by Sophia James
Taking his jacket off, Gabriel laid it around his wife’s shoulders, buttoning the garment to the neck. A thin undershift was all that she had on from her waist down and she was shaking violently.
When he had first come into the clearing he thought Adelaide had been hurt badly with the amount of blood around her and the position she sat in, strains of Henrietta Clements coming back and all the death and blood of the Service. He had felt his heart simply stop, the frozen waste of clogging breath. And then the baby had cried.
If he should ever lose Adelaide... If she should die...
His arms tightened across her shoulders as he held her to him.
‘I’d never done it before, though I told Amethyst that I had.’ She whispered this so that the others would not hear and the earnestness of her confession was heartbreaking.
His wife had not thought to run for help or gone to pieces. No, she had stripped off her own clothes and coped with it all. Even in terror and inexperience, even without the absolute rudiments of anything to help her.
‘If one...panics it always...goes wrong, Aunt... Jean said. She said one has to keep...a composure and a peacefulness for the event otherwise a child might be...difficult to deliver...’ The trembling had worsened and without thought he lifted her up to him and took her over to a tree where he sat down with it at his back and with her in his lap, trying to give her the warmth and reassurance she needed.
Now that help had arrived she was panicking. In fact, she thoroughly went to pieces in his arms, her sobs ragged and deep, his warrior of the healing arts finally reaching the limit of what could be tolerated.
‘It’s all right, sweetheart. Everything is all right now.’
And it was, he realised with a great thump of truth. His wife was in his arms and the world was still going around. That was all he needed. Just Adelaide and her bravery and strength. Just them. Together.
* * *
Much later they returned to Ravenshill Manor, Amethyst and Daniel electing to stay on at Colton House with their newly born son and a doctor who had been summoned by Lord Herbert.
Adelaide was exhausted. Gabriel had given her the choice of staying or making for home, but it seemed all she could think of was being somewhere safe, and the annex at the rear of the Manor was where she felt the most secure.
Gabriel dismissed the astonished Milly when they came into her room, telling her he wanted to help his wife himself.
And he did help her, rolling off her stockings and undressing her with an extreme tenderness, and then finding a cloth and ewer to dab at her hands and face.
Finally he placed her into bed, the clean sheets against her skin.
‘Please...come in with me...I am...fr-freezing.’
He hesitated momentarily, but then, stripping off his jacket and pants, he joined her. He left on the long linen shirt and held her close, pulling the blankets around her chin.
‘Thank God you were with Amethyst...’
But she simply stopped him with her own words.
‘No, Gabriel. Thank God I am with you.’
Then she fell promptly asleep.
An amazing statement when he considered her day, but here after cold and shock and in desperate tiredness he believed her.
He had never had someone true and good on his side before, not like this. Her ring glinted in the light of a single ten-hour candle, but when he laid his warm hand on top of hers it curled about his own, even in sleep.
Safe. She felt safe here at Ravenshill with him in the small annex at the back of the ruined manor. She had not wished to stay at Colton House with all its splendour and luxury, but had elected to return to the place she felt at home in.
His wife.
His saviour.
Usually at this time of night he was prowling the dark watches and the shadows, aware that sleep was very far away and waiting for the dawn.
But here at barely nine o’clock in the evening he was anchored to this bed and wrapped in the long limbs of Adelaide, tethered by something far more enduring than anger, sorrow and shame.
Shutting his eyes, Gabriel said a prayer. For them, for the baby that had been born, for the years he might have with his wife and for the joy that would follow.
And it was only as he fell into slumber Gabriel realised he had not asked God for the miracle of a healing for himself. In fact, he had forgotten about it altogether.
* * *
He came awake in the night, the warmth of Adelaide beside him, her hand across his stomach and her leg slung over his thighs. And in the quiet he reached down into her centre as a moth flies to flame, gentle and soft, her body writhing with the touch.
Up into warmth and wetness and the hidden depths of life, he turned her as she opened her thighs and took her across him, almost real, the bud of her arousal harnessed against his thumb as he quickened his rhythm.
He felt her come, the beaching waves of release, rigid and then loose and quiet. When he pressed in again straight afterwards she cried out, but he covered her mouth with his own and brought her to the flurry of a second climax, this one clenching hard over him and making her shake with the intensity of it.
Like birth, he thought.
Like the beginning.
Lifting his fingers to his mouth, he tasted her sweetness.
* * *
She was lost in love, shivering now with delight instead of fear as she reached all the places he wanted to show her and then held her whilst she recovered.
The candle burned low and the moon had waned, the dawn not far off, she thought, for already the eastern sky had lightened through the crack in the curtains. She cuddled in, her hand inadvertently touching the twisted skin at his thigh as she did so.
