Page 49 of Lady Frederica and the Scot Who Would Not
Gabe gritted his teeth. “It will work because that’s how I want it.”
Carrington arched his eyebrows. “Is it? I think not. Ye’ve been making choices to tangle yer life with Freddy’s since the night ye met her.”
“Like hell I have.”
Carrington smirked. “Ye had yer coachman take her locket to her.”
“How the devil do you know about that?”
“Yer sister told my wife, who then told me.”
He was going to give Blythe a verbal lashing when he saw her.
“Ye also took her home yerself the night Brooke’s man attacked her. And I’d wager my fortune that it wasn’t an innocent carriage ride.”
Gabe yanked off his cravat and glared at Carrington, whose smirk grew in response.
“Ye came to warn her at the ball when ye could have just told me, and that ye felt compelled to ensure her safety at all was verra telling.”
Damn it. Carrington was correct.
“Then ye declared to thetonthat she was under yer protection. And then ye had yer little garden incident. And then ye wed her. And then—”
“Enough,” Gabe said, going to the sideboard and pouring himself a finger of whisky, which he threw back in one gulp.
He met Carrington’s eyes. “Ye already care for her.”
“Of course, I care for her,” Gabe said, his blood roaring in his ears. “She’s my wife. It’s my duty to see to her protection and needs.”
“I wonder how long ye’ll lie to yerself.”
Gabe slammed his whisky glass onto the sideboard. “And I wonder how bloody long you’ll stand here annoying me. Don’t you want to rush home to your wife?”
That damned smirk of Carrington’s got even bigger. “Don’t ye want to rush home to yers?”
Good God, he did, and just how much made his heart stutter. He needed to find Hawk quickly so he could get Frederica out of his house. His efforts to keep her at a distance were made a thousand times harder with her so near.
Gabe entered the house late that night, expecting and hoping to find it in silence. What he found was a very loud rendition of a bawdy poem set to tune by his wife. It was undeniably Frederica singing at the top of her lungs from somewhere abovestairs, likely her bedchamber, and she was slurring the words of “The Plenipotentiary.” She sounded rather foxed. He didn’t know how a woman raised as Frederica had been would know the words of a bawdy poem.
He eyed his footman, who blanched and scuffled back a few steps, and then Gabe glared at the two guards, who both held their ground with him but tensed. “Where the devil has my wife been today?”
“Only to the seamstress,” the footman responded. “And straight home from there.”
“And who’s been to call on her?” he asked.
“Just your sister,” the other guard answered. “She came and went and came again.”
What the hell had Blythe done?
Gabe gave a quick nod, then headed for the stairs, stopping midway up in shocked amazement at the words Frederica was singing and just how ridiculously horrible a singer she was and how her merry singing in his home made him smile and put an undeniable warmth in his chest.Damnation.
“When to England he came, with his prick in a flame,
He shewed it his Hostess on landing,
Who spread its renown thro’ all parts of the town,
As a pintle past all understanding.
