The temperature was cooler in here though, and it felt damp and smelled musty. She’d intended to try to follow Gabriel, but her limbs refused to move any farther inside.
It’s only a mine. Dirt. Rocks. A hole in the side of the earth.
And now she wanted to go back outside but had somehow become frozen in place. An odd terror had taken hold of her limbs, rendering them useless.
She heard the men shuffling again, and then let out a piercing scream when something black and shiny the size of a rat flew past her face.
Released from her temporary paralysis, she clamored back out the opening and gasped for fresh air. In the distance, the creature fluttered its wings just before disappearing into a copse of trees.
A bat. It had only been a bat. Her heart was still racing when Gabriel appeared by her side.
“Are you hurt? You scared me half to death.” But he didn’t touch her. He searched her eyes, and she vaguely noticed he had a streak of mud along his jaw.
“You have something—” Without thinking, she reached up to wipe at it, and he jerked back.
He did not welcome her touch.
“Why did you scream?” he demanded, sounding almost harsh.
“It was nothing,” she said through this strange form of pain he’d inflicted. “A bat. It was nothing.”
* * *
Gabriel closedhis eyes in relief. He’d never moved so fast as when her scream echoed all throughout the bowels of the mine. She’d sounded as though she was inside and could have been around any corner.
He’d never wanted her anywhere near this hellhole. He’d wash his hands of the project completely if not for the promise he’d made.
“Will you take me home now?” She looked prim and proper standing there in her bonnet, gloved hands folded together at her waist. “I think I did not wish to see the mine after all.”
He’d had a picnic made up by the cook at Ashton Acres and they’d barely just arrived, but something in her voice had him nodding. “Your wish is my command.” Only this time, his tone lacked all the promise it had carried earlier. He smiled grimly as she turned without him to march toward the vehicle.
Perhaps, without even trying, he’d answered her questions after all.
And the answer was not what either of them wanted it to be.
Chapter 12
AFormal Proposal
Olivia refusedto dwell on whatever it was that had happened between her and Gabriel Fellowes since Louella’s wedding. Because whatever it had been, now that it seemed to have ended, it stung.
No gentleman of any worth will make a respectable offer to a cockeyed gel.
She’d known all along that any interest he showed in her could never lead to anything substantial—anything real. He was an earl, and something of a rakish one at that. He’d admitted himself that he wasn’t yet prepared to settle down.
And when he did, he would do so properly. He’d hire a valet, he’d told her, in order to keep up appearances.
Appearances. He’d want a wife who wasn’t flawed, or cursed, or whatever it was that kept Olivia separated from Society. He’d want a wife who wouldn’t produce children who might be equally flawed.
Not that Olivia wouldn’t love her own child with every part of her heart, but she couldn’t bear it if her husband could not love it. Or wanted to hide it.
She should have heeded Eliza’s warning.
Perhaps, someday, she could look back and remember without feeling so melancholy. For today, she’d not look back on it at all.
“Good morning!” She swung open the door to the Smiths’ cottage with a forced cheerfulness, expecting to be greeted by Eliza, but instead, found herself face to face with Mr. Luke Smith himself.
In one arm, he jostled baby Harvey in the way Olivia had done many times herself, and with his free hand, he spooned out some sort of blackened substance onto three small plates for his other children.
