Page 65 of A Fearless Heart
“Dear God.”
She shot him a withering glance. “It’s a sort of antidote to the clephobine.”
“Wait, you’ve got an antidote?”
“No, I’ve beenworkingon an antidote. And it’s not specific to the clephobine. It’s more of a general antidote—it has stimulant properties to increase heart rate and blood flow. In other words, taken soon enough, it could counter the effects of clephobine. But it’s not perfected yet, and I’d be quite hesitant to offer it to another person unless it was a last resort. But I did bring a few vials, just in case.”
“That’s good information,” he said, wondering what else Cady had stashed in her luggage. “Maybe you could tell me these sorts of things a little earlier next time?”
“Next time? How many times do you expect to be chasing down a criminal madman? It’s not as if you do this for a living.”
“Fair enough,” he said. If only Cady knew that such work was his living.
“Now, can we please return to the matter at hand?” She tapped the page with her pencil.
“Fine. Where were we?”
“Who’s Baron Murol?” she prompted. “The man whose death your friend was looking into?”
“Married to a very wealthy lady from somewhere in Dorset. No political leanings, unless you consider a distaste for Napoleon a political leaning. For his personal life, it’s fairly typical, though he’s had more than the usual number of affairs.”
“How does his wife feel about that?”
“We’ll never know. He had her put away in an asylum.”
“What! Did she go mad?”
“Not exactly. He had her committed for…” He coughed. “Er, a particular kind of illness. He claimed she was an adulteress and that was her punishment, though it’s nearly certain that he’s the one who gave it to her.”
Cady’s eyes widened in shock as she processed that. “She contracted a venereal disease from him, but he’s still walking around free to spread it, and she’s stuck in a cell somewhere? What a horrible man. I’m glad he’s dead.” She frowned as she wrote that note down. Annoyed by all the note-taking, Oscar relocated to a far corner of the bench seat, and curled up on Cady’s wool cape.
When he finished telling her what he could safely disclose, they both moved into that quiet space peculiar to travel—where one could just sit and stare out the window at the passing scenes, unlinked to any specific location and thus free to let the mind wander where it will.
Gabe thought about the assignment, about spring, about London, about his brothers and whether he should even let them know he would be in town. He started to get moody, and frequently glanced at Cady, who maintained her perfect posture, her face composed as she kept her gaze on the fields passing by. He observed the prettiness of her profile—strong brow, slightly upturned nose, soft, pondering mouth, and a narrow chin that sometimes gave her an elfin appearance.
At the moment, she was so still that it was a little disconcerting. As if sensing his attention, Cady turned to face him. “Gabe, tell me something. Are we having an affair?”
He blinked, not expectingthatquestion, but had to admit, “A lot of people would say so. A woman alone with a man she’s not related to tends to raise ideas like that.”
“I ask because if we were having an affair, then that would mean that you wouldn’t mind if we sat together on the same side in the carriage, and also you might hold me a little. I’ve been thinking about London. Everything I’ll have to do and see and deal with. And I’m getting scared.”
She looked to the side as she spoke, and she’d reduced a handkerchief to a wrinkled ball of cotton and lace. Belatedly, Gabe realized that this had been gnawing at her for a while. He was annoyed at himself for not picking up on it sooner.
He moved from the front of the carriage to the back, now sitting next to her and facing the same way. He held out his arm. Cady slid along the bench seat until she was next to him, and he dropped his arm around her shoulders.
She leaned into him and closed her eyes. “Thank you.”
“You’ll be fine in London,” he told her, guessing at the cause of her worry. “I’ll be near you and we’ll work as fast as we can to find out who’s responsible for this. And then you can go home.”
“You don’t have to reassure me of things. I’m not sure I’d believe you anyway. There’s too much we don’t know. But if you just hold me like this now, that’s more than enough.”
He didn’t even know how to respond to that, so he said nothing.
Gabe was glad when they finally got to London, not least because having Cady draped across him for miles of bumpy road was doing absolutely nothing for his peace of mind, though his libido was evidently in fine shape. Not long after he sat by her, she’d actually drifted off to sleep, and he wasn’t going to disturb her. So he simply enjoyed the pleasure/pain of being in a state of arousal and knowing he couldn’t do anything about it. He kept his arm around Cady, enjoying the way her curves pressed against his side, and he used his excellent angle to enjoy her breasts rising softly every time a wheel hit a dip in the road. He decided that people who complained about the state of the highways didn’t fully understand the situation.
When the carriage reached London, dusk was falling. Jem had been told the location of Cady’s town house, so he continued through the increasingly crowded streets toward the correct neighborhood. Gabe nudged Cady awake.
“Almost there,” he told her.
