Chapter 20
“Wit you well, I loved you, and never other.”
Sir Thomas Malory, Le Morte d’Arthur
Gabriel stood alone in the servants’ corridor for several long minutes after Henri’s footsteps had faded, staring at the spot where she had delivered her devastating ultimatum. The echo of her words reverberated in the confined space, each syllable cutting deeper than the last.
“I find myself thinking I might … not.”
For the first time in his adult life, Gabriel found himself completely paralyzed by emotion.
The careful control that had defined his diplomatic career, the barriers he had constructed so meticulously over the years, crumbled in an instant as the full implications of Henri’s declaration crashed over him like a winter storm.
She is leaving me.
A bolt of pure panic shot through his chest that was unlike anything he had experienced since childhood.
All the rational arguments he might have marshaled about their marriage being a practical arrangement, about emotional attachments being dangerous liabilities, about the wisdom of maintaining professional distance—all of it evaporated in the face of one terrible truth.
I am in love with Henri.
Desperately, completely, irrevocably in love with the brilliant, stubborn, infuriating woman who had just walked out of his life because he had been too much of a coward to let her into his heart.
Gabriel sank against the stone wall, his legs suddenly unable to support him as waves of realization washed over him.
Every moment of their journey together played through his memory with devastating clarity.
Henri’s excitement when they deciphered their first clue, her courage during their dangerous descent at Tintagel, her patient attempts to draw him out of his self-imposed isolation.
She had been trying to build a real partnership, a genuine marriage, while he had been treating her like a colleague to be managed and controlled.
My grandfather was wrong, Gabriel thought with sudden, blazing clarity. Uncle James was wrong. They shaped me into someone who cannot connect with another human being, someone so terrified of rejection that I reject others first.
The old viscount’s repulsion had haunted Gabriel’s dreams for decades, those cutting words about weakness and unseemly emotion that had driven a five-year-old boy to lock away his heart and never let anyone close enough to hurt him again.
But Henri had been different. Henri had seen past his fortified walls, had recognized the man behind them, and had been willing to fight for him.
And he had squandered it because he was too frightened to take the chance that someone might actually care for him despite his flaws.
Gabriel forced himself to his feet, his mind racing with desperate plans. He had to find Henri, had to explain everything. He had to tell her that she was worth more to him than all the ancient mysteries in the world, that solving Horace’s murder meant nothing if he lost her in the process.
Gabriel rushed through the manor’s corridors, calling Henri’s name and checking every room where she might have gone to calm herself after their argument.
The main hall, the library, the morning room.
All empty. As the minutes passed without any sign of her, Gabriel’s panic began to transform into terror.
Where could she have gone?
Gabriel burst through the main entrance of Grimsfell Hall, his eyes scanning the courtyard for any sign of Henri’s blue cloak or honey-brown hair. Their coachman looked up from tending the horses with mild surprise at Gabriel’s obvious distress.
“M’lord? Something amiss?”
“My wife,” Gabriel said breathlessly. “Have you seen Lady Trenwith leave the hall?”
The coachman shook his head with certainty. “No, m’lord. I’ve been here with the horses the whole while. Ain’t seen her ladyship since the two of you went inside.”
Gabriel felt his heart sink even further. If Henri had not left through the main entrance, where could she have gone? The hall was built on a cliff edge. Surely, she would not have attempted to leave on foot across such hostile terrain, especially not in her emotional state.
Unless she is so desperate to get away from me that she is willing to risk anything.
Gabriel raced back into the hall, his search now taking on a frantic quality as he checked rooms he had already examined, opened doors to chambers they had barely bothered to explore, called Henri’s name until it echoed through the empty corridors.
The silence that answered him was more terrifying than any response could have been.
It was only when Gabriel reached the ground-floor kitchen that he noticed something that made his blood run cold.
The door leading to what appeared to be a service garden stood slightly ajar, and a cold draft was whistling through the gap.
Gabriel knew with absolute certainty that he had not left that door open, and it was unlikely Henri would have ventured this way in such hostile weather.
