Marriage Made In Shame(12)

Once there she had simply collapsed against the solidness of the wood, her legs like jelly as shock brought on a shaking and she had thoroughly gone to pieces.

She had made a mistake that was monumental and prodigious and far reaching in its consequences. Would Kenneth Davis tell anyone? Was she ravaged? Would she now have to marry a man she hated to the very last fibre of her being? What would her uncle say or her aunts?

This edge of horror was now the truth of her life as the scratches on her right breast throbbed in pain, burning as the night-time faded into dawn.

Aunt Eloise had found her in the morning, cold and stiff, and she had bathed her and dressed her and counselled silence.

‘There is no way that you can win a war such as this one, Addie,’ she had crooned as she pulled back the blankets and put her to bed. ‘This is a truth women of all the ages have known.’

And so nothing had been said and life had regained its patterns and gone on.

In a different way for her, though. Fright filled the cracks of silence and Adelaide made certain that she was never far from her two old aunts. Nightmares replaced dreams, too, and for a good year afterwards she had barely slept.

Then Eloise and Jean had begun to teach her the art of healing, and in the elixirs and tinctures and ointments she had regained a peace long missing and a sense of herself that she had thought was lost.

Aye, in her reflection sometimes she still saw it, that terror and panic, but mostly now it was hidden under calm and manners, only a small ripple of a previous disquiet and seldom on show. Kenneth Davis himself had left summarily on an extended sojourn to Europe. She often wondered if his father had known something of his son’s propensity for damage and drunkenness and had exiled him.

Almost eight years ago now, she whispered to herself. A day, a week, a month, a year. She had written down the passage of time as a list in her diaries, counting days and taking comfort from the distance and number as each year marched on. But she had never truly forgotten the horror and her uncle and cousin were the only men she allowed herself ever to be alone with.

But who was she now, she wondered, her eyes meeting the reflection in the silvered glass. Did a lack of trust hold one prisoner for ever, locked into celibacy and destined for spinsterhood?

‘Please,’ she whispered and then stopped. What was it she was asking for? The curl of hope turned inside darkness, like a frond of some fern in a deep and far-off forest. Nascent. Plump. Moving against shadow. Unfurling against Gabriel Hughes.

Because of his humour and kindness and beauty. His hands around her waist as he had helped her from the horse, his wariness in the library when she had asked him why he was reading a botanical, his lazy drawl as he had taken the pulse at George Friar’s neck and commented on his appalling clothing.

She smiled. She would meet him again tomorrow in the park. At two. Her uncle had been surprisingly acquiescent. She had brought riding outfits down from Northbridge and, crossing the room, she opened the cupboard to bring them out across the bed.

Taking the shirt from one, she added it to the jacket of another. Finding a pin of bright red rubies, she placed it across the frothy collar. With her riding skirt this would look well upon her. She wondered if the hat she chose was not too...formal, but added it anyway as she had always liked the dark blue of the velvet.

Her fingers brushed up against the grain, the lush fabric a present from her uncle a year or so before. Her father’s brother was a good man and he meant well. He would stay true to his word of allowing her home after the twelve weeks of Season, but just for a moment she wondered what might come to pass in the time left of her London stay. Gabriel Hughes’s heartbreaking smile flashed into her memory.

* * *

Adelaide Ashfield’s hands tightened on the leather reins with such a force that all her knuckles turned white.

‘Fear looks like that, Miss Ashfield.’ Gabriel pointed to the stiffness in her fingers. ‘Demeter will know you tremble through the leather and it’ll worry her.’ Reaching up, he released the reins. ‘Just grip like this and let the leather run over the top. See? Then cup them so that there is space to move.’

‘She won’t pull away?’

‘Try it.’

‘Now?’

‘I am here beside you. Walk around the pathway and if she becomes fidgety I will stop her.’

She nodded, though Gabriel could see her composure was taking some effort.

‘After the other day, riding a horse does not feel as safe as it should.’

‘The steed you nearly fell from was largely untrained. Does your uncle have no idea of an animal’s temperament or of your ability to manage one?’

