Chapter 19 #2
Gabriel, meanwhile, had become increasingly aloof as their search continued without success.
The charming, attentive man who had swept her off her feet and convinced her to marry him seemed to have vanished entirely, replaced by this focused, monosyllabic investigator who barely acknowledged her presence unless her assistance was specifically required.
Henri watched him move through the manor with his sketch, studying walls and architectural details with intense concentration while paying her no mind whatsoever.
This is the man I married, Henri realized with painful clarity. Not the passionate lover from Calais, but this distant, secretive stranger who uses people for his own ends.
When Gabriel headed toward what appeared to be a servants’ staircase leading to the lower levels of the hall, Henri followed reluctantly, more out of habit than any genuine hope that they would find answers in the basement chambers.
The narrow stone steps led to a network of service corridors and storage rooms that would have housed the army of servants required to maintain such a grand establishment.
Gabriel immediately began examining the walls with the same intense appraisal he had applied to the upper floors, running his hands along the stone surfaces and studying his sketch by lantern light. Henri watched him work for several minutes before her frustration finally overwhelmed her patience.
“Gabriel,” she said, his name echoing in the confined space. “What exactly are you doing?”
“Looking,” he replied without turning from his examination of a particular section of wall.
Henri’s temper flared at his dismissive tone. “Looking for what, specifically?”
“Hidden spaces,” Gabriel said, his attention still focused entirely on the stonework.
“And you expect to find them how?”
“Inconsistencies in the construction.”
Henri stared at her husband’s back, amazed by his ability to reduce their conversation to the absolute minimum number of words required to convey basic information.
The man who had once spoken to her with such eloquence and wit now seemed incapable of stringing together a complete sentence in her presence.
“Gabriel,” Henri said, taking on a sharp edge, “you promised you would tell me what this was all about once we solved the puzzle together.”
“I said I might,” Gabriel replied, finally turning to face her but offering no elaboration.
Henri’s frustration rose like gunpowder that had been lit, and she grappled to find some semblance of self-control.
Two weeks of disruption, days of mounting resentment, and hours of being treated like an unwelcome appendage to Gabriel’s investigation had combined to create an explosive mixture that his casual dismissal had finally ignited.
“And I said I would give this marriage a try,” Henri said, her voice rising despite her efforts to maintain composure. “And now I find myself thinking I might … not.”
With that declaration, Henri turned on her heel and left the room, climbing the servants’ stairs with angry stomping while her heart hammered against her ribs.
She could hear Gabriel call her name behind her, but the sound only fueled her determination to put distance between herself and the man who had somehow managed to break her heart so thoroughly in such a short time.
Henri made her way through the manor’s corridors blindly, her vision blurred by tears of anger and disappointment that she refused to let fall.
She had been such a fool, allowing herself to believe that Gabriel’s passion in Calais represented something real and lasting rather than merely a calculated strategy to secure her cooperation.
She admitted to herself that she had stupidly fallen in love with a man who was fundamentally unobtainable, setting herself up for a life of dependence and heartbreak that would make her mother’s widowhood seem pleasant by comparison.
I should have listened to my instincts from the beginning, Henri thought. I should have recognized that a man who keeps so many secrets is incapable of the kind of honesty that real partnership requires. Romantic attachments make intelligent women act like fools.
Henri had always prided herself on her independence, her ability to navigate the complex world of politics and society without needing masculine protection or guidance.
Yet here she was, married to a man who treated her contributions as negligible and her presence as an inconvenience, trapped in a legal bond that she was beginning to suspect would prove far too constraining.
She should have chosen passage to the Americas to start again over this doomed marriage.
At least as a spinster, I had the respect of Uncle Reggie and his colleagues, Henri reflected bitterly. As Gabriel’s wife, I am apparently an accessory to be deployed when needed and ignored when not.
Henri had reached the main hall when she heard footsteps behind her, and for a moment her heart leaped with the hope that Gabriel had followed her, that perhaps her ultimatum had finally penetrated his self-absorbed focus and prompted him to address the fundamental problems in their relationship.
“Gabriel?” she called out, turning toward the sound.
But the figure that emerged from the shadows was not her husband.
Henri found herself face-to-face with a gaunt, hollow-cheeked man whose pale eyes held a kind of fevered intensity that made her blood run cold.
She recognized him immediately. The same man who had threatened her in Danbury’s library, the menacing stranger willing to use violence to obtain the manuscript she had been examining.
Henri opened her mouth to scream, but the man moved with shocking speed, clamping a gloved hand over her mouth while his other arm wrapped around her waist with iron strength.
Henri struggled desperately, trying to break free from his grip, but years of sedentary work as a secretary had not prepared her for combat against someone clearly experienced in violence.
“Quietly now, Miss Bigsby,” the man whispered against her ear with the same cold menace she remembered from their first encounter. “Or rather, I should say Lady Trenwith, shouldn’t I? Congratulations on your recent marriage, though I’m afraid the celebration may be rather short-lived.”
Henri continued to fight against his hold, but the man was already dragging her toward what appeared to be a side entrance, moving in a determined manner that suggested he was accustomed to this sort of nefarious activity.
Henri’s mind raced with desperate thoughts of Gabriel somewhere in the basement chambers, completely unaware that the danger that had brought him into her life was now literally carrying her away from any hope of rescue.
He will never even know what happened to me, Henri realized with terrifying clarity as her captor maneuvered her through the doorway and into the bitter wind that swept across the clifftop.
He is so absorbed in his investigation that he probably will not notice I am gone until he needs me to discuss something.
The irony was almost unbearable. After all her anger about Gabriel’s failure to value her properly, Henri was about to disappear from his life entirely, taken by the very forces that had driven their quest from the beginning.
As her captor dragged her away from Grimsfell Hall and toward whatever fate he had planned for her, Henri could only hope that Gabriel’s guilt over losing her might finally prompt him to reveal the secrets that had remained locked in his heart throughout their brief, troubled marriage.
Not to her, it would seem, but mayhap to some other future bride.