Page 76 of A Bride By Morning
Lydia shoved through the library door and slammed it shut behind her. The large windows ahead seemed like a refuge, a place to gather herself, find her composure again. She lurched toward it, fumbled with the lock, and shoved it open.
Lydia heaved. The rain and mist battered at the windowsill, but she didn’t care. That weather suited her. The brisk air filled her lungs and made it past the burning in her heart. She pressed her palms to the window frame and leaned out, shutting her eyes as she gathered herself. Rain pelted her skin. None of it mattered.
Gabriel, she thought, as her chest painfully constricted.Gabriel.
She had never before considered how painful it was to love someone. She had loved him before he left for Vienna, but not like this. This time, she had known his kiss. Had felt the hard press of his body against hers. Had made declarations that were inscribed deep down in her soul because she believed he’d finally felt the same.
But he didn’t. She was just another obligation. Another mission, another life to be saved, like the others he’d protected against Medvedev. She was his duty.
You will get through this,she told herself. You will. Just like before.
She turned away from the window and focused on calming her emotions. When Gabriel came to find her, she did not want him to see her weeping. Like him, she would have to build barriers to protect her heart.
Just as she had finally caught her breath, someone grabbed Lydia from behind. A hand pressed hard to her mouth, and a voice whispered in her ear in a thick accent, “You should not have opened that window, Lady Montgomery.”
37
Gabriel leaned over the table, his mind repeating Lydia’s words. Everything she had spoken was held up and examined, filtering through the ache in his heart.
You can’t stop me from dying any more than you can stop me from loving you.
He had to restrain himself from telling her that he loved her back. He had left so many words unspoken that he now wished he had said.
I won’t waste my years grieving the future you rejected twice.
I could die tomorrow.
His head rose as he imagined her on the same train that had killed his father and brother. A fate that he could not save her from. He imagined himself in a city across the continent, living under a different name, pretending to be another man.
And one day, he would open a missive informing him of her passing. If he considered the speed of the post and the safety of his identity, that message would take time to reach him. The death of his father and brother had taken two months.
Gabriel stared down at Wentworth’s letter, imagining the future it presented him. He’d already lived without Lydia once, and that had been the biggest mistake of his life. If he did it again, and something happened to her . . .
He would never recover. Lydia was right; he had already wasted years. Ten that he could have spent in her arms every night. How many more would he squander? Two years? Five? A lifetime? He longed to kiss her everywhere in the garden of that little cottage, just like she desired.
He wanted to keep her, too.
“Lydia,” he breathed, pushing away from the desk. If enough time had passed for her to collect herself, perhaps she would let him beg her forgiveness. Tell her that he was a fucking idiot. A fool. A bastard.
He needed to tell her that he loved her.
Gabriel threw open his bedchamber door and checked the room next to his, only to find Lydia’s bedchamber empty. “Lydia,” he called, traversing the halls.
Where had she spent her days? Where would she go to think, if not her bedchamber?The library.
Gabriel quickened his pace, his bare feet pounding across the long, carpeted halls. “Lydia,” he called as he reached the door to push it open. “Lyd—”
The room was vacant. The only indication that it had been previously occupied was the wide-open window. A cold, rainy breeze swept through the room, chilling Gabriel’s skin. The carpet beneath the windowsill was soaked through from the downpour. Was that open window his wife’s error, or—
Terror swept over him.
“Lydia.” His voice echoed through the empty house as he exited the library. “Lydia!”
Gabriel rushed down the hall, throwing open every fucking door he saw, closet or bedchamber, sitting room or servants quarters. Each empty room only seized his heart further in an icy grip of dread.
“Lydia!”
Footsteps pounded down the hall. Gabriel whirled, but his relief was short-lived. Callihan came to an abrupt stop, panting hard. Rain plastered his hair to his forehead. “Jones is dead,” he said briskly. “Hart and Grant spotted a rider a short while ago and left in pursuit but lost sight of him in the rainstorm.”
