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‘When he opened his eyes and said, “Papa, what are you doing here?” I thought I would never ask for anything else, ever again, the relief was so great. I’m an ungrateful devil still to yearn after something I cannot have.’
‘Gray, I—’
‘Gabrielle, you do not have to apologise. Never that. It is exactly the same as it would be for me if someone told me that on marriage I lost total control of Winfell, of all the estates, of my seat in the House of Lords, that everything would become the possession of my wife. It would not matter how much I loved her, I would be losing total control of something that was at the core of who I was, why I was. There are very few women, other than monarchs, who face what you face in terms of what they surrender on marriage.’
‘You are too understanding,’ she said, piqued. ‘Could you not rant and rave a little?’
He became very still and suddenly she was aware of how big he was, how powerful. ‘You think me understanding? You think that simply because I have enough intelligence to see what the problem is for you and sufficient empathy to sympathise, that I feel civilised about this? Resigned, perhaps?’
She had propped her umbrella against the seat between them. Gray picked it up in both hands and bent it—metal struts, strong malacca handle—until it snapped. ‘I want to break things, hit things,’ he said through clenched teeth and hurled the limp, ruined thing on to the seat in front of them to lie like a broken bird.
Gaby gasped and he turned on the seat to face her. No, he is not feeling civilised. Not resigned.
‘I could smash this carriage,’ Gray said in that dangerous voice. ‘I could swear and I could rant and, my God, I could rave. I could have you sobbing, terrified, distressed.’ He leaned forward sharply so his face was too close to hers for Gaby to focus. ‘Is that what you want? Is that what it would take for you to believe that I care? Is that what it would take for you to trust what I say?’
Gaby shook her head. ‘No.’
‘No, she says. What about this?’ Gray’s hands closed on her shoulders.
The kiss was hard and dangerous. There was anger that made her tremble, even as she kissed him back as fiercely. She should have been afraid, but there was despair there, tenderness there, an emotion that made his hands shake with something that was not rage.
He let her go at last and she fell back, hating herself for stripping that control from him.
‘Anger breaks things,’ he said after a while, into silence that had grown thick with unspoken words, feelings. ‘It does not bend them to our will.’
‘Only this will not bend, only break, whatever we do,’ she said sadly.
‘We have arrived. I will take you in and introduce you to the Gibsons and send the carriage round to the mews to take you home when you have finished. I will buy you a new umbrella.’
And a new heart?
The carriage halted. Gaby straightened her hat, ordered her breathing into submission and found a social smile.
Gray, it seemed, had been doing much the same. ‘I look forward to meeting my exotic lady of the harem,’ he said lightly as he helped her out.
‘And I my valiant guard,’ she returned in the same tone. It was that or burst into tears.
Gray lifted her hand to his lips. ‘Who would die for you, my lady.’ He was not smiling.
* * *
‘I am not at all certain that is decent.’ Aunt Henrietta, who was draped in enough silk brocade to upholster an entire suite of furniture in the Prince Regent’s Carlton House, studied Gaby’s costume with apparent alarm.
‘Nothing is actually transparent, Aunt.’ She had shed her evening cloak into the hands of a maid in the ladies’ retiring room and Lady Orford was seeing the ensemble for the first time.
It had taken over a week, and the work of Gaby’s favourite modiste to convert the diaphanous silks and gauzes Mrs Gibson and her daughters had pressed on her into something that looked authentic without being utterly scandalous and without damaging the original garments.
‘Yes, but it looks as though it ought to be. And it clings.’
Gaby was rather enjoying having a bosom that merited the name rather than the modest curves that the fashions of the day revealed. The tight little bodice lifted and compressed and presented every inch to maximum advantage and contrasted with the filmy layers of silken skirts that flirted around her ankles—her bare ankles above frivolous little sandals with bells on them.
‘I do have a veil,’ she offered.
‘Ha! That little scrap? All it does is dangle across the lower part of your face from ear to ear and blow about in the breeze, just like that apology for a head covering does.’
‘All the ladies will be similarly dressed, Aunt. And besides, everyone is staring at the footmen and their chests.’
Her aunt gave a muted shriek, but Gaby was not surprised that she stopped protesting and led the way out. The footmen’s costumes—fortunately for the poor men’s blushes—were not as racy as they had sounded. The edges of the waistcoats were caught together in the front so that no—whisper it—nipples were on show, much as giggling young ladies might crane their necks. However, a fine array of muscular arms and broad shoulders were revealed and the baggy trousers tucked into soft kid boots were undoubtedly dashing.
