Now that help had arrived she was panicking. In fact, she thoroughly went to pieces in his arms, her sobs ragged and deep, his warrior of the healing arts finally reaching the limit of what could be tolerated.
‘It’s all right, sweetheart. Everything is all right now.’
And it was, he realised with a great thump of truth. His wife was in his arms and the world was still going around. That was all he needed. Just Adelaide and her bravery and strength. Just them. Together.
* * *
Much later they returned to Ravenshill Manor, Amethyst and Daniel electing to stay on at Colton House with their newly born son and a doctor who had been summoned by Lord Herbert.
Adelaide was exhausted. Gabriel had given her the choice of staying or making for home, but it seemed all she could think of was being somewhere safe, and the annex at the rear of the Manor was where she felt the most secure.
Gabriel dismissed the astonished Milly when they came into her room, telling her he wanted to help his wife himself.
And he did help her, rolling off her stockings and undressing her with an extreme tenderness, and then finding a cloth and ewer to dab at her hands and face.
Finally he placed her into bed, the clean sheets against her skin.
‘Please...come in with me...I am...fr-freezing.’
He hesitated momentarily, but then, stripping off his jacket and pants, he joined her. He left on the long linen shirt and held her close, pulling the blankets around her chin.
‘Thank God you were with Amethyst...’
But she simply stopped him with her own words.
‘No, Gabriel. Thank God I am with you.’
Then she fell promptly asleep.
An amazing statement when he considered her day, but here after cold and shock and in desperate tiredness he believed her.
He had never had someone true and good on his side before, not like this. Her ring glinted in the light of a single ten-hour candle, but when he laid his warm hand on top of hers it curled about his own, even in sleep.
Safe. She felt safe here at Ravenshill with him in the small annex at the back of the ruined manor. She had not wished to stay at Colton House with all its splendour and luxury, but had elected to return to the place she felt at home in.
His wife.
His saviour.
Usually at this time of night he was prowling the dark watches and the shadows, aware that sleep was very far away and waiting for the dawn.
But here at barely nine o’clock in the evening he was anchored to this bed and wrapped in the long limbs of Adelaide, tethered by something far more enduring than anger, sorrow and shame.
Shutting his eyes, Gabriel said a prayer. For them, for the baby that had been born, for the years he might have with his wife and for the joy that would follow.
And it was only as he fell into slumber Gabriel realised he had not asked God for the miracle of a healing for himself. In fact, he had forgotten about it altogether.
* * *
He came awake in the night, the warmth of Adelaide beside him, her hand across his stomach and her leg slung over his thighs. And in the quiet he reached down into her centre as a moth flies to flame, gentle and soft, her body writhing with the touch.
Up into warmth and wetness and the hidden depths of life, he turned her as she opened her thighs and took her across him, almost real, the bud of her arousal harnessed against his thumb as he quickened his rhythm.
He felt her come, the beaching waves of release, rigid and then loose and quiet. When he pressed in again straight afterwards she cried out, but he covered her mouth with his own and brought her to the flurry of a second climax, this one clenching hard over him and making her shake with the intensity of it.
Like birth, he thought.
Like the beginning.
Lifting his fingers to his mouth, he tasted her sweetness.
* * *
She was lost in love, shivering now with delight instead of fear as she reached all the places he wanted to show her and then held her whilst she recovered.
The candle burned low and the moon had waned, the dawn not far off, she thought, for already the eastern sky had lightened through the crack in the curtains. She cuddled in, her hand inadvertently touching the twisted skin at his thigh as she did so.
When he stiffened she knew why he had left his shirt on. He didn’t want her to see this or to know it. When his hand came down over hers though she simply pushed him away and continued to explore through touch. A burn, she surmised, for nothing else could have left a mark quite like this one. The fire in the chapel at Ravenshill.
‘Did it hurt?’
She felt him smile into her hair.
‘Yes.’
‘Who tended you?’
‘The Wesley physician.’
‘Did he use honey?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Lavender oil, then, or diluted vinegar?’