‘Well, he rides sometimes, but, no, I suppose there is not much need for expertise at Northbridge because we seldom venture out further than the village.’

As the mount began to move she took in a hard breath.

‘This isn’t the small and docile steed I had imagined you might pick for me, Lord Wesley. Did you get her at Coles?’

‘No, she’s mine.’

‘Oh. No wonder she is so beautiful, then.’

He began to laugh. ‘You think I only keep attractive horses in my stable?’

‘Well, rumour has it you are a man of good taste...in whatever you try.’

‘The titter-tattle of the ton in play, no doubt. Wait till you hear what else is said of me. Ahh, but I can see from your face that you have. Bear it in mind that my reputation is one magnified by the interest in it and if I had slept with every woman I am said to have I’d have barely been out of bed. These days I am far more circumspect.’

She looked at him directly then, censure in the water-marked blue. ‘Brothels are not more circumspect, my lord, in anyone’s language.’

A thread of irritation surfaced. ‘The tongues of those with little to recommend them save gossip are seldom still. If you could take it on yourself to disbelieve at least half of what is said of me, the picture might be a truer one.’

‘An angel, then? The personification of your name?’ Her irony was harsh.

‘Hardly that. Were I to proffer an excuse at all it would probably be a lack of paternal guidance. My father was a violent drunk.’

‘Well, at least you had one. Mine was killed when I was not yet four years old.’

‘Touché, Miss Ashfield. Has anyone ever told you that you are beautiful when you are angry?’

The wash of red caught him by surprise. Her blush was intense and unsettling and wide eyes stood out amidst it.

‘No, of course not. And they would be lying if they did. I am not beautiful, Lord Wesley, not in the way the ton defines beauty and I have no wish to be. Passable is all that I aim for. And interesting,’ she added, her top teeth worrying her bottom lip after she had said it.

Despite meaning not to his hand reached out for the arm nearest to him and he laid his fingers across hers. ‘If you think I was lying, then you have no knowledge of me at all, Miss Ashfield.’

The park around them dissolved into empty space and without warning a feeling that Gabriel had long since thought dead, rose. It was so unexpected that the world disappeared into whiteness, the dizzying bout of relief making him sway, an unusual heat creeping into the very bones of emotion and wringing out the bitterness.

‘God.’ The breath was knocked out of his body in shock and confusion.

Adelaide Ashfield was off her horse in a second, a dismount that was as rapid and competent as any he had ever seen.

‘Are you well, Lord Wesley?’

He held his fists so tightly curled that they hurt.

‘I...am.’ Fighting to get the words out, he closed his eyes. Not panic now, but sheer and utter relief. If he could feel like this once, then it stood to reason he could do so again. He swallowed back a thickness and took in air, reaching for the return of that he had imagined never to know again.

‘If you describe your symptoms to me, I am more than certain I could find something to help you?’

The laughter in his throat warred with a heady disbelief and that in turn was swallowed by a certain and horrifying realisation.

She had no idea what she was doing to him, this unusual and tall country miss with her ocean-blue eyes and honesty. Already she was digging into the pocket of her skirt to bring forth a twist of powder that was the colour of mud.

‘I had this on hand for myself, my lord. Lightheadedness comes from fear, you see, and I imagined I may have had need for it. But you...?’

He shook his head, not wishing for any medicine that might eliminate the effect of warm blood on his masculinity. ‘Perhaps we might...postpone this riding...lesson, then, until another day...Miss Ashfield.’ Sweat had begun to build above his top lip and temples.

‘You are too overheated?’ Her face looked aghast.

‘Just...breathless.’ Each word took effort, and, gesturing to the maid who sat on a bench twenty feet from them, he moved back, the reins of his horses in his hands held as tightly as he had been instructing her not to.

And then he was off his horse, walking, striding towards the park gate and glad that the pathway out of the gardens was clear.

Once through them, he stopped. What the hell had just happened? He wanted to go back and try again, take her hand and see if perhaps the feeling might grow and blossom into the hope of more. A proper erection. The return of his libido. But he couldn’t. Cowardice had a certain all-consuming feel to it and if it was an illusion, then...? He shook his head and mounted his horse for home.