“Of course you did,” she said, “but you didn’thaveto listen to me. You didn’thaveto apologize to Sukey when you threw that book at her. You didn’thaveto receive Lord Westwood, or take me in your carriage to Spitalfields, or take my son into your household.”
“Ourson.”
“Of course.Ourson. But you didn’tknowit. And you took him in anyway, and gave him your time and attention, and loved him.” She swiped at her eyes. “That was the hardest thing to bear, you know. That you loved him. I knew you loved him. And I knew you didn’t—” She made an awkward sound in her throat, a sort of restrained sob, and squeezed her eyes closed, her spiky lashes fanning her cheeks.
“What?” he asked. “I didn’t…?”
“Nothing,” she managed at last. “It’s not important. Whatisimportant is that you can change. You can choose, every day, to be kind. To be better. And Matthew needs you to be the kind of man you want him to be when he grows up. You have to show him that. Don’t—don’t let him become like your father.”
She spoke as if she had made up her mind, as if she would have no influence on Matthew’s upbringing, and the thought pitched him straight into despair. There was so little time left, and he didn’t know if hecouldchange her mind. They had once rushed into a relationship, crammed their courtship into just a few short months, but he had no idea if he still possessed any of the qualities with which she had once fallen in love, if those things would even appeal to the woman she had become.
There was just a week left to become the sort of man she could love. A week left to win her…or he would have to let her go.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Claire had slept through most of the day, but drifted into consciousness when Sukey entered the room with a tray, packed to the gills with plates.
“Afternoon, ma’am,” she said. “His lordship said I ought to make sure you got an early dinner, seeing as you slept straight through breakfast and luncheon. Would you care for a bath?”
“Thank you,” Claire mumbled, feeling as though her mouth had been packed full of cotton. “That would be lovely.” At least Sukey seemed to have recovered from her general discomfort and rediscovered her otherwise amiable disposition. Probably Gabriel had had something to with that, she supposed. If he’d notified the servants that she had effectively resigned her position, then it stood to reason they would no longer need feel awkward around her. Very soon they would no longer be reporting to her.
Rather than hauling up a hip bath as she’d expected, Sukey instead instructed the footmen to fill the tub in Gabriel’s private bathing room, a kind of luxury that Claire had never expected. Still, it was not an experience that she was ever likely to have again, and so, feeling just a shade guilty, she indulged in a truly relaxing bath for the first time in her life. She wondered as she soaked if Gabriel intended to release her from her doctor-ordered bed rest today, or if he would insist on threefulldays.
Sighing, she dunked her head beneath the water. Probably the full three days. He’d shown no sign of intending to be reasonable thus far, anyway. Finally she rinsed her hair and wrapped herself in a towel, only to find that her nightgown had been nicked in the interim, presumably for washing.
When she made her way back into the bedroom, she stopped in the doorway, surprised to find Gabriel standing over her dinner tray, unabashedly filching a roll from beneath a silver cover.
“That was mine!” she said, and then subsided into silence as she realized what a covetous creature she had become with just a few days of having been served such rich fare. She would never have begrudged someone a slice of the hearty wheat bread the servants subsisted on—but she mourned the loss of the flaky, buttery dinner roll.
Unrepentant, Gabriel chewed the last of the roll and swallowed it down before he said, “I’ll have Sukey bring up some more. Here.” He tossed to her a soft linen nightshirt that seemed as if it would hang down to her calves, along with her own wrapper. “Your nightgown will be returned to you when it has been laundered.”
Her hand bunched in the fabric. “It’s been three days—”
He pinned her with a severe look. “Threefull days,” he said. “You’ll be released tomorrow.”
As she’d expected. But there didn’t seem any point in arguing with him, and so she turned about and retreated to the bathing room to dress. The nightshirt had clearly been meant for a man; the neck threatened to fall straight over her shoulders, and it took some doing to arrange it so that it gaped at the front instead of sliding off, but she supposed it was decent enough so long as she kept it covered by the wrapper.
She scraped her wet hair over her shoulder as she emerged once again. Gabriel had reattached the bell pull, and Sukey was just leaving the room, presumably to replace the roll that Gabriel had eaten.
A fresh fire glowed in the fireplace, which went some way toward vanquishing the slight chill in the room, but with her skin still damp from her bath and her wet hair hanging over her shoulder, chill bumps broke out over her arms and she suppressed a shiver.
“Sit.” With a vague motion, Gabriel gestured to the fireplace. “You’ll catch your death.”
For the first time she noticed that her dinner tray had been set on the carpet before the fire, and Claire guessed that he intended for her to eat there while her hair dried.
She might’ve taken offense to his heavy-handed order, but shewaschilly, and being out of bed was infinitely better than being confined to it. The carpet was soft and warm, and she sank down onto it, folding her legs beneath her and turning her face to the soothing heat of the fire. She lifted the covers from the dishes and examined her choices—little bite-sized filets of chicken doused with a fragrant tarragon cream sauce and sprinkled with chives, roasted potatoes slathered in butter and dusted with cracked pepper, and a watercress and endive salad with thin slivers of shallots and lightly coated with a dressing of olive oil and lemon juice.
“How is your shoulder?”
She flexed it experimentally. “Much better,” she said, reaching for the fork on the tray. “It’s just a small ache.” She popped a bite of salad into her mouth and chewed.Delicious. She ought not allow herself to grow accustomed to such things, but right now she was not quiteherself. She was someone she didn’t know, straddling two worlds and belonging in neither—she was neither servant nor lady. It was as if she existed outside of herself, and the strange, ephemeral creature that inhabited her body lived only in this moment. All spells, all magic, had an inevitable conclusion—but for the moment she was content to be enchanted.
A plate appeared before her eyes, stacked with dinner rolls—Sukey had returned with all haste, it seemed. She took the plate without hesitation, breaking a roll open with her fingers and enjoying the plume of steam that erupted from it. A moment later there was a tug on her hair, warm fingers stroking along her cheek to scrape her hair over her shoulders and down her back.
Then came the soft, rhythmic sound of a brush moving in smooth strokes through her hair. She had rarely had the time for anything more than a perfunctory brushing, nor access to the sort of tools to make untangling her hair anything but a thankless and often painful task. A simple comb, a handful of pins—they were her everyday items. But Gabriel took his time, sliding the bristles through her hair delicately, gently working out the tangles left from her bath. It reminded her of—
“Hm,” he said, pausing in his efforts to snag another roll from her plate, a theft which she forgave since four rolls still remained. “I’ve done this before, as well.”
She nodded, and her hair pulled against the pressure of his hands. “When we were married,” she said, “we spent our honeymoon—what there was of it—at an inn in Greenbriars. You brushed my hair for me every night. You said you liked the way it looked in the firelight, like—”
