Chapter 3
Chapter Three
Gabriel froze. He had faced ambushes, fought alongside friends in their darkest hours, endured the deepest betrayal, but nothing unsettled him like the sound of his name on this vixen’s lips.
While he’d spoken of cutting ties to his past, she had walked into his house and announced herself proudly. Were it not for his need for answers, he would have instructed Mrs Boswell to march her out and bolt the door.
“Miss Bourne.” He would be damned before he called her Kate. “What an unpleasant surprise. If you’re here to explain your absence, you’re a decade too late.”
She smiled, the coquettish smile that had once fooled him into believing her lies, back when he was young, blind, and far too trusting. “I see you’ve not lost your talent for bluntness.”
“Do not profess to know me, madam. You have no idea what manner of man I have become.” And God willing, she never would.
Her gaze slid to Miss Woolf’s nightclothes, and her smile sharpened. “It seems the gossip is true. The mad marquess steals women from their beds in the dead of night and—”
“I came of my own volition,” Miss Woolf countered.
The devil’s own wrath surged in Gabriel’s veins, but his temper abated the moment he set a hand to Miss Woolf’s back. “Mrs Boswell will escort you to my private drawing room and wait with you there. I shall be but a moment.”
Miss Woolf hesitated. She had defended him to a stranger, so why did he sense she would run at the first opportunity? The contradiction both frustrated and intrigued him. Could she not see their burdens would be lighter if shared?
He cast his housekeeper a knowing look, and she gestured for Miss Woolf to follow. “I’m sure you’d welcome a seat by the fire, ma’am.”
Of all his rotten luck. Tonight was about solving her problems, not mastering his own. Any doubts she had about a marriage of friendship were probably gathering now, dark as a coming storm.
He watched Miss Woolf disappear through the door, his plans for the future likely vanishing with her.
“What do you want, Miss Bourne? More money?”
“Of course not.”
Her hair caught the light, a halo of gold framing cherubic features. But she was no angel, only the devil who had betrayed him.
“How much did my father pay you to leave London?” How much had it cost to buy her loyalty, her integrity, to turn every loving word into a lie?
She moved towards the antechamber as if she owned the damned house. “May we sit and talk like civilised adults?”
“About what?”
“I’ve moved back to the manor. My aunt is ill—”
“And you’re set to inherit Wynbury Hall. I know.” They would be neighbours, forced into the same circles, the same church pews, when he bothered to attend. The thought was unbearable. “I asked a friend to make enquiries once I learned your aunt was bedridden.” And Daventry had come up trumps.
“Please. May we sit, so I might tell you my plans and answer any questions you may have?” She smiled, like a puppet trained to entertain. “Should we not attempt to clear the air?”
Clear the bloody air? He would rather choke on it.
Yet the need to know what his father had said to her plagued him still. Nothing in his cutting statement—Miss Bourne has shown her true colours—revealed how easily she had been bought.
“Very well.” He gestured to the antechamber and followed her inside. She sat in the red velvet chair beside the fire. He settled opposite, still on edge, as he had been since the day she disappeared. “If there’s to be any peace between us, you will tell me what he paid you.”
Her composure wavered, the faintest crack in her poise. “Gabriel, you must understand, my father was facing penury and had fallen out of favour with my aunt. You know she held the purse strings, and still does. Everything depends on her whims. She used every—”
“How much, Miss Bourne? And this time, address me with the respect befitting my title.”
A blush rose to her cheeks, cheeks he had once stroked with the backs of his fingers as if they were the rarest thing in the world. But that had been a naive boy’s fantasy. Now the sight made him grip the arms of the chair, battling the fury within.
“The marquess gave me ten thousand pounds, my lord.” Her voice held a trace of shame. “And my father the same. In all, he paid twenty thousand so you would be rid of me.”
The news struck like a blow to the gut, stealing his breath. The act had destroyed his relationship with his father, yet it might have been the greatest gift the man ever gave him.
“And where did you go?”
“To France.”
“Alone?”
“My cousin lives in Lyon. I’m sure I mentioned her.”
“You told me she lived in Avignon.”
“You’re mistaken, my lord.”
No. She was lying.
And he was already tired of this conversation. He was no longer in awe of her beauty. It was merely a mask. Rubies and rouge could not hide a deceitful heart.
“Are you not going to ask if I’m married?” she said, catching him unawares. “If I wept for months when my father forced me to leave England? If I’m still in love with you?”