When he stiffened she knew why he had left his shirt on. He didn’t want her to see this or to know it. When his hand came down over hers though she simply pushed him away and continued to explore through touch. A burn, she surmised, for nothing else could have left a mark quite like this one. The fire in the chapel at Ravenshill.
‘Did it hurt?’
She felt him smile into her hair.
‘Yes.’
‘Who tended you?’
‘The Wesley physician.’
‘Did he use honey?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Lavender oil, then, or diluted vinegar?’
He shook his head. ‘He wrapped the leg in wet bandages and changed them frequently for a very long time.’
‘And is the pain still there?’
‘Sometimes.’
‘I will make you something for it, then, to relax the tightness. Is it on your stomach as well?’
She went to reach up further, but he stopped her by capturing her palm and bringing it to his lips where he kissed each finger.
‘Clever hands. Healing hands, hands that have brought a child who was not meant to have arrived so soon safely into this world. Daniel will never be able to thank you enough. I think he will be your servant for life.’
She giggled, imagining the lofty and austere Lord Montcliffe in such a role. ‘I would rather his friendship.
‘Well, I am sure that you will have that.’
She liked the laughter in his words and the way his fingers traced circles across the bare skin on her back.
‘Would you like to have children, Gabriel?’
All movement stopped and his breathing became shallow.
‘Our children, I mean,’ she added as he did not say anything. ‘An heir for the Wesley title and lands?’
She made herself carry on. ‘I do not know a lot about what happens between a man and a woman in bed, but I do imagine it is something like the farmyard and there has to be a contact between us that is...more intimate.’
He still did not an
swer though his heart raced hard in his chest. She could feel it through the linen.
‘If you would like to do this thing, I would be happy to do it with you.’
His swear word took her by surprise as he rolled away from their embrace and sat up on the bed. His profile against the new dawn looked wary and tired, a man fighting more demons than he might ever name.
‘Is it some illness that stops you?’
He stood at that and pulled down his shirt, reaching for the candle and blowing it out. The smoke curled into the grey light, a small puff of blackness and then gone.
Like her husband.
Without another word he had disappeared through the door frame and shut it behind him.
* * *
She did not see Gabriel until well into the next day when she spied him on horseback on one of the hills a good distance from the house. She knew him from the easy style he had of riding, fluid and graceful, and because the horse was the same one that he had ridden beside the carriage on the journey up from London.
Walking purposefully down to the stables, she thought to intercept him and indeed as she came down the pathway he was cantering in from the other direction, a groom coming to take the steed into the stables proper.
And leaving them to face each other.
‘You ride well.’ It was the only thing she could even think to say that did not include a question.
He smiled and hit his whip against his jodhpurs, a cloud of dust rising as he did so.
‘Practice makes perfect.’
She was at a loss as to how to reply. He had had a lot of practice in the bedroom and yet...
It was as though he could see what she was thinking. ‘We need to talk, Adelaide, but not here. If you could meet me in the blue salon in, say...an hour?’
He sounded so serious her heart began to beat quicker, a new dread coming from nowhere. Would he tell her that this marriage was a mistake or that he never wanted children? A hundred other possibilities crossed her mind, all fleeing as he stepped forward and placed one warm hand across hers.
‘It is my problem, Adelaide. Not yours.’ And with that he walked back into the stable to see about his horse.
* * *
He watched the clock on the wall slow in its minutes as it turned towards eleven. He had to be honest with her, he had to tell her who he was now, a man ruined from circumstance and foolishness, a broken man who should never have married her.
‘God, help me.’ The words echoed in the room and in his stomach, hollow and sick, scared and lonely. This was the truth of him. This man.
He swore again beneath his breath when he heard her coming, light footsteps on the parquet floor. Could he do it? Would he do it? How was one to sacrifice heaven for hell and barely a backward glance?
‘Thank you for coming.’ She was here now and he crossed to close the door behind her, standing against it for a moment in indecision, weighing up his strength.
‘You thought I would not?’ The nervously asked question helped somewhat as did the shake in her fingers as she wiped back a curl that had fallen across her cheek.
He wanted to step forward and hold her, make her understand all that he was inside even amongst the shattered fragments. But it was not fair to do so. He had to give her the facts to make her own decision about their marriage without coercion. Without feeling. Cold. Hard. Honest.
I am impotent.
Say it, his body chided, but his mind refused.
He hated the way he was breathing fast and the sickness was again back, sweeping over him so that he could barely take in air.
He sat down hard on the chair behind him and held his head spinning with the horror of everything. For one moment he thought he might even cry in front of her like a baby.
And then she was beside him, her hand across his brow and at his wrist, feeling for the signs of sickness, he thought, trying to determine what to do.
Fix me up. Make me better. Make me the man I once was with your potions and your kindness. Make me whole again.
These words turned in his mind. Foolish hopes that would never come to pass.
‘I might be able to help you, Gabriel, if you could only tell me what’s wrong.’
