Flirting with His Forbidden Lady--A Regency Family is Reunited by Laura Martin (good novels to read txt) 📕

‘Promise to tell me all about it later.’

‘I promise.’

Chapter Ten

Josh closed his eyes, let his head rest back on the bench and enjoyed the warmth of the sun on his face. Even in what his brother had hailed as the hottest May in memory, it wasn’t anything like the heat of an Indian summer. In that heat sometimes you felt as if you couldn’t breathe, the humidity meant the sweat rolled from your skin and the sun would burn you within minutes. This felt like a pleasant spring day in comparison.

He was sitting outside the drawing room, on an ornate stone bench that someone had positioned with loving care to look over the gardens and to the cliffs beyond. The gardens were a curious design, now overgrown in many places and left to run wild, the sea air culling many of the plants not designed for a coastal garden. Nevertheless, it was charming in its own unique way with patches of colour in amongst the winding paths.

‘Ah, there you are,’ Leo said as he stepped out of the drawing room.

‘Have you finished your letters?’

His brother grimaced and shook his head. ‘Almost. The writing desk is very low in my bedroom so I thought I would take a little break and stretch my legs before the other guests arrive.’

‘Not keen on socialising?’

‘Remind me again why we agreed to come all the way down here for four days?’

Josh laughed. Only an Englishman would think eighty miles was a long way to travel.

‘For your intended. To woo her, I suppose.’

‘That’s not exactly my way.’

Leo sat down on the bench next to him and turned his own face up to the sun just as Josh had a few minutes earlier.

‘It’s good for you to be away from the demands of Lord Abbingdon for a couple of days, at the very least.’

Just as Leo was about to reply Josh saw a flash of movement behind them and Lady Elizabeth stepped out of the drawing room.

‘Oh.’ She didn’t look particularly pleased to see them, although she covered her initial reaction with a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. ‘Good afternoon, Mr Ashburton and Mr Ashburton.’ She gave a pretty little curtsy and then glanced around the garden as if trying to work out an escape route.

‘We were just admiring your garden and enjoying the sunshine,’ Josh said.

Leo remained silent.

‘Would you like to take a stroll around the garden, Mr Ashburton?’ Lady Elizabeth addressed herself squarely to Leo.

‘No. I have letters to write.’ Even to Josh’s ears Leo sounded blunt and he saw Lady Elizabeth blink in surprise. ‘Take Josh.’

Leo stood, bowed and walked quickly back inside the house, leaving Lady Elizabeth standing awkwardly staring after him.

‘Was it something I did?’

‘He really does have letters to write.’

‘How are we meant to determine if we suit if we never spend any time together?’

Josh didn’t answer; there wasn’t anything he could say. Instead he offered Lady Elizabeth his arm and waited whilst she contemplated whether to take it or not.

He leaned in. ‘I promise not to kiss you.’

‘Stop it.’

‘Fine. I promise I will kiss you.’

‘I’m not going for a walk with you if you behave like this.’

‘Ah, but what if Leo is watching from his window and realises we’re not strolling companionably around the gardens?’

Letting out a little snort of frustration, Lady Elizabeth took his arm and began a fast march away from the house. Josh had to suppress a smile as he lengthened his stride to keep up.

‘Here are the roses,’ she said, pointing to a sad-looking bed of thorny tangles with not a single bud in sight. ‘Here is the fernery. And here is the summer border.’ A few droopy plants with sparse flowers hung limply in the summer border.

‘Impressive,’ he murmured.

‘Do you have any idea how difficult it is to grow anything this close to the sea?’ Lady Elizabeth exploded, her voice carrying on the breeze much further than he thought she would want it to.

‘Either you planted these sorry specimens yourself and nurtured them to their current state or your anger at me is about something else.’

‘Of course it is about something else. The garden is just the garden, it hardly looked any better when we had two full-time gardeners rather than me and Annabelle in our old boots trudging about with watering cans.’ It was an image that was strangely appealing to Josh. He pictured Lady Elizabeth in a flimsy dress, the material blown by the wind revealing far more than it should, watering can in hand and heavy boots on her feet.

‘Enchanting,’ he murmured. ‘What part of my behaviour exactly has offended you?’

‘All of it.’

‘That’s not true, Lady Elizabeth.’

As she clenched her teeth he could see the little muscles just under her earlobes bulging and relaxing in little pulses.

‘Why do I like you so much when you’re so difficult to be around?’ she blurted out eventually.

He smiled even though he knew it would infuriate her more.

‘Perhaps you find me so difficult to be around because you like me so much.’

She glared at him as if everything were his fault, her fingers distractedly toying with the flower stems to her left. As if deciding something, she spun on her heel and began to stalk along the path at great speed, only stopping when she was halfway along to turn back and look at him questioningly.

‘Aren’t you coming?’

‘I didn’t realise the tour was continuing.’ He followed, walking even faster to keep up with her as she weaved in and out of the forlorn flower beds. There was a little summer house at the edge of the garden, obscured from sight of the house by a few scraggy trees that had grown all in one direction, their leaves all on the side away from the cliffs as if they were desperately trying to escape the wind that whipped over the precipice and hit them with full force much of the year.

The summer house was octagonal, made of