Chapter Twelve #3
Gabe leapt onto the bench and faced his cousin, pointing the end of his saber. “Say one more word about Louisa and I’ll slit your throat.”
“Give Barkham to me, or I’ll slit yours.”
Fenton lunged. Louisa screamed. Gabe parried, catching the blow on the curved end of his sword, somehow turning his saber to force Fenton’s arm out to the side. Then he lifted a leg and kicked his cousin square in the chest.
Fenton stumbled backward, feet scrabbling off the bench. He hit the balcony with the small of his back. His arms windmilled. Gabe, eyes widening, lunged for him, but the other man was already falling, legs in the air, a scream ripping from his throat.
The scream stopped when he hit the floor with an echoing thud.
For a long moment Louisa simply stood frozen with her hands over her mouth.
The same cold terror gripped her as that night when she heard the sear and hiss of flame, the falling beams, the screams of her husband and the men trapped in the stable by the fire she’d set.
She looked upon murder, and she would never be free of the stain.
Gabe stared at his cousin, then at Louisa. He breathed heavily, his eyes wide with the rage of the fight and shock at its ending. “Hell’s toenails.” He put a hand to his side and sagged against the balcony. “Fenton, you sod! You’re the devil’s own spawn, but don’t be dead. Not here.”
Fenton opened his eyes. Blood seeped from beneath his head onto the floor, and his legs lay at an unnatural angle. “You rotting bastard,” he wheezed, his voice a thin thread. “You’ve killed me.”
“Sister Nan!” Louisa’s voice trembled as she rushed forward, catching her apron in one hand. “Fetch the stretcher. We’ve another for the infirmary.”
Fenton lapsed into unconsciousness as they loaded him on the stretcher and Gabe, with the help of two older, sturdier girls, carried him to the infirmary.
Louisa fretted for the state of Gabe’s own strength and pushed him onto a bed while the others swarmed over his cousin, Sister Nan calling that she needed the bonesetter for this one.
Louisa pawed off Gabe’s waistcoat and pulled up his shirt, where blood seeped through. The gash was long, but not deep.
“Salt rinse,” she murmured, “or perhaps brandy. We’ll need to clean it to prevent infection.”
“You do love nursing me, don’t you?” he grumbled.
“Gabe.” Louisa grasped his arms. Her entire body trembled. Gabe was safe. She was safe.
Well, not entirely. “He knows everything, Gabe,” she said, her voice catching the shivers she could not seem to stop. The fear still had her in its grip, the fear she might lose him. “About me. He could ruin me.”
“He just tried to kill me in front of witness,” Gabe said. “He can say whatever he likes to his friends lined up beside him for the hangman’s noose.”
She laughed and tried to loosen her fingers. She couldn’t seem to let go. “But if you accuse him in public, he’ll tell my history to everyone. Here, let me tend your cuts. You’ve likely bruised all your other ribs too.”
He caught her hands and she reached for his shirt. His eyes were dark but the passion in them was of a different sort, now. “Under a condition.”
“What?” She blinked up at him.
“Only my wife-to-be may touch me. I’m very delicate.”
The most unladylike snort escaped her. “You. Delicate.”
“Particularly my feelings.” He grasped both her hands and placed them over his heart, his palms anchoring hers. “I linger at death’s door. Only you, my lady, can revive me and give me life.”
She worked to firm the curl of her lips. “Did you take a blow to the head?”
“A blow to the bosom. There is a knife sunk in me, and only you can pull it out.”
“You are being ridiculous again.”
“You’ll have a lifetime to cure me of it, as well as all my other errors, I hope. Louisa. Say you’ll marry me. Be my duchess. Be my light. Be the wise, steady head at my side, my partner at the ball, the beautiful siren in my—”
“Ahem,” Louisa said. “Listening ears.”
For his bed was ringed with girls watching them, wide-eyed, rapt, some of them holding their own hands over their hearts as if imagining themselves in Louisa’s place.
“Girls,” Gabe said, looking steadily into Louisa’s face, his expression filled with a tenderness she could scarcely bear, “I am going to take your respectable Matron away to be a Duchess. May I?”
“Oh, Your Grace!” came a chorus of sighs.
“A duchess! Matron Louisa! Can you conscience such a thing?”
“Take me too!” Alice cried.
“And me!” Eleanor elbowed her way in.
“And me,” Margaret added. “Every duchess needs a seamstress, and your embroidery’s lovely, mum, but you can’t sew straight to save your life.”
“Fenton will accuse me—”
“I’ll brag about your vanquishing one of Napoleon’s generals all on your own. You’ll be lionized in the papers. They’ll put a statue to you in Westminster.” He rubbed her captured hands against his chest. “Marry me, Louisa Bickford.”
“Do, Matron!”
“Oh, ye can’t say no!”
“If she won’t, I’ll have ye, yer Grace.”
He held her gaze steadily, the light in his eyes burning steady, strong and true. Louisa melted into his arms.
“Oh, very well,” she said. “Since I can’t bear to be a disappointment, I suppose I must.”
“Finally,” Gabe breathed, pulling her close. “I thought I was going to have to steal you, and that would look rather poorly on me in this modern age.”
“I go willingly,” Louisa whispered against his lips. “Since you seem determined to take me on.”
“And I am determined to be worthy. I’ll show you, my love.”
“You already have,” Louisa promised, and allowed him a kiss.
Then another. Then, because the girls were laughing and cheering, sobbing and throwing their caps, and because her beloved was an excellent kisser, and because Louisa’s heart was bursting to a joy that flooded her senses and chased away all her better scruples, she kissed him again.