Gabriel: Lord of Regrets (14 page)

“You’ll let out all the heat,” she scolded, “and you’re family, George.”

“I’m in the presence of a pretty girl bearing gifts.” George set his pipe aside, because pretty girls were supposedly unable to breathe around pipe smoke. “Whatever’s under that linen smells as sweet as the lady bringing it. Have a seat, and we’ll have the teapot up here forthwith.”

They chatted about the wet weather and the coming winter, and demolished two sweet buns apiece before Marjorie got down to business.

“Mama’s going to ruin everything.”

“She’s only one woman. What can she do to ruin anything?”

“She’s going to turn her solicitors loose on the task of setting my marriage to Aaron aside and getting me married to Gabriel.”

George took up his pipe and fussed with it in some ritual known only to men. Marjorie understood this to be a delaying tactic but did not ruin her dinner with a third sweet bun.

“You’d keep the title,” George said. “And Gabriel’s a good man. A better man for having been out from under the title a while.”

“Gabriel is… Gabriel. I am married to Aaron.”

“So tell your mama to desist.”

“You tell her. She doesn’t listen very well.”

“She doesn’t,” George agreed pensively. “Have you put this to your menfolk?”

“I put it to Aaron. He’ll stand up to Mama, as will Gabriel.”

“Puts Gabriel in a bit of a pickle.” George got up to rummage in a drawer. “He’ll have to repudiate the contracts he signed upon your betrothal.”

“And Mama can have him put in jail for that?”

“Mama can go after damages and create scandal like you’ve never seen, my girl. Have a spot more tea. It’s chilly out.”

George was not being much help. “A cup of tea will hold back all evils.” Except Mama.

“A good marriage can make them all seem surmountable.” George held up a square nail and resumed his seat.

“You’ve been married, then, George, to speak so highly of the institution?”

“It might interest you to know, young lady, I was not discovered among the dinosaur eggs. I had a mama and a papa, and because we are the distaff side of the family, they were a love match. I have hoped for the same for you.” He used the nail to clean out the bowl of his pipe.

“You’re not that old, George.” Marjorie poured them both more tea. “Why haven’t you married?”

“A man in service usually doesn’t.”

“You’re not in service like some footman.” Marjorie added cream and sugar to his tea and passed it over as he tapped his pipe out into his palm.

“I’m bound hand and foot to thousands of acres of crops, cows, and cottages. You mind?” He gestured with the pipe.

“Stop asking.” She stirred her tea. “It’s a comforting smell, after all these years.”

“So you’re sure you want young Master Aaron?”

“Lord Aaron. I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life. I only wish he were taking Mama on out of similar sentiments, not out of devotion to duty.”

“What a man says and what he feels are usually two different things. Particularly a young man, particularly regarding his young lady.”

He was barely twenty years her senior, and talking like some crony of Mr. Danner’s. “You weren’t found among the dinosaur eggs, George. You really could marry and have children.”

“Oh, right.” George smiled ruefully and looked very like Aaron. “I could if I ever gave up my post. As busy as the land keeps me, my wife would see little of me.”

“I see little of Aaron.” Which George should have realized, because Aaron spent much of his time out with George inspecting piglets or ditches or heaven knew what.

“And where are those babies Lord Aaron’s supposed to give you?”

Marjorie nearly threw her tea at him. “That’s in God’s hands. Will you come to dinner tonight?”

George lit a taper from the candle on the tea tray, then drew on his pipe to light it. “It’s nasty as Hades out, and you summon me to the manor.”

An invitation was not a summons. For the first time, Marjorie understood Aaron’s exasperation with dear George. “It’s a good night to be with family, and you know you can always stay up there if you don’t feel like braving the elements. I keep a guest room ready for you.”

“I’ll be happy to join you, though if it starts sleeting again, I might take you up on that guest room. When do you think your mother will fire off her guns?”

Marjorie rose as the scent of pipe smoke filled the room. “She’s already gone up to Town. That doesn’t bode well.”

“She’s forever going up to Town, which means she leaves Tamarack to the tender mercies of old Pillington far too much.”

“You say that like Pillington won’t do his job in Mama’s absence. He wouldn’t dare slack when she might catch him out.”

