Little steps, he reiterated to himself. Little tiny steps. And this was the first.
* * *
An hour later after a close game Gabriel extracted a golden guinea from his pocket and gave it to her. ‘For your service, Sarah, and for your kindness.’
Bringing the coin between perfectly white teeth, she bit down upon it. Still young enough not to have lost them, still innocent enough to imagine that gold might be a cure for the dissolution of morality. A trade-off that at this point in her life still came down on the black side of credit. God, he muttered to himself as he grabbed his jacket.
Henrietta Clements had been the same once. Hopeful and blindly trusting.
He brought out his card from a pocket and laid it down on the lumpy straw mattress. ‘Can you read?’
She shook her head.
‘If you ever want to escape this place, find someone who can, then, and send word to me for help. I could find you more...respectable work.’
She was off of the bed in a moment, the scent of her skin pungent and sharp as she threaded her arms about his neck.
‘If you lay down, I’d do all the work, sir. Like a gift to you seeing as you have been so nice and everything.’
Full lips closed over his and Gabriel could feel an earnest innocence. The pain of memory lanced over manners as he pushed her back.
‘No.’ A harsher sound than he meant, with things less hidden.
‘You won’t be calling again?’ Sarah made no attempt at hiding her disappointment. ‘Not even for another game of chess?’
‘I’m afraid I won’t.’ The words were stretched and quick, but as manners laced through reason he added others. ‘But thank you. For everything.’
Chapter Three
The stone was cold, rubbed smooth with the echoes of time. He had tried to reach her, through the tapestries of Christ under thorns, but the choking smoke had stopped him, the only sound in his ears the one of a ghastly silence.
His dagger was in his fist, wrapped around anger, the Holy Water knocked from its place on the pulpit and falling on to marble pocked with time. The spectre of death had him, even as he reached for Henrietta, the trickle of red running down his fingers and her eyes lifeless.
* * *
Gabriel woke with the beat of his heart loud in his ears and his hands gripping the sheets beneath him.
The same bloody dream, never in time, never quick enough to save her. He cursed into fingers cradled across his mouth, hard harsh words with more than a trace of bitterness within as his eyes went to the timepiece on the mantel.
Six o’clock. An hour’s sleep at least. Better than some nights, worse than others. Already the first birds were calling and the working city moved into action. The street vendors with their words and their incantations. ‘Milk maids below.’ ‘Four for sixpence, mackerel.’ The heavier sound of a passing carriage drowned them out.
Unexpectedly the image of the water-blue eyes of Miss Adelaide Ashfield came to mind, searing through manners and propriety on the seat at the edge of the Bradfords’ ballroom as she cursed about her ten more weeks.
Where did she reside in London? he wondered. With her uncle in his town house on Grosvenor Square or in the home of Lady Harcourt? Did she frequent many of the ton’s soirées or was she choosy in her outings?
Swearing under his breath, he rose. He had no business to be thinking of her; she would be well counselled to stay away from him and as soon as he had caught those who were helping Clements in his quest for Napoleon’s ascendency he, too, would be gone.
The society mamas were more circumspect with him now, the failing family fortune common knowledge and the burned-out shell of the Wesley seat of Ravenshill Manor unattended. His father had squandered most of what had been left to them after his grandfather’s poor management, and Gabriel had been trying to consolidate the Wesley assets ever since. The bankers no longer courted him, neither did the businessmen wanting the backing of old family money to allow them an easy access to ideas. It would only be a matter of time before society turned its back altogether.
But he’d liked talking with Adelaide Ashfield from Dorset. This truth came from nowhere and he smiled. God, the unusual and prickly débutante was stealing his thoughts and he did not even want to stop and wonder why.
She reminded him of a time in his life when things had been easier, he supposed, when conflict could be settled with the use of his fists and when he had gone to bed at midnight and slept until well past the dawn.
What would happen after the allotted ten weeks? Would her uncle allow her to simply slip back into the country with her fortune intact, unmarried and free?
His eyes rested upon the gold locket draped on the edge of an armoire to one side of the window.
