CHAPTER5
The next morning, following a solitary dinner the night before and an equally unaccompanied breakfast, Court found himself once more playing the part of the interloper. He had spent the better part of two hours investigating the massive, once-neglected gardens of Sherborne Manor and attempting to distract himself from Vivi’s obvious attempts to avoid him. On the last occasion he had seen the gardens, they had resembled nothing so much as an overgrown thicket, complete with a silt-ridden ornamental lake and a broken fountain.
But the gardens had been restored, the lawns neatly trimmed, the rosebushes pruned and blooming. The hedge labyrinth had been sheared into tidy, box-shaped rows, and the fountain was once more tinkling merrily. Even the lake had been drained of silt and was now replete with a game of swans. So much change in just one year. He could scarcely credit it.
The late-morning sun shone down on the lake’s surface, making it sparkle with a majesty that it had not possessed in all his life. It seemed, as he took a contemplative stroll on the gravel path surrounding the renewed body of water, symbolic. Vivi had always been the source of happiness and brightness in his life. Even her hair was golden and light. And now she had changed his ancestral estate as surely as she had changed him. It would seem that in his absence, in all ways, Vivi had shone.
Whilst Court…
He had been lost. Adrift on a journey of guilt and regret. Missing her.
As he rounded the lake, he approached a swan that was eyeing him dubiously from its perch on the bank. The swan opened his beak and closed it in a show of displeasure before hissing at him.
And this, too, was rather reminiscent of his present situation with his wife. Vivi was furious with him for his presence. She hadn’t threatened to peck him, but she had emptied a vase upon him.
“No harm intended, old chap,” he told the bird as he skirted the august creature slowly, trying to make a show of his lack of aggression.
He was just beyond the swan when he felt a sharp twinge in his left arse cheek.
The bastard had bitten him.
With a look over his shoulder to confirm the swan was flapping its wings and hissing in preparation for another strike, Court hastened his stride. Apparently, the swan was not finished with him. The bird increased his pace as well, flapping his wings and hissing, his beak opening and closing with the promise of more violence.
“Bloody hell,” he muttered under his breath, changing into a run in his need to escape.
He was going to have a bruise, by God.
Court made it to a grouping of chestnut trees before he relaxed his stride, confident he had outrun the feathered menace.
And that was when he heard it.
Feminine laughter.
But not just any laughter.
Vivi’s, the sound musical and tinkling, washing over him like a caress, even if he suspected his contretemps with the swan was the source of her levity. She stood in the shade of the chestnuts, a ridiculously large-brimmed hat hiding her gorgeous blonde hair from his view, and she was wearing a navy-and-cream-striped walking gown that showed her generous bosom and well-curved waist to perfection. The moment their gazes clashed, the humor drained from her countenance. Movement at her side forced him to belatedly realize she was not alone, but rather, accompanied by a brunette dressed in a similar shade of blue, a small, jaunty hat perched atop her head. She, too, was laughing.
The Lady Clementine who had already arrived, Court supposed.
“I reckon you both witnessed my routing,” he told the ladies wryly as he reached them, the cool shade of the chestnuts granting him a reprieve from the sun.
“I am afraid we did, Your Grace,” his wife’s friend said, still grinning at his expense. “I must say, I’ve never seen a swan so thoroughly irate before. Do you always have that effect on birds?”
He grimaced, sketching a bow as he did so, remembering the manners he’d been eschewing for most of the last year. “Thankfully, no.”
“I do believe Honoré quite thoroughly trounced you, Your Grace,” Vivi told him coolly, having schooled her features into a mask of civility.
And not without a note of pride, he thought, rather as if she had pinned her hopes on the odds of his walking past the angry cob at just the right moment for the attack. If he hadn’t known better, he would have sworn she had planned the entire affair.
“Tell me you haven’t named that wretched beast Honoré,” he said, though he wasn’t surprised that she had.
For Vivi had always named every creature she came upon. There had been Frederick the Frog, Charles the stables cat, Alberta the hunting hound, and a host of others over the years. He found himself smiling at the discovery of a part of her which had not changed in his absence.
“There is nothing wrong with his name,” Vivi informed him.
“A bit grandiose for a feathered nuisance,” he grumbled, resisting the urge to rub his smarting arse.
He had no doubt he would have a bruise there. Deserved, it was true.
