‘Leave Adelaide Ashfield out of it, Daniel. I mean it.’
‘She talked with Christine Howard of mesmerism...’
‘I don’t want to hear this.’
‘...and self-healing. Of reliving the moment when everything changed and moving on with life. Of coming to terms with what has happened to you?’
The heat crawling across his legs and sending the cloth into flame, skin dissolving as other hands had reached him, pulled him to safety, the last of Henrietta Clements’s long hair frizzling into black.
She had smiled at him and then cursed him in the last moments before death. ‘There won’t be another for you. Only me.’
The sudden realisation floored him. Gabriel could barely move with the truth of what he remembered.
‘What is it, Gabe? You look like you have seen a ghost?’ Daniel’s query came softly.
‘I think Henrietta Clements wanted me to die alongside her. The fire was like a pyre...a suttee. If she could not have me here, then maybe in the celestial...?’ He left the statement hanging because he no longer had the energy to continue.
‘And you didn’t remember this until now? God. Perhaps Miss Ashfield’s suppositions about speaking of a defining moment holds more power in it than we both gave her credit for. She’ll be wasted on Lovelace if she marries him.’
If...
Swallowing, Gabriel pushed back his fear to a place where he could manage it. ‘Is there any way, Daniel, that your wife might ask Miss Ashfield to visit your town house again tomorrow afternoon?’
‘Because you want to talk with her?’
‘Alone if I can.’
‘I think that would be a very good idea.’
* * *
Adelaide, accompanied by her maid, Milly, climbed the steps of the Montcliffe town house with a feeling of nervous anticipation. The horror of her dreadful conversation with Gabriel Hughes at the McWilliamses’ ball had kept her up for nights and she knew she did not look her best.
The last time she had been here he had been, too, but Lord Wesley was nowhere to be seen as she gave Lady Montcliffe her greeting once inside the front door.
‘Perhaps your maid could accompany mine and go and find something to eat and drink in the kitchen, Miss Ashfield. That would give us a small opportunity to talk.’
‘Of course.’ Milly happily got up, leaving her alone with Amethyst Wylde, who shepherded her into a small salon to one side of an opulent hallway.
‘I would like to speak honestly with you if I may, Adelaide...might I call you that?’
‘Yes.’
‘The Earl of Wesley is a particular friend of ours and he is a good man, a strong man, a man who is misunderstood in society, I think. He admires you. I know that for a fact.’
Adelaide hated the flush of red that had crept up into her cheeks.
‘He is here today and he has asked to have a private word with you. Is this something that you might consider?’
Adelaide stood, unable to sit longer. The other day she had asked to meet the earl and he had refused. She could not even begin to imagine what he might want to say now, but it could not get any worse than the last meeting, she was sure of it. And he was here, close. She took in a deep breath. ‘I would. My uncle expects me to form a union , but a fortune can be a difficult asset in the marriage stakes, Lady Montcliffe.’
‘The rich must marry the rich, you mean?’ Amethyst Wylde came to stand beside her.
‘Exactly, and Lord Berrick has asked for my hand.’
‘I had heard this said, but I do not recall the man himself.’
‘My uncle prays for an alliance within the ton. My father wanted it, too. There was a letter expressing his hopes for a suitor and his family name was mentioned so...’ She stopped, unable to go on.
‘Strong persuasions, then. As a way of presenting the other side I might tell you that Daniel was almost penniless when I married him and our union has proved a great success. I think a wise woman can find a way to gain exactly what she wants and make it work, and from what I have seen and heard of you, Miss Ashfield, you are more than up to the task. My advice, for what it is worth, is to follow your heart no matter where it takes you. Now if you will excuse me, I shall find Lord Wesley.’
* * *
Adelaide stood in the sunlight by the French doors overlooking the garden, the gentle smell of lemons just discernible in the air. For a moment Gabriel faltered, unsure if what he was about to do was a wrong step or a right one, but then he made himself come forward and the noise had her turning.
She did not wear her spectacles today. That was the very first thing he noticed, and because of it her eyes seemed bigger and much more blue.