“It’s cold out, Pillington is as old as dirt, and he would dare,” George countered. “Somebody ought to put him out to pasture before he truly wrecks your brother’s birthright.”

“Dantry will soon be old enough to take over the duties of the title,” Marjorie said as George escorted her to the foyer. “Pillington can step down as steward then.”

George passed her a pair of black leather gloves, his expression particularly serious. “A few more years, you mean.” He kept speaking as he helped Marjorie get her cape fastened. “Tamarack hasn’t got a few more years, Marjorie. Pillington follows no schedule for fallowing and rotating his crops, he lets the herds get inbred, he marls when the shells are cheap, not when the land needs it. He doesn’t even set the stone walls to rights come spring unless the sheep are running loose on a neighbor’s land. And the tenants have ceased to stand up to him provided he leaves them in peace.”

Marjorie lifted her chin while he wound a scarf about her neck. “You’re angry about this. Have I ever seen you angry, George?”

“When your papa was alive, it wasn’t so bad. For a steward to neglect his duties because he’s serving an earl’s widow and children rather than the earl himself is inexcusable. Now, especially, Pillington should be taking his duties more seriously than his grog.”

“Mama won’t listen to anybody about this,” Marjorie predicted. “Maybe Aaron can say something to Pillington.” Provided Marjorie found a way to say something to Aaron.

“Have Gabriel do it. Aaron will try to do Pillington’s job for him to keep the peace. Gabriel will put the fear of Eternity in the man.”

“You know them well.” Marjorie paused with a hand on the door latch. “Has it been very upsetting, having Gabriel come home?”

“Upsetting?” George handed her a large umbrella. “What was upsetting was not knowing for two years if he lived or died, and if he lived, whether he was bedridden, crippled, or mad with pain.”

“You didn’t assume he was dead?” Marjorie took the umbrella, surprised at George’s disclosure. “I don’t think Aaron was sure either, at first. He kept looking down the driveway at odd hours, and he sent post after post to his fellow officers in Spain, and then he just stopped.”

“What’s important is that Gabriel is with us again, relatively whole and happy. We’ll get your mama sorted out, and then you can be about providing the Hesketh heir, hmm?”

Marjorie resolved to ask Polly Hunt to teach her some curses a lady might use in the privacy of her thoughts.

“Talk to Aaron, or the Lord Almighty.” Marjorie kissed his cheek, patted his lapel, and went back out into the rain, feeling somewhat better for having been able to share her concerns with George.

She didn’t see her friend’s eyes narrow shrewdly on her departing person, or hear the quiet, heartfelt oath he muttered in her absence.

***

Polly scooted over, making room for Gabriel in her bed. “You shouldn’t be here.”

“I shouldn’t be anywhere else. It’s storming miserably tonight, and you need me to allay your fears.”

“I fear you’ll hog the covers.” Though when he stretched out beside her and wrapped an arm around her shoulders, she bundled into his warmth gratefully. “It is a wicked storm.”

“Could be worse.” Gabriel commenced tracing patterns on her back, and immediately Polly felt her eyes getting heavy. “Could be snow.”

“I like snow,” she said, determined not to slip off as easily as she had the past three nights.

“I nearly cried at my first sight of snow after leaving Spain. I’d thought never to see it again.”

Snow
had nearly made him cry? “What was it like in Spain, Gabriel?” She hadn’t asked him this, because it had clearly been a time of suffering for him, and the moment to ask hadn’t been right. But here, cuddled up with no immediate thought of mischief between them, the fire crackling softly, and the wind howling outside, she wanted to know.

“It’s very different. Exotic, more Eastern than I’d thought it would be, and pretty, in its way.”

“In its way.” Polly snorted. “You nearly died there. How pretty can it be?”

“I didn’t die there. The nuns wouldn’t allow it.”

“Tell me.”

“They were all Sister Maria Something,” he said, “and they were the silliest bunch of women I’ve ever met, always teasing and laughing, and enjoining one another to ridiculous prayers. ‘We must pray for Señor Wendover’s sense of gratitude, because he fails to appreciate this fine, rich broth we bring him five times a day…’ and so forth, but God, they were fierce.”

Who else would he describe as
fierce
in such admiring tones? “Fierce, how?”