He shook his head. ‘He wrapped the leg in wet bandages and changed them frequently for a very long time.’
‘And is the pain still there?’
‘Sometimes.’
‘I will make you something for it, then, to relax the tightness. Is it on your stomach as well?’
She went to reach up further, but he stopped her by capturing her palm and bringing it to his lips where he kissed each finger.
‘Clever hands. Healing hands, hands that have brought a child who was not meant to have arrived so soon safely into this world. Daniel will never be able to thank you enough. I think he will be your servant for life.’
She giggled, imagining the lofty and austere Lord Montcliffe in such a role. ‘I would rather his friendship.
‘Well, I am sure that you will have that.’
She liked the laughter in his words and the way his fingers traced circles across the bare skin on her back.
‘Would you like to have children, Gabriel?’
All movement stopped and his breathing became shallow.
‘Our children, I mean,’ she added as he did not say anything. ‘An heir for the Wesley title and lands?’
She made herself carry on. ‘I do not know a lot about what happens between a man and a woman in bed, but I do imagine it is something like the farmyard and there has to be a contact between us that is...more intimate.’
He still did not answer though his heart raced hard in his chest. She could feel it through the linen.
‘If you would like to do this thing, I would be happy to do it with you.’
His swear word took her by surprise as he rolled away from their embrace and sat up on the bed. His profile against the new dawn looked wary and tired, a man fighting more demons than he might ever name.
‘Is it some illness that stops you?’
He stood at that and pulled down his shirt, reaching for the candle and blowing it out. The smoke curled into the grey light, a small puff of blackness and then gone.
Like her husband.
Without another word he had disappeared through the door frame and shut it behind him.
* * *
She did not see Gabriel until well into the next day when she spied him on horseback on one of the hills a good distance from the house. She knew him from the easy style he had of riding, fluid and graceful, and because the horse was the same one that he had ridden beside the carriage on the journey up from London.
Walking purposefully down to the stables, she thought to intercept him and indeed as she came down the pathway he was cantering in from the other direction, a groom coming to take the steed into the stables proper.
And leaving them to face each other.
‘You ride well.’ It was the only thing she could even think to say that did not include a question.
He smiled and hit his whip against his jodhpurs, a cloud of dust rising as he did so.
‘Practice makes perfect.’
She was at a loss as to how to reply. He had had a lot of practice in the bedroom and yet...
It was as though he could see what she was thinking. ‘We need to talk, Adelaide, but not here. If you could meet me in the blue salon in, say...an hour?’
He sounded so serious her heart began to beat quicker, a new dread coming from nowhere. Would he tell her that this marriage was a mistake or that he never wanted children? A hundred other possibilities crossed her mind, all fleeing as he stepped forward and placed one warm hand across hers.
‘It is my problem, Adelaide. Not yours.’ And with that he walked back into the stable to see about his horse.
* * *
He watched the clock on the wall slow in its minutes as it turned towards eleven. He had to be honest with her, he had to tell her who he was now, a man ruined from circumstance and foolishness, a broken man who should never have married her.
‘God, help me.’ The words echoed in the room and in his stomach, hollow and sick, scared and lonely. This was the truth of him. This man.
He swore again beneath his breath when he heard her coming, light footsteps on the parquet floor. Could he do it? Would he do it? How was one to sacrifice heaven for hell and barely a backward glance?
‘Thank you for coming.’ She was here now and he crossed to close the door behind her, standing against it for a moment in indecision, weighing up his strength.
‘You thought I would not?’ The nervously asked question helped somewhat as did the shake in her fingers as she wiped back a curl that had fallen across her cheek.
He wanted to step forward and hold her, make her understand all that he was inside even amongst the shattered fragments. But it was not fair to do so. He had to give her the facts to make her own decision about their marriage without coercion. Without feeling. Cold. Hard. Honest.
I am impotent.
Say it, his body chided, but his mind refused.
He hated the way he was breathing fast and the sickness was again back, sweeping over him so that he could barely take in air.