Page 70 of A Bride By Morning
Raid last night in the East End, Wentworth wrote.Accomplices captured. Bear on the run alone. Have you given more thought to my offer?
Wentworth’s proposal had plagued Gabriel for days. Several times, he had considered riding to the telegraph office to accept that future, but some lingering doubt always stopped him. The previous evening, it was Lydia in the gallery, asking if he would take her to Moscow. He’d thought of her delicate features, pale and wan from lack of sleep, but she had looked at him with a burning hope that he wanted to both satisfy and violently reject. Those conflicting emotions occupied his mind during his earlier ride with Callihan—a complication that was far too dangerous.
Lydia’s soft laughter drifted through the connecting door as her maid prepared her for bed. Gabriel rose from his desk and lingered at the threshold, listening to her movements. He pursued the cadence of her voice and laughter like sunlight, seeking it wherever he could. He shut his eyes and let the sonance roll across his skin like soothing water.
He wondered what she did in the privacy of her bedchamber. If she ever stood at the wood paneling and heard him tossing restlessly at night, dreaming of the past that plagued him. If she was ever tempted to knock.
But the locked door between them might as well have been an entire country between their worlds. A reminder that intimacy with her could not be a distraction from the truth: his homeland now felt as foreign to Gabriel as the life he once lived.
The way Lydia had gazed up at his old portrait in the gallery had tugged at something in his chest, chipping away at the minuscule pieces of ice that had managed to persist since they wed. Bit by bit, she had melted nearly every part of him until his blood ran almost as red and warm as the man in the gallery portrait.
But Gabriel was not the same. The construction of him had become fundamentally altered. Lydia was the only thing that grounded him to this place; she was the rope that anchored him into position, saving him from being cast adrift. But that was her own danger. The sacrifice was too great. His heart may pump blood instead of ice now, but it held the memory of cold. Like a lake in winter, it could freeze again under the right conditions.
With a sigh, Gabriel left to seek a distraction outside. He found Callihan in the stables, grooming his preferred horse for their patrols. If the other man was surprised to see Gabriel in the stables at night, he didn’t show it.
“Monty,” he said simply.
Gabriel watched Callihan run the brush across the horse’s flank in smooth motions. “You’re putting my stablehands out of a job, I think.” The usual staff was nowhere to be found.
Callihan’s lip quirked up. “Gave them the night off. Said you ordered it.”
A short laugh escaped Gabriel. “If you’re looking for more work, all you had to do was ask.”
“Not looking for more work,” Callihan said, raising the brush to the horse’s muscular back. “Just seeking a distraction. Reckon you’re out here doing the same.”
Gabriel grunted. “And what makes you think I require a distraction?”
Callihan lifted a shoulder. “You’ve got a pretty wife who looks at you like she wants you to fuck her, and you’re out here watching me groom a horse. Can’t attest to a fancy education, but I’m not an idiot, either.”
Gabriel looked away sharply, staring out at the dark beyond the stable doors, back toward the house. “Does Wentworth appreciate your impertinence?”
“I assume my honesty holds a bit of appeal, or he would have booted me out on my arse years ago.” Finally, after a long moment of silence, Callihan asked, “You going to take his offer?”
Gabriel hadn’t realized Wentworth made the proposition known to Callihan. “Wentworth gossips too much. Here I thought he was supposed to be busy looking for Medvedev.”
“Only a matter of time,” Callihan said, dropping the brush in the bucket and giving the horse an ear scratch. “With his men in custody and Wentworth and Thorne on his tail, he won’t last long unless he flees back to Russia.” Callihan glanced over at Gabriel. “Surprised you haven’t raced to London to aid in the search.”
Gabriel reached for his old anger toward Medvedev but found it had cooled—what had once been molten was now solidified, cold, and practical. He cared less about hurting Medvedev than he did about protecting Lydia. After what happened on the road to Langdon Manor . . .
He could have lost her so easily.
“I won’t leave my wife,” he said simply. “Medvedev is resourceful, and he has more reason than ever to come after me. His entire operation here in England is compromised.”
“For a man who cares about his wife so much, you do a great deal to avoid her.”
Gabriel glared at Callihan. “For a man who seems to value his life, you talk too fucking much.”
Callihan laughed.
Later, Gabriel returned to his bedchamber. His attention settled on the connecting door. Was Lydia already asleep? Or did she lie awake, waiting for him to visit her?
He edged closer to the door, pressing his ear to the wood to listen. He just wanted to hear her breathing. The rustle of her moving about. To know that she slept safely, and—
A sound stirred from within, one that ignited him.
A low, breathy moan. Then another. A soft gasp of pleasure had him curling his fingernails into the door panel.
She’d mentioned pleasuring herself back in the library at Meadowcroft, a small detail that had preoccupied him in the quiet of his afternoon rides, imagining her activities. In his absence and distance, he had wondered about her revelation—had contemplated all the ways she touched herself. Brought herself to climax. These became small details that he longed to learn from and employ during their own intimacies. He wanted her to educate him on the terrain of her body, every part that made her shudder with pleasure. He wanted to know what she pictured in the bedroom next to his own. Did she think of him at all? Or was she thinking of a new lover, perhaps one not so broken?
