A soft scuffle. The creak of a board.
Relief fluttered in her chest. A servant entering through a different door, or Mrs Boswell making her nightly rounds. Thank heavens.
But when she turned, it wasn’t Mrs Boswell.
A man stood in the shadows, face half-obscured by the lantern light.
A stranger.
She barely had time to gasp. A rush of footsteps. A shadow lunging.
Something heavy cracked against the side of her skull.
Pain exploded behind her eyes, bright and searing.
The last thing she saw was the pistol still raised, and Miss Bourne’s face, unreadable in the dim light.
The world tilted.
The light blurred.
Then everything went black.
Chapter Nineteen
Gabriel woke to a pounding in his skull, his friends Dalton and Gentry gathered at the foot of the bed, Mrs Boswell fussing, and the unmistakable taste of betrayal on his tongue.
He was naked beneath the sheets, the space beside him cold and undisturbed. His wife’s name hovered on his lips, a question he couldn’t quite form.
“It’s the brandy,” Gentry was saying, amid the faint clink of crystal and the sound of someone sniffing. “It’s the only thing he’s touched since returning home from the theatre.”
Yes, he remembered.
Passionate kisses on the carriage seat. Swallow wallpaper. Brandy. The heat of anticipation. The slow haze that had dulled his senses as he waited for Olivia.
“Do you think she did this?” Dalton asked, never one to soften a blow. “Did she drug him?”
Mrs Boswell bristled. “Of course not. Lady Rothley went straight to her chamber to change for bed.”
“Then where the hell is she?” Dalton shot back.
A spike of panic split the fog in his head. Gabriel tried to sit up, but his limbs were sluggish and leaden, his skin clammy, and the room tilted like a boat with a broken keel. His stomach lurched at the effort.
“O-Olivia?”
His mouth was dry. His pulse raced. Was this some fractured dream? Voices in the room. The space beside him vacant. The weight of absence where she should have been.
Where was she?
Why wasn’t she here?
And why the devil were his friends in his bedchamber, watching him like a man on the brink?
“My lord.” Mrs Boswell was at his side, wringing her hands, the same anxious expression he’d seen countless times before, back when his parents entertained. “Thank heavens. You’re awake.”
Barely.
“There was no need to send for the doctor.” He met Gentry’s gaze and saw the tension pulling every muscle tight. “I’m alive. Now will someone tell me what the blazes is going on?”
