“Fine.Fine!”Gabriel ground his back teeth.“Don’t go, I’ll stop asking.Only tell me what happened with my uncle, then.We fought?Over whatever it was?
Fitz nodded reluctantly.“I wasn’t there, you understand.And after, you refused to talk about it.I do remember Dom tried to get the two of you to make it up, but you would have none of it.Eventually he stopped trying.”
Of course Dominic would side with his own father, Gabriel thought, feeling sick.Over a cousin.
Dom had always felt he owed Uncle Roman everything; understandable, perhaps, given that Roman had adopted him and turned him from a stepson to his legal heir after Dom’s mother died.Roman had always treated Dom as his own son, and Gabriel had certainly felt as close to him as if they were related by blood.But he’d been aware of the restless, hidden pressure Dom had felt to live up to his new family’s legacy.
Gabriel knew his cousin so well.Or so he’d thought.
Everything about this family rift felt wrong, terribly wrong, but Gabriel couldn’t argue with the facts.He evidently hadn’t been in touch with either his uncle or his cousin in years, since some catastrophic event no one would share with him.Even now, after suffering a fall that could have killed him, neither of them had come.
Gabriel had lost his entire family.
Fitz took his leave soon after, when Gabriel couldn’t rouse himself to much more than somber, one-word responses to his light anecdotes and attempts at cheer.Gabriel went back to bed and dozed fitfully for the rest of the afternoon.
His head hurt.His whole body hurt, in fact, the forced inactivity weighing on his limbs and joints and making him feel weak.He had no appetite, could barely choke down more than a couple of spoonsful of the beef tea and coddled egg brought to him by the same impassive-faced, watchful-eyed footman who’d assisted him into this bed.
This bed, which now felt more like a prison cell.
Day lurched slowly into night, the hours compressing and expanding oddly so that Gabriel never quite knew when he was supposed to be awake.
He lay in bed and stared up at the intricate plasterwork ceiling, following the loops and curls of the flowering plaster vines with his eyes, over and over and over, until he finally fell asleep.
* * *
With the ease of practice, Lucy skirted the creaky floorboard just outside her bedchamber and tiptoed down the hall.As her eyes adjusted to the dark, she crept up to Gabriel’s door.
Ashbourn House was still and silent at this hour, all the family and the servants abed.With bated breath, she peered into the open doorway of the Blue Room.Gabriel was asleep, too, his long, muscular form unmoving except for the steady rise and fall of his chest.
Breathing out in relief, Lucy pulled her wrapper more tightly around her body and let herself into the room as she’d done every night since he lost his memory.
She’d continued to pore over what medical tomes Ashbourn House’s library held, and she’d been haunted by one detail in particular.Apparently, in quite a few recorded cases of head injuries, the patient had fallen into a sound sleep…and never awakened again.
Lucy didn’t know how or if her presence could prevent such a thing from happening to Gabriel, but she found it impossible to stay away and do nothing.
Conflicted feelings or no, she was certain of one thing: she didnotwant him to die.
So every night, she slipped out of her bed and sat beside his.And every morning, she waited until he began to stir, and hurried from the room before he could open his eyes.
She wasn’t sure why she didn’t want him to know about her nightly vigil.Perhaps it felt too revealing, somehow, in a way she wasn’t ready for.
Might never be ready for, honestly.
In the days since Gabriel’s fall, she had endured endless rounds of incredulous questions from her brother and sister-in-law.Nathaniel was entirely stuck on the fact that Lucy had always professed to despise the Duke of Thornecliff, until finally Bess pointed out, with some amusement, that they would hardly be the first couple for whom antagonism had sparked into attraction.
Lucy had then been treated to the sight of her reserved older brother giving his wife a look so tender it had made Lucy blush.Then Bess had calmly and incisively said that she’d always thought there was more to the animosity between Lucy and Thorne than met the eye, so she wasn’t at all surprised.
Though she did question the speed with which Lucy had seemingly progressed from “I hate your twisted innards” to “I vow to cleave only unto you until death do us part.”
“You know that you don’t have to marry him,” Bess said gently.“No matter what has passed between you—Nathaniel and I would never expect you to carry through with a wedding to a man you don’t love, simply because he proved impossible to resist.”
“How conventional do you all think I am?”Lucy groused.“Gabriel mentioned something similar.As if I’d feel the need to wed the first man to touch me.I’m hardly some green girl!”
“I don’t want to hear this,” Nathaniel said loudly, standing up and stalking out of the drawing room, leaving Bess shaking her head in fond exasperation.
“Men can be so squeamish at the oddest things.”
“Nathaniel is an awful prude.”Lucy shook her head.“I’m sorry for you, Bess.He must be very boring in bed.”
