‘There are so many spare gentlemen around, what with visiting buyers and partners and officials from the government making inspections,’ she explained as she split another roll. ‘The ladies are always outnumbered.’

  ‘Stops the gentlemen becoming complacent.’ Gray reached for another chicken leg.

  She was not going to watch him eat it. Her imagination was doing a perfectly good job of visualising those muscles moving in his neck as he chewed and swallowed, his tongue coming out to lick his lips and savour the herb-infused oils it had been cooked in.

  ‘The gentlemen are much more concerned with discussing the harvest, debating whether or not to declare a vintage, garnering information and downright gossip about rival quintas, rival lodges. The ladies are so much ornamentation as far as they are concerned.’

  ‘Except you.’ He said it seriously, not as though he was mocking her, which was a pleasant surprise.

  Gaby risked a look. The chicken leg was nothing but a bone now, dangling from long, lax fingers. ‘Except me,’ she agreed. ‘I spend the evenings carefully not flirting, not gossiping, not discussing the things the men consider feminine concerns. Then when the ladies withdraw I stay put and they simply pretend I am not female. Obviously I must put something of a crimp in the conversation if they are dying to discuss mistresses or boast of their sexual performance or relieve themselves, but they can always take their cigarillos out on to the terrace and do all of those things.’

  Gray gave a snort of amusement. ‘I do not think your aunt has the remotest idea just who she is expecting me to bring back to London. I look forward to watching you. Do you scandalise the other ladies?’

  Gaby shrugged. ‘They are used to me. This will be a social evening only, I think.’ Some of the other women she even thought of as friends, although she had little in common with their day-to-day lives. ‘Wine?’ She passed him the flask of red.

  ‘Good. Yours?’ Gray wiped the neck with one of the napkins Maria had wrapped the food in before passing it back to Gaby, then ruined the civilised effect by scrubbing the back of his hand across his lips.

  The soldier, not the society gentleman, Gaby thought, repressing a smile.

  ‘No. This is a MacFarlane vintage. They make more table wine than I do. You’ll have to talk to them at dinner tomorrow—I’m sure Hector MacFarlane would be delighted to sell you—’

  She broke off as a flicker of darkness scuttled out from a boulder beside Gray’s left boot. The knife was in her hand ready to throw, then she realised that he had slid his own blade from his boot and had it poised in his hand. They both watched the scorpion, then it skittered off over the edge of the terrace and they relaxed in unison, shoulders touching as they leaned back.

  ‘These days I don’t like killing anything I don’t have to, even those wicked little devils,’ Gray said as he slid his knife back out of sight.

  ‘Neither do I,’ Gaby agreed. There was a mark on her blade, a smear of sap, and she rubbed it clean with her thumb.

  ‘How well can you throw that?’ Gray asked.

  ‘Very well. Old Pedro, my father’s steward, taught me when I was only ten. See that dead plant over there?’ A large, desiccated thistle was silhouetted against a post on the edge of the terrace.

  ‘You can hit that from here?’ He sounded politely sceptical.

  Gaby shifted the knife into a throwing grip and sat up. Beside her Gray stood and out of the corner of her eye she saw him draw his own knife again. His throw followed hers in a fraction of a second. Hers skewered the head of the thistle to the post, his cut the stem beneath the head.

  ‘I’m impressed.’ He walked across to retrieve both knives.

  ‘So am I. Shall we go back down again now? Now, what was I saying? Oh, yes, Uncle Hector is sure to offer to sell you wine.’

  She thought she heard him mutter, ‘Everyone in this damn valley wants to sell me something,’ but when she looked at him he grinned back.

  Really, the man was all too easy to like—she couldn’t recall now why she had found him so severe, so difficult, when he had first arrived. Perhaps she could survive a week of his company, after all. Provided she could stop looking at his mouth. Or those shoulders.

  Chapter Six

  It was early, the light was thin, weak. Nothing stirred inside the house or out. Gaby turned, squashed up the pillow and burrowed into it. Far too early to be awake. She turned to the other side. But something had woken her, a soft thud and a crunching sound that had somehow become part of a dream about cracking walnuts.

  She sat up, listened. Nothing, just her imagination, but it was impossible to go back to sleep now. She lay and thought about Gray instead.

  Last night at dinner she had thought him subdued, somehow. Polite, careful to involve Jane in the conversation, observant about what they had seen on their walk up through the terraces. And yet it was as though someone had turned down the wick on a lamp. Perhaps he was tired or missing his children, or he regretted committing to stay for a few days and travel down to Porto with her. He had excused himself after the meal and gone back to the Gentlemen’s House. No intimate conversations last night, which was doubtless a good thing.

  Sunlight was penetrating the shutters now. When she slipped out of bed and went to look the morning was perfect: cool, clear, filled only with the sounds of nature. The river, early birds, a distant dog barking. The water would be cold, but the bathing place would be beautiful and she could paddle her feet and watch fish rise and the kingfisher hunting.

  It took minutes to pull an old gown over her head, find some rope-soled shoes and a towel and let herself out into the garden. A blackbird flew off, making its usual overdramatic fuss about nothing. The ginger kitchen cat sauntered out of the wood store, inspected her, sneered in a feline manner and strolled off, tail up, in search of a breakfast mouse.

