Gabriel woke with the sun pouring in from the floor-to-ceiling drawing room windows, making him squint and mutter a curse as he struggled upright.
He was alone.
For the best, he told himself as he hastily dressed in last night’s clothes before a maid could wander in and find him in the altogether.Or, worse, his uncle.
Gabriel didn’t know quite where he stood with Uncle Roman this morning, he thought, taking the stairs two at a time.Roman had come here with the intent to stop Gabriel’s engagement—but he’d stayed to help them obstruct the sworn duty of an agent of the Crown, something Gabriel would never, in a hundred years, have suspected Roman would do.
He paused as he passed the door to the room Lucy had been given but decided to let her sleep.She’d earned a lie-in, if anyone ever had.
Whistling a tune under his breath, Gabriel hurried through his ablutions and let his valet shave and dress him.He found he was starving and was very glad to see the baskets of sweet rolls and dishes of kippers still set out on the sideboard in the breakfast room.
Gabriel helped himself quickly, piling his plate high with bread and jam, coddled eggs, rashers of bacon, and a cluster of grapes from the hothouse, and sat down to his feast.
He was halfway through his mountain of breakfast when Dominic strolled in.
Dom hesitated in the doorway, their eyes meeting across the Aubusson carpet.But if Gabriel was uncertain of how he would react to seeing his uncle in the clear light of a new day, he felt less conflicted about his cousin.So he smiled and gestured with his fork at the repast laid out for their morning meal.
“There’s apricot marmalade,” he said, and Dom grinned.
“My favorite.”
“I know.”Gabriel went back to eating, but he was conscious of every movement his cousin made as he filled his own plate and brought it over to sit at Gabriel’s right hand.
They ate for a few minutes in a silence that wasn’t entirely companionable—though it wasn’t quite antagonistic either.
In the end, it was Dom who broke it by remarking, “It’s strange to be back here.At Thornecliff.”
For me, too.Gabriel took a sip of tea.“Where have you been living?At Wolverton Chase, with Roman?”
“I suppose you could call that my most permanent address,” Dom allowed.“Though I’m not there much.I…travel quite a bit.For work.”
“And what is it you do?”
“This and that.”
Gabriel rolled his eyes.“Being vague doesn’t make you sound mysterious, you know.It just makes you sound like an arsehole.”
It felt intensely awkward and strange to be making small talk with this man who had been a brother to him—brother, best friend, confidant, conspirator and rival, all rolled into one.
But that was a long time ago; he couldn’t begrudge Dominic his secrets now.
Though it seemed Gabriel hadn’t managed to keep any secrets of his own.“I’m still angry with you,” he said.
At his side, Dominic stilled for a moment.“Are you?”
Wincing a bit at having accidentally strayed too close to the deep chasm that splintered their family—closer than he’d meant to come over tea and kippers, anyway—Gabriel hastened to add, “I can’t believe you let Lucy convince you she was the one who ought to don the black and ride out as The Gentle Rogue.She could’ve been hurt.Or caught!How could you let her do it?”
Dominic looked askance.“How do you propose I should’ve stopped her?Have you met your wife-to-be?She’s a woman who knows her own mind.If we hadn’t helped her, she only would’ve snuck off and done it on her own.And this way we could play for time.We had Fitz and his wife drag out their interviews with Sir Colin to give Lucy a chance to make it back to Thornecliff.From the sounds of things, you and I would both be locked up in neighboring gaol cells right about now, because Sir Colin anticipated exactly the scheme you thought we were pulling.”
“Instead, here we are eating bacon.All because of Lucy.”Gabriel thought of her upstairs, sleeping the sleep of the deeply exhausted, and smiled.God, but he loved her.
“Oi, I did have a little something to do with it,” Dom protested, spearing a piece of kipper.“I had to play boring whist for hours, to keep you from suspecting anything and scuppering the whole plot.”
Gabriel snorted.“Please.I know you.You loved every second of last night, you confidence trickster, getting to run two simultaneous schemes to fool both me and an agent of the Crown.”
“You do know me.”
The low intensity of Dominic’s voice brought Gabriel up short.He met his cousin’s eyes, tawny gold like a cat’s, with the same bright, inquisitive alertness.
