Gabriel: Lord of Regrets (8 page)

“I passed Aaron on the stair.” She moved into the room on silent feet. “He said your back was hurting.”

“My brother has aspirations toward the medical profession, then.” Gabriel rolled to his back. “The fire helps. What have you been about, though, Miss Polonaise Hunt, wandering the house alone after dark?”

“Thinking,” Polly said, dropping down on a hassock.

“About?”

She gave him a basilisk, Polonaise stare. “What do you make of your brother’s marriage?”

“They seem cordial.” Gabriel lay where he was and passed her the estate book, which was rude of him, when a lady was present. He’d told the truth, though: his back had just started to ease, and movement did not appeal.

“They seem awkward to me,” Polly said. “Cordially awkward.”

“Typical marriage among the English quality.” The firelight turned her nightgown and wrapper to gossamer as she put the estate book back on the desk, then stood before the hearth, warming her hands. Gabriel did not close his eyes.

“Beck and Sara will never be cordially awkward,” Polly rejoined. “Nicholas and Leah won’t be either, and that other brother of Beck’s… Mr. Grey, he has a way to go before he even merits cordial among strangers.”

“Beckman’s brothers came to Beckman and Sara’s wedding, I take it?”

Polly resumed her seat, which was a mercy. “I half expected you to attend.”

“Beckman would not have known where to send the invitation.” Gabriel arranged a pillow under his head. “I was scouting the territory here before I went up to Town. It was lovely?”

He saw too late the question was unkind, considering Polly had resigned herself to the life of a spinster artist.

“Shall I hold you again, Polonaise?” He made the offer quietly, as much of a bracing taunt as a genuine overture. She stiffened, and he thought maybe he’d achieved his objective, but then she nodded once. He shouldn’t have asked this either, especially not this, but he held out his arms to her anyway.

She surveyed his recumbent length. “You’re just going to lie there?”

“I’m getting quite good at it. Come, don’t be silly. You’ve lain in my arms before.”

She muttered something, then straddled him gingerly and folded down onto his chest.

“Budge up.” He petted her derriere. “Warmth makes me biddable. Now what were you thinking about, Polonaise, that dreams of me elude you tonight?”

“I’m going to violate a confidence.”

“Then it must be serious.” He’d known her two years, and she’d never once betrayed a secret or indulged in gossip.

“If there were a legal argument making it easier to invalidate your brother’s marriage, would you want to know about it?”

“Serious, indeed.” He rested his chin on her crown and traced her spine with his fingers, a serious pleasure. “What do you think you know, Polonaise?”

“Is nonconsummation a ground for annulment?”

“I couldn’t honestly say,” Gabriel answered slowly, “though I doubt it. You claim Aaron hasn’t consummated his union with Marjorie? Aaron, who can’t take his eyes off his wife, and Marjorie, who resembles a well-bred version of every mistress the man has ever had?”

“I didn’t need to know that. But yes, that Aaron and that Marjorie.”

“She told you this?”

Silence, which said enough.

“Interesting.”

Polly rubbed her cheek against his chest, and warmth began to make Gabriel something besides biddable. “I’ve thought maybe the Wendover men are all shy and sexually reticent.”

She used such bold, naughty words to hide her hurt feelings.

“Because I didn’t swive you?” Gabriel let his hand travel to the very base of her spine, then retrieved his errant appendage before it could perpetrate true mischief. “I regret that, you know.”

“Oh, of course.” And without moving, Polly communicated to him that her feelings had been more than hurt. Damn him, he’d become not just a marquess, but a heartbreaker.

“You think I regret missing a mere moment of pleasure, don’t you?”

“Don’t you?” She shifted to peer at him. “Or possibly several moments?”

What he regretted was missing a lifetime of moments with her, for every one would have been a pleasure.

“Had there been a child,” he reminded her, “I would have insisted on marrying you, my dear, and you weren’t willing to take that step; hence, I allowed no opportunity for consummation.”

Allowed
was a grand term for having barely hung on to his scruples.

“I understood your conditions, and you apparently understood mine.” She fell silent, but she was prostrate upon him, his arms around her, and Gabriel could feel her gathering her courage. “I can’t have children, Gabriel, or so I’ve been told.”

