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He is talking about his marriage, she realised. The temptation to press him for more details, here in the darkness when she, at least, was in confessional mood, had to be resisted. Gray was a proud man and a private one and she owed him too much to indulge in vulgar curiosity.
The silence as the carriage wound its way back through the night-time streets was curiously companionable. All either of them said when they reached her hotel room door was her thanks, his ‘Goodnight.’
Gray bent his head, brushed his mouth across the lips she raised to him, then, as she opened the door he turned and walked away.
A lamp was burning low on the table in their sitting room, but when she peeped around the door of Jane’s bedchamber she was fast asleep on the bed, still in her wrapper, a book fallen open on the coverlet. She pretended that she was a brisk, unsentimental woman, but even so, she stayed up at night to see Gaby safely home.
With a sudden surge of affection Gaby moved the book, found a spare blanket in her own room and draped it carefully over her companion, then took the lamp and put herself to bed.
She had told Gray that she was tired and so she was. Yet her brain would not let her sleep. I could love that man if I am not very careful, she thought. She wanted to be his lover, she had agreed to become so, but something suspiciously like her conscience was telling her that had been a serious mistake.
If she was not very careful she was going to forget her reason for coming to London—to find a man to father her child and heir. She could hardly be Gray’s lover and, at the same time, seek out another man. Nor, she realised, could she indulge her desire for him and then promptly end the liaison. She would be using him, she saw that all too clearly.
For a moment there was the tempting thought of being both his lover and hoping she would fall pregnant by him. Gray’s child. She could almost see the little boy. Somehow she was sure it would be a boy with dark hair, his father’s eyes... Gaby shook her head resolutely as though that would stop the dull ache of longing inside. Gray would never agree to father her child and to try to trick him would be despicable.
Which meant that she must tell him she had changed her mind and as quickly as possible. It would be a lie—she wanted him, desired him, ached for him. Telling him that they should not be lovers would hurt. It was not going to be an easy conversation, Gaby thought as she pulled the covers over her head and burrowed down. Not easy at all.
* * *
If anyone had told him a month ago that he would hear about a fellow officer being killed by a Frenchman in civilian disguise, aided by a loyal Englishwoman, and that he would decide to do nothing about it, Gray would have thought them either insulting enough to challenge, or a fool.
But here he was doing just that, he thought, as his valet moved soft-footed around the dressing room disposing of garments as he shed them. Why?
Because he believed Gabrielle, he supposed. And if the positions were reversed, he would certainly do his utmost to rescue a Frenchwoman from an assault by one of her own countrymen, whether or not they were at war. Norwood was not a man he had ever warmed to or admired. There had been an essential coldness about him. Not that Gray expected to form a warm friendship with every officer he met, but he had never seen Norwood grieve for a friend lost, or put himself out for someone who needed help. And there had been whispers about women, young women, seduced and abandoned.
It was not hard to believe that the intelligence officer might want to secure a wealthy wife, not too great a stretch to visualise him forcing the issue. Had he been so ruthless as to plot the death of a patriotic young man to increase his gains? Possibly, Gray realised with a sense of shock that the idea came so easily.
‘My lord?’ Tompkins was standing patiently, a nightshirt folded over the back of the chair beside him, the red silk banyan draped across the seat.
Gray realised that he was down to his evening breeches and must have been standing there, his hands on the fastenings, for several minutes while he thought. ‘I’m sorry, just puzzling something through.’
‘Of course, my lord.’ Tompkins whisked away breeches, stockings, evening pumps and shook out the nightshirt. When Gray took it and pulled it over his head he added, ‘Mr Hotchkiss, the agent, left a portfolio for you. I thought perhaps it was somewhat bulky for night-time reading, but I have placed it on the table in your bedchamber. Can I do anything else for you, my lord?’
That must be the first selection of houses for Gabrielle. It might be better to stop brooding on Norwood’s death and do something practical. ‘Light a candelabrum for the table and bring me a pen and ink and the brandy, Tompkins. Then take yourself off to bed.’
The agent had included details of eight houses and two apartments in the portfolio. Gray tossed two of the houses aside as being insufficiently good addresses. Gabrielle, with the faint taint of trade and her anything-but-faint air of independence, needed the most fashionable and respectable of addresses to lend her consequence.
Two would be too small, one, too large. Another street he knew to be very noisy at all hours. That left four. He scribbled a note to Hotchkiss to be sent first thing in the morning and closed the lid on the inkwell. Inspecting four houses with Gabrielle might be a diverting way of spending the day. The sooner she was established in her own household the better for the sake of his ability to sleep, let alone his ability to keep his hands off her. He wanted her in his arms, against his skin. He wanted to be over her, in her, with her.
Gray picked up the details of the apartments that he had initially discarded without more than a glance. A house with Miss Moseley in residence and a complement of servants was not going to be suitable for a liaison either. But if he took one of the apartments himself, then they could use that for trysts in complete privacy. He uncapped the ink and picked up his pen again.
I have details of four houses if you would care to inspect them tomorrow. Also apartments, which might prove useful.
Might I suggest a bonnet with a veil?
G.
Oh, yes, he was beginning to ache for Gabrielle Frost, he thought as he addressed and sealed the note. Gray snuffed out all the candles and took himself off to bed, where he proceeded to toss and turn until he sat up again with an oath, wide awake.
What the devil was the matter with him? Tomorrow he and Gabrielle might be lovers. Certainly the day after. With that definite he could surely compose himself to sleep? He was not some randy seventeen-year-old lusting after his first wench.
But for some reason he could not stop thinking about Gabrielle. Not her in bed, although that image was always there in the back of his mind. Not her part in Norwood’s death either. Just Gabrielle. How she smiled, how she looked when she was sad. The sudden flashes of humour, her seriousness about her quinta and her love of Portugal. The curve of her neck, the gesture of her hand...
I am on the brink of falling in love with her. Hell and damnation.
He would marry her tomorrow, love or not—this was close enough for him, love was a dangerous emotion. But she would not have him, he knew that much about her now. The resistance to marriage was engrained in her, confirmed by Norwood’s cynical manoeuvrings. And he was not in a position to simply walk away from England and his obligations, even if she could be persuaded to marry him and believe that he would be a sleeping partner in the business of the quinta, as she might if he was a younger son wit
hout ties to England.
