Page 71 of A Bride By Morning
God, but it didn’t matter. He wanted. He fuckingwanted. Her breathing heaved as she unabashedly took her pleasure, and that set something off inside him. Gabriel flicked open his trousers and took out his cock. And as he listened to her, he imagined that it was his own hands on her pussy. His fingers plunging into her until she was wet enough to fuck. He gave himself a hard stroke at the thought of shoving inside her slick quim, timing his movements to the pace of her breaths, moving faster. He knew that she was close—and he increased his speed to match hers, as if they were fucking.
Then, with a moan he muted by biting his tongue, he heard her muffled cry from within her room. And the answer to his earlier question came to him like a bludgeon.
“Gabriel,” he heard her whisper. Perhaps she knew he was there, sensed his presence on the other side of the door. She seemed as connected to him as the tides to the moon. “I love you.”
Gabriel pressed his forehead to the wood door and shut his eyes.
34
Lydia was writing a letter to Lady Derby when she heard a woman scream.
She jolted in her chair, nearly knocking the furniture over in her haste to yank open the curtains. While the source of the shouts wasn’t visible from her window, Lydia noticed servants racing down the garden pathways toward the commotion.
Lydia shoved away from the window, threw open the door and dashed down the stairs. A maid sped past her in the hallway, sobbing and incoherent—not in any state to offer an explanation. Lydia hurried out the terrace doors to the garden.
The voices of staff originated just past the rose bushes, the uproar reaching Lydia’s ears as she hastened down the footpath. More maids ran past her, their eyes filled with tears. Then, as Lydia entered the rose garden, she spotted Gabriel’s broad form standing with Mr. Callihan at the edge of the flower beds.
“Gabriel!”
He spun at her shout, his eyes filling with . . . was itfear? In a few strides, he gripped her shoulders. “You can’t be out here.”
“What’s happened?” Lydia’s pulse raced as she looked past him. “What—” A strangled cry lodged in her throat.
There, just beneath the roses, lay a maid’s prone corpse. Lydia only identified the girl from the blood-covered uniform she wore. But her face was turned away, her hair entirely matted red, and her face and neck covered in scratches. Her torso was a map of violence, the geography crafted in rage.
Lydia pressed her hand to her mouth as bile rose in her throat. Gabriel made a soft sound and shifted in front of her, blocking her view. “Don’t look at it, love. All right? Don’t look.” Lydia’s vision pulsed, and she leaned against Gabriel for support. “Callihan, take my wife back inside to my bedchamber. I’ll be there directly.”
The other man came and gently took her arm. “Come, my lady.”
As Lydia let herself be led back toward the house, Mr. Callihan supported nearly all her weight. “I’m sorry to have you nearly carry me,” she said faintly. “I’m rather dizzy.”
Mr. Callihan gave her a grim smile. “Understandable.”
He was silent as he helped her up the stairs. “Do you . . . do you know who it was?” she asked him.
“Scullery maid,” Mr. Callihan said, easing her up another flight of stairs. “Reckon she went into the garden for a smoke or a bit of rest after her duties.”
Lydia pressed her lips together. In her days within the house, she had seen so little of the kitchen staff. She’d regretted not even knowing the girl’s name—the girl who had died in the garden below her window. “Shouldn’t I have heard?” she whispered.
“Heard what?” Mr. Callihan stopped at her door and nudged it open, urging her inside.
“Her die.” A faint noise escaped Lydia as she crossed the room and settled in her window seat. “She was at the rose bushes just out of view of my window.”
“Some men know how to kill quietly,” Mr. Callihan said, shutting the door. “Medvedev is evidently one of them.” His eyes settled on her. “Are you all right now?”
“No.” The answer was little more than a breath. “I’m not certain I am.” At his silence, she said, “You have seen the sight below often, haven’t you?”
Though his handsome features didn’t change, she noticed a stillness move through his body. “Often enough,” he said.
A breath heaved through her, one that hurt the bones of her body. She felt as if her entire frame bore the load of a million stacked stones, pressing her into the earth. “Why do you do this job, Mr. Callihan,” she murmured, “if that sight is so common for you? How do you bear seeing it?”
A muscle leaped in his jaw as he leaned against the wall. “Perhaps I figure it a penance.”
Lydia was surprised by that. “A penance for what?”
A bitter smile crossed his face. “You might have some idea, based on your husband’s previous work. The difference between us is that I’ve done it for a lot longer, and I don’t have a wife to go home to.”
Lydia’s fingers curled into the soft muslin of her day dress. “I’m sorry. I feel foolish for asking.”