His hand went still, but then he said the first thing that popped into his tired brain.

“I am so sorry.” He gathered her closer, and again, she resisted at first but then capitulated with a weary sigh.

“I haven’t had much occasion to test the diagnosis,” she said. “You would have been the first in a long, long time.”

“For me as well,” he said, the need to protect her from this hurt so great, he would have taken her into his very body had there been a way. “I couldn’t risk leaving a child to fend without a father, and you won’t agree to marry on any terms, so there we were.”

“And now we’re here.”

Fatigue, brandy, and Polly’s latest revelations made it easier to hold sexual arousal at bay. Gabriel let longing simmer in his vitals, while Polly fell asleep on his chest. To hold her thus was a privilege he’d been granted on only a few occasions, and they burned in his memory as moments of profound ambiguity.

Polly had trusted him, and all the while, he’d been lying to her. He’d savored the forbidden pleasure of limited intimacy with her, even as he’d been tormented by his dishonesty toward her and toward every member of the Three Springs household.

He hadn’t been lying, though, when he’d told her he’d marry her. If she’d conceived his child, he’d have had a special license in hand before sundown the same day, and no argument in the world would have stayed him.

No argument from her, no argument from anybody.

Which meant Aaron had best fall in love with his damned wife and put period to Lady Hartle’s damned maneuvering. But what on earth could the man have been thinking, to leave his lovely young wife untouched after two years?

And why had Polly chosen now to confide that she couldn’t have children?

***

“So, lad.” Old Mr. Danner settled into his padded rocker. “What was you doing, being dead these two years past?”

Gabriel eyed his tenant, a man who’d always been ancient to him. What he noticed now was that Danner also appeared enviably contented. “I was farming, and growing up.”

Danner grinned around his pipe stem. “Done a bit of both myself. Of necessity only.”

“Your fields and stock suggest otherwise, but was it necessary to stand up with every last one of the pretty girls, sir?”

“Somebody has to give George Wendover a run for his money.” Danner’s smile faded. “That one thinks he knows everything, and thinks the ladies should be grateful for his attentions.”

“And you don’t think the same thing about your own attentions?”

Danner wheezed merrily at this reply then sobered. “It’s well you’re back. Young master Aaron was giving it a good try, but he’s distracted by that little wife of his.”

“She tops you by several inches, and that’s before she puts on her riding boots.”

Danner waved his pipe. “She’s just a girl. How that she-beast Lady Hartle raised up such a one is beyond me. But her pa doted on Lady Margie, and that will tell.”

“Margie?”

Danner jammed his pipe back into his mouth. “Her husband calls her Margie.”

“How can you know these things?”

“You ever take to napping, lad, you’ll overhear plenty, and when the women think you’re harmless, you’ll overhear plenty more.”

As if old men invented eavesdropping? And Gabriel had taken to napping, and not so he could eavesdrop in the library of an evening. “I’ve given your daughter a recipe for a salve that I’ve found helpful when my back troubles me.”

“And isn’t it a grand thing a man can’t put salve on his own back? You were smart to take that knife in your backside.”

Oh, yes, brilliant of him. “It was in my back, not my
backside
.”

“More fool you. When you getting married?”

“Not anytime soon.” Gabriel scowled at him, but either the old man didn’t see well enough to know he trod on thin ice, or he didn’t care—and why should he?

Danner sat forward, a deliberate scoot that involved using his hands on the rocker arms to pull himself about. “Have you taken marriage into dislike at your tender age? Your pa had both you bull calves on the ground only late in life, and you and your brother are past your quarter century. Lady Hartle makes poor Lady Marjorie’s life a hell, ranting about the heir and the title and all. Best get your own wife, my lord, and find an easy breeder while you’re at it.”

“And one can tell this by looking at their teeth?”

Danner smirked. “It’s a place to start. Mostly, you look at their willingness for the task.”

“You have the one daughter,” Gabriel pointed out bluntly. “Aren’t you out of your depth on this issue?”

“I had the one daughter,” Danner said softly, “because I was willing to have only the one wife. Joan’s mama was the love of me life, and there was no other for me when she passed.”

