Page 64 of Lord Gabriel’s Undoing

He moved across to the seat on the opposite side. “No. I can’t.”

Her eyes filled with tears, but she bit her lip.

“I’m sorry,” he muttered. “We shouldn’t…I shouldn’t have done that. That was wrong of me.”

She swiped her gloved hand across her eyes. “I’ll make it my life’s work to get you to change your mind.”

He had a strong feeling she was convinced she could do so.

Chapter Twenty-Three

“I don’t know what’s got into you,” Ambrose said, as he sat with Gabriel at the breakfast table in their house in Half Moon Street on the morning of the seventh day after the visit to Bow Street. “You’ve been moping at home like a sick dog for a week now. You refused the invitation to Lady Rucker’s soirée, I couldn’t persuade you to go to the theatre with me, you declined to attend Lady Haltwhistle’s ball, and now you don’t want to come with me to the ball at Audley House. Are you sickening for something? That’s what Mama would have thought.”

He reached out a hand and tried to lay it on Gabriel’s brow, but was thwarted in the attempt as Gabriel dodged out of the way. “I’m quite well,” he snapped, in irritation. “But thank you for your brotherly concern. I just don’t feel like mixing with other people at the moment. Unlike you.”

Gabriel was well aware that Ambrose had spent the week on pins, hourly expecting to be informed of the imminent arrival of his first offspring. However, despite the bumpiness of the journey up from Dorset, Isabel continued to remain in one enormous piece. Luckily for both of them, she’d remained in her bedroom throughout her visit, mainly because, as Gabriel had so succinctly put it, she looked as though she’d swallowed a hippopotamus and couldn’t move. She was, however, attempting to insist that she should be waited on hand and foot by not just the servants but also her husband.

Hence Ambrose’s desire to attend everything he was invited to.

Ambrose’s eyes narrowed at his younger brother, and Gabriel pretended to be fascinated by the mushrooms on his plate. They were cold now, as his appetite had completely vanished of late, but he pushed them around as though he intended to eat them in a minute.

“And you’re off your food,” Ambrose said. “Anybody would think you were in love.”

A warm flush rose to Gabriel’s cheeks and he could have kicked himself. What was he? A blushing debutante?

“Aha!” Ambrose swooped in for the kill. “Can’t be one of this Season’s debutantes, or you’d be going to everything she’s been invited to. Must be someone unsuitable.” He paused, a delighted grin on his face. “Let me guess. You’ve got yourself another actress. You behaved a bit like this when you first met the last one, if I remember rightly. You’ve got a mistress installed somewhere and you’ve been visiting her while I’ve been out. I knew it. I can read you like a book, little brother. Always have been able to.”

As this claim was so patently untrue, Gabriel’s blush subsided and he put his knife and fork on his plate to indicate he’d finished eating. “Possibly,” he said, making an effort to instill doubt. He didn’t want Ambrose guessing the truth about any of this, although that was most unlikely. He didn’t want anyone but Phoebe to know anything until he found out himself.

Ambrose leaned closer and dropped his voice. “Well, at least you don’t have a wife keeping an eye on you all the time, you lucky devil. It was a black day indeed the day I met Isabel. Women are so duplicitous. She let me believe she was meek and obedient and…and nice, and it was all a lie. She’s none of those things.” He gave a shudder.

Gabriel smiled, glad to be able to change the subject. “She can’t be that bad. She’s confined herself to her bedroom, at least. And don’t forget, you let her believe you’d be a faithful, loving husband.”

“Don’t you believe it,” Ambrose said, with a deep, heartfelt sigh, and conveniently ignoring Gabriel’s comments about his own behavior. “My advice to you is never to get yourself leg-shackled. Keep on enjoying your freedom and don’t let any woman tie you down.” He huffed. “And I have to go out now, before she starts calling for me, otherwise I won’t get the opportunity to see Dora and restore my sanity. She’s already getting annoyed that I have to spend so much time waiting on Isabel.”

“She is your wife,” Gabriel pointed out. “And she is about to present you with an heir. It doesn’t look to me as though that’s a particularly pleasant process.”

Ambrose sighed. “Knowing my luck it’ll be a girl.”

“You know you’d love to have a daughter.”

Ambrose rubbed his chin. “Possibly. So long as she’s nothing like her mother. I’m hoping for a boy, of course, because then I won’t need to go near Isabel again.”

“She might notice your reticence.”

Ambrose shook his head. “Heavens, no. She didn’t care much for the process of planting the child, so I don’t think she’ll miss my attentions one bit. Say a little prayer for me that it’s a boy, if you don’t mind. Easier for both of us if it is. Her and me that is, not you. And don’t let your actress persuade you into marriage.”

With that last depressing advice given, Ambrose rose from the breakfast table and departed, no doubt seeking some safe place to hide from Isabel. White’s, perhaps. Or, if he was feeling particularly henpecked, he might go so far as to run off back to Wentworth Castle and leave his wife here to fend for herself. Only Papa, who for some inexplicable reason seemed to like Isabel and would be in residence at Wentworth, would be furious with him.

Gabriel chuckled to himself and refilled his coffee cup, reflecting on how correct Ambrose was in surmising that he was in love. Just not who with. The warning against marriage had amused him. There was no way Phoebe could ever turn out to be like Isabel. He sipped the coffee. Food had been holding no attraction for him all week, and he’d been living on coffee and the odd glass of port. Not being able to banish Phoebe from his every thought had a lot to do with it.

The coffee, which was no longer hot, drunk, and followed by a second, hotter one, he was about to rise from the table himself when the door discreetly opened and Owens, Ambrose’s butler, came in carrying the silver tray on which he liked to deliver any post that came.

“My brother’s gone out, I think,” Gabriel said, standing up. “I’m afraid you’ve just missed him.”

Owens performed a neat bow. “It was not His Lordship I was seeking, milord. Rather it was yourself. An individual arrived at the servants’ entrance only ten minutes since and insisted on leaving this letter for you. Mrs. Watts was persuaded to accept it and when I returned from the front hall where I was seeing His Lordship off to White’s, she entrusted it to me. The individual had departed, so I had no way of inquiring if a reply was required, I’m afraid.”

He offered the tray.