“If I didn’t hit my target I wouldn’t eat. Or I or someone I love might die. I always hit my target.”
“Oh,my,” Lady Bankham breathed.
Her husband eyed her balefully.
Giles studied Hugh. “Shall we do a little target shooting? We’ll have a pair of Baker’s brought out.”
Hugh had loaded and shot Baker’s more times than he preferred.
“Mustwe shoot things today?” the countess wondered, with a sigh.
“I’drather like to shoot something,” Lillias said suddenly.
“Have you ever done that, dear?” the countess wanted to know. “It isn’t quite the done thing, but...” She stopped herself from adding, “...neither are American fiancés.”
“I haven’t,” Lillias said firmly. “And I should like to.”
The countess looked as though she intended to say something else. Then she paused and changed her conversational tack. “Well. We’re so looking forward to spending the day with you and your Mr. Cassidy, Lillias, whether or not any shooting takes place. We’d so hoped Lady Harriette—she’s the Marquess of Dervall’s daughter—would have safely arrived by now but we’ve had a message thismorning—they’ve been detained a week or more. I do believe it was stained with a little tear. I was quite moved.” She placed a hand over her heart. “She’s a dear thing—so petite and pretty and docile, you know, and hasn’t yet surprised anyone.”
Lillias knew this little criticism for what it was. She leaned forward and patted the countess’s arm. “There’s still time,” she said, with great, feigned sympathy.
Finally Lillias’s parents appeared at the top of the marble staircase and made their way down, and moments later two blue-liveried, bewigged footmen appeared with a hamper. Giles had a word with another footman about getting the groundskeeper to ready the rifle targets.
And then they all set out.
They’d passed the giant fountain featuring spitting cupids, heading out into an orderly avenue of sorts outlined by low green shrubs and tidily trimmed flowers that reminded Hugh of nothing so much as a labyrinth one could never escape. If they should inadvertently arrive at a minotaur, he was certain it would be the small tasteful English variety that spoke in cutting words.
Giles had flanked Lillias at once. Hugh took up her other side.
The earls and countesses fell back a little and let the younger people stroll ahead.
“Lilly knows nearly every inch of this house as well as I do, no doubt,” Giles began. “Do you remember sliding across the foyer in your stocking feet? How your governess scolded you. You told her that day you were going to live here so what did it matter what you did?”
Lillias laughed. “She was a bit of a harridan, Mrs. Cuthbert. One just wanted tobaither.”
“You were forever asking her questions she couldn’t quite answer and she was infuriated by her inadequacy.”
“I imagine inadequacywouldbe infuriating,” Hugh said with abstracted sympathy, to Giles. He made it sound as though this was something Delacorte might have a pill to address.
Giles’s determined confidence stuttered a little. But he ventured on. “And Lilly, do you remember the day you slid down the banister—”
She gave a shout of laughter. “—and you were at the foot of the stairs with a jam tart...” Lillias interjected.
“...and when you flew off your face went right into it!”
They laughed together, delightedly.
For Hugh, it was the oddest sensation to feel elevated by her joy and yet oppressed by the source of it.
“I love to hear stories of when Lillias was a child,” Hugh said. “How thoughtful of you to share them, Giles.”
He said it because it was clear Giles was going to do his best to exclude him.
“How shocked everyone in thetonwould be if they knew you were like that once, Lillias,” Giles said. “You’re such a fine lady now.”
Her smile faded. “I suppose so.”
Once again, Hugh knew that odd sensation of a belt tightened about his ribs on her behalf.