Honesty.
What had he said of it?
‘I think the truth is only simple. Us. Here. Married.’
So simple she could let go of every single truth she believed? Gabriel Hughes had played women false for years now and if the question was whether he’d done so for a greater good or for a lesser one she had no way of knowing.
From the very first second of seeing him she had felt a connection, solid, hard and surprising. It had shocked her with its intensity then and it had grown ever since. Unable to be fought. Absolutely undeniable.
It was why nothing else had felt right ever since: her suitors, her home at Northbridge, her vocation of healing and her acceptance of spinsterhood. She had been thrown into a reality unlike anything she had ever expected, bright against dull, heat against cold, and the truth of it all had led her here. Gasping for breath.
She wiped away the tears that fell across her cheeks in an angry motion. Crying was not a part of it. She needed to understand Gabriel Hughes and allow him to understand her. He had tried to be truthful and she had thrown it back in his face. A lover of repute who could bring any woman he chose to climax, the deceit of it all excused by the intelligence he gathered. Understandable. Even lauded. She knew wars were not always fought on a level playing field and that the compilation of secrets was never going to be tidy, the currency of duplicity having its own payments.
He had not come to her door last night after they had spoken. Neither had he sent word this morning to ask if she would join him for breakfast. Perhaps he, too, was licking his wounds and trying to find a pathway, back to togetherness.
* * *
When she finally got down to the dining room he had eaten and gone. To make the arrangements for the trip up to Ravenshill Manor, his butler had assured her and turned away. She had seen the look of consternation that had crossed his brow, though, and wondered at it.
Servants knew everything. She had discovered that fact years ago when her aunt Josephine had lost yet another baby and the silence of grief filled Northbridge. A stillbirth this one and a boy. With hair the colour of moonbeams and perfectly formed despite his early coming and his lordship sobbing inconsolably, behind his desk in the library. Adelaide had overheard her maid talking to another of the upstairs girls and was surprised by the extent and breadth of their knowledge of events. Like a grapevine entwined on to itself as its runners lengthened and thickened.
The Wesley staff would know that Gabriel and she had slept separately and that they had not sat together for a first breakfast, either. Even Milly, who had come with her from Northbridge, had looked tense as she pulled Adelaide’s hair into a chignon with draping curls around her face.
‘His lordship went out early, mistress, before the sun even rose and I have heard it said he was not in bed either till late. The maid who does the fire grates said he often did not even come home.’
‘Perhaps he has commitments, Milly?’
‘Commitments, my lady?’ Her eyebrows had shot up into her hairline. ‘I would have hoped you were the commitment he honoured.’ Laying down the brush, her maid caught her glance in the mirror. ‘I am sorry, ma’am. I should ha’ held my tongue. He is good to his horses if that is any consolation. Tom, the stable boy, told that to me yesterday.’
Adelaide smiled. In Milly’s world a man who was kind to animals could do no wrong at all. She was glad for the information though, for already she had started to worry. If he did not come home night after night, what could she do about it? This was not a love match. Gabriel Hughes had married her out of pity, she thought, or even expedience, her fortune a way to rebuild Ravenshill Manor. She was a salvation, too, a beacon in the darkness he had fallen into.
The problem was that as much as she tried to convince herself her marriage was one of convenience for both of them, other things surfaced to make nonsense of the notion.
The way he had kissed her hand for a start last night, all her senses rising to the surface like water boiling in a pot, the heat and want unstoppable.
The way she saw the sadness in him, too, when he could not quite hide it, his pale gaze lost in other harsher times. Or his ruined right hand when he rested it on his thigh in a way he often did, rubbing it up and down across the fabric of his trousers as though the skin underneath troubled him.
Nay, if she were honest she had wedded Gabriel Hughes because she wanted more. More conversations, more of his smiles, more of the laughter that came quick when she spoke to him of ideas and books and dreams. She had never felt this before with anyone, a sense of kinship and knowledge, the mystery of him wrapped in hope. And need, too. Her aunts had always dismissed that part of a woman, the place that found magic in intimacy. Granted she had, too, for a very long while after Kenneth Davis’s attack, but lately some other understanding had budded and blossomed. She wanted to feel his warmth upon her, the urgency, the thrill of blood coursing across reason when he touched her.
