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She had not been able to give him that trust up to now, she acknowledged. It would be a leap of faith and the fact that she wanted to be with him, wanted to be his wife, only made it harder to decide. Was she doing what she wanted or what she ought to do?
But first she must be certain that she really was carrying a child. She knew the name of the best doctor in Porto, the one that all the ladies summoned to their childbeds. Because he specialised as an accoucheur she had never met him, so a false name would protect her privacy a little longer.
* * *
The next day Gaby managed to secure an appointment with Dr Riberro. She went to his consulting rooms veiled and returned dizzy with the knowledge that she was, indeed, with child, that she appeared to be perfectly healthy and that she now had the most important decision of her life to make.
‘If I love him, then I must trust him,’ Gaby said to Jane as they sipped, grimacing, the camomile tea the doctor had recommended. ‘I wish I had realised that before, had not been so stubborn.’
‘But you feel the responsibility to the family firm very deeply.’
‘It took so long to build the quality, the reputation. All those years of work by my parents, my grandparents and their forefathers. It should have been Thomas’s. Our workers have been with us for generations.’
‘There is no reason to suppose Lord Leybourne would damage such an inheritance.’ Jane experimented with a spoonful of honey in her tea and pushed the jar across the table to Gaby. ‘Try that. It improves the taste.’
‘It is trade, a business, and he is an aristocrat. And it is hundreds of miles from England. It would be a smudge on the family name and a great deal of work for what he probably thinks is foolish sentiment, although he is too kind to say so.’
Gaby looked around the tea room of the hotel. She could not go home yet, not with this decision hanging over her. If she did, she feared she would act out of sentiment alone, shut herself into the quinta and ride out the scandal, learn, somehow, to live with her conscience over deceiving the man she loved.
They were at the hotel they normally used in Porto. It was quiet, respectable and comfortable, but not one that her neighbours and friends patronised. She knew what she looked like from her mirror—pale, tense and with dark shadows under her eyes. It would be best not to be seen and her health commented upon before she knew what she was going to do.
‘I love him,’ she said out loud. ‘And I have to do the right thing and believe that he will, too.’ But the right thing as Gray saw it might well not be the same as her vision. ‘I will go down to the docks tomorrow, book a passage back to England. I cannot do this by letter.’
‘You must. Summon him here,’ Jane said firmly. ‘It cannot be good for you in your condition to go back and forth on that wretched journey. The Bay of Biscay is bad enough when one is feeling in perfect health and it is December now.’
‘I have to and, besides, I am never seasick, so the rough weather is neither here nor there.’ The morning sickness would be as bad on the ship or the land. ‘It will doubtless be several days or so before I find a berth and can sail again.’ She leaned across the table and took the other woman’s hand. ‘I have to see his face when I tell him, Jane. I have to know what is in his heart.’
In hers there was joy about the baby and there would be, even if there was nothing at stake, no inheritance, she realised. Before, she had been thinking like a dynast, not a mother, not a woman. This child would be loved by her whether they grew up wanting to run Frost’s or not, she realised. It felt strange to have that worry gone. It had obsessed her ever since she had begun to accept the finality of Thomas’s death and now... Now other things were more important.
Chapter Twenty-Two
It was three days later that the shipping factor sent a message to come down to the docks. There had been a storm in Biscay, ships had been delayed and when she had enquired he had no way of knowing what bookings were already taken. Now ships were arriving, the note said. There should be plenty of choice.
The wet weather, the tail of the storms, blew in from the sea in a fine drizzle that soaked everything, made the stone-flagged quayside gleam with damp and cast a miserable chill over the city and the estuary. Gaby refused to be depressed by it. There was too much else to think about and worry over.
They were unloading a large vessel beyond the factor’s office, one of those delayed by the storm, she guessed. Passengers, some lurching slightly as they recovered their land legs, were making their way towards her in the wake of porters with laden barrows. One tall figure stood out in the murk and her breath caught as she narrowed her eyes against the damp. No, obviously it could not be Gray.
‘Gabrielle!’ He broke into a run as she stood staring, the crowd splitting around her as though she was a rock in the river. Then he was in front of her, his hands reaching for her.
‘Your face,’ she said, staring. Gray was sporting a greenish-purple left eye and a healing lower lip.
‘Nothing. It is nothing. Gabrielle, what are you doing here? I thought you would be back at the quinta by now.’
‘But what happened? Who have you been fighting?’ she demanded, a sinking apprehension in her stomach.
‘Henry. A misunderstanding. He is all right and this is nothing. Gabrielle, I had to come and tell you—’
‘No, me first.’ Whatever he had come all these miles through the teeth of a storm to tell her must wait until he heard about the child. ‘You have to hear what I need to say.’
‘In here. You are getting soaked.’ He pulled her towards one of the low brick buildings that lined the quay, a cake and coffee shop catering to the passengers waiting to embark or to do business. Gray pushed open the door to steam and the enticing aromas of baking and hot chocolate. ‘A jug of chocolate for two,’ he ordered in English, apparently too distracted to recall his Portuguese, but the woman behind the counter obviously understood.
‘This booth, Gabrielle. Give me your cloak.’ There was only one other couple in the shop, huddled together in conversation at the far end. Gray shook out her cloak and his greatcoat and hung them over empty chairs, then took her hands in his large warm ones. ‘You are chilled through and you do not look well.’ He pulled off his gloves and traced the circles under her eyes with one cold finger.
‘Just what every woman wants to hear,’ she said with an attempt at lightness as the chocolate and two cups were put in front of them.
The woman smiled at her. Perhaps, Gaby thought, she is being sentimental over reunited lovers. Is that what we are?
‘Thank you.’ She took the cup Gray had filled for her, sipped the rich liquid for courage and to ease her cold lips. There was no way to soften this news. She put down her cup and looked him in the eyes. ‘Gray, I am expecting a baby.’