Other emotions danced there, too, before she could hide them. Fright. Worry. Joy.
‘Miss Ashfield.’
‘My lord.’
He did not move closer as he shut the door behind him and when a cloud fell across the sun the room darkened markedly. An omen? He prayed not.
‘Thank you for meeting me. I guessed I wouldn’t be exactly welcomed at the Penbury town house and so I asked Lord and Lady Montcliffe if they might arrange this. The rumour that you have agreed to marry Lovelace has come to my ears, you see, and—’ He stopped, biting down on his babble of words. He was seldom nervous, but here he found he was.
Her smile was sad and it came nowhere near to touching her eyes. ‘You of all people should know the danger of listening to gossip.
He was surprised by the ache of relief that went through him at her answer. ‘So it is false, this proposed union ?’
‘Oh, parts of tittle-tattle are always true. Lord Berrick did ask me, but I did refuse him.’
‘Because you do not love him?’
‘Could not love him. There is a difference. One can marry a man whom one admires in the hope that love might follow, but if there is no feeling whatsoever in the first place, I doubt a satisfactory union would result.’ Her voice wavered on the last words, the pulse at her throat rapid.
He covered the distance between them and stood just out of touch, watching the secrets he so often saw dancing in the blue of her eyes.
‘You told me once that you never wished to marry at all and that you would like to remain a spinster.’
‘And I believed that to be true...then.’
‘But now?’
‘My place in the world is less certain then it once was and Northbridge is not the home I imagined it to be. I thought to come here for twelve weeks and then return unchanged to get on with my old life, but that will not be so easy now.’ She smiled. ‘I find myself at a crossroads, Lord Wesley, and it is hard to know in which direction to turn.’
It was her bravery, he was to think later, that made him throw off caution and speak.
‘Marry me, then, instead.’
Her mouth fell open and she stared at him, her teeth worrying her bottom lip.
‘I am not wealthy and I am not safe in the way your uncle would want a husband to be. There are things about me you do not know and that you may never understand, but I promise to protect you. For ever. My family seat is a pile of burned-out ruins and the town house is heavily mortgaged. But your money should stay in your name, separate to anything I own, because in that way you might understand it is not for riches that I ask this question.’
‘Why on earth...would you ask me, then?’ Her voice was small, barely there.
‘I like the way you reason out things and fight for people and heal them. Besides, Berrick and his stupidity would ruin you and George Friar is not to be trusted.’
The clock ticked in one corner, loud as it measured the passing minute, and outside he heard the rumble of a carriage. Small everyday things counterbalanced against the magnitude of his proposal.
‘Yes.’
He could not quite for the life of himself fathom for a second exactly what she meant.
‘Yes?’
‘I will marry you, my lord.’
‘Gabriel. My name is Gabriel.’
‘I know.’
Neither of them moved, as though in the action the truth of it all might simply disappear, lost in fantasy.
‘Hell.’
She laughed at that, a throaty deep sound that filled the emptiness in him. ‘I do not think one is supposed to swear after such a moment, my lord.’
Had she truly just consented to what he thought she had? Could it possibly be this easy?
No.
The answer came quickly. She did not know who he was, what he was, the ache in his thigh only underlining more uncertainty.
He should take the words back and leave her to find her own direction for she had told him of her refusal to marry Lovelace. She was sensible, clever and honest and he was dangerous, unstable and impotent.
Impotent.
The word hung in the air around everything he did and said now and yet he had not been candid with her, with a bride who would know from the first moment he touched her that all was not as it ought to be.
Was this marriage proposal simply selfishness because he thought he might be cured by Adelaide Ashfield’s touch? Just another worry that he added to the pile of others.
‘I wouldn’t stop you doing the things you wanted to. I envisage a marriage of equality and independence.’
He needed to put these things on the table to counter all the other negatives. Perhaps in the balance, then, something could be salvaged, some sense of rightness, and Adelaide had always stressed how important autonomy was to her.
But would it be enough when she came to understand all that he might not be able to give her? He waited for her answer.