For ithadbeen wicked. And wonderful, too.
“Your secret is safe with me,” Lady Adele assured her, giving her hand a pat. “It is the least I can do after being so clumsy. I confess, I turned back to see if you were well, and I saw His Grace carrying you into this chamber. When some time had passed, and you had not emerged, I reasoned it best to make my presence known, before someone else happened upon you.”
Had Lady Adele seen more than Gill with his hands beneath her gown?
Christabella felt ill. “It is not…we were not…”
“You need not explain, Miss Winter,” Lady Adele interrupted. “Nor should you fret. I will reassure everyone that after we collided in the hall, His Grace immediately left to seek your sister whilst I stayed here by your side. The two of you were never alone.”
She eyed Lady Adele. “You would lie for me.”
“I would offer an explanation far more suitable than the truth,” Lady Adele corrected, her tone gentle.
“Why, my lady?” she asked bluntly. “Doing so would offer you no benefit.”
Lady Adele smiled, but there was no joy in it, only sadness. “Oh, but it would. For I have a favor to ask of you.”
A favor? Now this was indeed intriguing. Christabella could not fathom what manner of favor she could perform for a lovely duke’s daughter.
“Whatever can it be?” she asked.
But before she could answer, her elder sister, Pru, swept into the chamber. “Christabella Mary Winter, what manner of trouble have you managed to find yourself in now?” she demanded.
Christabella sighed at the disapproval in her sister’s voice. And then she did the only thing she could do—she lied. “No trouble at all.”
Gill needed toexercise caution.
He knew it.
If he wanted to make Christabella Winter his wife, he had to stop taking such foolish risks with her reputation. Kissing her in every chamber of Abingdon House and raising her skirts as if he were a practiced seducer of innocents had to stop.
He chastised himself all the way to her chamber.
Then he cautioned himself some more whilst he stood there.
He knocked anyway, of course.
It had been hours since he had last left Christabella in the care of Lady Adele and fetched her sister, Miss Prudence Winter. During the course of the afternoon, Miss Prudence had been absent from the drawing room entertainments arranged by their hostess, Lady Emilia. As had Ash.
The significance of the two being gone simultaneously had not been lost upon Gill.
Nor had it aided him in his quest to see how Christabella was faring. Since she, too, had failed to appear this afternoon, and since Ash and Miss Prudence were nowhere to be found, he had no choice. That was his reasoning for seeking out her chamber in the midst of the day.
He was concerned for her wellbeing.
“You may enter,” Christabella called.
He hesitated.
What if her lady’s maid were within? Or someone else?
Devil take it, he had not thought this scenario out in its entirety, had he?
No, he had not. But it was too late to allow that to stop him now. He opened the door and stepped over the threshold.
The chamber was as elegantly appointed as his, decorated with pastoral paintings and pale-blue wall coverings. He found Christabella at once, seated in a settee by the hearth, her leg propped upon a footstool. She had been engrossed in a book, but she looked up at his entrance, her countenance startled.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, snapping her book closed, color staining her cheeks.
