“My point is that there are significantly fewer eligible suitors inside my empty guest chamber than there are roaming the grounds of the annual Marrywell matchmaking festival.”
He ground his teeth, then glanced over her shoulder. “Stay close behind, Buttons.”
Matilda spun about in surprise. “Buttons! When did you sneak downstairs?”
“I’ve been behind you this whole time,” her lady’s maid replied. “I’m to keep you in my sights and to stay out of yours as much as possible.”
“You’re doing an excellent job,” Matilda marveled. “Did you at least get breakfast?”
“She ate with the servants,” Gilbourne interrupted, striding toward the exit. “If we’re to attend these infernal festivities, let us not put off the inevitable.”
“You’re referring to merrymaking?” Matilda asked as she skipped up to his side, careful not to touch him.
“I’m referring to you. Ideally betrothed and off my hands.” He paused to turn and address the innkeeper behind the counter. “Where is the highest concentration of eligible bachelors at this hour?”
“At this hour?” the innkeeper repeated with a smile. “Most likely at the follies in the center of the labyrinth. Always a crush by the pond at any time of the day.”
“Marvelous,” the earl muttered.
A footman rushed to open the door for them. Outside, the driver of a carriage parked in front of the hotel shook the last of the rain from his top hat.
Matilda was right—the sun had come out! She grinned up at Lord Gilbourne in triumph.
He was not attending to her. The sight of the horse and carriage—and all of the other horses and carriages clogging the road—appeared to have put him on edge. As he forced himself to meld with the crowd of early morning merrymakers wending their way toward the pleasure gardens, his posture was stiff, his gait wooden, and his expression resolute.
“This will be fun,” she assured him.
He grimaced. “I’m afraid of that.”
Chapter 8
The moment Matilda and Lord Gilbourne stepped away from the street and into the shady green silence of the towering hedgerow labyrinth, the earl seemed to become an entirely different person, right before her eyes.
Everything about him relaxed. His muscles, his posture, his tight jaw and clenched teeth. All of that vanished, leaving behind a dapper man who looked as though he hadn’t a care in the world. Instead of hulking at her side, all thick arms and legs and angry scowls, his arms swung loose and his legs ambled without hurry. He wasn’t smiling—the earl never smiled—but even the scarred half of his face looked peaceful and… friendly?
Matilda gazed at the transformation in awe. “Are the botanical gardens your favorite part of Marrywell?”
“I wouldn’t know. I’ve never been to Marrywell before.” This was said with equanimity, rather than irritation.
“Then… You don’t know how to navigate the maze to arrive at the follies?”
“I haven’t the slightest notion,” he confirmed with something astoundingly close to good cheer.
“Are you simply an aficionado of nature?” she insisted, cognizant that her impertinence could flare his temper at any moment.
“I wouldn’t know that, either,” he replied without a frown. “I never leave my study, if I can help it.”
She stared at him in wonder. He was in a town he did not know, bumbling through a complex maze whose solution eluded them… and he was as relaxed as a kitten napping beneath the morning sun?
What the devil had got into him?
Or—a sudden thought occurred to her—was this his natural state, and the usual biting misanthropy a secondary effect of external stressors?
Five minutes ago, she would have counted herself as one of those stressors, but at the moment, he didn’t seem bothered at all to be strolling down shady hedgerow paths at her side, shrugging and turning around gamely whenever they came face-first with a dead end.
Fascinating. She remembered how tense he had become when they’d stepped outside the hotel. The snarl of horse and carriage traffic amid the hordes of pedestrians was overwhelming, particularly to a girl who had been raised in a hamlet the size of a pea, but the earl’s reaction had been even more severe.
He refused to leave the peace and quiet of his study.
