Yes, and there was that. It had been at the back of his mind all day. He had largely ignored it because this was his wedding day.
We,she had said.What are we going to do?
“I knew he was planning to come here soon,” he said. “I was hoping, though, to get there before he left. It would have been easier to confront him there. I waited too long.”
“Because I wanted a family wedding,” she said. “We ought to have married on Tuesday, as soon as you came with the special license.”
“Even then it would have been too late,” he said. “We would probably have passed him on the road. Besides . . .” He smoothed her hair back from her face, hooked it behind her ear, and touched his fingertips to her cheek. “I liked our wedding just the way it was. Did you?”
“I am very glad Mr. Vickers did not drop my ring,” she said, and he watched a smile light her eyes.
And there, he thought.There.That was how he wanted her to look. For him. Because he had pleased her or amused her. Because they could share a joke. Because there was some bond between them. He smiled back at her, and there was a flicker of something in her eyes, something that took away the smile but left a lingering look of . . . what? Wistfulness? Yearning?
“I liked our wedding,” she said.
But she had asked a question.
“I suppose,” he said, “I should call on him. Privately. Let him know I am back. Still alive. Give him a chance to leave quietly and avoid embarrassment.”
“You supposeweshould call on him,” she said.
His first thought was that he would not expose her to that. But it was for this very thing he had married her. This confrontation with Manley and the return to Brierley.
She did not wait for him to answer. “Would he give in that easily?” she asked him. “Or would he have you arrested?”
It would be a toss-up. It could go either way. Manley might simply admit defeat and creep on home, taking his wife and son with him. He might not want the humiliation of having all his hopes dashed in full sight of theton. On the other hand, his disappointment would be colossal, and he might choose to fight. He had set up Gabriel as a ravisher and murderer thirteen years ago, he and Philip between them. He might well believe that the charges would stick now and take Gabriel to the gallows. Or he might try to send him scurrying back to America with the threat of arrest. It had worked before, after all.
“He might,” he said. “I believe he wants very badly to be the Earl of Lyndale, owner of Brierley, possessor of a large fortune. And he is tantalizingly close to achieving his dream. I am not so easily frightened these days, however, and I can put up a good defense.”
“It might be messy,” she said.
He ran his thumb across her lips and then kissed her softly. Was she taking fright? Even though she had known before she married him—
“And whyshouldhe be given the chance to slink off home if he chooses not to fight?” she asked. “Gabriel! He ravished your boyhood sweetheart and left her with child. He murdered her brother, your friend, in the most cowardly way imaginable, by shooting him in the back. And he is just as guilty even if it was actually your cousin who fired the gun. He tried to put the blame on you. He would have let you hang. Are you going to allow him to walk away now, unpunished?”
She sounded, rather incongruously, like the Lady Jessica Archer of his early acquaintance.
“If anyone deserves to hang,” she said, “it is he.”
He turned more fully onto his back and draped his free hand over his eyes.
“And if anyone deserves to be publicly humiliated, Gabriel,” she added, “it is surely Mr. Manley Rochford.”
He had cut off Mary’s allowance without any authority to do so and was about to turn her out of her home to certain destitution. He had got rid of a number of servants at Brierley, again without any right to do so, and had turned several of them out oftheirhomes. He had not changed in thirteen years. Perhaps he had never again ravished anyone—though Gabriel would not wager against it—or shot anyone else in the back. But he was still a sorry excuse for a human being. Just as Philip had been. Howcouldthey have been related to his own father?
“Yes,” he said.
She moved more fully onto her side then and spread one hand over his chest. She moved one leg between his.
“Gabriel,” she said, “what are we going to do?”
Weagain.
“We are going to let things be messy,” he said, using her word. “We are going to confront him, Jessie, in as dramatic and as public a way as possible.”
She lifted her head, and because she could not hold it up comfortably, she came farther over him, bracing herself with both hands on his chest and moving her leg right across both of his. Her hair fell about her face and over his chest. She was smiling. And looking damned irresistible. Lookingandfeeling.
“Where?” she asked him. “And when?”
