chin rose as she looked up at him. ‘I will decide what I will or will not do, my lord!’
His grey eyes narrowed to silver slits. ‘You already have a bump on your forehead half the size of a hen’s egg. Do not make it any worse out of stubborn defiance of me!’
Lily drew her breath in sharply. ‘You are arrogant, sir, to assume your opinion on anything would ever affect my own behaviour one way or the other!’
‘Arrogant? Possibly,’ Giles acknowledged with a derisive inclination of his head. ‘But, in this particular case, I have no doubt I am necessarily so,’ he added drily, heartily relieved to realise that he and Lily Seagrove had returned to the natural state of affairs between them.
Her cheeks flushed with irritation and her eyes flashed. ‘You—’
‘What on earth is—Oh, Lord Giles?’ Mr Seagrove looked slightly perplexed as he stood in the now-open doorway to the family parlour and recognised the gentleman standing in the darkness of his hallway. ‘And Lily …’ The vicar looked even more puzzled as he saw his daughter standing slightly behind Lord Giles.
‘Lord Montague and I met outside, Father,’ Lily spoke up firmly before ‘Lord Montague’ had any opportunity to say anything that might add to her father’s air of confusion.
Once seated at the kitchen table in order to allow the clucking Mrs Jeffries to apply a cold compress to the bump on her forehead—not because Giles Montague had instructed that she do so but because it was the right and sensible thing to do!—Lily could not help but think again of those few minutes of awareness as she stood outside the vicarage with Giles Montague….
Chapter Four
‘So exciting! I am sure Monsieur André is beside himself at the thought of baking all those delicious cakes for the garden party! And Mrs Stratton has us all polishing and cleaning the silver until we can see our faces in it,’ Daisy, a plump and pretty housemaid at Castonbury Park, chattered on excitedly. ‘Do you think the old Gypsy woman will be there again this year to tell our fortunes? Oh, I do hope so! Last year she said a tall, dark and handsome stranger would sweep me off my feet. I haven’t chanced to meet him yet, but I live in hopes—’
It was now two days since Lily had literally clashed heads with Giles Montague outside the vicarage, and having already made several calls in the village on her way to Castonbury Park today, she was now only half listening to Daisy as the maid chattered non-stop on the walk down the hallway in the direction of Mrs Stratton’s parlour.
‘She prefers to be called a Romany. And her name is Mrs Lovell,’ Lily supplied, the making of her new gown and the well-dressing celebrations having taken up more of her own thoughts and time than she would have believed possible, as she dealt with the wealth of arrangements to be put in place before the ceremony next week.
She had also, after more enquiries from curious neighbours than she cared to answer, found a style for her hair which managed to cover the discolouration which still remained upon her brow despite the swelling having disappeared.
Daisy’s ‘tall, dark and handsome stranger’ could easily be a description of Giles Montague. Lily’s own dislike of that gentleman did not appear to have prevented her from acknowledging that he was indeed tall, dark and very handsome. After twelve years away from home, with only infrequent visits back to Derbyshire, he could also be considered something of a ‘stranger’ to most of the people in Castonbury. Daisy was certainly young enough not to have too many recollections of him.
Giles Montague’s return had now resulted in the whole of the estate and household staff being ‘swept off their feet,’ as he began to issue orders and instructions for the work he considered needed to be done before Castonbury Park opened its gates to the village for the well-dressing celebrations the following week.
‘Oh, I hope I did not cause offence, Lily!’ Daisy’s embarrassed expression revealed that she was aware of the things said in the village concerning Lily’s true parents. ‘It’s just that Agnes said she saw one of the pretty Gypsy caravans on the other side of the lake yesterday. And the Gypsy—the Romany, Mrs Lovell,’ she corrected with a self-conscious giggle, ‘is so wonderful at telling fortunes, that I hoped it was her. It’s my afternoon off today, so maybe I’ll take a walk over that way and see for myself—’
Lily also wondered if the caravan might belong to Mrs Lovell, that elderly lady usually arriving at Castonbury several weeks ahead of her tribe, and so giving her the opportunity to go about the village selling the clothes pegs and baskets she had made through the winter months. Her fortune-telling had also been a feature of the well-dressing celebrations ever since Lily could remember. Whether or not those fortunes ever came true did not seem to matter to the people in the village, as they, like Daisy, simply enjoyed the possibility that they might—
Lily’s wandering thoughts came to an abrupt end as she heard the sound of raised voices from down the hallway. Or rather, a single raised voice….
‘—do not say I did not warn you all! And do not come crying to me when he succeeds in killing His Grace!’ There was the sound of a door being forcibly slammed.
‘Uh-oh, it’s Mr Smithins, and he sounds as if he’s on the warpath again!’ Daisy whispered in alarm as she clutched Lily’s arm. ‘I’d better get back to me polishing!’ She beat a hasty retreat back to the kitchen just as Smithins appeared at the end of the hallway, the scowl on his face evidence of his bad temper.
A short, thin and balding man, he possessed an elegance of style about his demeanour and dress that some might consider foppish. Lily had observed that he was also something of a despot in regard to the other household servants at Castonbury Park, considering himself far above them in his position as personal valet to the Duke of Rothermere. Hence Daisy’s hurried departure back to her work in the kitchen; Smithins was perfectly capable of boxing the young maid’s ears if he felt so inclined!
His scowl deepened as he strode down the hallway and caught sight of Lily watching him.
She grimaced self-consciously as she felt herself forced into speech. ‘Is anything amiss, Mr Smithins?’
His eyes narrowed. ‘Mark my words, it will all end in tears!’ he muttered as he pushed past her before continuing on his way without apology.
Lily felt slightly unnerved as she turned to look at the valet, but more by his angry claim of some unnamed person ‘killing His Grace’ than his rude behaviour to her just now. What on earth could have happened for Smithins to—
‘Ah, Lily,’ Mrs Stratton sighed wearily as she appeared in the doorway of her parlour and saw Lily standing outside in the hallway. ‘Do please come in,’ she invited softly.
Lily hesitated. ‘I have obviously called at a bad time …’
‘Not at all,’ the older woman assured wryly. ‘Smithins is volatile of temperament, I am afraid,’ she continued as Lily slowly entered the cosy parlour.
‘But … he seemed so vehement …?’
Mrs Stratton shook her head. ‘He is merely annoyed because Lord Giles refuses to heed his advice concerning His Grace.’
Lord Giles? Smithins’s warning just now had been a reference to Giles Montague’s behaviour in regard to his father?
The housekeeper
