Page 42 of Lady Frederica and the Scot Who Would Not
She frowned. “You sound unhappy about it.”
He opened his mouth as if he was going to respond, but then he shut it, and instead of speaking, he carried her across the room and managed to open the parlor door.
“Where are you taking me?” She looked around warily for servants, but the halls were dark and quiet.
When she glanced to him once more, she found him studying her, a guarded but soft look in his eyes. “To your bedchamber.”
Hers, nottheirs. A little knot of sadness hardened in her throat.
Gabriel frowned. “You needn’t worry about the servants seeing us.”
Frankly, she wasn’t. She ought to be if she were the right sort of proper lady, the sort her mother had tried to raise her to be, the sort that all women of thetonwere. Even Guinevere, for all her adventures, would be scandalized if the servants witnessed Carrington carrying her through the house. Freddy suspected she’d be slightly embarrassed but mostly annoyed. That was the problem. She was the problem. The way her mind worked never would have allowed her to be a propertonlady, but a Covent Garden lady she was sure she could master as long as Gabriel didn’t try to stop her, which was almost certain he would.
She wouldn’t say any of that. Not yet. Instead, she made light and teased, “Did you threaten them not to come out of their rooms?”
He laughed, seeming to readily accept that she had been concerned about the servants. And why wouldn’t he readily accept that? He didn’t know her, and she barely knew him. But she was determined to rectify that.
“No, but that’s a sound idea.” He flashed a grin then sobered. “Even if they came out, my carrying you through this house won’t scandalize them as it would the Mayfair servants you’re used to,” he said as he took to the stairs.
“Gabriel, now that I’m here in Covent Garden, I want to stay.”
He hesitated just outside her bedchamber door. “This is temporary.”
Her chest tightened with his words. As he opened the door, proceeded inside, and moved to the bed, where he gently set her down, she asked, “So you plan for us to live separately forever, once you’ve dealt with your enemy? Assuming that’s what tonight was about, given I have no notion.”
“I think it’s best.”
The man wouldn’t know what was best for her, or even them, if it slapped him in the face. She refrained from arguing that point just yet. Instead she said, “So was your plan when you decided to wed me to keep me at arm’s length from you? To never give us the chance to be close?”
The startled look he gave her made her heart feel very likely that if someone blew on her heart, it would shatter. “I see,” she said and then to her horror, her throat constricted and began to burn, and before she could stop the instinctual reaction to cry, her vision went blurry. She turned her face down quickly, but above her, Gabriel inhaled sharply, and then the bed squeaked as he sat down beside her. His hand came to rest by her thigh, but he didn’t reach out to touch her. Still, his heat enveloped her and sparked a longing, a need to feel understood and wanted, that she had tried to bury. She’d almost been successful until he’d kissed her in the carriage—quite possibly before that, though. Perhaps the lies she’d told herself had started to unravel the very night she’d met him and he’d intrigued her.
“I’m sorry,” he said, and she knew he was. Remorse underlay his tone, but his remorse would not change the wall he wanted to keep erected between them. She could try to tear down some of it, though ultimately, he’d have to rip down the rest. She wanted that truly, and just how much took her breath. She didn’t just want a life in Covent Garden. She wanted a life in Covent Garden with him by her side. But was she competing for him with his dead wife or was she competing with fears he had of getting close to someone again? She wasn’t sure one was any less problematic than the other, though the first one, his dead wife, made Freddy shamefully jealous.
“How long will I be staying here in Covent Garden?” She needed to know how long she had to change his mind and get him to relent to letting her live here.
“Until I’ve captured my enemy.”
“The man at my window tonight.”
Gabriel nodded.
“Tell me of him. Who was he?”
The relief that swept his face would have been comical, except she suspected that he was so relieved because she’d not pursued the line of conversation about how their marriage was to be. She bit her lip on the sharp ache in her chest.
“His name is Phillip Hawkins. He grew up in the orphanage and on the streets with Blythe and me. We were once the best of friends—Hawk, Blythe, myself, and my first wife.”
“Georgette,” she said, the name of the woman Gabriel had been wed to before her coming easily to mind. The woman he’d loved. The one who had died four years ago.
Gabriel frowned. “How did you know—”
“Blythe told me,” Freddy interrupted, not particularly wanting to linger too long on the topic.
He eyed her with suspicion. “What exactly did Blythe tell you?”
“Just that you’d been wed before and that she died,” Freddy lied, not wanting to say aloud that Blythe had told her how much he’d loved Georgette, nor did she want to give him a reason to confront Blythe and possibly cause his sister not to share anything else with Freddy. She needed an ally, and Blythe was definitely her best option.
He scrubbed a hand across his face. “We watched out for each other, the four of us. Kept each other alive. Comforted each other. And then things became complicated.”
