“Ah.” Lia didn’t comment on his last words and instead simply got out of the car and shaded her eyes as she squinted up at the manor. “That’s a lot of space to heat in the winter.”

Gabriel unfolded himself from his own seat. “You sound exactly like my mother. She looks at this house and sees an accounting sheet full of neat numbers and sums.”

“Then I’ll take that as a compliment.” She dropped her hand, her lips twisting into a wry smile. “I, too, am rather partial to neat numbers and sums.”

Gabriel leaned on the door of the car and watched Lia as she spun in a slow circle, taking in her surroundings. He suddenly had the urge to paint her just like this—the green of her dress a jewel floating against a backdrop of fern and olive that comprised the lawns and vegetation behind the house. The curve of her soft rose-colored lips, the halo of amber and gold around her head where the sunshine illuminated the flyaway wisps that had come loose from her ponytail.

His fingers curled, as if he held a brush in his hand.

“Do you think I could look at the gardens and the view out front before we go in? Just for a moment? Before they finish setting up?”

Gabriel straightened and cleared his throat, pressing his fingers flat on the roof of the car. “Of course. Come, follow me.”

He resisted the urge to reach for her hand and instead simply waited for her as she skirted the car. They walked back up the lane, their feet crunching on the gravel.

“Are you a lord of something?” she asked conversationally as they rounded the side of the manor. “I meant to ask that earlier.”

Gabriel glanced at her. “A lord?”

“This house is rather lordlike. And it sounds like it’s been in your family a long time. It seemed like a reasonable possibility.”

“Alas, I am not a lord of anything,” Gabriel told her. “Nor is anyone in my family. Though the house was intended for one.”

“Really? Who?”

“As my grandfather tells it, a rather self-absorbed viscount who decided, on something of a whim, to build himself a fine manor in 1814. Unfortunately, also on a whim, his lordship decided that he would look quite majestic in a military uniform. Despite his family’s horrified protestations, he purchased himself a commission, marched off to Belgium in 1815, and, regrettably, did not survive the French. The house was never completed, fell into disrepair, and the viscount’s family eventually sold it to the first person with enough money and the ambition to take on an unfinished pile of brick and stone. It’s been in my family ever since.”

“So the house outranks you,” she teased.