The Unexpected Marriage of Gabriel Stone (Lords of Disgrace 4)

‘Mind your own business and keep your place, damn you.’

Her nails were digging into her palms at the threat in her father’s voice. She had seen him use his whip once on a hedger who had answered back. If he struck Gabriel she had no idea what the reaction would be. Murder, probably.

She had moved to the opening when Gabriel, sounding like an affronted Welsh solicitor’s clerk, said, ‘Then I must reconsider my employment here.’

Caroline stuffed her knuckles into her mouth to stifle the sudden urge to laugh. He was a loss to the stage, her father’s hermit.

‘Don’t be a fool. Who else will pay you for sitting on a stump writing poetry? Stay here and keep watch. If you see anything, send to the house. If you can lay hands on her, lock her in the chapel.’

There was the sound of horses moving off, of shouts becoming fainter.

‘Stay put a little longer,’ Gabriel said quietly from below. ‘I’ll climb the hill and locate them all.’

* * *

It seemed like an hour before he came back, but she supposed, counting her own pounding pulse in the darkness, that it was only a few minutes.

‘You can come down now.’ Whe

n she arrived in front of him, rumpled and dusty and sneezing from the soot, he checked from the door again. ‘You’re safe to go out for a few minutes now, I’ll heat you some water.’

When she returned Gabriel was busy at the fireside. ‘Here, have some coffee. I have seen them all at a good distance. The guests are out with your father on horseback. There were three grooms, also mounted, they’ve gone down towards the lake away from here. I could see people searching on foot, but they’re nearer the house. I think you can wash and we can safely have breakfast, then I’ll go to the village and leave a letter at the posting house.’

Caroline sat down with more of a bump than she had intended. ‘Don’t go yet.’ Her voice wavered and she took a moment to steady it. ‘The post boy doesn’t get to the inn until past ten.’

Gabriel put a mug on the table beside her and hunkered down to look into her face. ‘Are you about to cry?’ He sounded less than happy at the thought.

‘No, of course not.’ She wished she felt as confident of that as she sounded. ‘I am just rather...shaken, I suppose.’

‘Is this about last night?’ He jerked his head towards the bed. ‘Do you want to go back home?’

‘No!’

‘I wouldn’t let you if you did.’ Gabriel got to his feet with a swish of brown robes. ‘I would assume you’d lost your wits. Look, last night must have been...fraught. You are tired. You are anxious and uncertain and you have no idea what is going to happen to you. And you have lost control of the situation to me. That’s a combination calculated to make you weepy or angry or stupidly docile. Any one of those would be perfectly natural, but we have no time for any of them.’

‘I can certainly manage anger,’ she said and sat up straight to glare at him. ‘Do you talk to every lady of your acquaintance like this? That must explain your reputation as a lover.’

‘Sarcasm does not become you. And, no, I do not usually talk to a lady like that.’ Gabriel smiled. The slow, reminiscent curl of his lips made something shift inside her, distracted her for a moment, dismayed her as she recognised both desire and jealousy in the jumble of emotions. ‘I am speaking to you frankly as I would to a man because we do not have the luxury of soft words and endless discussion here.’

Gabriel had not treated her as another man last night. He must have seen the kindling light of indignation in her eyes because he threw up his hands, palm out in the fencer’s sign of surrender. ‘Wash and eat your breakfast while I write the letter outside where I can keep an eye on things, then back up the chimney with you and I’ll go to the village.’

Irritation with the entire male sex got her through bacon and eggs. Caroline cleaned the plate and mug in the bucket of warm water by the fire and put them away, leaving the remains of Gabriel’s own breakfast where they lay. He could do his own washing up and besides, it emphasised to anyone who looked in that there was only one person there.

She scrambled up the chimney by herself, still determined to show him that she was not some weak and clinging female, subject to weeping. Show him that those moments in his bed had meant nothing. It was only as she rolled herself into the blanket and tried to catch up on her sleep that she realised he had probably been deliberately provoking her into just this spirit of militant determination. ‘Wretch,’ she muttered, despite the tinge of admiration for his tactics.

* * *

The day passed somehow. She slept, woke to find Gabriel had returned from the village and came down to eat, then retreated back to her cave. Life was beginning to take on an unreal, dreamlike quality. Perhaps she would spend for ever in this safe, smoky little chamber, venturing out at night like some woodland creature. Behind the unreality was the awareness that Gabriel was there, standing between her and whatever lurked in the darkness beyond the fire.

She worried about Anthony and how she would be able to write to him now. Would she find some way to see him when he was at school? How would she know if he was ill or unhappy? She had done the best she could for him, but she fretted that it was not enough. Her only consolation was that if she was married to Woodruffe she would not be with her brother either.

There was another visitation, this time by some of the guests, although they did not enter the chapel. The lurch of fear at the sound of their shouts shattered her dreaming state and she lay, gripping the edge of the blanket, as tense as a leveret hearing the fox stalking towards it through the grass.

When they had gone Gabriel stayed outside and she supposed he was presenting an innocent face to anyone who might be secretly observing. Eventually, stupefied by a mixture of boredom and anxiety, Caroline slept again.

* * *

She woke at the sound of someone inside the chimney, grabbed the water jug and raised it to throw as the pale oval of a face, eerily lit, rose above the edge of the opening.