He shook his head. ‘No one can help me.’ He hated the self-pity he could hear in his words, but could not take them back.
And then because she had seen him at his very worst, a man with nothing left to lose save his final pride, he simply blurted it out.
‘I cannot make love any more because I am impotent. The accident took that part from me, the burns, the fire. I cannot father children. I cannot be a husband. I should have told you, of course I should have before you married me, but I wanted...’
He stopped and swallowed. ‘I love you, Adelaide, and I wanted you to love me back.’
* * *
Adelaide could not believe the words he said. Not the ones on impotency and the fire and burns, but the other ones; the ones of love and wanting.
‘I love you, too, Gabriel. With all my heart and soul. I loved you from the first moment of meeting you, the very first in the small arbour at the Bradford ball when you warned me about your reputation.’
Placing her hands on either side of his face, she knelt down beside him and looked into his eyes, a darker bruised gold today, though a flare of hope was there, too, amongst the anguish and disbelief.
‘The physical things you speak of are only one side of a union. What of trust and love and closeness? A marriage is about friendship and honesty and laughter. I have all of that with you. And more...’ She smiled. ‘When you take me to bed I cannot remember anything at all save the way you make me feel. If that is our life, then I am more than happy with it, though I should like to be able to pleasure you, too. You could teach me.’
He stood at that and brought her into his arms, the scent of soap and linen filling in the cold of the room. He had washed and shaved since she had seen him last, the hair at his nape still damp, spots of water darkening the loosely tied cravat he wore at his neck.
Beautiful. More beautiful than she had ever seen him with the edge of vulnerability staining his eyes and deepening the lines in his cheeks.
Not a boy but a man, honed by tragedy, seasoned by fire.
‘And the promise of children, Adelaide? What of this loss?’
‘We shall enjoy the offspring of your friends. Already there are two little Wyldes whom we can shower with our love. Your friends will have others.’
She felt him smile rather than saw it, felt him relax and meld into the shape of her, exhausted by his truths.
‘I don’t deserve you.’
‘Why?’
‘Because you did not know who I once was and that is unfair. All you have now is the wreck of me.’
‘And what of me, Gabriel? Did you know the girl who used to laugh more, enjoy life more? The one who was not scared of strangers and men and the midnight dark? That girl was lost, too, with Kenneth Davis’s attack, gone in a second, replaced by a new woman. But you know me as I am now, lessened, less trusting, more uncertain. I hope it is enough.’
‘Enough?’
‘Marriage is just that, don’t you think? Change and challenge and chance. The people we are now will be different from the ones we will be in ten years or twenty. Or fifty when we are old and grey and wrinkled. But will we love each other less because of life marking us, moulding us, strengthening us? Like steel in a forge, stronger in adversity and more tempered. Less breakable because of the hardships and of the joy.’
‘I love you, sweetheart. I love you so much that it hurts, here.’ He placed one of her hands across his heart and she could feel the thump of it, neither as fast as it had been, nor as heavy. She was glad for the fact even as sadness crouched close, for him and for her and for the things they wo
uld not have together, but also for all he had just given her. Love. Truth. Himself.
And then just like that his touch changed back into the magic, drawing a line down her neck and on to the flesh above her bodice in the way only he was able to.
‘You are so beautiful,’ he whispered, his lips grazing the place where his fingers had been, down and down on to the rise of her breast. She felt his tongue there, too, the dampness and the heat, and then a heavy suckling, hollowed and echoing. Sounds of her heartbeat and her breath and then his and an answering call somewhere lower. Take me, it cried, and make me yours. And he did then, with his hands and a swift sharpness that had her arching backwards, the heavy beat of blood and want coursing through her. Her fingers were now in his hair, pulling him in, making him hers.
‘I love you.’ Softly said and formless. He took her loving and stretched it around desire and appetite before changing it again to the white-hot heat of knowledge.
When he was finished and she simply stood there watching him, spent, he took her hand and laid it across his nipple.
‘Here,’ he instructed, ‘like this,’ he added, shepherding her fingers and pinching in a certain spot between forefinger and thumb.
She understood what he was doing. In the ashes of honesty a new phoenix was rising, a different one, a finer one. Together they could make this marriage the best it could be. She licked the tips of her fingers as he had done with her and set to work.
When the bud hardened she was pleased and when his breathing ran into quickness she was even more so.
And then she laid her mouth on his and found the taste of him with her tongue, slanting across wetness, taking the breath from them both, the power he allowed her now more exciting than anything she had ever known.
This was what it was like to truly love someone without reservation or embarrassment. Threading her fingers around his neck, she brought him down with her on to the thick burgundy rug.
‘I will never stop loving you, Gabriel. Ever.’
‘And I will make certain that you do not,’ he whispered back.
* * *
They barely left Gabriel’s bedchamber the next day and the one after that as they discovered things about each other by talking through the hours.