Amelia felt her stomach drop at once. “Yes,” she admitted more quietly than she intended, her fingers briefly tightening together before she forced them still.
“You appear much improved,” Gabriel continued, his gaze moving over her briefly with the detached precision of someone evaluating damage after an incident.
“I believe so,” Amelia replied, though she was no longer entirely certain what answer was expected of her.
“Good,” he said simply.
The word landed with a finality that made her unease deepen rather than ease.
Amelia hesitated, watching him carefully as the pause between them stretched. “You should be leaving soon,” Gabriel added at last, as though concluding a practical arrangement.
There it is. The dismissal was delivered without ceremony or softness, as though my presence had already been accounted for and now filed away.
Amelia stared at him, searching his face for something—uncertainty, hesitation, even courtesy—but she found only calm indifference. Gabriel met her gaze without flinching, making the silence between them feel increasingly deliberate rather than accidental.
“I have nowhere to go,” she admitted finally, the words slipping out before she could temper them. She clasped her hands together tightly in front of her, not because it was proper but because it stopped them from shaking.
Gabriel did not react. His expression remained unchanged, as though she had offered him a logistical detail rather than a personal confession.
“That is not my concern,” he said evenly.
The statement struck harder than she expected, not because it was cruelly delivered but because it was delivered without effort at all, as though concern had never been part of the equation.
Without waiting for a response, Gabriel turned away from her with the same efficiency he seemed to apply to everything else. “I shall instruct a servant to escort you wherever you require,” he added, already moving to end the conversation.
Panic surged through Amelia so quickly it overwhelmed caution.
“No, wait,” she blurted, the words escaping before she could refine them.
Gabriel stopped and turned slowly, like a man already regretting the interruption.
Amelia scrambled for something, anything, that might keep him from sending her away.
“The little boy and young lady…” she said quickly.
“They are my wards,” he clarified.
Something clicked inside Amelia’s mind. A possibility. A ridiculous possibility, but better than no possibility at all. Before she could reconsider, the words came tumbling out.
“I have an excellent education,” she announced.
Gabriel blinked once.
Encouraged by the fact that he had not yet walked away, Amelia hurried onward. “I was taught by the finest governesses available,” she said, lifting her chin slightly.
Gabriel said nothing.
“I speak French,” she continued.
Nothing.
“I play the pianoforte.”
Still nothing.
“I can recite poetry.”
Not even a flicker.
