” Gabriel turned to look at Miss Neville and suddenly realized this was no shallow puss. He could nearly hear the wheels whirling in her head, and she was spinning threads around him, tying him up with his own words. “I suppose one is attracted or one is not. Proximity doesn’t seem to be a factor. With silkworms, that is.”
“Oh, yes, with silkworms. With gentlemen, I suppose it’s different, and ladies should learn to be attracted to the only ones to hand.”
“I should have apologized immediately. You were going to get your own back on me, no matter how long it took. I just happened to give you ammunition with the mulberry trees.”
“Only after I guided you there when I recognized the trees. I know the history of King James’s mulberry trees. There are still some thriving in Saint James’s Park, and I was told to look out for them if one of my suitors were to take me there for a drive. Now I can scratch that off my list of suggested excursions.”
It was his own fault. He wasn’t at his best today, and she had clearly taken umbrage at being told to meet him at one rather than asked if she would care to drive out at one. She had him at a disadvantage, she knew it, and the mulberry trees might not be her only method of torture, meant to remind him that he’d behaved like a perfect ass ever since her arrival.
“We could keep this up, Miss Neville, I suppose, verbally jousting back and forth, save for two things. No, three. One, I’m still paying the price for a poor choice of comfort last night.”
All he did was pause to take a breath, and she was on him. “Yes, I heard, although it was made clear to me that drinking yourself stupid isn’t something you do on a regular basis. My maid, Clarice, is quite accomplished at ferreting out information, and your valet may be loyal, but his tongue is hinged at both ends. Forewarned is forearmed, sir. You may wish to remember that.”
“Jesus,” Gabriel said under his breath. But she’d heard him. They were sitting right beside each other, even as they were miles and miles apart, which is where he wanted her. Of course he did. “Number two, Miss Neville, which should be obvious to us both, you’re more clever than I.”
“And not beneath taking advantage of a man in pain,” she pointed out, smiling. “There’s also that. How is your head, by the way? My stepfather describes it as having one’s head stuck in a vise while the devil jumps up and down on one’s stomach. I’m only amazed anyone, having experienced this torture, chooses to repeat it. Her Grace drove you to it, though. I understand that.”
“That takes care of numbers two and three. Now the question remains—what are we going to do about it?”
There was that smile again, gorgeous in itself, but now he knew better. Perhaps he should be ducking, or jumping from the curricle, putting himself out of the line of fire.
“I don’t know what you’re going to do about it, sir, but if you’d remained in the drawing room, as opposed to making that ridiculous statement and bolting like a rabbit toward its den at the first sniff of the fox, you would have heard me inform Her Grace that I thank her for her thought, but I must decline…for obvious reasons.”
“I admire your sticking abilities, Miss Neville, while condemning my rash reaction, but do you really believe the duchess was at all swayed by your refusal?”
Her smile was sweet enough to sugar ten cups of tea.