Gabriel sank into his own chair. He had heard the words distantly, as if his ears had been plugged with cotton. They didn’t matter, not really. All that mattered was that he had well and truly lost. Claire was going to leave. He’d all but shoved her out the door himself.
Westwood cleared his throat uncomfortably. “Poppy took some notes during their interview,” he said. “If we didn’t already have a housekeeper, I suppose she’d be eminently qualified, even if sheisa marchioness.”
Gabriel’s throat ached as he swallowed another bracing gulp of whisky, and this time the burn felt like punishment, like penance. He had the terrible feeling that it wasn’t only the whisky that burned. All he could think about was Claire, desperately seeking a new position. If she couldn’t find one with Westwood, he had no idea where she would go, what she would do. She could disappear entirely. “If she truly wants to leave,” he heard himself say, “you must find a position for her.”
“Well, I can’t possibly turn out Mrs. Sedgwick just to hire on a new housekeeper,” Westwood said, “even if sheisqualified.”
“Send Mrs. Sedgwick on holiday,” Gabriel said. “Or invent an ailing relative for her, if you must. But I need”—he was horrified by the reedy sound of his voice, the way his breath whistled through his teeth—“I need to know Claire is safe. For God’s sake, I’ll cover her wages, Mrs. Sedgwick’s sabbatical, whatever you like.”
“My God, Leighton. She’s not goneyet.” Westwood had intended the words to be comforting, perhaps even hopeful, but instead they merely underscored the inevitability of it all.
As if an enormous weight had crashed down upon him, Gabriel felt his shoulders sink. “But how could she leave?” he whispered. “She couldn’t hope to take Matthew along with—” And the words died with the terrible realization that she did not intend to take Matthew with her. He thought of the heart-wrenching sobs she had smothered against his shoulder some nights past, the tearful words she had spoken.A mother should be able to protect her child!
Christ. She had determined that what Matthew needed was beyond her ability to provide. Perhaps even that Matthew would be better off without her. Everything he had done had only emphasized that belief, driven home the fact that Matthew would be the better for being the cosseted son of a marquess rather than a housekeeper. If she could not protect him, then she would sacrifice her happiness for his.
He couldn’t imagine what it had cost her to come to such a conclusion. What itwouldcost her, if she followed it to its end. How much did it wound a mother to leave her child behind?
“See here,” Westwood said, his voice strained, as if he suspected that Gabriel might break down at any moment. “I’ll ask Poppy to tell her she’ll have a position in a fortnight. It’s notmuchtime, I grant you—but it ought to be little enough time to keep her from seeking out a position elsewhere.”
A fortnight. A fortnight for what? To watch Claire drift farther and farther from him until he lost her entirely?
“What the hell am I supposed to do?” he asked.
Westwood snorted. “What you should have done from the start, you insufferable idiot,” he said. “Woo your damned wife.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
Woo his wife. It was a damned sight harder than Westwood had made it seem. Gabriel was uncomfortably aware that for all they were indeed wed, for all that they shared a child between them, they might as well have been strangers. Claire had a wealth of knowledge that he did not, possessed memories that still escaped him. Years and years of resentments had piled up between them like boulders, and he hadn’t the foggiest idea of how to go about dismantling that makeshift barricade.
If it evencouldbe dismantled. She’d once been his guardian angel, the glint and glimmer of her halo guiding him out of the darkness he’d lived within. And when she’d fallen from the pedestal upon which he had placed her, he’d as good as torn her wings off himself.
She had been subdued most of the day, quietly going about her tasks but interacting with no one, as if she had already withdrawn from his household. Probably his brash declaration of her true status had done her no favors after all, alienating her still further from the staff she ostensibly commanded.
There would be no more nocturnal visits to her room. He’d turned it from a sanctuary into a cell, as though she were a prisoner called to account for her crimes. He’d even thought himself justified in it, that she had owed him an accounting of her actions.
But they had both been victims. And Claire’s ordeal had been so much worse than his own. Instead of offering his understanding, as she had done with him, he had treated her like a thief. As if his claim to their past eclipsed her own, and she had wronged him with her knowledge of it.
In reality she had only been protecting herself, protecting their son. As any good mother would. He ought to have known it straight off, ought to have weighed his father’s revelation against what he knew of her, and found in her favor.
So rather than forcing his presence upon her where he ought never to have trespassed, instead he waited for her at the base of the stairs, until at last, late into the evening, faint footfalls in the hallway heralded her arrival. In the shadows of the foyer, he watched her approach, her head bowed, candle held in one hand. Tallow, of course—the sour smell preceded her. In the dim light he saw the weight of the day scrawled on her face, the strain she had labored beneath slumping her shoulders.
She had carried a burden he could not possibly have understood.
“Claire,” he murmured, flinching when she leapt back, her hand pressed over her heart as if to keep it from leaping out of her chest. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to startle you.” Probably he had shocked her with his appearance, like a beast lurking in the shadows, lying in wait to tear her to shreds.
She had not expected to encounter anyone so late in the evening as she returned to her room at last—that much had been evident from the unguarded emotions that had flitted across her face. But now she withdrew once again, smoothing her features into that placid housekeeper’s mask, retreating within herself to a place he could not touch, could offer no injury. “Do you require something, my lord?” she inquired, her voice wooden.
“No,” he said. “But I thought—hoped—you might join me in the library for a few minutes.”
She took a step back, and if that carefully constructed mask she wore did not waver, her voice did. “It’s late,” she said, defensively.
“I know. It’s a request, not an order.” He resisted the urge to take a step forward to close the distance she had set between them. “I would like to speak with you—”
Her breath whistled sharply through her teeth, and he winced as he recalled that it had not been so very long ago that she had made a similar request of him, which he had refused rather harshly. But she said nothing.
“I would like to speak with you,” he reiterated, “but the choice is yours.”
For a long moment she stood silently, as if weighing her options. The candle wick hissed and sputtered, and stray drip of tallow fell onto her wrist, but she seemed not to notice it.
