Page 54 of Lady Frederica and the Scot Who Would Not
“Just,” Bear called. “She said she told you she was going home.”
That clever little minx. She was a Covent Garden lady if ever there was one. But that didn’t make him feel a bit better knowing Hawk was out there, waiting for his chance to snatch her.
He ran past Bear and threw open the door, turning toward his house, and then he bellowed in rage. There in the middle of the street was Freddy wrestling with a man by a stopped curricle. As Gabe hurdled toward them, she ducked as Gabe had shown her and twisted her body out of the man’s hold. But then she turned to run, giving the man her back and leaving herself open.
“Freddy, no!” Gabe roared, his voice sounding inhuman to his own ears.
But it was too late. The man knocked her over the head with a pistol, and she fell to the ground, her head hitting so hard that it bounced back up. Gabe’s vision went momentarily red, and he sprinted toward them as the man dragged Freddy onto the seat of the curricle and then sat himself and took up the reins. The conveyance started to move just as Gabe reached it.
Gabe didn’t hesitate. He grabbed on to the back, being dragged for one moment, before he managed to find a foothold and pull himself onto the single seat, reserved normally for the servant, at the back. Freddy’s assailant turned back to look at Gabe just as Gabe jumped over the seat onto the man. Gabe reared back his fist and he let loose a punch so hard it sent the man flying off the seat and onto the ground. Gabe jerked the carriage to halt, gave a glance over his shoulder to find Bear towering over the man. “Take him to the club and keep him there,” Gabe ordered Bear, and then Gabe turned back to Freddy, who was slumped in the seat with her eyes still closed. He gathered her into his arms as images of his mother still and white on her cot and then Georgette bloodied on the street flashed through his mind. He shoved the images down, but they left him shaking as he lifted her and started to the house, his chest seeming to constrict more with every step.
As his boots clopped against the ground, a certainty filled him. Freddy was not only in his head, but she was in his heart. It had never been his choice whether to let her in or not. She’d stormed her way in. And it scared the hell out of him because the thought of ever losing her was a reality he knew he could not survive.
Chapter Nineteen
“You’re certain?” Freddy asked the doctor who’d been called in to examine her at Gabriel’s insistence, though she’d woken up from being knocked out soon after Gabriel had brought her home.
The doctor smiled at her and nodded.
She’d assured Gabriel she felt fine except for a pounding headache, but he had refused to listen to reason. He had, in fact, been acting particularly tense since they’d arrived back home. He’d also refused to leave the bedchamber until the doctor had insisted. She was glad of that now. Her hand fluttered to her belly.A babe.
Her breath caught in her throat. “But that’s impossible.” It was a stupid thing to say. Of course it was possible. It was just that she’d not once considered what would happen if she were to get with child. She’d been so focused on creating a place for herself in Gabriel’s world and getting him to open his heart to her, she’d not given a single thought to what all their lusty joining might result in, nor had she spared a moment’s worry for her missed flux.
She settled her other hand on her belly, too, and bit her lip. How did she feel about this? Frightened. Most definitely. And the thing that most scared her was that Gabriel might never be willing to give her his heart and put himself at risk for loss again. Or… She bit her lip as hope rose. Perhaps this child would be the hope he needed, the thing to make him love her as she loved him.
“Do you want me to send your husband in?” the doctor asked, interrupting her thoughts.
Freddy nodded, and he inclined his head, turned, and quit her bedchamber. Before she could think any more on the news of the babe to come, the door opened with a swish, and Gabriel filled the doorway, his jaw set and shoulders stiff. He strode to the bedside and swept his gaze over her, but not, she noted, touching her. A sliver of apprehension swept through her.
“Dr. Hughes says you are fine, but you look pale.” He shifted restlessly from foot to foot.
Just blurting the news might be the best way to tell him, she reasoned, given how cagey he already appeared. “I’m fine, and so is the babe.”
His face drained of color, and his gaze flew to her stomach. “Did you saybabe?”
Her lips pulled in a tentative smile and that little bubble of hope within her expanded. “Yes.” When Gabriel looked up, her stomach clenched tight at the agony in his eyes.
“I can’t.” He shook his head and backed up several steps.
She frowned. “What do you mean,you can’t? There’s no choice, really.” But therewasa choice. He could lead a separate life from herandthe babe. She knew plenty of husbands of thetonwho carried on as if they had no wife or child, but she’d not considered that possibility until this second.
“Damn it, Freddy.” Gabriel shoved his hand through his hair. “Letting you in was already too much risk. But a babe too?”
Her breath stalled at his words, and she tracked him as he began to pace in front of her bed.
“But you pushed and pushed every step of the way. I told you not to come back to Covent Garden after that first night we met, but you came anyway. I told you that you didn’t belong, but did you listen?” His voice was rising with each word.
“No,” she said, her voice quiet, “I did not listen.”
“Precisely!” He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment and pressed his knuckles into his forehead as if trying to contain something in his mind. What? His anger at her? His fear to love again? Or his sadness that she was not Georgette? Freddy wanted to rave at him, but shehadpushed him. He was correct.
“You came and got yourself in trouble, and what was I to do?” he went on.
She watched him continue to pace the room, not sure if he really wanted her to answer.
“I had to save you, that’s what.” He stopped mid-stride and glared at her before continuing again. “I had to save you. And then you went and sat close in my carriage—”
“I thinkyousat next tome,” she inserted, but he was wearing a path on the floor as he muttered to himself and didn’t seem to even hear her.