  Dew-soaked grass brushed her ankles. The air, not yet warmed by the sun, sent goosebumps up her arms and she threw the linen towel around her shoulders as a makeshift shawl. Foolish to even think of wading at this time of year when the river was chill with the very last of the melt water from the mountains, but she was restless.

  The Douro was not a safe river to take risks with, except where it had carved little bays and deposited shingle to protect them. There it was possible to find pools with slow-moving water, deep enough to swim in, safe enough to relax. There was one just upstream of the house, beyond the edge of the lawn, through a thicket of willow. Gaby trod softly, hoping to see the kingfisher on his favourite dead branch overlooking the pool.

  Something was splashing about beyond the screen of low-hanging branches. She moved warily. It might be a stray farm animal taking a drink or it might be a pack of the semiwild dogs that roamed the foothills and were best avoided. She eased the leaves apart and caught her breath.

  Gray was standing thigh-deep in the pool, stark naked. His back was to her, his arms raised as he ran both hands through his wet hair. He had just stood up, she realised, as the water sheeted down from his shoulders.

  His skin below the neck was pale, the muscular definition of his shoulders and back a pattern of light and shade as the sunlight hit him. She followed the dip of his spine down to the narrow waist, the tight, neat buttocks, the horseman’s strong thighs where water droplets clung to dark hairs.

  A river god, magnificent, male. Gaby’s mouth was dry, she could have no more closed her eyes than levitated. Then the kingfisher flew past the mouth of the bay, a flicker of iridescent blue, and Gray’s head snapped up, his arms dropped to his sides. For a moment the man watched the bird and Gaby watched the man, then he turned and she took two hasty steps back among the low-hanging leaves.

  Her foot came down on a dry branch with a crack like a pistol shot. There would be no mistaking it for anything but a footfall. She almost fled, then realised that would betray the fact that she had been watching.

  She cursed in Portuguese, loudly enough to be heard, and pushed on through the wall of greenery, unfurling the towel from her shoulders as she came, as though preparing to stop and undress.

  In the water Gray moved and she looked up. The flapping towel half obscured her vision, but not before she saw the diamond of dark hair on his chest between his nipples, the trail downward to his navel, downward to the junction of his thighs and—

  Gabrielle gave a startled shriek and spun around, the towel like a banner behind her.

  * * *

  Hell. Gray took two strides out of the water, grabbed his own towel and slung it around his hips. ‘I apologise. I did not realise that anyone else would be swimming. I asked last night and they said there was this bay, but that it would be cold.’ And thank heavens for chill river water or she would have had even more of an eyeful.

  Gabrielle made a vague gesture with her hand, her back still turned. Her neck was pink below the pinned-up plait of dark hair. ‘Not at all. I probably wouldn’t have swum, and anyway I should have made more noise in case anyone was here, but I was hoping to see the kingfisher.’

  ‘It flew past just before you came. If you stay there a moment, I will put on my trousers.’ That was thoroughly uncomfortable, pulling them on over chilly, damp flesh, but he tugged them up, fastened the falls. ‘I’m more or less decent now.’ It wasn’t as though she was a virgin. She must have seen a man’s chest before. Seen all of a man. Even so, he draped the damp towel over his shoulder and down across his torso.

  Gabrielle turned, the movement swirling the thin cotton of the faded gown over her curves, and he realised that she was probably naked under it, ready to swim if she had felt brave enough to face a brisk dip. Now he was on the shore they were close enough for him to see that her pupils were dilated just a little, her breathing rapid enough to lift her breasts distractingly.

  She had seen enough to excite her, just as the realisation excited him. Gray wondered if the more intelligent thing to have done would have been to sit down in the river and wait for her to go away. He’d have frozen his parts off, of course, it was far too cold to sit about in, but...

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Death before dishonour,’ he muttered. ‘I should simply have gone under the water.’

  ‘Gentlemanly, but idiotic,’ Gabrielle observed. ‘But then, so many of the things that gentlemen consider necessary are. I’ll leave you to...’ With a flap of her towel she vanished into the willows.

  Gray carried on drying himself. The fact that his thawing anatomy was beginning to take a decided interest in proceedings was a distraction he tried to ignore although, as that was the crux of the problem, it wasn’t easy. He had thought yesterday that the attraction he felt was probably mutual, now he was certain. He had taken care not to be alone with Gabrielle last night, but an intimate chat over a glass of port was hardly in the same league as face-to-face confrontation with him naked and her as good as.

  It was nothing more than a physical reaction, of course, but he was not going to accompany her on her tour of the remaining terraces, that was certain. His shirt tails refused to tuck in smoothly between the loose linen trousers and his still-damp skin and he pulled them out again impatiently and left them hanging, flipped the towel over his shoulder and walked barefoot back towards the Gentlemen’s House.

  Gabrielle was an attractive young woman. He had been celibate since... Since when? Gray stopped halfway across the lawn and thought. Hell, six months. His father’s death, everything that followed, had swallowed up both time and emotional energy. But that explained why he was feeling decidedly edgy now. Being alone so casually with Gabrielle, who was not a virgin and would be quite well aware of what her feelings and reactions meant, was going to reveal any stirrings of desire.

