Gabriel felt, rather than saw, Miss Clare sway beside him, and he turned just in time to slide an arm around her. Some part of his brain made the unexpected—and unwanted—observation that she felt soft and womanly beneath her ugly, prim gown.
“Steady on, Miss Clare,” he said to the top of her head, holding her shaking body against his.
She muttered something into his shoulder.
He turned slightly and slid his other arm around her waist; he told himself it was only to hold her upright “What was that?”
“You might have killed him.”
He gave a humorless chuckle. “Hardly. Please, hold on to me if you fear you might faint, Miss Clare.”
She turned until she faced him, gazing up at him through huge pupils, her hands resting lightly on his shoulders. “I’m so sorry, I was foolish. I—I shouldn’t have been here.”
Gabriel agreed, but there seemed no point in saying so. “Where is my sister? She told me she was coming back here.”
“I don’t know.” She sounded much better, much calmer, and much more herself. Gabriel watched in fascination as her cool, competent expression put itself together right before his eyes.
“Can you stand unassisted?”
“Yes, I—” She stopped, cocking her head. “What was that?
It took Gabriel a moment to understand what she meant. It was like the susurration of waves on a beach. But some primitive part of his brain must have known even before he spun around: It was the sound of people whispering. Lots of people.
He shoved Miss Clare behind him and stepped between her and the small crowd that had assembled in the doorway, but he knew it was too little, too late: Everyone would have seen them with their arms around each other. At least a dozen heads bobbed in the entrance, men and women, their eyes darting from Visel to Miss Clare to Gabriel.
Nobody spoke.
He glanced down. Visel was scooting sideways like a crab fleeing an incoming wave, the slick heels of his dancing shoes skittering as he tried to gain a foothold on the smooth floor. The man was having entirely too much difficulty controlling his person, and Gabriel realized he was drunk—very drunk.
“Dammit!”Visel swore, pushing back against the glass and scrambling awkwardly to his feet, his breathing an audible soughing in the near silence of the conservatory. His heavy-lidded eyes slid from Gabriel to Miss Clare, his brows pulling together over his nose until they resembled a solid blond hedge. He opened his mouth, but another voice interrupted whatever he was going to say.
“Dru? Gabe?” Eva was pushing through the bodies blocking the doorway as if they were a bothersome thicket of weeds. “What is going on?” She sped toward them in her heedless, headlong way, her blue-violet eyes round with shock as she stared at the swaying form of the earl. “What have you done?”
Visel’s too-pretty face screwed into an ugly sneer. “Well, if it isn’t Mad Mary herself—come to rescue the barbarian bastard and the shopgirl, have you?” He laughed. “I think you’re too late for that, sweetheart.”
Gabriel’s body moved toward the other man before his brain knew what he was doing. But this time Visel was expecting him and met him head-on.
“You are drunk,” Gabriel grated between clenched jaws as they grappled with each other, well matched in size and strength if not in sobriety.
Visel’s choked laughter filled the conservatory. “I might be, but I’d say the same things sober, Marlington. What are you going to do about it?”
Before Gabriel could answer, Visel twisted one arm out of his grasp and swung wildly. His fist clipped Gabriel’s jaw hard enough to send a cascade of stars across his vision, and he lost his grip on Visel’s other arm. He lunged toward him just as several hands landed on his shoulders.
Gabriel ignored the frantic voices behind him and the violent handling, his eyes locked with Visel’s. The earl straightened up and pushed his sweat-damp blond hair from his forehead, his eyes narrowed to slits.
At least four sets of arms tightened around Gabriel’s arms and shoulders and held him steady.
Visel walked up to him, close enough that the hot, sweet stench of alcohol made Gabriel flinch. Close enough that he could see the almost mad glint in the other man’s eyes. “You assaulted me, Marlington; I demand that you meet me for this.”
“No!” Eva and Lady Drusilla yelled in tandem.
The men ignored them.
“Let him go,”Visel snapped at Gabriel’s captors.
The hands fell away, and Gabriel heard the shuffle of feet as they quickly moved out of range.
