His gut churned.
She was his. What was he going to have to do to make her realize that? His. Not Staunton’s. Not her damn foreign dog’s. Not anyone’s but his.
They were greeted in the drawing room with a round of ribbing for their late arrival and summarily borne off to the billiard room. Ivo cast one resentful glance back at George before allowing himself to be drawn out of the room.
She didn’t even seem to notice he was there. Damn frosty woman. He grimaced as he spun his cue idly. There was no point in pushing ahead before knowing the lay of the land.
Every fibre of his being itched to storm back into the drawing room and force her to listen to reason. To him.
He had a fortnight, after all.
Surely that would be long enough to bring her round?
George bit into a muffin, savouring the warm, slightly tangy flavour of the bread, still warm from the pan. She added a splash of milk to her empty teacup and poured herself a second cup of tea, emptying the pot.
Fragrant steam curled upward, the hint of bergamot reminding her unwelcomingly of Dauntry.
She’d spent the whole night lying awake, wanting to creep down the hall to his room. It was humiliating how badly she wanted him. How much she missed him.
Calm. Cool. Collected. Those were the things she was supposed to be. A heartless bitch, even. Above such petty emotions as lust and loneliness.
The door opened with a rattle and her brother-in-law and Gabriel burst in, unruly as a pack of foxhounds who’d caught the scent. Sydney loudly demanded if she could remember where they had left the curling stones.
‘We haven’t had those out in years.’ She drank the dregs of her tea, grimacing when she discovered it had grown cold while she’d been daydreaming. ‘I think they’re in a spare tack box out in the barn.’
‘The green one,’ Sydney agreed, looking hungrily at a plate loaded with eggs and a thick slice of beef. ‘I’d totally forgotten about that. When we were children, we kept them in the bottom of the toy chest in the nursery. I looked there this morning—nothing.’
George thought for a moment. ‘We used them every winter, and as I remember, we were quite territorial about them.’
Gabriel grabbed several wedges of toast and loaded them up with a dripping abundance of marmalade, explaining between bites that the boys had asked to go skating later, and he and Sydney had had the brilliant idea to teach them all to curl. ‘I don’t think we’ve passed that bit of our childhood on.’
‘Excellent proposition.’ George tried to refresh her cup for a third time, forgetting that the pot was empty. ‘This is the first time in years the pond has frozen solid and I say we take advantage of it.’
When they finally got to the pond it was after noon. The ice was already whizzing with the village children playing tag on homemade skates of bone and wood. Their brightly coloured caps stood out starkly against their muted coats and the white snow. The vicar’s wife was obviously still a prodigious knitter.
The gathered children greeted Sydney with a cheer and were shyly introduced to the visitors. The Morpeths’ three boys and Simone were already known to most of the locals, having spent large parts of their young lives running through the village. They had been joined for the day by all the other visiting children and most of the younger adults.
George supervised the children putting on their skates while Sydney assisted the three young Misses Tilehurst with theirs. Gabriel, Dauntry, and Charles were left to haul the curling stones out of the gig and carefully lug the heavy stones out onto the ice.
Dauntry looked thoroughly confused and confounded by the stones. He’d insisted on coming along, his attention wholly, intently, on her.
Why couldn’t he accept his congé?
George had made sure she’d been surrounded by the children in the sleigh. No room for any of the men. Dauntry had no idea how effective a chaperone a swarm of children could be.
He was about to find out. Poor bastard.
George strapped on her own skates and joined Gabriel and Sydney on the ice where they were attempting to explain curling to the gathered children. She skated in lazy figure eights around them, interjecting explanations and clarifications.
The fur tippet around her throat tickled her cheek. The breeze raised a flurry of snowflakes from the bank.
Dauntry was down at the other end of the pond, skating in swift, sure circles around Charles, who was experimentally pushing the stones across the ice, a look of pure determination on his face.
George forced herself to quit watching him and turned her attention back to the children.
‘Perhaps we should simply show them?’ she suggested, cutting off another long-winded explanation. Sydney called all the children over to watch a practice match, then set them all to it.
They spent the rest of the afternoon learning the peculiar natures of the various stones: which ones slid to the right or the left, which picked up speed as they went, which didn’t. George and Sydney refereed, leaving Brimstone and Dauntry free to supervise the play at the other end.
George kept waiting for the simmering dislike between the two men to explode into something more. Dauntry was stiff with irritation, Gabriel’s face was set in a blank mask that she knew hid disdain and an urge to plant his fist in Dauntry’s too pretty face.
When everyone finally grew tired of curling, Sydney organized a huge game of tag. Everyone racing about the ice to the best of their abilities, the high-pitched shrieks of the children cutting through the air.
Hayden zipped past in pursuit of the youngest Tilehurst girl. Caught her, sent her flailing across the ice and into George.
George fell back into the snowbank at the pond’s edge, sending up
