surely reason enough for celebration on her part.
She did feel a slight pang of guilt on behalf of the Duke of Rothermere, but ultimately believed that he, and everyone else at Castonbury Park, and the surrounding village, were far better off without the oppressive presence of Lord Giles Montague and his conceited arrogance.
Lily felt happier than she had for days as she walked back to the vicarage. She had removed and was swinging her bonnet in her gloved hand, allowing the sun to warm her ebony curls as she strolled through the dappled glade, which she invariably used as a shortcut onto the road leading back to the village.
Spring was indeed here; the sun was shining, the wildflowers were in bloom, the birds were singing in the branches of trees unfurling their leaves after the long winter. Indeed, it was the sort of pleasant early evening when one was assured of God’s existence and it felt good just to be alive and in His—
‘Well, well, well, if it is not Miss Seagrove once again trespassing on the Rothermere estate!’
The sun disappeared behind a cloud, the wildflowers lost their lustre and the birds ceased singing as they instead took flight from the treetops at the sound of a human voice. At the same time, the colour drained from Lily’s cheeks and her heart began pounding loudly in her chest, her shoulders having stiffened defensively in instant recognition of that hatefully mocking voice. A voice which undoubtedly belonged to none other than the utterly despicable Lord Giles Montague!
‘I do not remember you as being this … accommodatingly silent during the last occasion on which we spoke together, Miss Seagrove. Can it be that “the cat has finally got your tongue”?’
Lily drew in one, two, three steadying breaths, as she prepared to turn and face her nemesis; all of her earlier feelings of well-being had flown away with the birds in the face of the shocking reality that Giles Montague was returned to Castonbury Park, after all.
In the end it was the impatient snorting of that gentleman’s horse which caused Lily to turn sharply, only to come face to face with the huge, glistening black and wild-eyed animal as it seemed to look down the long length of its nose at her with the same scornful disdain as its rider.
Lily took an involuntary step back before chancing a glance up at the owner of that horse, her breath catching in her throat as the late-afternoon sun shone behind the imposing and wide-shouldered figure of Lord Giles Montague, and succeeding in casting his face into shadow beneath the brim of his tall hat.
Not that Lily needed to see that arrogantly mocking face clearly to know what he looked like; each and every one of those dark and saturnine features was etched into her memory! Cold grey eyes beneath heavy brows, a long and aristocratic nose, hard and chiselled cheeks, the wide slash of his mouth invariably thinned with scorn or disdain, the strength of his jaw tilted at a haughty angle.
She moistened her lips before choosing to answer his initial challenge rather than the second. ‘It is impossible to do anything other than walk in the grounds of Castonbury Park when one has been visiting at the house, my lord.’
‘Indeed?’ he drawled in a bored tone, holding his skittish mount in check without apparent effort. ‘And whom, might one ask, can you have been “visiting” at Castonbury Park, when most of my family are away or in London at present?’
Lily’s cheeks flushed at the derision in his tone. ‘I came to deliver some of last year’s jam to Mrs Stratton from our own cook,’ she revealed reluctantly.
‘Ah.’ He nodded that arrogant head, a contemptuous smile curving his lips, no doubt at the knowledge that Lily had been visiting below stairs rather than above.
Now that she could see Lord Giles’s face better Lily realised that there was, after all, something slightly different about him than the last time she had seen him. ‘You appear to have a smudge of dirt upon your jaw, my lord,’ she told him with a feeling of inner satisfaction at his appearing less than his usual pristine self.
He made no effort to raise a hand to remove the mark. ‘I believe, if you were to look a little closer, you would find that it is a bruise, and not dirt,’ he dismissed in a bored voice.
Lily’s brows rose. ‘You have taken a tumble from your horse?’ It seemed an even more unlikely explanation than the dirt, as Edward had told her years ago that the duke had placed all of his sons up on a horse before they could even walk, and Lord Giles’s years in the army would only have honed his already excellent horsemanship.
‘Not that it is any of your business, but I chanced to walk into a fist several days ago,’ he drawled in cool dismissal. ‘Mr Seagrove is well, I trust?’
Lily would much rather have heard more about the ‘fist’ he had ‘chanced to walk into’ than discuss her adoptive father’s health, which had never been anything but robust. ‘My father is very well, thank you, my lord,’ she assured huskily, still staring curiously at the bruise upon his jaw. ‘How did you—?’
‘Please pass along my respects to him when next you see him.’ Lord Giles nodded distantly.
Obviously the subject of that ‘fist’ was not for further discussion, which only increased Lily’s curiosity as to who would have dared lay a fist upon the aristocratic jaw of Lord Giles Montague. Whoever he might have been, Lily knew a desire to shake the gentleman by that very same hand! ‘Certainly, my lord.’ Her tone was dry at the obvious omission of any of those respects being paid towards her; Giles Montague had not so much as raised his tall hat in her presence, let alone offered her polite words of greeting!
Because, as they were both only too well aware, there could be no politeness between the two of them after the frankness of their last conversation together. Not now. Or in the future. Lily disliked Giles Montague with a passion she could neither hide nor disguise, and he made no effort to hide the contempt with which he regarded her and her questionable forebears.
‘You have come home to visit with your father, my lord?’ She offered a challenge of her own.
Those grey eyes narrowed. ‘So it would appear.’
Lily raised dark brows at his challenging tone. ‘And I am sure His Grace will be gratified to know you at last feel able to spare him time, from what I am sure has been your … busy life in London, these past months.’
Giles’s expression remained unchanged at this less than subtle rebuke. A rebuke which told him all too clearly that Miss Lily Seagrove had heard something at least of his rakish behaviour in London these past nine months. ‘If I had known you were counting the days of my absence perhaps I would have returned sooner …?’
Colour brightened the ivory of her cheeks even as those moss-green eyes sparkled with temper at his obvious derision. ‘The only reason I would ever count the days of your absence, my lord, would be with the intention of thanking God for them!’
Giles looked down at her from between narrowed lids. As a young child Lily Seagrove had been as wild and untamed as might have been expected, given her ancestry. Her long curly black hair had seemed always to be in a loose tangle about her thin and narrow shoulders, smears of mud and berries invariably about her ruby-red mouth, her tiny hands suffering that same fate and her dresses usually having a rip or two about them where she had been crawling through the undergrowth with his brother Edward on one of their adventures.
Quite when that untamed child had become the composed and confident young lady Giles had met just over a year ago he was unsure, only knowing that he had returned home to find that his brother Edward
