An Improper Arrangement

She patted his cheek. “You’re such a good boy, Sunny. You always were my favorite grandnephew.”

“I’m your only grandnephew. I’m your only nephew of any kind,” he said to her departing back as she and her draperies floated out of the room.

Once alone, he looked toward the drinks table and considered his options.

Drink alone and get sloppily drunk so that he either slept on one of the couches or some kind servant found him and hauled him off to bed.

Or search out Rigby so that they could get sloppily drunk together. But if he did that, he’d end up telling his friend about Miss Neville and that wrong sides of the blanket business, about the duchess’s plan. It was bad enough Rigby had already voiced some suspicion about the coincidence of surnames.

Disclosing the circumstances of the young woman’s birth would take him beyond the pale, into the land of the unforgivable. He was already despicable to even consider becoming a part of his aunt’s plan. He was also, he realized with a jolt, fairly well trapped. If Basil refused to go to London and died, it would all be Gabriel’s fault. If Basil went to London and died, he couldn’t be held responsible. For—and in all charity to the woman—an air-witted flutterbudget, the duchess certainly possessed a fine way with backing her men into corners.

Gabriel grabbed up the wine decanter and brought it with him back to his chair. He’d drink alone; it was safer that way.

For the first hour, he attempted to think up ways he could get out of the briars into which his aunt had so neatly dropped him.

For the second hour, with all the concentration an intoxicated man believing he’s still sober can muster, he considered ways to extract himself and substitute Rigby into his aunt’s plans.

But by the time he managed to stagger to his bedchamber he had faced the truth. There was nothing else for it.

When this was all over, honor decreed he would have to marry the eyebrows.

Odd his aunt hadn’t figured that one out…

CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_02f559f5-99f6-5363-9209-badf4b062929)

GABRIEL WOKE TO what could reasonably be considered the taste of furry deceased mouse on his tongue, forcing him to stumble to the window embrasure and the tray his valet, Horton, had just placed on the round dining table.

Memory came slowly wandering back into his head, pointing out that said head could be in real danger of bursting open like an overripe melon. The duchess and the eyebrows had compelled him to dive into the bottle. More than one bottle. He hadn’t felt this miserable since the last time he and his trio of friends had gone out on a spree to celebrate…to celebrate…well, it had to have been something leagues more jolly than the reason he now felt as if he’d been ridden hard and put away wet.

“Good morning to you, sir,” the valet chirped cheerfully, his voice setting up an anvil chorus between his employer’s ears. “I have been waiting without, the tray at the ready, until I heard you moan—er, sounds of you stirring, sir. I brought coffee, against my better judgment, as I believe your stomach would do better with Adam’s ale in your present condition.”

“Water? You want me to drink water? Pour the coffee, Horton, or hand over the pot. As for whatever is beneath those covers, thank you, but no.”

Only after he’d singed his tongue on some of the hot, dark liquid did he ask, “What time is it, Horton?”

“Nearly noon, sir,” the valet said, his voice containing just a hint of censure. Horton was by and large a good valet, but he did on occasion assume a proprietary role, especially when Gabriel’s inconsideration of altering the man’s schedule came into play.

“All of noon, Horton? Shame on me.”

“Indeed, sir. Your friend the baronet sends his apologies, but as you didn’t seem to wish to seek him out last night, and the fun you promised him seems to be over, he departed just after breakfast this morning. He did also leave behind a note.”

So saying, Horton handed it over.

“The seal is cracked,” Gabriel said, looking up at the valet, who quickly busied himself removing the offending tray, leaving only the small silver pot behind.

“It may have been urgent, sir.”

Gabriel squinted at the note, attempting to make out Rigby’s chicken scrawl.

Horton lent his assistance by throwing open the draperies blocking out the noonday sun.

Servants could torture a man more than any regiment of foreign gaolers.

“Thank you, Horton.” Gabriel, although blinking rapidly, refused to acknowledge the man’s punishment. “There’s nothing else in the note save what you’ve already told me.”

“Which is why I waited until you awoke on your own, sir, yes,” Horton answered, as if explaining something to a child. “The duchess asks that you amuse Miss Neville this afternoon, as Her Grace will be occupied with the duke. She thought a drive about the estate would be pleasant, and that you and Miss Neville could become better acquainted.”

“Yes, that’s precisely what I need after a night of injudicious imbibing. Stilted conversation of no merit combined with a bumpy drive to soothe this damned headache.”

Even Horton apparently had no answer to that one. “Your bath is prepared in the dressing room, along with a suit of clothes I deemed appropriate for a day in the country.”

“Since Her Grace has undoubtedly already informed her guest of the excursion, please see that Miss Neville’s maid is told to have her ready and downstairs by one. And thank you. What would I do without you, Horton?”

“It’s not to be thought of, sir,” he replied, blushing to the very crown of his nearly bald head.

Horton had been with Gabriel for several years before his master had gone off to war, only to come home looking overly thin and haggard, and sporting bruises too fresh to have been left over from the day of the doomed battle. The valet had fussed over him, Gabriel had allowed it and now the man seemed to believe he’d gained some sort of privilege above that of a mere employee.

Which he had, and deservedly so.

An hour later, when the chime of the hall clock struck one, the sound buried somewhere under the squawking and wing fluttering going on in the grand-entrance-cum-aviary, Gabriel trotted down the staircase and opened, then quickly closed the door behind him, expecting to see Miss Neville dutifully waiting for him at the main entrance.

“Georgie, have you seen the young lady?” he asked a shirt-sleeved youth industriously cleaning one of the cages. “And please tell me that’s not today’s newspapers from London you’re laying in there.”

“Yes, sir, the last one. Mr. Hemmings always hands ‘em to me onct the family’s lunched. All they’s good for, Mr. Hemmings says, onct they’s read.”

“Wonderful.” The newspapers might be two days old before they reached Cranbrook Chase, but everything remained new until it was learned. “And the young lady?”

“Miss Neville? Yes, sir. She said as how to tell you she’d be outside, away from the moltin’, and you was to find her out there because you sure as check wasn’t goin’ to find her in here.”

Clearly the woman wasn’t shy about voicing her opinions. Gabriel smiled as he headed outside to see Miss Neville pacing back and forth in front of his town curricle. Both the groom holding his bays’ heads and his tiger watched her progress rather as if they were viewing a tennis match at Wimbledon.

She certainly was a sight to behold.

She wore a short, tight dark blue jacket that reached just to her ridiculously small waist. It was unbuttoned, to show the ruffled white lawn blouse beneath, with matching lace protruding from the hem of each sleeve. That in itself was intriguing, to say the least. But when he dropped his gaze below her waist, all the way down to her booted toes and back up again, it was to realize she must possess the longest legs in creation. Legs that went all the way up to her hips. Legs that, as she strode with purpose, her steps longer than might be considered ladylike, could put ungentlemanly thoughts into any man’s brain, probably never to be dislodged.

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.”