Gabriel coped with cruelty by healing it away—he’d said this when he’d explained his work, and it was true. But he couldn’t heal Lady Ryan, he couldn’t even help her.
Lady Ryan. He repeated her name in his head and thought of the moments before he’d seen the abrasion on her neck. She’d welcomed his request to undress her. Before that, he’d knelt before her and she’d baredher legs to him. He’d picked up her tiny foot and held it in his hand. Their time beside the waterfall had evoked a surge of desire so potent, he’d thought he would expire from it. The memory of it—of kneeling, and touching, and unhooking—was too new to regret and he repeated it, over and over, in his mind.
The kettle whistled, and Gabriel jumped. He stepped to the fire to move it to a higher hook. She might not want coffee, so he poured cider into a clay goblet. Was this enough? Gabriel knew virtually nothing of entertaining guests.
“Oh, how lovely.”
Gabriel looked up. Lady Marianne, skin glowing, head tipped sideways, padded into his small kitchen, drying her hair with the towel. The borrowed nightshirt swallowed her shoulders and fell loosely to the middle of her legs. Her feet were bare.
“I’m famished, actually,” she said, sliding into a seat. “Do you mind?”
How natural she seemed. Unaffected. He’d known so few women in his adult life, he couldn’t say if this was remarkable, or fleeting, or feigned. The memories of his own mother were not steeped in calmness. She’d been beautiful and demanding, and life inside a cave would have sent her into hysterics.
Gabriel didn’t know Lady Ryan, not really, but he remembered a sort of serenity—a steadiness—from the letters she’d written as a girl. She was curious rather than judgmental; hopeful rather than preoccupied with dread. Their betrothal hadn’t seemed to distress her. In their two, brief meetings, he remembered her as pleasant and matter-of-fact. She wasn’t so very different now. Channing Meade had evokedher screams—and rightly so. But she wasn’t screaming now; she hadn’t screamed since he’d collected her. How, he wondered, had he almost not gone for her?
“Will you be offended if I eat while we talk?” she asked, studying a raspberry before popping it into her mouth.
He shook his head, watching her chew. But hehadgone for her. He’d brought her inside his home. He’d invited her to tell him everything. The screaming was over; now the recruitment would begin. And he would be forced to refuse her.
Gabriel wanted nothing to do with life outside the forest. He could exist perhaps; eat food, brush past strangers on the street, find some work. But he could not bungle through inane conversations, he could not relax in crowds, he couldn’t breathe in layers of stiff clothing. He couldn’t spend hours a dayinsideof doors. He couldn’t stomach the way horses were handled by untrained grooms or work in a stable that was not his own. He couldn’t trust anyone. He would never sleep.
And these were only his preferences. What he could never, not ever, survive was the mantle of being a prince. Royalty meant ceding a colossal measure of control that he’d vowed never again to release.
“Mr. Rein?” she was prompting. “Shall I begin? Will you hear it?”
“Yes.” He exhaled. “I will hear it.”
She froze for a moment, perhaps not expecting him to agree. His stomach gave a flip. She was so very pretty. Her hair had begun to dry. Loose brown waves swung about her face. She shoved up the sleeves of the nightshirt and took up a slice of bread.
“Right. Thank you. Let’s see, where shall I begin?” she wondered.
“Why don’t you start by telling me how your sisters are safe alone in Guernsey? Where is this imposter prince now?”
“Excellent question,” she conceded. “We’ve no guarantee of their safety, actually. The imposter prince departed Guernsey more than a fortnight ago—in late July—claiming some pressing business in Paris. He’s vowed to return on the fifteenth of October. He is a very precise person. Particular and fussy. He gave us no reason to believe we would see him before that date. We were meant to use the intervening time to... ‘come to terms with our future.’”
“Your future?”
“The future with him in charge.Hemanages things. And he marries me.” She took up another slice of bread and nibbled the crust. She did not gobble or smack. She was hungry, clearly, but her manners prevailed—small bites, slow chewing, shallow sips of cider. She was a lady. This made Gabriel think of his father, a gentleman—aprince—and the boy Gabriel once had been. Even as a child, he’d spent hours with his nanny and tutors to refine his manners and comportment. All of it was a faint memory now, like watching a familiar dance but having no notion of the steps.
“Naturally, we’ve come to terms with nothing,” she was saying. “Instead, we’ve made a careful study of our options. My sister Diana wants to fight, and Charlotte wants to beg—but I know better. Fighting him would invite harsher punishments and begging would only play into his inflated sense of entitlement. Ouronly choice is to outsmart him. October fifteenth is like the swinging door of a jail. Until it clangs shut, we’ll slip in and out, trying to find a way to subvert him.”
“And your way has been to wander about an unfamiliar forest in mainland England until you stumble upon Gabriel d’Orleans?”
She stopped chewing and stared at him. Too late, he realized he’d again pronounced his name like a native.
“Yes,” she said, taking a drink. “Well no, not entirely. We also contacted solicitors to challenge the betrothal. We looked into hiring a man who might serve as a sort of bodyguard and advocate, speaking in lieu of our sick father. We even thought of marrying me off to someone—anyone—else. But when I showed my sisters the last letter from yo—er, my last old letter from thetruePrince d’Orleans, we agreed it was worth the effort to try and find you—er,him. The most efficient and least expensive way to extricate ourselves from the imposter prince was to present the real prince.”
Gabriel lowered himself into the opposite chair, trying not to think of himself beingpresentedto someone. Even worse, to claim he was “the real prince.” It would be like digging up a dead man and wheeling him about, telling the world he’s not dead, only a little dirty and asleep.
“Just to be perfectly clear, I’m not on a mission tomarrythe real Prince d’Orleans,” she rushed to add. “He need not follow the terms of this old betrothal, simply... make himself known so that the imposter prince steps down. His mere presence will end the fight, in our view. There would be no dickering withsolicitors or documents. We’ve no desire to engage in a lengthy negotiation with this man. He is unreasonable, to say the very least.” She touched a stray hand to the scab on her neck.
“I don’t understand why marriage to you would give Maurice so much power over your father’s estate?” Gabriel said. “I understand you have no wish to marry an abusive man, and I don’t blame you, but why is Maurice’s stake in the betrothal so far-reaching?”
She shrugged. “The terms of the union state that all of Winscombe goes tomyhusband, the Prince d’Orleans, on the occasion of my marriage.”
“Like a dowry,” he said. He’d not understood the terms as a boy, but he had some notion of the way marriage merged fortunes.
“Yes, exactly like a dowry, I suppose.”
