Page 26 of Lord Gabriel’s Undoing

“I never creep. I walk in boldly as I have just done. But I will agree to the fact that I am uninvited, although, as you can see, I will have been invited at some time into each of the houses I then visit in the dark hours of the night.”

“I wish you would not talk of this now,” she whispered. Her hands had made nervous fists in her lap. Clearly she didn’t want to see him caught. That was promising. “I see my aunt staring at us and the lower your voice goes, the more she becomes suspicious. You need to find some bland topic we can discuss that will not necessitate such whispers between us.”

“I find the chitchat of the drawing room to be quite stultifying. Like you, I’m tired after the adventures of the early hours and have had even less sleep, thanks to the pain I’m suffering.” He couldn’t resist teasing her about her part in his lack of sleep, and was rewarded by a flare of the Phoebe he thought lurked within. No, knew lurked within. Well-hidden, but there, nevertheless. He nodded to the fireplace. “And the heat in this room will only serve to make me sleepy if I have to talk of the weather or some other such triviality.”

“Drawing room talk should be trivial, or so my aunt says.”

He chuckled. “She is quite right, I fear. That is a rule every mama would wish to inculcate into their offspring. Nothing untoward should go on in so exalted a place as a drawing room. In fact, nothing at all should be spoken of between a young lady and a gentleman that might touch on reality.”

Her brows twitched. “You are something of a cynic, my lord.”

“In view of the fact you know me well enough to hit me with a cricket bat, I think you might call me Gabriel.”

He saw her swallow and color began to rise to her cheeks again. She really was a girl who blushed easily. However, she drew herself up taller. “And I suppose you wish to take the liberty of addressing me as Phoebe.”

“If you are offering it.”

She frowned. He could sense her wavering. Part of her must want very much to do as he suggested, but another part was warning her against allowing a self-confessed burglar such familiarity.

He tried a smile, and winced. “Just look at what you’ve done to my face, and pity me.”

This made her smile. “I might consent to your suggestion but could not do so in any place my aunt was present. She would jump to conclusions, if she hasn’t already done so. And neither of us would want that.”

The urge to say that he very much wanted her to jump to conclusions blossomed, but that wasn’t what he said. “Then perhaps it might be wise for me to take you somewhere she is not.”

Her brows shot up. “What, now?” Her voice had risen in surprise, and Lady Brockwood, who’d been straining to listen to Evesham and Miss Nicholson’s conversation as it was bound to be the most important to her, stared.

He shook his head, which hurt. The laudanum must be wearing off. “Not now. But perhaps tomorrow. I could call at eleven and take you walking in the park.”

“She will most certainly jump to conclusions if you come to take me out walking.”

“I can deal with that, have no fear.”

“And I could not go unchaperoned.”

“Bring your maid. She can walk six paces behind us so she won’t be able to overhear us.”

For a moment he thought she might be going to refuse. She was quite a conundrum. Then, to his delight, she nodded. “I would be pleased to walk with you tomorrow, Lord Gabriel, as long as Aunt Fanny says I may.” She paused. “But only to learn more of your secret project, you understand.”

Disappointing. He’d rather hoped her apparent enthusiasm might have been for his company. Perhaps he could make it so. Time would tell.

Chapter Nine

The following morning at precisely ten minutes before eleven, Phoebe was waiting in the drawing room in the company of Aunt Fanny. Also present was a slightly jealous Mattie who had not received an invitation from any of her callers to go walking in the park. Although she was too polite to say anything, Phoebe, who knew her cousin well, could feel the resentment in her cousin’s stabbing of the needle into her embroidery with every stitch. Much as they loved one another, this did not preclude the occasional resentment surfacing.

The two girls were seated side by side in the window, mainly so Phoebe could continually peep out of it to see if she could spot Gabriel arriving. She’d been given her own blood-spotted sewing, but it lay untouched in her lap and no one seemed to have noticed.

Indeed, Aunt Fanny, glowing with a deep sense of her own astute success in presenting her niece and so speedily securing her the attentions of the second son of a duke, was engaged in embroidering a handkerchief she’d announced was for Phoebe’s trousseau. This statement had managed to only increase the hint of jealousy from Mattie, who probably considered her mother’s industry should be applied only to her own trousseau.

However, Phoebe knew Mattie would not be cross for long, as they were the best of friends, even if that friendship had so far depended on Phoebe being the underdog in it. Now, Mattie leaned in closer to Phoebe, keeping her voice down so her mother wouldn’t hear. “You are something of a dark horse, you know.”

Phoebe, whose heart was hammering with well-hidden excitement, or at least she hoped it was hidden, stretched forward for her tenth peek into the street and had to make a grab for her sewing as it threatened to slide off her lap. Nothing. Not unless you counted the normal tradesmen going about their deliveries, a nursemaid walking the children she was in charge of, several carriages and a variety of different sorts of people on foot. No sign of Gabriel at all. Might he have forgotten he’d invited her to walk in the park with him? Or might his injuries be preventing him from coming? Maybe he’d decided, on sober reflection, that someone who’d attacked him with a cricket bat was not the sort of young lady his family would approve of, and he didn’t want to come after all?

She looked back at her cousin. “What do you mean, I’m a dark horse?” She kept her voice to hardly above a murmur.

Mattie leaned forwards to look outside as well. “I don’t see him any more than you do.” She sat back again. “I mean, you hid it well that Lord Gabriel had taken a fancy to you. You let me think it was Lord Evesham who was taken with you.”

“I did? He has?” If only. She would like nothing better than for Lord Gabriel to fall in love with her, but this visit must surely be for quite another reason. He wanted to encourage her interest in his pet project.