the High Street from the Pump Room and turned left into Bond Street, welcoming the stretch to his leg muscles as he climbed towards Queen’s Square and his father’s lodgings. If the old man discovered that Laurel Knighton was in Bath at the same time as his prodigal son it would probably give him a seizure. It was enough to give Giles a seizure, come to that, and his constitution was perfectly sound.
Neither of them had ever discussed Laurel directly in their punctilious, cautious, correspondence. It had taken his father a good month to recover from the worst of his fury over the collapse of his plans to marry his heir to the well-dowered girl next door. Then there had been the scandal over Giles’s flat refusal to do the decent thing and marry Miss Patterson instead, even after he had so gravely insulted her in the midst of the hideous row with Laurel.
Eventually the Marquess of Thorncote had simmered down sufficiently to write in response to Giles’s formal and polite letter informing his sire that he had removed his person—as instructed—as far as possible from the Marquess’s sight. That had taken a while to reach home as, to his father’s indignation, Giles had attached himself to his cousin Theobald’s entourage sailing for Portugal and Theobald’s new diplomatic post with the Court at Lisbon.
His father had replied, acidly, that his instruction to ‘remove’ himself had meant relocating to one of the family’s other country estates. Anyone but a stiff-necked ingrate would not interpret it as a direction to take himself off into a war zone at the age of barely eighteen. Giles would kindly bring himself back immediately if he wished to avoid falling even further into the Marquess’s ill favour. If there was any deeper hole to fall into.
But Giles found he had no desire whatsoever to go home and that had nothing to do with ghastly embarrassment, torrid gossip, furious or fainting young ladies, or fathers demanding satisfaction and reaching for their horsewhips. He wrote a temperate letter of refusal to his parent and made himself at home in Lisbon.
It had been, as Giles was fully prepared to admit, a young man’s over-dramatic solution to a monumentally unpleasant situation. But he soon found that life in Lisbon suited him down to the ground. He grew up fast and hardened up as quickly. Then the quiet gentleman who was believed generally to be the British army officer attached as liaison to the diplomatic corps revealed himself to be rather more than that and recruited Giles into his intelligence organisation. Giles had never imagined himself involved in spying, let alone risking his neck behind enemy lines, but he discovered that it was something he enjoyed and was good at into the bargain.
Now he was furious. He recognised that it was as much with himself for being thrown off balance as with Laurel, the infuriating female. The fact that the gangly, plain, awkward fledgling of a girl had turned into a lovely young woman—at least, she was lovely when she was not glaring at him—only fuelled his own bad temper, for some inexplicable reason.
He arrived at the doorstep of the elegant lodging house and spent a good half-minute getting his breathing under control before he rapped the knocker.
The man who answered was clad in a respectable suit of dark superfine with crisp white linen and had the unmistakable air of being a retired gentleman’s gentleman. He ushered Giles in and escorted him upstairs with a few unexceptional remarks about the weather. At the top he paused. ‘The Marquess has taken all of this floor for his accommodation,’ he said, low-voiced. ‘He is having a good day today, I am happy to say, my lord. His gout has eased considerably and I believe the anticipation of your visit has raised his spirits.’
‘How bad is his health?’ Giles asked bluntly. ‘I would rather have the truth with the bark on, if you please.’
‘You will wish to speak to the medical practitioner who attends your father, my lord, to satisfy yourself. I would only venture to say that the Marquess’s condition is always vastly improved when his mood is good.’
In other words the gout was thoroughly unpleasant, but everything else was in his head, Giles mentally translated. Whether his father was looking forward to taking the prodigal to his bosom in an excess of forgiveness or was pleasurably anticipating giving vent to nine years’ accumulated disapproval remained to be seen.
‘This way, my lord.’ The landlord tapped on a door, then opened it. ‘Lord Revesby, my lord.’
Giles stepped into a spacious sitting room with a pair of windows overlooking the square. His father was seated in a large winged chair with his left foot, heavily bandaged, resting on a gout stool and as Giles entered he turned to scowl at him from under heavy brows that had turned almost white.
But despite the grey in his hair and the white brows and the footstool this was not an old man, far from it.
He’s only sixty, Giles reminded himself. It must be maddening to find himself crippled like this, no wonder he is turning into a hypochondriac. He should be rampaging about the estate giving everyone hell and persecuting foxes and pheasants as he always did.
‘My lord,’ he said formally as he approached. ‘I am sorry to find you not in the best of health.’
To his alarm the Marquess lurched to his feet and pulled him into an embrace. ‘Giles. My God, it is good to see you again, my boy.’
When the grip on Giles’s shoulders relaxed he eased his father back down into the chair, restored his foot cautiously to the gout stool and sat down opposite, unbidden. He spent an unnecessary moment fussing over the cushion at his back so his father could deal with the tears on his cheeks. He had not seen his father weep since that awful day more than twenty years ago when both his mother and his just-born sister had died. ‘Sir, you should take care.’
‘Hah! I should indeed take care. Too late for that now,’ he added.
‘Surely not?’ Now Giles was here he realised how much he had missed his father, even at his blustering, noisy worst. He had loved him and hadn’t known it. ‘Father, your gout is obviously bad, but you are a young man still, in your prime. Nothing is too late.’ Even as he said it a superstitious chill ran through him. ‘Or is there something else, some disease you haven’t mentioned in your letters?’
‘No, there’s not a damn thing wrong with my health, only this hell-bitten foot and a lack of exercise giving me the blue devils.’ The older man shook his head, his expression strangely rueful. ‘Let me look at you. I cannot believe how you have changed, which is foolish of me. You’re a grown man now and you’ve the look of your mother’s family about you, and that is no bad thing—fine-looking men, the lot of them.’
‘I should have come home sooner,’ Giles admitted.
‘I do not think so. I can read between the lines, and your cousin Theobald dropped me a few discreet hints. You’ve been involved in more than Court affairs in Lisbon, I would guess. Scouting into Spain? Intelligence work?’ When Giles shrugged and smiled, his father nodded. ‘I thought as much. You would have probably been safer in a regular regiment, in uniform, damn it, than risking your neck without its protection, but you’ve been doing your duty for your country and I am proud of you.’
Giles could find no reply. His father had never said anything before to suggest that his only son was not a grave disappointment, a bookish, clumsy, serious boy. When he was younger, before he realised the implications of primogeniture, he had wondered why his father did not remarry and sire another son, a satisfactory one to inherit.
Now that had changed, it seemed. He sensed that it was not simply that he had
