He sat down hard on the chair behind him and held his head spinning with the horror of everything. For one moment he thought he might even cry in front of her like a baby.
And then she was beside him, her hand across his brow and at his wrist, feeling for the signs of sickness, he thought, trying to determine what to do.
Fix me up. Make me better. Make me the man I once was with your potions and your kindness. Make me whole again.
These words turned in his mind. Foolish hopes that would never come to pass.
‘I might be able to help you, Gabriel, if you could only tell me what’s wrong.’
He shook his head. ‘No one can help me.’ He hated the self-pity he could hear in his words, but could not take them back.
And then because she had seen him at his very worst, a man with nothing left to lose save his final pride, he simply blurted it out.
‘I cannot make love any more because I am impotent. The accident took that part from me, the burns, the fire. I cannot father children. I cannot be a husband. I should have told you, of course I should have before you married me, but I wanted...’
He stopped and swallowed. ‘I love you, Adelaide, and I wanted you to love me back.’
* * *
Adelaide could not believe the words he said. Not the ones on impotency and the fire and burns, but the other ones; the ones of love and wanting.
‘I love you, too, Gabriel. With all my heart and soul. I loved you from the first moment of meeting you, the very first in the small arbour at the Bradford ball when you warned me about your reputation.’
Placing her hands on either side of his face, she knelt down beside him and looked into his eyes, a darker bruised gold today, though a flare of hope was there, too, amongst the anguish and disbelief.
‘The physical things you speak of are only one side of a union . What of trust and love and closeness? A marriage is about friendship and honesty and laughter. I have all of that with you. And more...’ She smiled. ‘When you take me to bed I cannot remember anything at all save the way you make me feel. If that is our life, then I am more than happy with it, though I should like to be able to pleasure you, too. You could teach me.’
He stood at that and brought her into his arms, the scent of soap and linen filling in the cold of the room. He had washed and shaved since she had seen him last, the hair at his nape still damp, spots of water darkening the loosely tied cravat he wore at his neck.
Beautiful. More beautiful than she had ever seen him with the edge of vulnerability staining his eyes and deepening the lines in his cheeks.
Not a boy but a man, honed by tragedy, seasoned by fire.
‘And the promise of children, Adelaide? What of this loss?’
‘We shall enjoy the offspring of your friends. Already there are two little Wyldes whom we can shower with our love. Your friends will have others.’
She felt him smile rather than saw it, felt him relax and meld into the shape of her, exhausted by his truths.
‘I don’t deserve you.’
‘Why?’
‘Because you did not know who I once was and that is unfair. All you have now is the wreck of me.’
‘And what of me, Gabriel? Did you know the girl who used to laugh more, enjoy life more? The one who was not scared of strangers and men and the midnight dark? That girl was lost, too, with Kenneth Davis’s attack, gone in a second, replaced by a new woman. But you know me as I am now, lessened, less trusting, more uncertain. I hope it is enough.’
‘Enough?’
‘Marriage is just that, don’t you think? Change and challenge and chance. The people we are now will be different from the ones we will be in ten years or twenty. Or fifty when we are old and grey and wrinkled. But will we love each other less because of life marking us, moulding us, strengthening us? Like steel in a forge, stronger in adversity and more tempered. Less breakable because of the hardships and of the joy.’
‘I love you, sweetheart. I love you so much that it hurts, here.’ He placed one of her hands across his heart and she could feel the thump of it, neither as fast as it had been, nor as heavy. She was glad for the fact even as sadness crouched close, for him and for her and for the things they would not have together, but also for all he had just given her. Love. Truth. Himself.
And then just like that his touch changed back into the magic, drawing a line down her neck and on to the flesh above her bodice in the way only he was able to.
‘You are so beautiful,’ he whispered, his lips grazing the place where his fingers had been, down and down on to the rise of her breast. She felt his tongue there, too, the dampness and the heat, and then a heavy suckling, hollowed and echoing. Sounds of her heartbeat and her breath and then his and an answering call somewhere lower. Take me, it cried, and make me yours. And he did then, with his hands and a swift sharpness that had her arching backwards, the heavy beat of blood and want coursing through her. Her fingers were now in his hair, pulling him in, making him hers.
