A Lady In Need Of An Heir. Louise Allen

a note.

       So, find the right man, think of a way of ensuring that when I come back here as a pregnant sorrowing widow people will believe in the marriage.

      A hawk screeched overhead, a lonely sound in the vastness of the sky. Gaby tipped back her head to watch it and met Gray’s gaze as he looked up to do the same thing. He grinned and pushed the broad-brimmed straw hat further back on his head.

      Something was niggling at her. Could she use a man like that and then simply vanish with his child? Wouldn’t he have the right to know he was a father? Would she want anything to do with a man who did not care if he was? This scheme was full of pitfalls. So, to square her conscience she would have to discuss it with him, make certain he had no scruples. Was it even ethical to use a man as a stud in this way, even if he was perfectly willing, or was she being absurdly overscrupulous? Men married to breed heirs every day of the year. Her wretched conscience. How much easier to simply not care about how her actions affected anyone else...

      ‘This banking looks unstable to me,’ Gray called and Gaby went over to where he was crouched down at the foot of the terrace wall. ‘Something has been digging.’

      ‘A fox, I expect.’ Another note. She carried on along the foot of the terrace wall.

      ‘Rights?’ Gray had come up close at her shoulder without her even realising. ‘The rights of man? Rights of way?’

       Hell, I must be thinking out loud again.

      ‘Water rights.’ Gaby improvised as he strolled off to look at a clump of late orchids. ‘We can cut up to the next level from the end here. We do not need to walk right back along the terrace.’

      She had to find an intelligent man who would happily give up his rights in his child and who would not turn round and blackmail her. She clambered up the stones at the far end and walked slowly back until she found she was standing above Gray. He had leaned back against the stone wall, hat in hand, and was looking up, watching the hawk and its mate circling high above them. His hair was thick, curling slightly at the crown, thick and virile and temptingly touchable.

      There was a fig tree at the back of the flat area and Gaby went and sat under it, took a long drink from her flask and checked her notes against Jorge’s. That was better than thinking about how a man’s hair would feel between her fingers, how his weight would be over her, how those broad shoulders would...

       Stop it.

      She made a few annotations, but the sun was in her eyes and Gray was still somewhere below. She tipped her hat down over her nose and closed her eyes against the glare, the better to think.

       Chapter Five

      Gray wandered across the short grass beside the row of vines looking for Gabrielle. She was very quiet—he couldn’t even hear the occasional muttering that seemed to signify deep thought.

      He was impressed by her work here, as he knew she intended him to be. She was proud of her quinta and she had every reason for that. If Gabrielle had been a man and his godmother was agitating for a return he would have told her, in no uncertain terms, to leave well alone. But she was not a man. How she had escaped the war unscathed he could not guess, although obviously the loss of both her brother and her lover must have left emotional scars.

      Luck could last only so long. Sooner or later if she stayed here, she was going to need help and support, the strength only a husband could give her, but she seemed to cling to her independence and her control of the quinta, as a mother clung to a child, terrified to let it walk off on its own. If she chose her husband well he would surely place the estate in the hands of competent managers, although, given the distance from England, he supposed selling would be prudent.

      A splash of colour under the angular arms of a fig tree betrayed her presence. Deep blue skirts today, with a similar linen undershirt and black waistcoat to yesterday. It seemed to be her working uniform, practical but feminine. And she was asleep, he realised. Only her chin, firm and decided, and her mouth were visible beneath the tilted straw hat. The lower lip was full and sensual, the upper curled a little as though she dreamed of something pleasant.

      Gray moved silently across the parched grass, avoiding dry leaves, a twig, until he could fold down cross-legged, facing Gabrielle. Her notebook had fallen from her hands and lay open in her lap and he squinted at the pencilled notes, trying to read upside down.

       3 ps on 2 rotten

       3 wires?

       5 wall—fox?

       Blackmail

      He blinked and looked again. The cryptic notes obviously referred to different terraces and ps probably meant posts, but blackmail? It was hardly an ambiguous word. Was someone trying to extort money from her, or did she believe her aunt was blackmailing her in some way to return? Perhaps she was marshalling more arguments to throw at him if he tried to persuade her again.

      Arguments were not all she might throw, he thought whimsically. She had a knife in a slim sheath attached to her belt. It lay beside her now, a workmanlike blade that she had used to probe rot in a post and lop off a broken trail of vine.

      The erratic shape of the fig threw a comfortable patch of shade just where he sat, but the October sunshine was warm on his back and he felt his muscles ease, his shoulders drop. Had he really been this tense? He supposed he must, because he could not recall feeling consciously relaxed since he had heard of his father’s death and had left the familiar army life for one of ancient obligations, new duties, half-understood roles.

      Home had held the children, yes, but they had been upset and confused because their beloved Gran’papa was no longer there, only Gran’mama and she was sad. And he had felt himself struggle to feel at home in a house that held memories of his own marriage and his singular failures as a husband.

      He thought he had left everything better than he had found it. Jamie and Joanna ran to him now when they saw him, smiled at him, held up their arms to be lifted. His mother was slowly coming to terms with her loss and he was throwing himself at all he had to learn as though the outcome of a battle depended on it.

      But when he got back to England again he was going straight home and paying no heed to any demands but those of his immediate family and the estates. He was going to live for the present and the future. He’d had enough of guilt and regrets.

      Meanwhile he could practise living in the moment by basking in the sun and looking at a lovely, if maddening, woman and listening to the birds and the rush of the river far below.

      * * *

      She had been asleep, Gaby realised. She felt too limp and comfortable to do much about waking up, not for a minute or two, although she opened her eyes just a little. The weave of her straw hat was a light open work and through it she could see Gray sitting cross-legged in front of her, shoulders in a comfortable slump. For the first time he did not look like an ex-officer, just a big, rather weary, distractingly attractive man.

      And he was looking at her mouth. She licked her lips and his gaze sharpened, fixed and, in the moment, she was hot and there was a disturbing, throbbing ache low down. Then Gray moved, swivelled the satchel on his hip and took out the water flask and the heat ebbed, leaving only a distracting tingle.

      He is the first new, interesting man who has come into your life since you have begun to recover from losing Laurent, she told herself.

      One had to be practical and recognise this for what it was: a rather inconvenient attack of lust. To which the interesting man in question was contributing by tipping back his head to drink and showing off a long bare throat with a gleam of sweat and the slightest hint of dark chest hair escaping at the point where his neckcloth was pushed aside.

      Gaby sat up rather too fast, pushed her hat back on her head and reached for her own water. ‘Have I been asleep long?’