“Like you, Sara, and Allie. They ran off the English surgeon when it was clear all the man wanted to do was bleed me, and they pestered the Arab physician until he was visiting me daily. A chaplain or two was commandeered for my spiritual comfort, and they taught me Spanish whether I wanted to learn it or not. They also cheated at cards, the lot of ’em.”

Nuns played cards? “They didn’t remind you of your mother?”

“She cheated too,” Gabriel said, his lips brushing Polly’s temple, “but no. She was a lady, for the most part, as best I recall.”

“How old were you when she died?”

“Eight.”

A cold pang of guilt pierced the haze of well-being Polly felt in Gabriel’s arms. “So you had some sympathy for Allie, who also lost a parent very young.” Both parents, in fact.

“She lost a wretched excuse for a father, but to her, he was as dear, I’m sure, as her mother is.”

Gracious heavens. Polly leaned up and ran her tongue over his nipple, because talking about Allie was the last thing she wanted to be doing when Gabriel was in her bed.

“Cease tormenting me, Polonaise.”

“You’re always telling me what to do.” She swiped wetly at the second one.

“And you’re always ignoring my generous guidance.”

“I’ll give you some guidance.” She glided a hand down his torso to rest her palm over his half-erect cock. “Take you in hand, I will.”

“You’ll go to sleep.” He removed her hand but kept it tucked in his own and folded it against his chest. “Roll over, and I’ll rub your back.”

“You drive a hard bargain, Mr. North.”

He didn’t comment, though Polly suspected he liked her reference to his former alias. She flopped over to her side and presented him with her back, thinking he had the absolute best touch with her aches and pains.

Her physical aches and pains.

“We leave for Town tomorrow.” He fell silent while his fingers spun pleasure up and down her spine then made the most wonderful slow circles on the muscles of her buttocks. “I suppose we could put the trip off.”

He was offering to delay this trip, and she loved him for that. “You’re meeting with your men of business, though, aren’t you?”

“We are.” He squeezed firmly and held his grip until Polly let out a sigh of pleasure.

“Did the nuns teach you this?”

“Naughty, Polonaise.” He added a kiss to her shoulder. “If I said yes, you’d be taking holy orders. The solicitors will be as happy to spend our coin if we wait a day or two.”

His grip on her backside was heavenly, his voice in the darkness lovely, and yet, Polly would send him on his way. “Marjorie is on pins and needles as it is, so be off with you both and have done with it.”

“It might not be that easy. What is this?” His finger traced a thin, puckered line from her nape out to one shoulder.

“An excuse for you to stop what you were doing. I fell out of a tree and landed awkwardly when I was very young.”

“I’ll kiss it better, when I can see what I’m aiming for.”

If only he could kiss all of her hurts better. “You’re a candles-blazing type, aren’t you?”

“I’m whatever you need me to be,” Gabriel rumbled, his hand going still.

“Such a tease.”

“I offer you heartfelt declarations, and you mock me.” He pinched her behind, affectionately, if such a thing could be done affectionately. “Go to sleep, Polonaise, and dream of me.”

“Believe I might.” She reached around and linked her fingers with his, then brought his hand up to cradle her breast through her nightclothes. He allowed it, as she’d known he would.

She wasn’t a stranger to the way men got when intent on gratifying their base urges, so she knew Gabriel was showing a monumental patience with her. He seemed genuinely content to cuddle and talk and tease in these dark, private hours in her bed.

Soon, she knew, he’d take what they both wanted him to take, and likely be on his way, as would she.

So why was she hugging these moments of uncomplicated proximity to her heart as if they were something more than simple bodily comfort between consenting adults?

***

Cold rain dripped down the back of Gabriel’s neck, because unlike Aaron, he’d eschewed a hat for the journey into Town.

“We could stop,” Aaron volunteered. “Hole up somewhere with a toddy or two, wait for this to pass.”

“This pissing weather will pass in about five months, for the fifteen minutes or so known as spring.”

“You sure that gelding of yours won’t suffer for this?”

Gabriel glanced at his sodden brother. “Soldier campaigned in Spain, just like you. He’s tough.”

“You don’t get tough; you get resigned. You bargain with God for no more mud, no more flies, no more puking recruits so scared they’re shitting their pants. No more drinking with a fellow one night only to be burying him in parts the next. You don’t get tough.”

“What about the glory?”