Gabriel took a card from his coat pocket. “Here is my direction. Viscount Byer and I share the house. He will receive your man.” He flicked the small rectangle at the earl, and Visel flapped clumsily to catch it.
He stared across at Gabriel with a hatred that should have left him scorched to a cinder, a fanatical expression of glee on his face. “Finally,” he said, and then shouldered past Gabriel and strode toward the exit.
Finally? What the devil did finally mean?
“Noooooo!” Eva’s anguished cry snapped Gabriel out of his daze. Luckily, Drusilla had her arms wrapped around the much smaller woman or she would have attacked Lord Visel.
Visel cut Eva an unpleasant smile but didn’t pause. The crowd parted to let him through and then dispersed more quickly than rats exposed to daylight. No doubt they were sprinting back to the crowded ballroom to spread the word. Gabriel needed to get his sister and Miss Clare out of here.
“Where the devil is your aunt?” he asked Miss Clare.
Eva answered. “I just spoke to Mrs. Peel,” she said, her eyes wide, shocked—frightened. “She is quite ill, but I think she—”
“She is very ill.” Miss Clare’s cool, quiet voice cut through his sister’s words like a blade. “She takes a potion to fight most of the pain, but it can become quite bad at times.”
Gabriel threw up his hands. “Then why is she here, at a ball, engaged in such frippery? If my mother had known, she would have engaged somebody for you both.”
Miss Clare pursed her lips. “She is here because it is her wish, Mr. Marlington. We are all the family we both have, and she does not want me to be alone.” She swallowed hard. “Although now I can see I might have made a terrible mistake giving in to her.” This last part was spoken more to herself. She looked up. “I thought Eva and I were perfectly able to care for ourselves.”
Gabriel snorted, even though he knew recriminations were not helpful. “Yet here you were. Alone. And you, Eva? Why were you not here with Miss Clare? You left me almost a quarter of an hour ago.” He flicked Eva a scalding glance.
“I’m sorry, Gabe. It’s not Dru’s fault.” Eva reached out and took his arm, and it was all he could do not to snatch it away. “I’d just left Mrs. Peel, who wanted me to fetch a—”
“We don’t have time right now. Word of this will reach your father’s ears before we set foot in the door.” He glanced at Miss Clare. “I’ll take you back to your house on the way.”
“She’s staying with me tonight, Gabriel—at Exley House.”
Gabriel squeezed his eyes shut and muttered every vile curse he knew. She was under the marquess’s roof? That meant she was his lordship’s responsibility—or Gabriel’s, by extension. His stepfather and mother would strip the hide off his back, and they had every right to do so.
The door to the conservatory opened, and Mrs. Peel entered with two other women. She raised a narrow, pale, shaking hand to her mouth when she saw her niece. Gabriel thought she might collapse then and there.
The other women, however, were alert and watchful, like avid, sniffing bloodhounds scenting a kill.
“Come,” Gabriel said to the girls, ushering them toward the entrance. “Let’s get you out of here while we can.”
Chapter 4
“The French have a phrase for what I am experiencing right now, Gabriel.”
Gabriel heaved a sigh. “Would that be déjà vu, sir?”
The Marques
s of Exley was, indeed, looking remarkably similar to the last time Gabriel had seen him in this room, a little over two months earlier—when his stepfather had asked him to escort Eva and her friend about during the Season. But there was one important difference: this time they were not alone.
“Tsss!” Lady Exley hissed.
The sound sent a flicker of amusement across the marquess’s usually emotionless face. “Perhaps you might be more articulate, my dear?”
Gabriel’s mother ignored her husband, instead gazing up at Gabriel in a way that made him feel as if he were seven years old. And then she made it worse. She reached up and cupped his face in both hands. His mother was an exceptionally small woman and had to stand on her tiptoes.
“Oh, Jibril, how did this happen?” She asked the question in Berber, the language of his father’s people, which just went to show how upset she was. They’d not spoken Berber since their days in Oran.
“The same way this kind of thing always happens, Mother.” Gabriel answered in English, not wishing to have to repeat the entire conversation a second time for the benefit of his stepfather.
