Chapter Thirty-Six
Mordecai didn’t take Eleanor riding in her breeches and tailcoat that afternoon because it rained. Fresh, cool rain that washed away the sticky heat of the past month.
Instead of riding, he showed her Coombe Regis, trying to share his delight in the house with her, pointing out his favorite absurdities: the songbirds cavorting across the ceiling in the music room; the gargoyles grinning down from the pelmets in the library; the trompe l’oeil panel in the Long Gallery that invited one to step through into a sunlit garden.
He suspected that he talked rather too much, but Eleanor didn’t seem to mind. She was even surprised into a laugh when she saw the great, gilded four-poster bed that had been relegated to the very sparest of the spare bedchambers because it was so bli
