Gabe woke some hours later to the sound of water dripping, slow and relentless. The rain had stopped. But that wasn’t what had wakened him. He listened. It was some time in the still hours before dawn, when London was almost quiet. All he could hear was the last of the rainwater dripping steadily.
He reached out for her, but she wasn’t there. He sat up and saw her, curled in the window embrasure, wrapped in her red shawl, her knees tucked up under her chin, staring out into the gray, miserable night.
He knew that look, the look of someone on the outside, looking in. Or in this case looking out, wanting something she didn’t have, something out there. Yearning for it. Not wanting what she had: him.
Gabe felt suddenly cold. She had to love him, she had to. He would make her, force her to love him.
As if love could ever be forced, he thought desperately. But what else could he do? He had to try.
She’d liked what they’d done in bed, he was sure of that, he would bed her and bed her and love her until she cared.
She hadn’t wanted to marry him. He’d had to work hard to convince her. And now it was their first night together and she was already regretting it?
He thought—hoped—he’d recovered from the disaster of his loss of control. Obviously not.
Unless it was not the bedding at all. He was sure she’d felt at least some of what he had that second time. If he knew anything about women he knew when he’d satisfied them and when he hadn’t. He would have bet his life that this time he’d made it good for her. It had been more than good for him.
But she’d already left him, left his bed. She was sitting there, alone in the cold, hunched into a ball of misery, looking out into the chill of the night as if there was something out there she wanted, and wanted more than anything she had in here.
A cold stone lodged in his chest. All he brought to this marriage was the ability to protect her son: such a slender thread to catch her with. He’d hoped, he’d banked on his bedroom skills to hold her, as least for long enough to try and make her love him.
He wasn’t going to lose her. He had to make her love him.
As easily cage the moon as make someone love you.
But he could perhaps reach her another way. Maybe she was worrying about her son. She was a wonderful mother. If she was given a choice between her son and her husband, Gabe knew what she’d choose: her son, the opposite of what his own mother had chosen.
Gabriel, always the loser to love.
But he was also a fighter and he wasn’t going to give up. This small, beautiful, scrunched-up piece of misery at the window held his heart in her hands, whether she knew it or not, and he wasn’t going to let her give it back.
He slid out of bed and came up behind her. The look on her face wrung his heart. “What is it?” he asked.
She gave him a bleak look. “We shouldn’t have done that.”
“Why not?” The words came out roughly.
The question hung in the air. Her mouth trembled, but she just shook her head.
“We can try again,” he said urgently. “If it wasn’t any good—”
“It was wonderful,” she said in such a small, sad voice it took him a moment to register what he’d said.
“Then—?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
He stared at her, frustrated. If he didn’t know what it was, he couldn’t fix it. She was cold. He fetched an eider-down and tucked it around her, hesitated, and then gathered her against him. She made no objection, thank God, because he didn’t know if he could let her go.
He held her in his arms, tucked against his chest, warming her with his body, supporting her. She stared out of the window, and a tear rolled slowly down her cheek.
Gabe felt desperate. How could he make her trust him enough to talk to him? “Whatever it is, I will make it right. Just say…” There was nothing he wouldn’t do for her.
She shook her head. The tears came again, rolling silently down her cheeks.
“Was it something I did? Or didn’t do?”
Her face crumpled. “No,” she said brokenly and turned to him in distress. She hugged him convulsively. “It’s not your fault at all. What you did—what we did together was utterly…I’ve never…It was just…perfect.”