The new morning lit the patina of the walls in the breakfast room, the old paint chalked into lighter squares where paintings had been removed. The gentle stroke of penury, hidden under excess. In society it was not what you were but what others perceived you were that was tantamount.
And Lord Gabriel Wesley was the most perfect example of all. Lost in shadow, but bathed in light.
He needed rescuing. He needed trust. He needed honesty. And as his wife she was damn well going to give it to him.
Chapter Fourteen
She had finished her breakfast already. Gabriel saw that as he walked into the dining room and sat to one end of the table, waiting until the servant had brought him his usual plate of eggs and bacon before he spoke.
‘I hope you slept well, Adelaide.’
She looked around to check the positioning of his staff before she answered him.
‘I have heard that you did not, my lord.’
His fork stopped as he lifted it. ‘I seldom sleep for long.’ He wondered which servant had leaked out that information. All the stakes heightened again, a wife who might wish to know all the things he’d told no one.
‘Do you walk, my lord? Walking helps, I find. In the country I take a long walk every morning and it allows me the time to think.’
‘You are full of excellent advice, Lady Wesley. Perhaps I should indeed start.’ He wished he could have made that sound a little kinder, but the few hours of slumber he had finally managed were not enough to foster good humour. He needed to arrange the journey up to Ravenshill and his mother had been ill again in the night. Her health was failing, he had known that for a long while, but today of all the days he just did not have the temperament for her constant melancholy and complaints.
He needed to get to Essex with his new wife. He needed space and time to adjust to being married. He could not leave Adelaide floundering in the no-man’s land of celibacy for ever without allowing her some honesty at least as to his reasons.
She was looking down now at her empty plate, her hands in her lap and a frown across her brow. Irritation, he thought. Or uncertainty. The bright and quick mind that he admired lost under the weight of their awkward union and he felt guilty and wary over it.
With a considered motion he lay down his eating utensils and stood, swigging down a mouthful of freshly poured tea as he did so.
‘Could you come with me to the library, Adelaide? I have things I need to say to you.’
Another flash of concern in blue, though she nodded and did what he asked, following him down the short corridor. He shut the door the instant she was inside and gestured to a seat over by the window.
‘I would rather stand, I think, my lord.’
‘Very well. Will you have a drink?’
‘This early in the morning? No. Thank you.’
‘Would you mind if I did?’
She didn’t answer that, but her frown told him she very much would mind. Still with the promise of shoring up his own courage he made certain to pour himself a generous brandy and downed much of it in one swallow. The liquor burnt a fiery path back to valour and he was glad for it. He had to stop drinking so much, he knew he did, and at Ravenshill he would make a start.
‘I have not slept well since the fire.’
That was honest enough. He had not done anything with any true skill since, but this wasn’t the time for that particular confession.
‘Have you tried massage?’
The sort of massage the Temple of Aphrodite was famous for? he thought wildly. The type that led to more than just a gentle touch of skin?
‘No.’
‘My aunt Eloise was an expert. She had a tutor from the East on the subject and people came for miles to have their aches and pains eased.’
Pushing back her sleeve, she laid a finger over a point a little way up from the wrist on her right arm. ‘This is Nei Guan, a place known to calm the heart and the spirit. With stimulation it can lead to better sleep and is well known, too, for its quelling of anxious thoughts.’
He began to laugh despite trying not to, the guarded tension in his shoulders relaxing with the humour.
‘Your aunt taught you this?’
‘Indeed, sir, she did.’ The words were given back to him without arrogance or pride and the floor beneath him seemed to tilt slowly to one side as he understood what that meant. She was not like any woman he had ever met before, neither boasting nor subservient. She just was. Herself. Different. Unusual. If Adelaide insisted she knew a method of Chinese massage that could put a grown man into the way of sleep, then she probably did.