Chapter Two
The carriage was warm despite the bitter grey day that greeted Perry and Grace as they left Mowbray House.
“Are you sure about this?” she asked, her eyebrows raised. “A dark and cold winter morning, a carriage ride outside town…wouldn’t you prefer your own fireplace on a day like this?”
There were so many answers to that question trembling on his lips, but he restrained himself to the most courteous. “A drive during which I may enjoy the company of a lovely woman is every bit as warming to the soul as a fireplace is to the toes.”
She snorted.
“You don’t believe me?” He turned to grin at her. “And here I thought I was being so gentlemanly.”
“Oh you were. You are,” she answered. “But really, Perry. You may now discontinue the overblown compliments. I’m here. We’re on our way, so you can relax.”
“I’m relaxed, thank you.” He lied, of course, since being around Grace had quite the opposite effect on him.
“Good.” She settled her skirts and snuggled a little deeper beneath the fur blanket. “Have we far to go? You said outside town, but not exactly where.”
“It’s southwest,” he said noncommittally. “I think no more than an hour or so. Two at most. The driver knows the way.”
She leaned back. “Well, we’re warm. I feel for him and the other lad on the box, but I trust they’re well wrapped up against the wind.”
“I’m sure they are,” he agreed. “And have been for most of this year.”
He kept their discussion general, the weather being the topic of choice across the country. Harvests had failed, snow had fallen at the most ridiculous of times, there had been fierce and violent storms; it was as if the entire globe had chosen to revolt and deliver monstrously terrible weather across its surface.
But the weather could only sustain so much conversation.
“You have no country seat, Perry, am I right?” Grace gazed from the window as the hedgerows flashed past, dappled with snow.
“True. There was once a Hawkesbury Manor, but I think my ancestor lost it in a game of cards to one of Henry the Eighth’s cronies.”
“Clumsy of him.”
“He probably cheated.”
She choked out a laugh. “You don’t have a high opinion of your forbears, I see.”
“Since he lost an estate that was almost the size of Wiltshire, then you’re correct. I have a very low opinion of him.”
“What happened to the family after that unfortunate incident?”
“I believe—and this is only hearsay through generations—that the Hawkesburys took to the road for a while.”
“Wait…highwaymen?”
He nodded. “So ’tis rumoured. Apparently they also engaged in things like smuggling, and restored quite a portion of their fortunes from activities in the Caribbean.”
Grace’s eyes grew wide. “Pirates?”
“I do have a somewhat colourful heritage, don’t I?” he mused.
“You’re jesting.”
He shook his head. “All true. Which is why I’ve never really pursued any investigations into the Hawkesbury lineage. God only knows what I’d find. Any family bible recording that history would doubtless explode into sulphurous flames.”
She couldn’t help laughing. “Oh dear.”
“The whole business of lineage strikes me as somewhat absurd. After all, were we to be brutally honest, half the great houses of our country are riddled with madness, illegitimacy and other dreadful things we can’t even imagine. And yet we title ourselves aristocrats.”
