The Unexpected Marriage of Gabriel Stone (Lords of Disgrace) by Louise Allen

problem of gaining an interview with her. If he had not known better he would have thought she had arranged matters in order to speak with him in private, but apparently this confounded beard was enough to hide from even the most perceptive young lady. He tugged at it and thought longingly of his razors before he began to dredge through his memory for Welsh songs, poems or even sermons.
    * * *
    ‘You are very clean for a hermit.’ Mrs Gleason, the cook, eyed Gabriel up and down as he stood in the doorway of her immaculate kitchen looking as meek as he knew how. Subtly mocking Lord Knighton was one thing, but cooks were the empresses of their domains and even their employers treated them with respect if they knew what was good for them.
    ‘I wash in the lake every day, Mrs Gleason.’
    ‘And what’s your name then?’ That was Molly, the kitchen maid, all freckles and crooked teeth and a big grin that showed them both off.
    ‘Petrus Owen, Miss Molly.’
    That triggered the giggles again. ‘Ooh, Mis s Molly!’
    ‘You’ll be Miss Out On Your Ear, my girl, if you don’t finish those potatoes,’ Cook snapped. ‘And you, you big Welsh lummox, stop lurking about like something out of those novels Lady Caroline’s maid is always reading, go on through to the end of the passage and knock on Mr Blackstone’s door. You give me the cold grues, standing there in that Popish outfit.’
    ‘Yes, Mrs Gleason.’ He winked at Molly as he passed and was out of the door before her giggles erupted again.
    The butler answered the knock on his door after a good minute. From the waft of violet pastilles on his breath Gabriel deduced he had been having an after-luncheon snooze to recover from the onerous duty of finishing off the leftover wine.
    ‘Oh, it’s you. His lordship said to take you up to the Blue Salon.’ He glowered at Gabriel, apparently found nothing obvious that he could object to, considering his employer was misguided enough to employ such a man, and stalked off along the passageway to the foot of the servants’ stairs.
    ‘Bring that with you.’ He gestured in passing to one of the hard wooden hall chairs. ‘I’ll not have you sitting on the good upholstery. That robe or whatever it is looks as though it would shed.’
    Where Mrs Gleason’s distrust merely amused him, the butler’s attitude filled him with a strong desire to apply one booted foot to his chubby buttocks. Gabriel picked up the chair by the back rail and hefted it into the salon without replying.
    Blackstone waved a hand towards the piano. ‘Lady Caroline said you might need to play it.’ His expression showed strong doubt that the silent hermit was capable of such a feat.
    Gabriel, without acknowledging he had heard, shifted the piano stool, dumped down the chair, sat and ran his hands up and down the keyboard in a series of perfectly accurate scales. He rarely played the piano, but he could recall enough of his lessons to manage that, at least.
    ‘Ha! Don’t touch anything else. I will tell her ladyship you are here.’
    It was almost silent when Blackstone’s footsteps died away. There was the draught from the open door on his cheek, the sound of birdsong through the window and, distantly, the lowing of cattle in the meadow beyond the ha-ha. It was curiously soothing, this bucolic peace. If he was not careful he would find himself seduced—
    ‘What on earth are you doing ?’
    Gabriel brought his hands down on the keys in a jangling discord and swung round and to his feet. ‘Lady Caroline.’
    ‘Lord Edenbridge.’
    She knows me. ‘Not so loud.’ He reached her side in three long strides and pushed the door half-closed. ‘Where the blazes is your chaperon?’
    ‘Unnecessary, according to my father.’ She was tight-lipped and pale and he felt his temper rising.
    ‘Your maid, then?’
    ‘Upstairs immersed in a pile of fine mending and a lurid novel I deliberately left just by the mending basket. Never mind that, we are alone for