she very much wanted fulfilled, and only he could accomplish it—but she had to keep distant from him, for both their sakes.
In that quick moment, his gaze met hers. His eyes were hot, and heat traveled the distance between them.
Somehow, she managed to haul her attention away from him and distracted herself by admiring Carriford’s facade. It had an air of enchantment, as though lords and ladies of an earlier time would emerge in just a moment to take the air.
“Rooms first?” Noel asked. “A tour of the house and grounds?”
“An old woman needs her rest,” Lady Haighe grumbled.
“When I see one,” he said with a smile, “I will suggest she do just that.”
Lady Haighe sniffed, but it seemed she couldn’t hold back her own reluctant smile.
Some of the others voiced an interest in going to their rooms so they might also rest from the journey.
“A tour sounds lovely,” Jess said. She’d accompanied Lady Catherton to a friend’s estate, and as soon as they had arrived, Jess had been put to work, communicating with the staff about the countess’s preferences and dislikes. There had been no time for leisure.
Not today. Today, she was Noel’s honored guest.
While some were shown to their chambers, Jess, Lady Farris, Mr. Walditch, and Lord Pickhill followed Noel as he guided them into the house. In the interim, the baggage was taken down from the carriages as the valets and ladies’ maids arrived.
“The Great Hall,” Noel announced, stepping into an immense chamber with tall ceilings. A huge fireplace dominated one wall, flanked by heavy wooden chairs. “Lords of the manor held quarterly audiences with their tenants to hear any complaints or requests.”
“Doubtless with wolfhounds sleeping in front of the fire,” Jess said.
His look was appreciative. “Deerhounds. But you’re close. Very close.”
“Perhaps you have been here before,” Lady Farris said. “In another life. You might have been a lady, seated just so to protect the panniers.”
Jess bit back the comment that if she had been alive back then, she surely would have been one of the laborers, her rough hands clutching her apron as she came to petition her lord for a new barn after a fire, and certainly not a lady protecting whatever the hell a pannier was.
Noel took them from the Great Hall into the corridor, where he showed them several parlors with wooden paneled walls covered in tapestries. The air smelled of beeswax polish and lemon, clean, but rich with history.
“This Venetian goblet has a tragic past,” he said, pointing to a stunning glass cup in a cabinet. “The unfortunate Charles I drank from it on a brief stay at Carriford. And this,” he continued, nodding toward a leather glove that looked tiny enough for a doll, “was left behind by one of Charles II’s mistresses when she had used Carriford as an assignation spot with the monarch. Fortunately, there was just the one mistress and not the entire platoon of them. There aren’t enough bedrooms at Carriford for that kind of debauchery.”
“You sound sad about that,” Jess teased.
“I come from a long line of reprobates and rogues,” he said with a bow. “It would be such a shame for their descendant to disappoint them. Let us move on and let their ghosts cavort in peace.”
The Long Gallery boasted curved ceilings and a floor made of wood so old it seemed to undulate in polished waves.
“Surely on rainy days you played ninepins in here,” she said. “I would have.”
“Our nurse forbade it,” Noel said, then added with a wink, “But that didn’t stop us. Oh, and I enjoyed sliding around in my drawers and stockinged feet whenever my parents and tutors were away, singing bawdy songs at the top of my lungs.”
She pressed her lips together, trying without success to keep from grinning at the image of a young Noel, full of mischief, impossible to be denied anything.
The house itself was lovely, but when he brought them outside to the gardens and grounds, she knew with certainty that there was no place in England that held such enchantment. There were hedge mazes and arbors and, beyond the gardens, rolling expanses of grass that invited bare feet and reckless running at top speed.
As Lady Farris, Mr. Walditch, and Lord Pickhill talked with Mr. Fields, the aptly named head gardener, Jess admired the charming arrangement of wrought-iron furniture beneath the spreading branches of an ash tree, as though anticipating a small group of lords and ladies to take tea and cakes in the afternoon heat.