hated and despised Lord Giles Montague.
It was unbelievable, unacceptable, that Lily should have such thoughts about a man who had never made any effort to hide the contempt he felt towards her.
She clutched her parcel tightly to her breasts as she turned and walked the small distance down the pathway before opening the door and entering the vicarage. ‘My father is no doubt in his study writing his sermon for Sunday,’ she dismissed with a complete lack of manners as she stared at the top button of Giles Montague’s waistcoat rather than at the hard planes of his face.
‘You will see to putting a cold compress on your forehead immediately.’ Again there was no question or suggestion from Giles Montague, only that cold inflexibility of will that Lily had come to expect from him.
Her 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….
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