Page 72 of A Bride By Morning
Mr. Callihan made a noise that sounded almost like a dry laugh. “Don’t be. Between you and your husband, he’s the fucking fool.”
Gabriel shoved through the bedchamber door before Lydia could ask what Callihan meant. Though his breathing was calm, his expression betrayed his agitation. Those beautiful features held a bleak countenance. “Your men go out in shifts tonight,” Gabriel said to Callihan. “I don’t want more than three sleeping simultaneously, and make sure everyone goes out in pairs.”
Callihan gave a sharp nod. “The staff?”
Gabriel’s lips compressed into a line. “I’ve instructed everyone to return to their families for the time being, with a bonus for their trouble. The constable was none too pleased once he got a cable from Wentworth instructing him to leave this to the Home Office.” He motioned with a hand to the window. “Have you ever dealt with a body?”
The other man gave a sardonic smile but didn’t answer. “I’ll make sure she gets a proper burial, and I’ll update you if the others find anything.” Mr. Callihan left the room, shutting the door firmly behind him.
For the first time since entering the bedchamber, Gabriel’s attention rested on Lydia. She watched as the hard angles of his features softened slightly. “I’ve secured this wing of the house, and the cook left us a basket before she went to stay with her daughter. We will be staying here until Wentworth comes up from London with Thorne’s men to assist in the search.”
A pinch of fear went through Lydia. “Do your guards know how Medvedev managed to make it near the gardens?”
The grim look returned to Gabriel’s features. “We found one of the guards with his throat slit.” Lydia shivered. Gabriel must have noticed, for he came to sit beside her, his hands coming up to gently rest on her cheeks. “I’ll do whatever I can to make it safe for you. Do you understand?”
Lydia grasped one of his hands and pressed her lips to his palm. “I trust you.”
If anything, his expression only grew bleaker.
35
Gabriel had been looking out the window for hours. Some time ago, Lydia had settled into the corner of their private sitting room and taken up her embroidery to pass the time.
Gabriel couldn’t stop himself from glancing over to the corner of the room, watching as his wife delicately threaded her needle through the textile. A curl of her hair rested softly on her forehead, and he longed to push it back. To soothe the line of concern from her brow.
I trust you, she’d said.
She shouldn’t. She should trust him with nothing, certainly not her heart.
The abrupt sound of her voice jolted Gabriel from his thoughts. “When do you expect Mr. Wentworth to come aid in your search?”
Gabriel stared out into the darkness. “Sometime tomorrow morning. He might wish to stop at one of the inns on the way.”
Lydia gingerly set aside her embroidery hoop and leaned back in her chair. “I’m eager to visit the gardens here when it’s safe. I noticed an ivy-covered wall from my window. Do you know what it is?”
His breath caught at how the fire illuminated her skin and cast its shadows lovingly across her delicate features. Her eyes were dark pools of ink that watched him with the kind of hope he had forgotten in all his years away. A part of him wished to say something that would disabuse her of that longing, set her on a different path that she would walk without him. But he could not find it in him to say harsh words to her, not when the room seemed to contract its walls down to the exact distance between them.
“Langdon Castle,” he said, letting his gaze linger on her. Once he accepted Wentworth’s offer, he would see very little of her. She would be a wife in name only. “It burned down two centuries ago and was replaced by this house.”
Lydia stood, approaching the window seat. She, too, looked out into that dark garden. “That’s one of the things I love about these old estates,” she murmured, setting her hand to the window frame. The air around Gabriel became redolent with the scent of her lavender soap. “Finding history in its gardens. Wondering about the people who lived there and built its walls.” Her eyelashes lowered. “I have made no such mark on a place.”
Gabriel wanted to argue with her. Tell her it wasn’t true. She’d carved marks all over his anatomy, the exact parts that kept him alive, right down to his very bones. When he was buried into the earth, they would find her written on his marrow.
But he only tipped his head back against the wall and said, “Perhaps you ought to make a change, then. Something for history to remember you by.”
She smiled softly at him. “Like what?”
Gabriel lifted a shoulder. “Whatever you like.”
The smile remained on her face—such an uninhibited and trusting expression. The sight of it pricked him like sharp claws. “What if I desired a little cottage, like something out of a storybook?” she murmured. “One to visit when I wish to be alone, away from staff and obligations? What would you think of that?”
He wanted to tell her that she was like a woman out of a fable. That she seemed as real to him as the cottage from her imagination and that it fit her just perfectly. “What would you do in your little cottage, with no staff or obligations?”
“Work in the garden with my hands,” she said. “Wear trousers everywhere. Come in at the end of each day exhausted and covered in mud.” Her eyes met his. “Kiss you wherever I’d like.”
Every part of Gabriel went still. He imagined himself in Lydia’s fantasy, working the land and finding comfort in the movements of his body. Physicality without violence. And he envisioned himself kissing her in the garden, setting her onto a bench, and making love to her as the sun warmed their skin. Then, months later, she would have to abandon her trousers for new ones that fit her expanding belly, full with his child.
That last unbidden image ripped him out of the fantasy. He was reminded of Wentworth’s letter sitting on his table just across the room. The missive that decided his future without her because that garden was a fabrication. It could never be real, not for someone like him.