“No,” he said flatly. The past was dead, and he had no interest in resurrecting it. A man had to draw a line somewhere, and his was here, with her, with what she had done ten years ago.
She flinched. “Then you are as cold as they say. You always had such a generous heart. You were kind, forgiving, the most—”
“I still am to those who deserve it.”
His thoughts turned to Miss Woolf. She had stood in her humble cottage and refused the chance to become a marchioness, refused his money. She wanted peace, not him, and she had been honest enough to say so. What she thought of him now, heaven only knew.
He rose abruptly. “I’ll have a footman see you home. I would hate for you to get lost en route.”
Miss Bourne was on her feet, her fingers clamping around his wrist like a viper’s coil. “Please, Gabriel. I made a mistake. If we’re to live in such close proximity I need your forgiveness … your friendship.”
He let her hold him, waiting for a flicker of the old emotion, some spark to prove he wasn’t dead inside. Nothing came. No warmth. No longing. Her treachery had robbed him of the ability to love, to feel joy, to know happiness.
“You have my forgiveness, purely because you taught me a great lesson and saved me from making a grave mistake.” The words tasted bitter, for lessons bought with betrayal were the hardest to stomach. “But you lack all the virtues I seek in a friend.”
Miss Bourne looked wounded. “Is she your friend, that woman in her shabby wrapper? Do you make a habit of rescuing strays? Or is it only the desperate who can abide your coldness now?”
He did feel something then, something other than anger. A desire to protect Miss Woolf, a woman he barely knew. But he’d be damned if he understood why.
“What I do is not your concern.”
She stared at him, incredulous, as if she had expected to walk back into his life as though she had never been away.
He tugged his arm free of her grip and yanked the bell pull. “Albert will see you safely home.”
“There’s no need. I’m not a child,” she snapped, buttoning the open pelisse he had barely registered. “I know these grounds well enough to walk home in the dark.”
“Even so, I must insist.”
She was at the door, her disappointment plain. “Mrs Boswell seemed to think I would be welcome.”
Another lie. Mrs Boswell was not merely his housekeeper but the closest thing he had to family, a true confidante. She knew his darkest thoughts, his faults, his failures. “Good night, Miss Bourne.”
With an irate huff she swept out, the oak door slamming in her wake. His anger boiled. He kicked the side table and damned every wicked woman who ever lived.
It was not the sight of Miss Bourne that riled him, but her accursed timing.
He braced his hands on the marble mantel, mastering the urge to lash out. “Welcome, indeed? The bare-faced cheek of it. Who the hell does she think she is?”
A light tap on the door brought Mrs Boswell.
Before she could speak, he swung around, irritation hardening into resolve.
“Twenty thousand pounds. That’s what my father paid to be rid of those devils.
” In part, the truth eased his bitterness toward the parent he believed had ruined his life.
“I suspect she named her price, and my father couldn’t count the notes fast enough. ”
Mrs Boswell’s pained expression surely mirrored his own. “Forgive me, my lord. I should have turned her away, but—”
“You’ve watched me battle the past long enough to know I needed answers. And you were right.” Though of all the infernal nights to call. “Did you know she had returned to Wynbury? No, of course not. You would have told me.”
Mrs Boswell stepped forward. “I believe Miss Bourne arrived in Islington earlier today. They say her aunt won’t last the week.”
Merciful Lord. He hoped the woman rallied, but fate was determined to make Miss Bourne his neighbour.
“About Miss Woolf,” Mrs Boswell said, her name bringing a measure of calm, though wolves were meant to chill the blood, not steady it. “She—”
“Will be staying for the foreseeable future. It’s a complicated matter, but I’ll explain properly in the morning. I trust you made her comfortable.”
God knew he had fought hard enough to get her here.
Mrs Boswell winced as if she had stubbed her toe. “As to that … she’s gone.”
The calm broke. “Gone?” A rush of alarm gripped him, fiercer than anything Miss Bourne had ever stirred. “Gone where?”
“Miss Woolf left. I tried to stop her but—”
“You let her walk out of this house? Alone? At this hour? Have you lost your senses?”
“What was I supposed to do, my lord? Chain her to the chair?”
“You were supposed to persuade her to wait.” He strode to the antechamber door. “Which way did she go?”
“Through the front door.” Mrs Boswell hurried after him, words tumbling as she tried to keep his pace. “I didn’t want to disturb you, and Miss Woolf insisted there was no need for her to stay. She was adamant.”