She released him and spun on her heel, marching to her husband, acres of emerald silk dressing gown billowing behind her like the wake from a very small ship.
“You must do something, Adam—say something to Visel’s family. Is he not the Duke of Tyndale’s heir?” She stopped beside the marquess’s chair and rubbed her hip against his hand, which lay on the upholstered arm.
Gabriel quickly looked away from their point of contact. His mother was an expert when it came to manipulating the seemingly unmanipulable Marquess of Exley, and no weapon was beneath her—especially not her body.
The marquess took his wife’s hand and raised it to his mouth, the lingering kiss causing Gabriel’s mother to sway closer.
Good. God.
Gabriel cleared his throat, and they both turned his way, their pupils huge, as if he’d interrupted them in some kind of drug-induced pre-rutting daze.
The marquess was the first to recover his wits. “You’d better sit, darling. Over there.” He pointed to another chair when it appeared his wife might crawl into his lap.
Gabriel’s ears became hot at the marquess’s endearment. But at least his mother sat. Exley turned to him again, his face no longer indulgent but hard and dangerous. “What happened?”
“I didn’t instigate this duel, my lord. Visel did when he molested a defenseless woman and then challenged me.” Gabriel hesitated, considering his next words. “He’s been goading me for months—almost as if he is obsessed with me.” He felt like a fool for saying that, but it didn’t make it any less true. “I have no idea why, but I have the feeling we would have met each other one way or another.”
The marquess’s eyelids dropped to half-mast. “I see.”
Lady Exley shook her head. “But, my love—”
Exley directed a deceptively mild look at Gabriel’s mother, but it was enough. She sucked in a breath and bit her lower lip. The only other person who’d been able to silence her so quickly was Gabriel’s father, the sultan. But everyone had obeyed his father, and for obvious reasons: Sultan Hassan had exercised complete and uncompromising authority over all his subjects.
Gabriel wondered what threat the marquess held over his wife? Knowing the two of them, it was probably something physical and revolting. Gabriel hastily put all thoughts of his mother and her husband and their private business from his mind.
The marquess studied him as if he were an insect on a pin. And not a prepossessing one, either. “You could have done nothing less tonight,” he said after an uncomfortable pause.
Gabriel began to smile.
“At least not once your sister and Miss Clare had been allowed to wander from the ballroom, unaccompanied.”
Gabriel’s smile died before it could reach full maturity; his stepfather was correct. If he’d been paying attention, he would have accompanied them or at least located their chaperone. He certainly should have gone searching for them far earlier.
“It is my fault, Adam,” his mother said. “I noticed Mrs. Peel looking unwell the last few times I saw her, but Cousin Rebecca needed to go to my aunt’s and could not chaperone the girls, and I, of course—” She waved a hand over her bulging midriff.
“Blame does not matter now, Mother.”
She smiled at Gabriel but the expression was sad and strained. “You are correct, Jibril. It does not matter.” His mother was the only person who still used the Arab form of Gabriel, and the sound of his once-familiar name left an ache in his chest.
Lord Exley cleared his throat. “I understand the rumor is that you were meeting Miss Clare, and Visel interrupted you?”
Gabriel had to laugh; the ton was bloody amazing. Even before they’d made it to the foyer at Abingdon House, Gabriel had heard the rumors flying.
“While we know that is not the truth, it does not signify—the truth never matters.” The marquess’s wry tone reminded Gabriel that Lord Exley knew about the power of rumors from personal experience. “You understand what must be done, Gabriel?”
Gabriel’s mother took one of his hands before he could answer. “I know your heart was elsewhere, but when something like this happens, you must do the correct thing.”
He smiled down at her and squeezed her hand, not in the mood to disabuse her of the belief that he’d fallen in love with the Kitten, and then turned back to the marquess. “Yes, I understand what has to be done.”
“You’ll make your offer kindly, my son?” Lady Exley asked, gripping his hand.
“I shall be as kind as I am able.”
Gabriel didn’t bother mentioning that he somehow doubted Miss Clare would receive his offer well, no matter how kindly he put it.
