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Damn it all! Best to get her inside a room before she said something else that might make him drop her. What had the barkeep said? Second door on the right, at least he thought that’s what he’d been told. Gabe shook his head and started for the door in question. “Your father is going to have me drawn and quartered. You know that, don’t you?”
“He doesn’t have to find out,” Sophie said. “We could turn back for London right now and he’d never be the wiser.”
He snorted a response to her suggestion. She was out of her mind if she really believed that. After all, they’d been gone for hours, and it would be hours more before he could return her to Beckbury House even if they did turn around right this moment. Besides that, she was filthy, dressed like a boy and soaked all the way through to her skin. There would be no hiding any of that from her father.
Gabe opened the door and carried her over the threshold. The room was small but clean, cleaner than Sophie in any event after Lumley had dragged her through the muddy yard. Gabe lowered her to the floor and said, “Get out of those clothes. Take a bath when it arrives and I’ll see about getting something decent for you to wear in the meantime.” Then he turned to leave, and would have made it into the corridor if her words hadn’t stopped him…
“You’re notleavingme now?” She sounded like she might cry.
Gabe heaved a breath and turned back around to face her. Strands of her blonde hair had escaped from under her pageboy cap and her borrowed clothes clung to her like a second skin. And damn if the sight of her didn’t heat his blood like nothing else. “I’mnotleaving you, but I’ve got to try and sort out this mess you’ve gotten us both into.”
“It’s not a mess, not yet,” she said. “No one will even know I’m gone. Well, no one except for Charlotte, but she’ll never say anything. And all I wanted was your undivided attention and no way for you to escape without answering all of my questions.”
She was mad. Gabe scrubbed a hand down his face. “For God’s sake, Sophie. You’ve always had my undivided attention.”
“We both know that’s not true.” She folded her arms across her chest. “And no one is quite as expert at evading my questions as you are.”
“And this—” he gestured to her state of dishabille “—was how you thought to go about changing that?”
“See!” She tipped her chin higher. “Even now you’re evading me.”
Gabe heaved another sigh and folded his arms across his chest to match hers. “All right, Miss Hampton, you win. What is so damned important that you’d risk your good name and your very life with this recklessness?”
Sophie squared her shoulders. She had come all this way, and she wouldn’t be a coward now, even if she was freezing and even if Gabe was glaring at her as though she was the biggest fool alive. “You asked Papa for my hand.”
He blanched slightly, so slightly in fact that a second later there was no indication she’d said anything even remotely surprising. “Years ago, and hardly worth you risking your neck over it now.”
The truth was worth it to Sophie. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“After my suit was rejected, there was nothingtotell you.”
A lump formed in her throat. “You thought it better for me to think that you didn’t care about me at all? You thought it better that I should cry myself to sleep over you every night after you left? You thought—”
“I said goodbye to you.” He swallowed and his brow creased in concern. “I wasn’t even supposed to do that.” He shook his head. “I thought if I said anything else it would make things worse for you and that was the last thing in the world I ever wanted, Sophie.”
That last goodbye. Sophie could still remember the feel of his lips against hers. She could still taste the salt from her tears as he strode away and had not looked back. “I wantedyou, Gabriel. Nothing else in the world mattered.” And looking at him now, that hadn’t changed. There was still nothing else in the world that she wanted more than him. The truth of that nearly made her knees buckle beneath her.
“And I wanted you.” His warm eyes nearly seared her with his gaze. “Every night I was in Spain, I wanted you with me. Every night in Portugal, in France, even Canada for God’s sake. But it doesn’t matter, Sophie. It doesn’t change anything.”
It changed everything. Especially if he still wanted her. “You asked me last night if I still cared for you. Do you still care forme?”
Gabe raked a hand through his sandy-colored hair, and looked at her as though he was in the worst sort of pain. “You’ll never understand, Sophie.”
She waited for him to say more than that. To explain what in the world he was talking about, but Gabe said nothing else. “I’ll never understand anything if you don’t explain—”
“We’ve got the bath you ordered, sir,” a man called from the corridor as he pounded on the door.
Gabe turned on his heel, opened the door and admitted a fellow carrying a tub in his arms. “Right there, please,” he said, motioning to a vacant spot on the floor.”
“Millie will be up with the water soon,” the man said after he deposited the tub.
Gabe flicked his gaze toward Sophie and said, “I’ll be back after your bath.”
And Sophie’s heart twisted in her chest. He hadn’t answered her. He hadn’t said whether he still cared about her, and now he was gone. Again.
CHAPTER 14
As Gabe made his way back to the taproom, a woman carrying a large pitcher was headed in the opposite direction. She was older than Sophie by at least a decade, but they were of a similar height. “You’re Millie?” he asked her.
