Chapter 21
Corridor encounters
Gerald watched Arabella as she honored those who had put down on her dancing card. After all, she had shared two consecutive dances with him and only with him.
After a while, she returned to him to refresh herself with some more lemonade. He noticed with satisfaction that his family kept their distance. Perhaps this night would end uneventfully.
“I have known that engagements are indeed a unique event,” Arabella said, offering him some refreshment, “but I was unaware that it required some military vigilance.”
He looked down, frowning.
“I was referring to the fact that you are watching the whole ballroom like a general before the battle. Perhaps I should have brought my sword after all.”
“It would have inconvenienced your dance partners.”
“And that would have brought you some delight.”
He felt his shoulders relax, and for the sake of Arabella, he decided to school his alert expression to a less stressful one. He had to admit that this was fun.
“Your Grace, you must excuse me for a moment,” Arabella said and set down her glass. “I should like to visit a powder room.”
“I will accompany you.”
“Surely the Duke of Albury has better things to do than accompany ladies into the powder room.”
“Not a lady. I am accompanying my wife.”
“Imagine how that would look. I know we’re newlyweds, but we wouldn’t want others to believe that you cannot bear to be parted from me even in such intimate moments,” Arabella laughed.
Gerald leaned down into her ear and, with a mysterious grin, whispered to her.
“I can’t say that this is entirely false, Your Grace.”
“You are incorrigible,” Arabella said and left unceremoniously. “After all, it will only be a moment.”
Gerald reluctantly let her go. She was right, he wouldn’t want to seem like an overly clinging husband. And what is more, he could sense that his vigilance had made her anxious. After all, he was the target of any attack, and he was still safely mingled with the ton.
He followed her with his eyes until she vanished into the corridor. He still felt uneasy to see her vanish from his side, but he decided to keep his distance.
He still held the refreshment Arabella had handed him as if it were some sacred relic, and perhaps it was, since apart from his staff, rarely did somebody anticipate his needs in order to cover them. But Arabella did.
He looked around again in the room, and he felt a sudden wave of reassurance. Everything seemed absolutely normal. The music continued, and the couples were dancing. There was this soft hum in the air by the small talk everybody was having.
Gerald drank from his glass and took one breath. Perhaps he was indeed overreacting, thinking there was danger everywhere he turned. There was always a chance that his ruse of getting married had actually managed to solve the problem as foreseen.
He took another sip of his drink. It was the last one, the very last drop, which meant that he had been sipping on it for a while. Then he noticed that the dances and the couples had changed in the ballroom.
As he was perusing the ballroom, he noticed his half-sister rushing to Joseph. While the two siblings met, they were very close, and they spoke to each other in a way that conveyed they didn’t want anyone else to hear them.
Although he was on the opposite side of the ballroom, he could very well read the thoughts on their minds. It was in the way Joseph and Cecilia came closer and spoke, hiding their mouths behind their hands.
And yet it was when Gerald saw Joseph with a cruel smile on his face that he knew there was a plan set in motion.
“Damn it,” Gerald cursed under his breath.
He had chosen to relax for Arabella’s sake, and now he was paying the price. He knew that he shouldn’t have trusted the so-called family. Then again, he didn’t think that they were this immoral, that they would choose to act upon his wife.
He scanned the room once more before his eyes turned to the corridor Arabella had just vanished into. His heart was beating fast, and inside his delicate leather gloves, he felt sweat.
He had one last hope that perhaps Arabella had returned to the ballroom without him noticing.
He would give anything right now to see her entangled in a friendly conversation with any other man in the room, because that would simply mean that she was safe. But she was nowhere to be seen.
The thought hit him in the chest like a brick. Arabella was alone, without him by her side, and the worst of it was that his family seemed to be aware of the fact as well.
Gerald dropped everything he was doing, cutting people off in the middle of a conversation and heading as fast as he could towards that wretched corridor.
His steps were fast and decisive. His look must have been lethal, because everywhere he passed, people moved aside. But inside, he was feeling petrified. His heart kept an impossible rhythm that he tried to tame, but that would only happen if he managed to lay eyes on Arabella.
He turned to the corridor, and some ladies were coming from the powder room, and Gerald relaxed a little.
Maybe there were too many people for the powder room.
She could have used one further away, and that is why she was late.
That would also mean that she was somewhere with fewer people. Alone. More exposed.
He made his way further down the corridor, his palms sweating in the gloves, his pulse refusing to find a steady rhythm. If anything had happened to Arabella, he would-
That’s when he saw the sapphire silk of her dress caught under the candles that lit the long corridor. She was walking back toward the ballroom, perfectly composed and unharmed. Relief washed over him like a salve for his soul. He took in a steady breath and allowed his fingers to unclench.
Arabella hadn’t seen him yet, still adjusting her gloves. Gerald smiled at seeing her again and decided to tease her, and perhaps feel her, just to calm his nerves, to make sure she was safe.
The moment he took a step towards her, he saw it. There was a dark corner, draped with a heavy velvet curtain, right behind Arabella. That curtain moved, and from there a man emerged.
The blood in Gerald’s veins went cold. That man had his eye trained on Arabella, his look dark. He watched in shock as the man walked behind her, too close, too deliberate. He didn’t need to see more. The man was targeting her.
He moved fast, so aggressively that Arabella looked up, startled, and relaxed only when she realized who he was. Gerald wanted to scream at her that the real danger was the man behind her, but that would make a scene, exactly what his siblings were hoping would happen.
Fury, the likes of which he rarely experienced in his life, came over him.