The bauble had been Henrietta’s. She had left it here the last time she had come to see him and he had kept it after her death. For safekeeping or a warning—the reminder of love in lost places and frozen seconds? For the memory of why a close relationship would never again be something that he might consider? He had tried to remember how the fire in the chapel had begun, but every time he did so there was a sense of something missing.
For a while he imagined it might have been he who had started it, but subsequently he had the impression of other hands busy with that very purpose. Hers? Her husband’s? The men they associated with? The only thing Gabriel was certain of was the hurt and the stab of betrayal that had never left him.
But perhaps he and Miss Adelaide Ashfield were more alike than he thought? Perhaps she had been hurt, too, by someone, by falsity, by promise. It was not often, after all, that a young and beautiful girl held such an aversion to marriage and stated it so absolutely.
He would like to meet her again just to understand what it was that she wanted. The Harveys were holding a ball this very evening and perhaps the Penbury party had the intention of going? He had heard that Randolph Clements’s cousin George Friar might be in attendance and wanted to get a measure of the man. Wealthy in his own right, the American had been staying with the Clements for a good while now, but some said he was a man who held his own concealments and darkness.
The inlaid gold on his ring glinted in the light and Gabriel frowned as he recited the Anglican prayer of resurrection beneath his breath. Turning the circle of gold and silver against his skin, he positioned it so that the inlaid cross faced upwards.
Fortuna.
He suddenly felt that he had lost the hope of such a thing a very long time ago.
* * *
Arriving at the Harveys’ ball later than he meant to, the first person Gabriel met was his friend Daniel Wylde, the Earl of Montcliffe, with Lucien Howard, the Earl of Ross, at his side.
‘I am only down from Montcliffe for a few days, Gabe, trying to complete a deal on the progeny of a particularly fine pair of greys I own.’
Gabriel’s interest was piqued. ‘The Arabian beauties that were standing at Tattersall’s a year or so back? The ones that caused a stir before they were pulled from auction.’
‘The very same. Perhaps you might be interested in a foal for the Ravenshill stables?’ Lucien Howard’s voice was threaded with an undercurrent of question.
‘My means are about as shaky as your own are rumoured to be, Luce. I doubt I could afford to feed another horse, let alone buy one.’
Daniel Wylde laughed heartily before any more could be said. ‘Find a wife, then, who is both beautiful and rich. That’s your answer.’
‘Like you did?’
‘Well, in all truth, she found me...’
The small and round Miss Greene and her younger sister chose that moment to walk past and gaze in Gabriel’s direction. He had stood up with her in a dance earlier in the Season as a favour to their bountifully blessed aunt and the girls had seemed to search him out at each ensuing function.
A plethora of other ladies milled around behind them, each one seemingly younger than the next. And then to one corner he noticed Miss Adelaide Ashfield. Tonight she was adorned in gold silk, the rich shade making her hair look darker and her skin lighter.
She was laughing at something the girl beside her had said though at that very moment she looked up and caught Gabriel’s glance. From this distance he could see something in her eyes that drew out much more in his expression than he wanted to show. With shock he broke the contact, his heart hammering.
Not sexual, but an emotion far more risky. He almost swore, but a footman chose that exact moment to pass by with an assortment of drinks on a silver tray.
The liquor slid across panic and soothed it. He saw the question that passed between Montcliffe and Ross, but he turned away, the card room as good a place as any to drown his sorrows.
‘If you will excuse me, I might try my hand at a game of whist.’
‘But a waltz is about to begin, Gabe, and the girl in gold in that corner looks as though she would welcome a dance.’
He left saying nothing though the sound of their laughter followed him for a good many yards.
George Friar was not yet here. He’d hoped to have a word with him, not to warn him off exactly, but to allow the colonial to understand the danger of becoming involved in political intrigues against England. Still, Gabriel was prepared to wait, and it was early.
* * *
A hundred pounds later Gabriel acknowledged his mind was not on the game and cashed in his chips.
‘Thank you, gentlemen, but that is me out for the evening.’