“How long have you been alone?” The question wasn’t one Gabriel would have asked had they any company, but Joan was bustling in the kitchen, the grandchildren were off at their chores, and a great-grandbaby slept soundly in a basket by the hearth.

“I have been a widower for nigh fifty years, but I am never alone. We had eight good years together, and they’ve lasted me the entire eighty. It’s like that, you see, when you can marry where your heart lies. But you lot wouldn’t know anything about such, which, if you ask me, is why your womenfolk are so peaked and wan.”

“Fifty years?”

“Fifty-one this spring. Losing her was hard, but I’d not choose else, not for a moment.” His expression turned mischievous. “And the ladies do dote on a young widower, offering him all manner of comfort.”

“Bother you.” Gabriel rose and peered at the baby in her cradle as a means of avoiding the old man’s gaze.

Danner gestured at the infant, who’d begun to make wakeful-baby noises. “You can bring that one here. We’re of a mind to rock for a bit, aren’t we, lambkin?”

Two years ago, Gabriel would have summoned Joan to pick up the child. Hell, two years ago, he wouldn’t have been here, offering the recipe for Sara’s salve to a mere tenant, and two years ago, he wouldn’t have admitted to needing the damned salve himself.

But he’d spent that two years tending the land and bringing forth every kind of young the farmyard boasted, so it was no great feat of courage to pick up the baby and cradle her against his shoulder.

Only a little feat of courage. “What’s her name?”

“Edith, best I can recall. They’re all of a piece at that age.”

Gabriel took the other rocker and settled with the child, an odd feeling starting up in his chest. “How many do you have?”

“Seven grands, living, and eight great-grands,” Danner replied. “That child looks mighty comfortable on your shoulder, lad. I’m thinking you were telling the truth about those two years of farming.”

“I was down by Portsmouth,” Gabriel said, which was vague enough.

“Didn’t know Hesketh held land down that way, though God knows you own every parish for fifty miles.”

“Hardly.” Gabriel began to rock the baby, who stirred quietly against his shoulder. “I ended up working for a man who’d traveled extensively. He’d seen agriculture on at least four continents and had learned some neat tricks.”

“Good luck showing your neat tricks to old George.”

“George Wendover is old? What does that make you?”

“I’m merely eightyish. That boy is old, in here.” He tapped his bald skull. “He hasn’t had a new idea since he were thirty, and when an old idea will do, that’s fine; but times change, and the land needs our best ideas, new or old, as strange as they may seem.”

“There’s a place for tradition,” Gabriel temporized, because any steward would have his detractors, and any old man would find things to criticize.

“Tradition is fine for Yuletide,” Danner spat. “You think my acres prosper? They do, and not only because they’re well situated. I do as I damned please here, and so does Joan’s Tom and their boys, because George learned long ago that my yields will outperform his.”

“Give me an example.” Gabriel wasn’t really interested in hearing Danner’s rantings about a steward who’d served loyally and without complaint for two decades, but neither was he in a hurry to leave the fireside and the company he’d found there.

Joan sang softly in the kitchen, Danner’s rocker creaked gently, and the scent of fresh bread stirred precious memories few titled lords could claim.

“George understands that land must fallow, and he understands you run the stock over the land after harvest, to give them a little start on winter,” Danner said. “But he lets the sheep have first go, half the time, and then you spend the fallow year recovering from the sheep.”

“The sheep are as hungry as the cattle or horses.” Gabriel shifted, because the baby was raising her head to peer around the room. “Hello, sweetheart.”

“Damned flirt, that one. Takes after me handsome self.”

“The sheep?”

“The sheep eat right down to the roots,” Danner said. “The cows not so much, and it’s the cows that need the fodder more than the sheep.”

“Why do you say that?” Gabriel knew these arguments as well as he knew the particular ache a man suffered when breaking sod with a tired team, but he’d never before held a baby to his shoulder.

“Sheep is growing only wool, lad,” Danner said patiently. “Cows is growing hair too, but also putting milk in the bucket, and half the time growing a calf while they’re about it. But it’s still the sheep are harder on the land.”

“But penning the sheep on the fallow ground over winter fertilizes it.” Gabriel got up to make an inspection of the room with the baby on his shoulder.