If this were not a formal event, he would have shown the man who dared glance with malicious intent at his wife what the price was for such insolence.
The man was so focused on his target that he hadn’t noticed him.
Gerald made sure to give as much presence as he could.
“Gerald,” Arabella said, looking at him, perplexed but also amused.
He was not entertained. She was blatantly unaware of the danger she was in, and that infuriated him more. He said nothing; he just walked up to her, still looking at him, frowning at his reaction.
Behind her, the man finally realized that they weren’t alone in the corridor. He instantly read on the other man’s face that he was not counting on the Duke to appear. Arabella was supposed to be an easy victim.
The two men measured each other over Arabella’s head, and though Gerald was expected to be the civilized gentleman, he couldn’t help but give this man a murderous look. If his family wanted to create a scene, Gerald was ready to give them one, a very bloody one.
The intent must have been clear on Gerald’s face, so the man quickly retreated to the darkness he had emerged from.
Obviously, some hired man his family employed for the sole purpose of placing Arabella in a compromising position.
He was obviously not getting paid enough to confront anyone else but one defenseless woman.
“Gerald?” She finally saw that there was something amiss and regarded him with worry.
He reached her finally, and the first thing he did was wrap his arm around her. He said nothing, just placed himself between Arabella and the danger. The moment he was physically touching her, tucked away safely by his side, his heart settled only a little.
“There you are,” he said simply.
Arabella looked up at him. She was not completely ignorant that they were behind enemy lines, but still didn’t realize how close to ruin she was.
“Did something happen?” Arabella asked, agitated.
She was worried about him. After they both foolishly assumed that he would be the main target of his family’s plotting, neither of them had stopped to consider that now that she was married to him, she was in a vulnerable position, exposed to danger, all because of him.
“Absolutely nothing,” he bit out and led her back to the ballroom.
The moment they reached the end of the corridor to turn to the ballroom, Lady Coventon turned with a sly look on her face. Lady Coventon was Cecilia’s best friend and right hand at everything. The moment she saw them, her smile dropped. Gerald threw the woman a cold, warning smile.
“Your Graces.” She stuttered.
“Lady Coventon,” Gerald said, and the temperature in the room dropped.
“It seems that you cannot let the Duchess one moment alone, Your Grace,” she said sarcastically.
Gerald blinked slowly in an open threat.
“You never know what threats lurk in the shadows,” he said, his voice cold, and pulled Arabella away.
She must have read his body language correctly, seeing the way his hand was gripping her tightly, sensing the coldness in his voice, and feeling how tense his body was.
“Something is the matter,” Arabella said.
“We are leaving,” is all Gerald said.
“You must tell me.”
“I just did,” he said, fully on edge. “We are leaving.”
Gerald knew that if he stayed one more moment, what he would cause would not be just a scene; it would be a crime. Thankfully, Arabella decided to simply follow him without arguing.
He didn’t even pretend to practice good manners and greet his family before he left. He even made it a point not to look for them in the ballroom as they crossed it to the exit. One smug grin from Joseph, and the ton would have experienced exactly how cruel he could be.
He helped Arabella into her pelisse. His hand never left her waist as he ushered her outside to their carriage. She entered the carriage without complaining, though her face was fully frowning now.
He sat across from her and looked outside the window.
His thoughts were torturing him. The amount of planning that his family had put into this was appalling, a hired man lurking in the shadows, and the lady who would happen to pass by at the right moment and expose Arabella in a compromising position.
And it was all his fault. This was his family targeting him, and Arabella was caught in the middle. He should have known better than to let her venture alone in that viper’s nest. He dropped his guard, and she almost paid the price.
But then again, how could he not be distracted? With her witty remarks and dancing with others, and then their own dance and light flirting, he almost forgot himself. And this was the result.
“Your Grace,” Arabella finally broke the silence, “I thought we had agreed that we were a team in this. Will you tell me what happened?”
“It is all being dealt with.”
“Judging by the look on your face, you are still dealing with it. Would you care to share the burden?”
“The burden is mine to carry. That is all.”
“You practically dragged me away from the party, you behaved coldly to everyone, and now, in the safety of our privacy, you are still behaving strangely.”
Gerald turned and pinned her with his most cruel look.
“You were alone in that corridor!”
“I wasn’t aware I had to be chaperoned into a corridor after I used the powder room.”
“You don’t even know how close you were to-”
“To what?”
He looked out the window again.
“I will not be ignored!”
“What do you want me to say?”
“The truth!”
“It is too easy to ask for something when you don’t know how close to danger you were.”
“I was in danger?”
Gerald looked at her and suddenly realized that Arabella thought that his distress came from an attack his family had planned against him. She was not worried about herself, but for him.
“It is all over now.”
“Gerald…”
“I said it is over!”
The emotions overwhelming him did not allow him to think clearly. He was caught between surprise, agitation, anger, and fear. He was expecting his fury to take the helm of his emotions, to lead him into plotting his next steps.
But Gerald had to be honest with himself. Rage would have been the easy emotion, the one he could deal with easily, like he had been doing his whole life. And yet, it was something else that predominated his thoughts. Fear.
Gerald was terrified. His hands shaking were not because of fury, but because he was afraid. In the middle of the silence, he realized something even more disturbing. He was not afraid because of gossip or scandal, or how his reputation would be ruined.
He was afraid for her, of how this would have affected her, how hurt and scared she would be if he hadn’t come into that corridor at the right time. He sat with that realization, not knowing what to do with it. It was incomprehensible, and then so very real that he couldn’t deny it.
Something had definitely changed tonight.