“So I’m sweet, and we are no longer enemies, to the extent that you have even consented to marry me.And this morning at dawn I fell out of your bedroom window.”He grinned.“Clumsy of me.”
He’d caught that too, had he?Well, Lucy refused to be abashed.“You didn’t exactly fall from the window.You fell while climbing down the trellis,” she corrected calmly.“It rained last night, so I expect it was quite slippery.”
Lucy thought he’d pursue the matter, that he’d ask her what he’d been doing in her room, be suggestive and insinuating and teasing, but instead he said, “That must have been frightening for you.”
Had she ever heard him sound so…gentle?It flustered her more than the boldest inuendo could have.
She didn’t have time to come up with a response.Nathaniel had finished ordering people about and stalked back over to the chaise to loom over Gabriel.
Clearly feeling at a disadvantage, the younger man struggled again to get himself upright.And before she could think better of it, Lucy had slid an arm behind his shoulders to help prop him up.
“Thank you, Lucy,” he said quietly.
The way she’d leaned over to support him put her face quite close to his.Unbidden, her gaze dropped to his lips and she recalled, with perfect clarity, what it felt like to kiss him.
On the other side of the chaise, Nathaniel cleared his throat loudly.“Your room is ready.You should probably go get cleaned up and rest.Charlie?Help His Grace to the Blue Room, please.”
This close, Lucy could see the muscle that ticked in Gabriel’s jaw.But rather than protest Nathaniel’s high-handed behavior, after a swift glance at Lucy, Gabriel visibly forced himself to relax.He even managed a smile.
“Thank you for your hospitality, Ashbourn.I know this is an…awkward situation.I’m sure I’ll be recuperated enough to be out of your way soon enough.”
“Not too soon,” Lucy protested, standing back reluctantly to let Charlie take her place.“You mustn’t rush your recovery.You’re welcome here for as long as you need.”
“Yes,” Nathaniel said, a touch dryly.“My prospective brother-in-law must be considered, of course, part of the family.Even if no one saw fit to seek my approval for this match.”
“Ah,” Gabriel said, as though putting together a puzzle.“If you are duke, that means Lucy’s father is no longer with us, and you are the head of the family.My apologies, sir.Obviously, I don’t know what circumstances led me to propose to Lucy without speaking to you first?—”
This, Lucy could not allow to stand.“Oh, please.As if I need my brother’s permission to wed.I am a grown woman with my own income!”
“You are,” Nathaniel conceded mildly.“And God knows I’ve learned better than to attempt to control and direct your life, Lucy.But it’s traditional, all the same.No doubt Thornecliff was on the point of speaking with me, once he had secured the promise of your hand.”
Was this charade going to destroy her brother’s friendship with Gabriel?Well, surely no more than Nathaniel finding out Gabriel had taken Lucy to bedwithoutpromising to marry her.
What a mess.Lucy pressed her lips together and told herself she didn’t care about Gabriel’s friendships or his reasons for turning highwayman, or whether he’d only slept with her as a cruel, humiliating joke after she’d told Thornecliff she hated him.
As she hovered by Gabriel’s side while Charlie helped him walk slowly from the drawing room, she knew that none of that mattered.
She would see this through, to protect her family.
And perhaps along the way she might begin to answer the question that had begun as a whisper and grown to an incessant drumbeat at the back of her mind.
Who was Gabriel de Vere?
ChapterFifteen
Gabriel was a touch embarrassed at the speed with which he’d nodded off, once ensconced in the spacious comfort of the guest bedchamber.
He’d managed a brief, shaky wash with the footman’s help—humiliating—then barely had time to register the leather embossed wall hangings with small birds in gold on a dusky blue background that no doubt gave the Blue Room its inventive moniker, before he’d sunk into the soft mattress piled with goose-down pillows and fallen into a deep, dreamless sleep.
Gabriel woke to find his bride-to-be curled in a navy blue tufted leather armchair she must have pulled over to his bedside, an open book on her lap and her head drooping at a surely uncomfortable angle.Gabriel felt his heart do a strange stuttering hop in his chest, and he rubbed a hand absently under his breastbone as he contemplated this stranger he had evidently chosen as his life’s companion.
With the benefit of a bit more rest and a bit less of a sore head, he thought she might appear more ordinary to him—less of a glowing anchor point in the maelstrom of his confusion.
But she was still the most beautiful, compelling thing he’d ever seen.
Sunlight streamed in through the window, setting off the pearly perfection of her skin and striking reddish-brown highlights from her dark hair.
It was wrenchingly disorienting to stare at her lovely, elfin face and search his mind for any clues as to what had drawn them together, what had happened to bring them to the point where she’d invited him into her bedchamber.What had happened to make him propose.