‘I love you.’ Softly said and formless. He took her loving and stretched it around desire and appetite before changing it again to the white-hot heat of knowledge.
When he was finished and she simply stood there watching him, spent, he took her hand and laid it across his nipple.
‘Here,’ he instructed, ‘like this,’ he added, shepherding her fingers and pinching in a certain spot between forefinger and thumb.
She understood what he was doing. In the ashes of honesty a new phoenix was rising, a different one, a finer one. Together they could make this marriage the best it could be. She licked the tips of her fingers as he had done with her and set to work.
When the bud hardened she was pleased and when his breathing ran into quickness she was even more so.
And then she laid her mouth on his and found the taste of him with her tongue, slanting across wetness, taking the breath from them both, the power he allowed her now more exciting than anything she had ever known.
This was what it was like to truly love someone without reservation or embarrassment. Threading her fingers around his neck, she brought him down with her on to the thick burgundy rug.
‘I will never stop loving you, Gabriel. Ever.’
‘And I will make certain that you do not,’ he whispered back.
* * *
They barely left Gabriel’s bedchamber the next day and the one after that as they discovered things about each other by talking through the hours.
‘I think Henrietta Clements meant to take me with her when she died because I did not love her enough.’ It was late afternoon and they were sitting near the window, wrapped in each other’s arms in the large leather wingchair.
‘Was it she who set the fire, do you think?’ Adelaide’s question came quietly and just like that the last piece of the puzzle clicked into place. The candle. The flame. The chapel curtain dust-dry with age.
‘Yes,’ he said, the last vestige of doubt falling away. ‘It was she. I remember now.’
He’d gone to meet her because she had sent him a message. She had the names of those her husband was associating with, the men and women who might bring down a kingdom at worst or a government at best.
He had not wanted to go, he knew that, because already there was a glint of madness in her eyes that worried him.
She had pulled a gun on him as he arrived and made him stand still, there by the marbled font, under the ruined body of Christ. Her hands had been shaking so much he thought the weapon might have gone off without her even meaning to shoot him.
‘Place your right hand on the Bible, Gabriel.’
He had done so, waiting for his chance to disarm her.
‘Swear you will love me for ever, in God’s name. I want to hear you say it now and mean it.’
He’d swallowed and hesitated. He wasn’t a man unable to use a lie for his own means even in a house of God, but there was something else at play here, something hidden and desperate.
‘Say it.’
As one hand had covered her belly in that certain protective gesture he suddenly understood.
‘You are with child?’
She had nodded, the gun lowering, but not forgotten.
‘Is it mine?’
Please, God, let it not be. If you ever do anything at all for me, my lord, please do not let this child be mine.
She shook her head and relief flooded through him. ‘But it’s not my husband’s, either. George Friar, my husband’s cousin, took me against my will and I could not stop him.’
She was crying. Loudly. ‘I think he would kill Randolph if he had the chance, too. Take me away with you, Gabriel, because you are the only one who has ever been truly kind to me. Say you love me and we can be free.’
And when he could not the candle was in her hand and then it was within the old curtain dividing the font from the chapel proper.
The horror must have shown on his face as the flame took, for she suddenly and simply stepped back into it, fire racing up her wide skirts and into her loosened hair.
He had tried to save her, tried to find the woman under the heat and bring her out, but the smoke had billowed, death tracing their skin with its blackness, the last echo of reason as he reached for the water in the font and poured it across them.
‘It was a month before I remembered anything again,’ he said softly as Adelaide’s hands traced the ravages of fire upon his thigh. ‘For a time I thought it was me who had killed her and then bits came back.’ Guilt made his voice hoarse. ‘We both betrayed each other, I think, her in love and me for the love of secrets. She was a means to an end and I deserved all that I have now.’ He sat up straighter and frowned. ‘But she gave me the names and I remember them now. George Friar is the one who killed Randolph Clements, the one we want.’