Page 63 of His Forgotten Bride
Just as she was arranging the fresh candle on the plate, the doorknob turned. A hot daub of tallow fell upon her wrist, singeing her skin, and she brushed at the spot with a muffled curse as Gabriel slipped inside her room. He had come clad not in his evening clothes, but prepared for bed—his feet were bare, and he wore a burgundy robe embroidered at the sleeves and lapels with little curlicues woven from gold thread. She wondered absently whether his arrival had been an afterthought, an impulse he’d given in to on the cusp of sleep, or if his attire was a deliberate choice, centered on comfort.
His face contorted with distaste. “What is that wretched odor?” he inquired.
“Tallow,” she said. And then, inanely, “Beeswax is expensive. Servants have a weekly allowance of tallow candles.”
He paused just inside the room, his brows knitting with bafflement. “That’s ridiculous,” he said at last. “I’ve no inclination to stomach such an odor. You’ll use beeswax from now on.”
She supposed that meant he intended more nighttime visits, whereupon he would pry into her brain, perform a postmortem of their past.
He settled onto the edge of the bed as he had last evening, only this time the light of the candle revealed the harsh planes of his face, the distance in his eyes. One leg was extended, the other with the knee raised, and he draped one arm over it, affecting an indolent pose. Arching a brow, he stared expectantly at her, waiting, she expected, for her to begin anew with her recitation of her memories.
She closed her eyes against the sharp censure in his. “I’ll tell you,” she said wearily. “I’ll tell you whatever you wish to know. But first, Matthew—”
“He’s well enough,” he said tersely. And then, as his gaze coasted over her face, he repeated in a softer tone, “Claire, he’sfine. I promise you. He’ll suffer no ill effects.”
A ragged sound escaped from her throat, and she clapped her hands over her mouth to stifle it. The dam burst, releasing a torrent of silent tears that had collected over the day—the humiliation of Betsy’s criticism, the fear for Matthew, his resulting rejection, and Gabriel’s scorn all coalesced until it was altogether too much to tamp down any longer.
Horrified, she twitched about to puff out the candle. There was no need for light, and she did not want to see his face any more than she wanted him to see hers. But everything seemed louder in the darkness, the rasp of her unsteady breaths tearing through the silence.
“Just give me a moment,” she said, hearing the break in her voice and wincing.
His sigh burned her ears. “Christ, Claire.” The ropes shifted beneath his weight, and a moment later his hand landed on her arm, feeling for her in the dark.
“I’m fine.” The protest came out tinny and shrill. “I’m fine, I just—”
“No, you’re not,” he said, his voice gruff and insistent. His fingers closed around her arm, tugged, and she went sliding across the bed toward him, skidding over well-worn sheets until she hitched up against his side. His left arm curled around her, his palm sliding up her back, through her hair, to cup the nape of her neck.
Her cheek was pressed to the soft fabric of his robe, the gold embroidery scraping her skin. She wrestled her arms between them, scrabbling for distance, for leverage to shove herself away.
“Claire,stop. Not everything must be a struggle.” He tempered her pitiful resistance with both arms, and his fingers massaged the back of her neck until her arms trembled and she went lax, sobbing in earnest and muffling the wretched sounds that escaped her within the thick fabric of his robe.
Of course everything had to be a struggle—everythinghadbeen a struggle for years and years now. The struggle for survival, the choice between what she wanted and what was best for Matthew, parceling out her precious wages to pay the doctors and knowing she could ill afford the cost. Torn between her head and her heart, her conscience and her affections. Guilt and shame and love blurring until she lived in a miasma of them, breathing in regret and exhaling fragile, futile hope.
“I can’t protect him,” she keened, her voice smothered.
“He’s fine.” The words were buried in her hair, whispered in a soothing murmur, delivered with an absent kiss. “The doctor’s prognosis was optimistic.”
“A mother should be able to protect her child!”
He huffed. “Really, Claire, what did you think you could do?” And then he paused, his hand slowing on her back. A minute passed in silence, with only the wheeze of her breaths to break it. Gradually his hand resumed its slow strokes, not with impersonal, almost obligatory comfort but deliberately, consciously soothing.
His heart beat near her ear, a steady, lulling sound. She was glad for the darkness, glad for the shadows that enshrouded them. She did not have to bear the judgment on his face, nor worry that her own might betray her. For just a moment she had let herself break apart, but collecting herself once again would be a trial she did not want him to witness. She did not want to provide another weapon for him to wield against her.
She did not want his pity. It was simply another side to his scorn, and both hurt in equal measure. A cold pit of trepidation settled in her stomach, like she’d swallowed a lump of ice. She drew a steadying breath, set her shoulders, and shoved herself away at last.
“Claire,” he crooned, his arms reluctant to release her. “It’s all right, just let me—”
She shrugged him off anyway, shrinking away from his touch, from the fingers that sought her in the darkness. “And give you another stick with which to beat me? No, thank you, my lord.”
Silence drew out, cold as the air that drifted between them. She took a shuddering breath, dashed her hands over her eyes, and said at last, in a diffident little voice, “That was unfair of me. I apologize.”
“Perhaps not so unfair,” he offered slowly, reflectively.
She bit her lower lip against a sigh and cleared her throat. And then she began to speak, in a dull, bland monotone, reciting her recounting of their past with as little emotion as she could muster, determined to offer nothing of herself up along with her memories.
∞∞∞
“Well,” said Westwood, reclining in the chair across from Gabriel’s. “Do you know, I think the most troubling bit of all of this is that your son quite outranks me.”
