Page 58 of A Winter Scandal

“Eating like a trooper,” Thea responded, smiling. “Honestly, he seems to be all right. The thief had the baby wrapped in an extra blanket, so I have to be grateful to him for that. And though Matthew was screaming madly when I came in, I think he was only scared and unhappy, not hurt.”

“He doesn’t feel as though he has a fever.” Gabriel stroked his finger over the baby’s soft cheek, and Matthew responded with a wide-mouthed grin that spilled his milk and bread back out onto his chin. Gabriel chuckled and stood up, pulling back on his gloves as Thea wiped the baby’s chin. “I should bring in the firewood he dropped in our struggle. We shall need more than is sitting by the hearth.”

Thea nodded. As Gabriel started to move away, she reached out impulsively and caught his hand, bringing it up to her cheek and leaning against it. “Thank you.”

He bent over her and laid his lips tenderly upon her forehead. Then, giving her hand a squeeze, he left. Thea continued to feed Matthew. The room was warming up now, so she shrugged off her cloak and pulled the knit cap from her head. Gabriel made several trips bringing in more wood, and by the time he finished and dropped the bar down across the door to shut out the cold, as well as intruders, Thea had changed the baby, sending up silent thanks that she had thought to bring some of those necessary cloths with her.

Gabriel pulled off his many-caped driving coat and laid it over one of the kitchen chairs to dry. He settled down in the chair beside the fire and offered to hold the baby. Thea smiled her thanks and handed Matthew to him. Sitting down on the hearth next to the chair, she allowed herself to simply luxuriate in the heat for a moment. She looked over at Gabriel. Matthew’s head was bobbing sleepily, and finally, with a sigh, he laid his head down. His big blue eyes were still open, but his stare was becoming glazed, and Thea felt sure that within a few minutes, he would be asleep.

She stretched and sighed, leaning back against the rock wall beside the fireplace.

“Tired?” Gabriel asked.

Thea nodded. “It’s been quite a night. I’m happy and exhausted—and still my nerves are humming too much to be sleepy.”

She pushed back her hair, which spilled down over her shoulders in curling profusion. She had not plaited it before she went to bed as she usually did, and in all the rush and excitement, she had left it as it was. The damp weather had turned it into corkscrews. Thea divided her hair as best she could without a comb or mirror and began to braid it.

“No,” Gabriel said softly. “Don’t do that. Leave it that way.”

Thea raised her brows at him. “’Tis a mess. I look positively wild.”

He grinned, and a light sparked in his black eyes. “Maybe I like you positively wild.”

For some reason, his words reminded Thea of her actions the afternoon before, when he had touched her so intimately and she had responded with a shattering rush of pleasure. Color rose in her cheeks and she jumped to her feet, letting go of her hair. “I—I think I shall wash up a bit.”

“There’s a washbasin here?”

“Oh, yes, we have all the amenities,” she tossed over her shoulder as she walked away, pleased that she managed to keep her voice light and seemingly unconcerned.

Inside her was another matter entirely. There she was a fizzing mass of emotions. Thea had been shaken by the events of the night, her nerves stretched almost to the breaking point, then flooded with relief at finding Matthew alive and unharmed. She felt at once vulnerable and amazingly strong, vital and surging with life even as her legs still trembled, weak and watery as if she had been ill.

Thea went into the bedroom and closed the door. Taking out a towel and a rag, she poured water into the basin and began to wash. Her gaze kept straying to the bed beside her. She tried not to think about their sleeping arrangements, but that effort proved to be remarkably unsuccessful. What was going to happen tonight? Gabriel would be a gentleman, she told herself. He would sleep in the other room, no doubt. But she could not help but wonder whether she really wanted him to.

That she would even consider such a thing took Thea’s breath away. What was the matter with her? What had happened to her over the last week? She was the vicar’s sister, for heaven’s sake! She was virtuous; she lived as she should and did the things that she ought. She followed the rules.

Or at least she always had until she met Gabriel. Thea did not even want to think about all the conventions she had flouted since he came along. Still, she could not blame it all on him. He had provided the temptation perhaps, but every step she had strayed off the path had been willingly taken. The confusing tumble of sensations and emotions in her now was hers, not anything pushed on her by anyone else.

Thea could not help but think of all the years she had lived without feeling any of the things she had felt yesterday afternoon—the hours and days and months she had passed through without tasting the sweetness of Gabriel’s kiss or the pleasure of his hands on her. She wanted … oh, she wanted so much more than she had ever known. All her life, she had been plain. Ordinary. But when Gabriel kissed her, when his arms went around her and his body pressed into her, she exploded with beauty. She felt anything but ordinary.

She turned away, knotting her hands together and pacing about the small room. It was foolish to be thinking this way. Nothing was going to happen between them. Just because they were alone here together … just because circumstances had thrown them into a situation where it would be easy to give in to temptation, it didn’t mean that they were going to do so.

Afraid that her thoughts might show on her face, Thea decided to change the bed linens, too, before she returned to the other room. Finally, with no reason left to linger in here, she squared her shoulders and stepped out into the main room. Gabriel was slouched in the chair by the fire, his long legs stretched out in front of him and his dark head resting against the back of the chair, his eyes closed. Matthew lay on his chest, peacefully asleep. Thea came to an abrupt stop, an almost painful sweetness clutching at her chest.

Gabriel’s eyes opened, and a sleepy smile turned up the corners of his mouth. “I think we can put him to bed,” he said in a low voice.

Thea nodded and went to the baby’s basket to take out the extra blankets and set them aside. Gabriel carried the baby over to the basket and bent to lay him down inside.

Thea let out a gasp. “Gabriel! You’re hurt! There’s blood on your head.”

He straightened, his hand going to his head. “Oh, that. It’s nothing. I told you, he gave me a thump with one of those logs.”

“You said he’d hit you,” Thea retorted in some exasperation. “You didn’t say you were bleeding.”

“I didn’t really know it.”

She took his arm and pulled him over to the table. Pushing him down into one of the chairs, she held up the lantern to take a closer look at his head.

“Well, I suppose it doesn’t look too serious, just a scrape rather than a cut. But I should clean it.”