“So I’m going to need a suit?”

“Yes. A bow tie, preferably. At least for dinner. Things relax a little after that.” She looked back at me. “You don’t have to come. It’s very… stuffy,” she finished.

“Hey, they invited me, and it would be rude not to come. Although I’m really not sure if that is my grandpa’s thing. Then again, he does love a good party, so it’s a good guess.”

Gabriella made a small noise that was neither here nor there. “Shall we keep going? I was hoping to pick some plants for the garden, including the climbers, if you don’t mind helping me.”

“Of course not.” I took the handle of the trolley, eyeing her speculatively. Something was bugging her. “Lead the way.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN – GABRIELLA

“You’re fidgeting,” Aunt Cat said. “You’ll crease your dress if you keep that up.”

I huffed and looked out of the window. I wanted to be anywhere other than here—I hadn’t been looking forwards to this party ever since we’d run into Adelaide and Eva in the garden centre.

Which was a shame because Lady Vic could throw one hell of a party.

“Whatever is wrong with you?” Aunt Cat pressed, leaning over in the car. “Gabriella!”

“I’m fine,” I said sharply, giving her a look that was hot enough to melt metal.

That’s how I felt, anyway.

I didn’t want her to know how frustrated I was… Especially since it was with Evangeline.

Granted, I had no right to be annoyed with her. Miles wasn’t mine to be annoyed over—we barely had anything more than a friendship, and Eva was single, footloose, and fancy-free.

She could flirt with whoever she pleased.

As could Miles.

That didn’t stop the bitter taste in my mouth, though.

I desperately wanted not to be here. It didn’t matter that many of my contemporaries would be here, both friends and… not so friends… alike.

There was a very large part of me that had no desire to watch Evangeline flirt with Miles.

I knew it would happen tonight. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t expressed her interest in him before, and now they’d been officially introduced, I knew they’d hit it off.

They were far more similar than he and I were.

Not that there was such a thing as he and I, of course.

I stared out of the window as we approached The Fox and Hound. It was a miracle the road had been fully cleared and everything restored in time for the party, but at the same time, I wasn’t terribly surprised.

Lady Victoria was a force to be reckoned with.

The car we were in pulled up in front of the hotel. The driveway was grand, with a large, circular fountain in the centre, making it a vast, sweeping journey from the bottom to the steps that lead up to the front doors.

The Fox and Hound was an old manor house that once belonged to an Earl. After the ancestral line had died out in the late eighteen-hundreds, it was bought and sold several times until it was finally left unoccupied in the nineteen thirties. A few decades later, Lady Vic purchased it after she married, and the rest is history as they say.