His memory might yet fail him, but Claire’s was sound. She owed him the benefit of her intact memory. Damn it, sheowedit to him.
∞∞∞
Claire woke slowly to the realization that someone was in her room. Drowsy still with the weight of a day that had hung heavily upon her shoulders, she murmured on force of habit, “It was just a bad dream, darling. Come, you can sleep with Mama tonight.”
The narrow mattress depressed far deeper than Matthew’s slight weight could have caused, and a raspy voice whispered in the darkness, “No such luck, I’m afraid.”
Gabriel. Every muscle jerked tight at once, sending a sharp pain shooting down her back as muscles that ached from beating out the upstairs rugs screamed a protest. She floundered up through the sheets and blankets, scrabbling toward the head of the bed, away from where his hand had rested near her hip. The ropes supporting the mattress squeaked at the rough treatment.
“What are you doing here?” she hissed, scraping her tangled hair away from her face. “You cannot be within my room!”
A low laugh burned in her ears. “The master can go anywhere he likes. An unlocked door might as well be an invitation.”
Now that she was freed of his looming shadow, the slant of the moonlight through the window revealed a slice of his face, his lips quirked into a mocking smile. She folded her arms over her chest, the thin linen of her nightgown little in the way of armor, and said defensively, “Matthew has the occasional nightmare. I leave the door unlocked forhim.”
“Hmm.” Even that small sound conveyed a wealth of doubt and suspicion. “You’ll forgive me, I’m certain, if I am disinclined to trust your word. A woman who can lie with such ease hardly inspires confidence.”
She hated the silky smooth cadence of his voice, the sibilant scorn that dripped from each syllable. She hated that he had become someone she did not recognize, that the years that had separated them had hardened him, imbued him with the same icy disdain his father had once shown her. She hated that he could cut her to the quick so easily, that the heart she had spent so long protecting had become vulnerable once again.
Still she ventured, “Have you…remembered?”
“Not a damn thing,” he countered. “And that, my dearwife, is where you may prove yourself useful.” The ropes creaked beneath the mattress as he shifted his weight, bracing his back against the poster of the bed. His boots landed on the bed near the pillows and he stretched out, making himself comfortable. “You remember everything I’ve forgotten. You let me stumble about in darkness for so long that it’s only fitting you lead me now into the light.”
A chill broke out over her arms, and Claire rubbed them briskly to soothe it away. The temperature in the room felt as if it had dropped a dozen degrees with the ice his presence had brought with it; if she could have seen her breaths she fancied they would have frosted.
He took her silence for refusal and gritted out, “Youoweme this, Claire.”
It was the first time he’d said her given name since that awful scene with the duke. She had grown accustomed to hearing it, and its revocation had felt like a slap in the face. Most days he did not even look at her—though she supposed that was fair enough, since she could hardly bring herself to the same. For more than a week they had tiptoed around each other. Well,shehad tiptoed. He had brooded and sulked, casting about glares and orders, a man made over into his father’s image.
A queer sense of loss, of shame, pricked at her conscience. It was easy enough to cast blame around, to justify one’s own actions as merited. But whatever her reasons, whatever her justifications, she had had a hand in his disillusionment.
Her hands dropped into her lap, and she linked them to stop their nervous fidgeting. “What would you like to know?” she asked finally, her voice a shred of sound, conscious of the positioning of her room between his valet’s and the butler’s. If their voices carried, it would be just one more sin with which the rest of the staff would condemn her.
He flicked an imperious hand, and the shadow of it cut across the swath of moonlight gilding the corner of her bed. “Everything,” he said. “Begin at the beginning, if you will—how we met.” His voice took on a derisive tone. “No, let me guess—it was love at first sight.”
She scoffed. “Not hardly. You were an arse.”
“And I suppose you were sweetness and light itself?” he returned caustically.
With a sigh, she acknowledged, “No, I don’t suppose I was.” They were like two wounded animals circling one another, each having drawn blood—her deceit, his cutting words—each searching for the next opening to strike. It was exhausting and painful, and she didn’t want to take slices out of him any more than she wantedhimto search for opportunities to hurther.
She drew her legs up beneath the covers and wrapped her arms around her knees, defensive pose while she made herself vulnerable. “I came to Havenwood from Bristol,” she said. “My sister had gone to live there with her husband, and I—I was desperate to escape our father. He was such a hard man after our mother passed on, zealous and harsh, fond of striking my hands with switches whenever I displeased him, which was often. He was an impossible man to please.” She started when Gabriel shifted on the mattress, slinging one ankle over the other.
“Go on,” he said, and this time there was no sarcasm in the words, no withering scorn.
Claire settled in further, her shoulders easing to a restful slope. “When Anne wrote that she was expecting a baby, I seized my chance to escape. I told Father that I would go to her to help, and he didn’t like it, of course, but I begged and begged until at last he agreed to let me go.” She flexed her cold toes, tucking her feet beneath the folds of her nightgown. “I had only been there a week or so. I liked to go on walks; it was a sort of freedom that Father never allowed me in Bristol. And the countryside is beautiful. But I was unfamiliar with the area, and I didn’t know that I had trespassed onto your father’s land.”
“A simple mistake to make,” he acknowledged.
She nodded, but doubted he could see it in the darkness. “There is a pond—”
“I know the one.”
She cleared her throat. “Yes, well, it was nearing dusk, and I probably shouldn’t have been out so late, but I had just discovered the pond and I wanted to walk along the bank. It was January and quite cold, but there had been a good deal of rain, and my boots kept sticking in the mud. And then out of nowhere, you came charging along on your horse.” She unfurled one arm to pluck at a loose thread at her neckline. “I suppose you must not have been paying attention, because you saw me a bit too late. You bellowed for me to get out of your way, but with the mud sticking to my boots, I couldn’t move fast enough.”
“Oh, no.” The words were a rueful groan, dredged up from somewhere deep inside him. But they were also warmer than she’d heard from him lately, as if he’d been carried back into the past, his righteous anger eased by the sound of her voice. “Never say I—”
“Oh, yes,” she interjected. “Ran me straight into the pond. And I had the devil of a time righting myself, too. My skirts were loaded with mud and worse, and it wasJanuary, mind you—”
