A woman who had refused his first offer, who had bargained the second time he asked. Yet the spark had beenthere since the start. He’d felt it too, and somehow found the faith to trust her. To trust in them.
She touched her wedding ring, her thumb tracing the band.
What had he inscribed inside?
She couldn’t look.
Not now.
Not when she needed her wits.
“Rothley would have shot me at dawn,” Mr Lovelace said.
“Wounded you, not killed you. You know the value he places on honour. The truth would have served you better in the end.”
Silence filled the cell.
She wished Gabriel were here to see the sorrow in his old friend’s eyes, to feel the regret that hung in the air. If she survived this, she needed answers. Not to see these villains punished, but to ease Gabriel’s restless mind.
“And now you’re part of this fraternity of fools who waste their days trying to destabilise the government.” She thought of her life with Gabriel, a cosy night reading by the fire, the heat of their bodies in bed. “You let Miss Bourne risk her neck to cause civil unrest. Is that what you call love, Mr Lovelace?”
He reeled from the bite in those words. “Kate is my wife. I joined this godforsaken group to protect her. So yes, my lady. I’ve sacrificed much in the name of love.”
His wife? They’d spent years wrapped in each other’s arms while Gabriel had denied himself the pleasure? She felt like taking her fist to his face.
But her mind jumped to the only question that mattered. If Miss Bourne had joined the fraternity before him, who hadrecruited her? Because that person had likely signed her father’s death warrant.
“So your wife lied. She hasn’t recently returned from France.”
“That’s not your concern,” he said sharply, casting a quick glance at the door. Suddenly, he leaned in, his voice dropping to a whisper. “We were permitted to leave as long as we returned when summoned. To prevent Rothley from pursuing the matter.”
The pieces were falling into place, none of them pleasant.
Had Miss Bourne been part of this fraternity for a decade? Had she taken the bribe to ensure Gabriel would always blame his father for their separation?
“What do you want from me?” she snapped, in case anyone had their ear to the door.
“Your father’s valise. The evidence that implicates us all.”
She almost told him the truth—that there was no evidence, or none they’d managed to find. But she refused to die in a gaol cell. If they wanted answers, she’d give them just enough to survive.
“The evidence is a series of complex clues. I’m the only one who can decipher them. Gabriel has the items, and I have the knowledge. He can’t do it without me. I can’t do it without him.” A wave of panic rose. What if the fraternity killed them both and buried the truth forever? “We’re close to solving it. You need us alive, unless you’re willing to risk someone else getting there first.”
Mr Lovelace fell silent. He seemed to debate the possibility that she might be of use, but he delivered a stark warning instead.
“They’ll kill us if we give them the evidence,” he mouthed. “They’ll kill us if we don’t. Either way, there’slittle hope. In a bid to save you, your father has doomed us all.”
A chill threaded down her spine. There was only one man who might protect them now. One man her father trusted. One man who had risked everything for her, and would again if only she could reach him.
She had to get back to Gabriel.
Somehow, she had to convince them to let her return to Studland Park before it was too late.
Gabriel paced the study, the draught slipping under the door, as cold and insidious as the one weaving through his heart. Rain pelted the windows. A darker storm was coming. A tragedy waiting to unfold.
“Swallows?” Mrs Boswell frowned. Doubtless, she thought he’d lost his faculties, that grief had clouded his mind. “A room of swallows? Like an aviary?”
“No, not like an aviary.” Cursed saints. Every second mattered. “On the wallpaper. Failing that, an old painting or tapestry.”