  As he stripped off again in his room and stood in the shallow bathtub, pouring blessedly hot water over himself, Gray wondered whether he should say he had changed his mind, would be leaving the next day.

  But that would be to acknowledge that he was aware of that flare of attraction on the riverbank and that awareness was much better left unacknowledged. Besides, he was finding this insight into another world, one he had seen during the fighting but had been ignorant of, fascinating. They were adults, neither of them wanted an entanglement or complications, surely? It would be easy enough to manage his feelings for a few more days.

  * * *

  It could have been very awkward. Gaby wrinkled her nose at herself in the looking glass as she prepared for the dinner party. Awkward? Downright embarrassing. They had both felt that flash of desire, she was certain, and it had only been superior acting skills on both sides that had dampened it down. Or, rather, banked it behind masks of indifferent politeness. Flash? It had been more like a lightning strike.

  Over breakfast she had braced herself to extend the invitation to climb the terraces on the far side of the river as they had discussed the previous day. Gray had clearly rehearsed a story of letters to write first. Then, he said, he had realised that he was close to some point of particular interest to him from the time he had passed through the area in August 1810. He asked for the loan of a horse for later in the morning so he could ride out and see if he could locate the French position he remembered.

  Gaby had agreed with a definite sense of relief and reminded him about the evening’s dinner party. ‘We will leave at six if you could be ready by then,’ she said before she stepped down into the boat and Jorge skulled her across the river.

  Gray had walked towards the house without a backwards glance. She, of course, only saw what he was doing because she happened to be facing backwards, not that she would dream of looking otherwise.

  Now she held up one of a pair of earrings to her left ear and another from a different set on the other side and made herself concentrate on choosing. Yes, definitely the silver-and-pearl drops. Her hair was up in an elaborate knot secured with a silver comb, and they went well with that. She hesitated over the jewellery tray that Paula, her maid, had fetched from the safe and finally settled on the intricately worked silver chain with one large pearl suspended from it. With the chain twisted round her neck three times the pearl lay perfectly, just at her cleavage.

  Her gown had been made in Lisbon two months before and was unworn. She had seen an illustration in one of the Paris fashion magazines that were imported in large numbers now and had sent it off to the dressmaker who had been holding fabric for her from the last time she had been in the capital. Gaby stood up, smoothed down the deep garnet silk and stepped into her evening slippers.

  Yes, that would do very well. She did not want an affaire with Gray, but she did want him to realise that she was not some poor little provincial chit stranded abroad who needed to be brought back to England and London society in order to bloom. He could tell Aunt Henrietta that she had fashionable gowns and good jewellery and a lively social life and that would certainly annoy her, even if it did not discourage her from her efforts to dislodge Gaby from Portugal.

  Gray was waiting in the hall, a handsome, most civilised, gentleman in his immaculate evening clothes. A red cabochon stone in his neckcloth echoed the gleam of the signet on his left hand, the finishing touch.

  And I know what is under those clothes now.

  Gaby kept that tantalising thought hidden under a polite smile as he came to the foot of the staircase and held out his hand to assist her down the last few steps. ‘Thank you.’ She rested her fingers on his arm when he offered it. Very formal tonight, aren’t we? Probably Gray was using that formality as armour, just as she was.

  ‘You look beautiful, Gabrielle.’

  It was the first time he had used her given name without her asking. Deliberate or a slip? ‘Thank you, Gray.’ Baltasar opened the front door as Gray settled his hat on his head and Gaby looked out, past the lanterns that had just been lit against the gathering shadows. ‘Oh, good, the carriage is prompt. The distance is very short,’ she explained, ‘but it is not a road one wants to walk over at night—not in evening shoes, at any rate.’ She was determined on polite small talk this evening while the thoughts of that morning still made her feel warm and flustered.

  Gray handed her in and took his place facing her. The hood of the barouche was down still, but the coachman would raise it before they came home. Now the fresh evening air was pleasant and the lack of intimacy felt...safer.

  ‘Did you find the location you were looking for?’

  ‘Yes, and with less trouble than I had expected.’ Gray took off his hat and laid it on the seat beside him. The breeze ruffled his hair slightly and she thought that she preferred that to the smoothly combed effect. ‘It was a place where a party of French snipers ambushed our forward column. I was puzzled at the time at how they had arrived there unseen, but once I was able to look about freely I could see there is a gully behind the rock that would have given them cover.’

  ‘Was it a bad skirmish? Did you lose many men?’

  ‘No, fortunately. Three wounded and those not seriously. It was a delaying tactic on their part and they didn’t press their advantage once they’d diverted us.’ He stared out over the darkening landscape. ‘Interesting how one views the countryside when one isn’t expecting to be shot at from every patch of cover.’

  ‘Are you glad now that you came back and can see Portugal in peacetime?’

  The other day when she had asked for his impressions, Gray had said that it was a pleasure to see the country at peace and she was expecting a similar response this time. Which was why she had asked, she supposed. It was a safe subject for conversation.

  * * *