* * *
Drusilla stared out the window, even though there was nothing to see other than the winking of streetlamps and the occasional carriage.
“It’s all my fault,” Eva said for at least the fiftieth time.
Drusilla had stopped arguing an hour ago.
“What if he dies?” Eva wailed.
Drusilla turned to her friend. “Eva, come sit by me. Please?” she added when the other woman did not cease her relentless pacing.
Eva slumped down beside her, her hands twisting and twisting the royal blue silk of her dressing gown. Just looking at her friend was enough to rob Drusilla of breath. She was achingly gorgeous and yet utterly unaware—or uncaring—of her beauty.
Drusilla put an arm around her and drew her close, resting her cheek on her soft almost-black hair. Something about Eva de Courtney brought out the mothering instinct in her—even though they were close in age. Eva had a family who obviously loved her, but she always seemed so . . . waifish, so alone. It was ironic that Drusilla, the one with only one aunt, was the more secure of the two.
“What if he dies, Dru?”
Drusilla squeezed her harder. “Your brother was a warrior before he turned seventeen, Eva.”
“Yes, but Lord Visel was a soldier for years and has only returned from the War recently. We don’t know what kind of man he is.” She paused. “Well, other than an atrocious libertine And the Duke of Tyndale’s new heir.”
Drusilla absently stroked Eva’s hair as she considered the new earl, a relative newcomer to London society. Godric Fleming, the current Earl Visel, was often intoxicated, madly reckless, and exceptionally mysterious.
He’d surfaced when the Duke of Tyndale’s son died last November in a freak carriage accident. All of London had been curious to meet the duke’s new heir, his eldest grandson, a man who’d been away at war for over a decade.
“We don’t even know if it will be pistols or swords,” Eva said. She grabbed Dru’s hand and squeezed hard enough to make her wince. “Oh God, Dru. What if Gabe is so angry he chooses pistols? What if Visel is a crack shot? What if Gabe kills Visel and has to leave England? What if—”
Drusilla gave Eva’s shoulders a gentle squeeze. “Stop borrowing tro
uble, Eva. We don’t know anything yet. It’s possible one of them will apologize and—”
“Never! And what did Gabe do that he needs to apologize?” she demanded, not waiting for Drusilla to answer. “And Visel? He challenged my brother—he would hardly apologize for that. Besides, I think this is exactly what Visel wanted. I think he’s been trying to goad Gabe into a fight since they met. You know what I mean, Dru—you’ve seen it yourself. He’s been needling Gabe since he first saw him two months ago.”
Drusilla had noticed Visel’s behavior but had chalked it up to yet another oddity of male aggression. After all, the recently arrived rake was not the only man who appeared to enjoy digging at Gabriel Marlington. Men seemed to dislike him as much as women found him captivating.
Eva shook her head. “I don’t understand it.”
“Understand what?” Drusilla asked.
“Why Visel hates him so much.”
“Because he is different, I suppose. That is how some people are, Eva. They’re afraid of people who are different, and they hate that fear in themselves—especially men.” She gave Eva’s hand a reassuring pat. “Your brother was a warrior, Eva. If Visel is fortunate, then his pride is the only thing that will suffer in such a confrontation.” Drusilla ignored the fact that Visel had been a warrior, too. “Worrying about men and what they will or will not do is as useful as grasping at shadows. They’ll do what they want, whether we women dislike it or disapprove it.” She could have added that both men in question were even more unpredictable than average.
Eva sniffed and gave a watery chuckle. “You are right, of course. Gabe will thrash him.” She sat up and met Dru’s eyes, her own red-rimmed from crying, which made Drusilla feel like even more of a beast since she had not shed so much as a tear for the man who’d come to her rescue. She couldn’t help herself—she felt far more angry and guilty than grateful. Because all she could think about was the fact that she’d not only met her fate in that conservatory, but she’d condemned Gabriel Marlington along with her.
Eva was too impetuous to have realized what tonight meant, and Drusilla did not want to be the one to tell her. She’d wait until the summons came.Who knew, perhaps there would be a miracle intervention and she’d be saved.
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