new name for an exciting new gentleman! It is just as well, for the society hereabouts is very staid, my lord. With the notable exception of my lovely young friend here and her charming uncle, I can barely tolerate most of them. However, I think I shall enjoy having you as a neighbour. I even approve of your dog.’
So did Miss Cranford, who had happily turned into Trefor’s willing slave as she petted him, all the previous fraught tension in her delectable, damp body beginning to disappear in the thrall of his dog’s spell. ‘Is Trefor a mongrel? Only I’ve never seen a dog that looks anything like him.’
Gray stared in mock affront. ‘Cover his ears! Don’t let him hear that, Miss Cranford! He will feel inferior.’ He bent over to scratch the shameless mutt’s belly, enjoying the way her eyes shyly locked with his for a second before she hastily returned them to the dog. ‘In actual fact, he is the result of two centuries’ worth of careful breeding. He is a St John’s. Rather aptly, bred to be a water dog to help the fishermen of that smelly port haul in their nets. They are excellent swimmers with the most amiable of temperaments. He’s come all the way from Newfoundland.’
‘Really?’ It was obvious she was a dog-lover. She had barely taken her eyes off Trefor since he had cosied up against her.
‘Indeed. Many moons ago, I was in the merchant navy.’ Gray had run away to sea within days of the momentous scandal exploding and had happily stayed at sea while it blew over, the dust settled and society quite forgot about him. ‘My ship was docked in that very harbour and one of the fishermen was offloading a litter of puppies, intent on drowning any he could not rehome that day. As Trefor was the runt of the litter, none of the other fishermen wanted him.’
‘And you took him?’ Her lovely eyes left his dog’s belly and locked with his, impressed. It had the strangest effect, almost as if he was suddenly bathed in sunshine that he never wanted to leave.
‘I couldn’t let the poor fellow die.’ The truth. Seeing Trefor’s tiny puppy face buried in a wrinkly bundle of black, fluffy fur, Gray had been smitten from the outset. He’d been the runt and empathised.
‘That is very noble of you, my lord.’ The softness in her eyes which had been wholly and exclusively for his dog a few seconds before was now directed at him. Bizarrely, it made him feel taller. ‘Why did you name him Trefor?’
‘Because it reminded me of home.’ Good grief—more truth and one he had never shared. Gray blamed the hypnotic copper flecks in her eyes. Eyes that were coincidentally exactly the same shade as his dog’s—minus the alluring copper, of course. ‘I grew up in Wales. As a child I played on Trefor Beach.’ With Cecily. Always with Cecily. The girl who had lived next door. The deceitful, conniving love of his life who had brought about his youthful downfall. ‘I adored it.’ As he had adored her until she had shredded his heart and stomped all over the remains.
Cecily’s treachery aside, life had certainly been simpler then. Back when he was able to avoid his father because his mother kept Gray out of sight. The beach had been his mama’s favourite place and she had been his absolute favourite person. Certainly the only member of his immediate family who hadn’t found him wanting. ‘I haven’t been back there for years.’ Not since his mother had passed, in fact, and had left him feeling like a cuckoo in a nest with only his overbearing father and equally staid and pompous elder brother for company, regularly disappointing the both of them simply by breathing.
That was when everything in his life had started going downhill—but at least he’d still had Cecily. Still clung to her and all they would have one day, biting his tongue and trying to please his father. An endeavour which had been ultimately pointless in the grand scheme of things, when Gray had never wanted to join the army or the church as good second sons were supposed to do. From his earliest memories, all he had ever wanted to do was raise horses. As a child he had lived in the stables. He’d loved animals. Had a way with them.
He found himself frowning at the buried memory, wondering why it had chosen today of all days to pop into his mind. Routinely, he avoided the past as a point of principle. It couldn’t be changed, so why ponder it? Especially when the moment always held more promise. Or disaster. That wish for a farm filled with the finest horses he could breed was nothing more than all those carefully laid plans had been. A disappointing mirage of a future fate had never intended for him. One he would have loved if things had been different and a fine example of why he preferred now never to look too far ahead or too far behind. He had mourned the loss of that dream almost as much as he had Cecily.
Yet there was something about Suffolk which reminded him of home. Ridiculous, really, when home was more than two hundred miles away and nothing in the universe could ever tempt him to return there. He ruthlessly pushed the memories away, knowing the unwelcome spectre of his past would not help salvage this mission. ‘Please allow me to compensate you for the dress. It is the very least I can do.’
‘It’s only a bit of mud. Nothing that won’t come out in the wash. I have plenty of other dresses to wear this afternoon.’
‘For Mr Hargreaves?’ A faceless man Gray suddenly, and irrationally, disliked.
She smiled and his breath caught. She was pretty beforehand, in a classic English rose sort of way, but that smile did something miraculous to her features. It turned pretty into beautiful. Achingly, uniquely beautiful. ‘For my aunt’s tea party this afternoon.’
‘She has invited half the county,’ said Lady Crudgington with mock solemnity, ‘which in Thea’s world means less than twenty. Aside from being staid, the local society is also distressingly small. The tea will be nought but a hot, claustrophobic room full of dullards. Unbelievably tiresome.’ Lady Crudgington wound her arm through his, her eyes twinkling with mischief. ‘You should come, too, young man. Introduce yourself. Meet your other neighbours and see first-hand how dire they all are, while keeping me entertained with your scandalous maritime stories. Shouldn’t he, Thea? I shall happily vouch for his credentials.’
* * *
Her hair was an unmitigated disaster. So horrendous it had made its way on to her unwritten list of her Worst Hairstyles of All Time. Not quite as bad as the epically awful Fuzzy Chignon of Eighteen Nineteen, when the combination of cold winter rain and Colonel Purbeck’s stuffy drawing room had created a gargantuan tangle of fleece-like spirals that had soared towards the ceiling—but dangerously close. Thea had caught Mr Hargreaves staring, perplexed, at the top of her head three times in quick succession as he sipped his tea, as if he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing either. Hair shouldn’t be vertical. Especially when it had enough pins in it to secure an elephant to the ground.
She resisted the urge to excuse herself to circulate among the other guests, knowing at best it was a flimsy excuse to wander past the mantel mirror and witness the mounting disaster for herself, as she had several times already. With every passing minute her wayward hair became even more wayward and the sight of it would only depress her. If she couldn’t fully tame her hair, how was she ever going to tame the streak of wayward selfishness that ran straight through her? The older she got, the harder it was becoming to behave when the urge hit and Impetuous Thea bubbled back to the surface.
She glanced at the door for the umpteenth time instead and tried to tell herself she was relieved that their new neighbour was not going to make an appearance. Another flimsy lie when she had spent most of the morning, all of luncheon and the entirety of Mr Hargreaves’ conversation thus far thinking about the way Lord Gray’s bronzed skin and intriguing muscles had looked, slicked with water.
Thea had never seen anything quite like it. Even as he had insisted on accompanying them to the boundary of the garden, the thin, wet shirt had been practically and gloriously translucent as he had chatted amiably about