Gabriel stepped through the doorway into what proved to be a well-maintained kitchen garden, one of the many areas around Grimsfell Hall that showed signs of ongoing care despite the building’s empty solitude. But what he saw there made his worst fears crystallize into horrifying reality.
The neat rows of winter herbs had been trampled, plants uprooted and scattered across the gravel paths in patterns that spoke unmistakably of a struggle.
Henri would never have caused such damage deliberately.
She was too respectful of things, too careful in her movements to create such chaos accidentally.
She has been taken.
The realization hit Gabriel hard, driving all the air from his lungs and replacing it with a rage so pure and focused that it burned away every other thought.
The mysterious forces that had been pursuing their manuscript had finally caught up with them.
And Henri was paying the price for his failures.
Gabriel followed the trail of disturbance through the kitchen garden, his training in observation serving him well as he tracked the signs of passage across the uneven ground.
Boot prints in the soft earth, broken plant stems, disturbed gravel.
All pointing toward what appeared to be a second walled garden where the sound of voices carried on the wind.
Gabriel moved with the stealth he had learned during his most secretive missions, using the garden’s layout to approach undetected. What he saw when he reached a position where he could observe the confrontation made his vision blur with fury.
Henri sat on a stone garden bench, her hands bound behind her back and her face pale but defiant. Standing over her was the same angular, sallow-skinned man who had threatened her in Danbury’s library.
“I know you’ve learned something from that sketch,” the blackguard was saying. “Tell me what you’ve discovered about the Regis Aeterni, and perhaps this unpleasantness can be concluded quickly.”
Gabriel frowned in surprise. He had thought this man was of the Regis Aeterni. What had Horace written to him? The Dominus.
“I have told you already,” Henri replied in a hoarse voice as if she had been screaming. She responded with magnificent stubbornness, steady despite her obvious fear. “We have not found anything of significance. The trail has gone cold.”
Gabriel felt a surge of fierce pride at Henri’s courage, even as his rage at her captor continued to build to blood-pounding levels.
She was protecting their investigation even in the face of direct threat, showing the kind of loyalty and strength that he had been too blind to appreciate when it mattered most.
“Lady Trenwith,” the man said with silky menace, “I’m afraid I don’t believe you. Your husband has been far too persistent in his pursuit of this matter for it to have yielded nothing. Perhaps a little encouragement will improve your memory.”
The man reached toward Henri with obvious malicious intent, and Gabriel’s famous diplomatic control finally shattered completely.
He had always been cool. Calm. Collected. Under every pressure. Some might say, emotionless.
But the sight of Henri being threatened by a scoundrel set off a primal rage, rising through his body like a tornado until he let out a barbaric growl, rushing forward to grab the villain by the scruff of his neck, causing him to release Henri in shock, and Gabriel slammed the fiend on the ground before grabbing him by the hair to thud his skull into the limestone rock.
It was not the precision attack he had employed at Danbury’s.
It was blind fury until Gabriel felt Henri gripping his sleeve with her teeth and pulling back with all her strength to prevent a second slam, mumbling his muffled name.
Afraid he might hurt her, he relented, and the haze of red rage dissipated as he realized her attacker was moaning in dazed pain, but that she … she was well.
“Henri?” Gabriel gasped, hoarse from the primitive sounds that had torn from his throat during the attack.
Henri was staring at him with wide eyes, clearly shaken by the violence she had just witnessed.
Gabriel had never let her see this side of him, the capacity for brutality that his prior military career had occasionally required.
He feared she would be horrified by what he had just done, repulsed by the man he had revealed himself to be.
But instead of backing away, Henri leaned into him as Gabriel quickly untied her bonds, her body trembling with relief rather than revulsion.
“I thought …” Henri whispered against his chest. “I hoped you would come, but I was afraid …”
“I am here,” Gabriel said fiercely, his arms coming around her with desperate possessiveness. “I am here, and I will never let anyone hurt you again. Henri, I need to tell you—”