She shook his hand briefly. “I guess you know who I am, then.”
The first snowflakes began to fall, tiny particles of puffy ice. One landed on his eyelash. His eyelashes, like his brows, were of a much darker shade than the molten gold at the tips of his hair. His eyes, she was sure, were the color of an Alpine lake, though she'd never seen one.
“I was going to call on you tomorrow,” he said. “To offer my condolences.”
She chortled. “Yes, as you can see, I am inconsolable.”
He looked at her, truly looked at her this time, his eyes scanning her features one by one. His scrutiny discomfited her—she was more accustomed to being pointed at behind her back—but it was not unpleasant, coming from such a rivetingly handsome man.
“I apologize for my cousin. He was most inconsiderate to die before marrying you and leaving an heir.”
His bluntness took her aback. It was one thing for her mother to say something along that line, quite another to hear it repeated by a complete stranger to whom she hadn't even been properly introduced.
“Man proposes, God disposes,” she said.
“A crying shame, isn't it?”
She was beginning to like this Lord Tremaine. “Yes, it is.”
The snowflakes suddenly increased in dimension, no longer icy sawdust but fingernail-size fluffs. They fell densely, as if all the angels in heaven were molting. In the minutes since Lord Tremaine first appeared, the sky had become visibly darker. Soon dusk would cloak the land.
Tremaine looked about them. “Where is your man, or your maid?”
“Don't have one. I'm not out in public.”
He frowned. “How far away is your house?”
“About three miles.”
“You should take my horse. It's not safe for you to walk that long in the dark, in this weather.”
“Thank you, but I don't ride.”
He looked into her eyes. For a moment she thought he meant to ask her outright why she was afraid of horses. But he only said, “In that case, permit me to walk you home.”
She breathed a silent sigh of relief. “Permission granted. But you should be forewarned that I am disastrous at small talk.”
He pulled on his glove and looped the stallion's reins about his wrist. “It's quite all right. Silence does not derange—pardon—disturb me.”
The word déranger in French meant to disturb. He didn't really have an accent. His English, a language that he hardly ever spoke, was simply somewhat rusty.
They walked in silence for a while. She couldn't resist glancing at him every minute or so to admire his profile. He had the classical nose and chin of an Apollo Belvedere.
“I conferred with my late cousin's solicitors before coming to Twelve Pillars,” Tremaine said, breaking the silence. “He left us a complicated situation.”
“I see.” She certainly did, being intimately acquainted with Carrington's financial particulars.
“The solicitors gave me the sum of his outstanding debts, a staggering number. But for four-fifths of the amount, they could not show me any demands from creditors that are less than two years old.”
“Interesting.” She was beginning to see where he was going with this. How had he pieced it together so quickly? He must not have been in England for more than two or three days or she'd have learned about his presence already.
“So I made them show me his marriage contract instead.”
A very shrewd move. “Did you find it soporific reading?”
“On the contrary, I quite admired it. As watertight a legal document as I'm likely to come across this lifetime. I noticed that you'd absolve him of all his debts upon marriage.”
“There might have been such wording.”
“You are the one who holds the lion's share of his arrears, aren't you? You bought out his creditors and consolidated the preponderance of his debts to persuade him to marry you.”
Gigi looked upon Lord Tremaine with a new, almost warm respect. He was young, twenty-one or so. But he was sharp as a guillotine blade. That was exactly what she had done. She had eschewed Mrs. Rowland's advice to win a duke in drawing rooms and ballrooms and had gone about it her own way. “That's right. Carrington didn't want to marry the likes of me. He had to be dragged kicking and screaming to the negotiation table.”
“Did you enjoy the dragging?” He glanced down at her.
“Yes, I rather did,” she confessed. “It was amusing threatening to strip his house bare to the last plank on the floor and the last spoon in the kitchen.”
“My parents are convinced of your grief.” She heard the smile in his voice. “They said tears streamed down your face at his funeral.”
“For nearly three years of hard work down the drain, I cried like a bereaved mother.”
He laughed outright, a rich sound with all the beguilement of spring. Her heart skipped a beat.
“You are an unusual woman, Miss Rowland. Are you also fair and honest?”
“If there's no disadvantage to me.”
She could swear he smiled again. “Good enough,” he said. “I'd like to negotiate a deal with you.”