He barely noticed Piers signalling to a stablehand who had just appeared to take care of Jonathan’s horse.
He needed a fair amount of brandy to even begin to sort through the myriad thoughts running through his scrambled mind.
And he was in such turmoil right then he was surprised he could string a sentence together.
Not half an hour ago, he’d been wondering how he’d continue his life without her. Now, she was here. Alive, and here. Furious with him for some reason, but here.
And although it hurt his cheek greatly, Jonathan smiled. Really smiled. For the first time in three years.
GABRIELLE SAT AT the edge of her bed and concentrated on slowing her breathing.
Had she really just been kissed by Jonathan Spencer?
The man whom she’d been plotting to kill?
Gabby pressed her fingers against her temples as her confused thoughts threatened to overwhelm her.
She’d known that seeing him again would be intense. She hadn’t known that she would kiss the living daylights out of him and then punch him.
Oh, Lord. How would she do this?
How would she plan to kill him if she couldn’t be in the same room as he without wanting to throw herself into his arms?
And they were lovely arms. Still. Strong and big and just delicious.
Cursing her stupidity in English and French, Gabby flung herself onto her back and gazed unseeing at the canopy above the bed.
What she needed was to forget his kisses and all the things they did to her. Forget how things used to be. Forget that he was the only man she had ever loved and concentrate instead on what he’d done to her and what she needed to do to see justice served.
She just wished it didn’t hurt so much.
She just wished that her foolish heart didn’t still want him so badly.
Well, Gabby decided as she stood from the bed and shook out her skirts, she couldn’t very well stay up here forever.
It was time to face Jonathan again. It was time to start putting her plans for revenge into effect.
If only the thought of it could be a little less painful.
CHAPTER FIVE
“I JUST CAN’T believe it. I can’t believe she’s alive, Piers.”
Jonathan had been staring into his brandy glass for the past twenty minutes, hardly noticing when Piers filled the contents for him again and again. Only vaguely noticing when he downed the contents again and again.
If he kept this up, he’d be thoroughly foxed.
“What happened?” he asked now, his tone raspy with barely contained emotion.
Piers leaned forward in his chair, his elbows on his knees. “It’s not my story to tell, Jonathan.”
Jonathan bit back an oath and rose from his own seat to pace toward the fireplace. “Can you at least tell me why she appears to be so angry with me?”
“Jonathan—”
“I know. It’s not your story to tell. For God’s sake, Piers. Why didn’t you tell me she was here? Why didn’t you tell me she was alive?”
“Because I begged him not to.”
The sound of Gabrielle’s voice brought Jonathan’s head round so fast he was surprised it stayed attached to his neck. Damn, but she’d always been good at sneaking up on him. On anyone.
Her beauty had always taken his breath away, and nothing had changed in that regard.
He took his time studying her now, drinking in the image of her… real flesh and blood instead of the ghostly images that had haunted him these past years.
God, she was stunning. He just wanted to grab her and hold her and never let her go. But given the reaction he’d received earlier, he didn’t think it would be good for his face.
He didn’t know what to say. Years of the best schools and living amongst the ton hadn’t taught him how to address the woman he was going to marry, who should be dead, and who had been shot in front of him while he turned tail and ran.
Jonathan suddenly felt sick to him stomach.
Of course she’d hit him. He was surprised she hadn’t shot him on sight.
“I don’t know what to say, Gabby,” he admitted when the silence stretched on.
She didn’t react to his words. Just stood. Just stared.
Piers stepped forward, coming between where Jonathan stood at the fireplace and Gabrielle stood at the door, as though ready to bolt.
“I haven’t interfered,” he said softly to Gabrielle. “Although I begged you to tell him you were here, I respected your choice not to. And I respected your wishes to stay out of your plans. But, I’m asking you, talk to him please. Before you decide anything. Before you do anything. Just talk to him.”
Piers turned to him then and gave him a look he couldn’t decipher. It seemed as though he were afraid to leave them alone together. But that was madness. He would never hurt a hair on her head.
Unless…
Jonathan looked back at Gabrielle.
…unless Piers was worried that Gabby would hurt Jonathan.
It would be no more than he deserved, he knew. He deserved much, much worse. But why? He knew now that he had left her alive, and he couldn’t even begin to think about how he would live with that knowledge.
But surely she couldn’t think that he’d done so deliberately?
He had loved her with every single fibre of his being. It wasn’t possible for her to think such a thing.
“Piers, please leave us,” he said, his eyes never leaving hers.
“I don’t think that—“
“Piers,” Jonathan interrupted the other man’s objections. “Please.”
Piers looked between them again before nodding his head and slipping quietly from the room.
Gabby stepped forward to let him past her as he approached the doorway, and he bent slightly to whisper something in her ear before continuing out of the room and shutting the door behind him.
In the normal course of things, Gabrielle would have insisted the door be kept opened. It had always amused Jonathan greatly that she was a spy, a masterful dagger thrower, an incredible fighter, and a deadly shot, but still insisted on adhering to the strictures of polite society.
But nothing about this was normal, and they both knew it.
The sound of the door clicking shut echoed around the room.
Jonathan had been in some crazy, dangerous situations in his time and had handled them all with aplomb. But this was beyond the realms of his expertise. He didn’t enjoy feeling so much on a back footing.
“You’re angry with me,” he finally blurted.
She raised a brow but didn’t speak.
“Gabrielle, to say that I’m sorry — It wouldn’t even begin to explain how I feel. I’ll never forgive myself for leaving you there. Hell, I haven’t forgiven myself. But now that I realise you were alive—“
He cut off and ran a hand through his hair.
What could he say? How could he possibly make up for what he’d done?
“I know how you must feel—” he began, only to be silenced by her laugh of derision.
And then she spoke.
“You know how I must feel?” she repeated, her tone incredulous. “Really, Jon? You know how it feels to watch the people you’ve helped betray you? You know how it feels to be lying on a cold, wet street bleeding to death, and nobody cares? Nobody helps? You know how it feels to learn that the man you lo—”
She cut off, and Jonathan was horrified to see the tears streaming down her face.
“Gabby, I didn’t know,” he rasped, wanting to roar at the injustice of this whole thing. At what she’d suffered and what she thought he’d done to her. “If I had thought you were alive, I never would have let Andrew drag me away. Never.”
He walked toward her and grabbed her shoulders, shaking her slightly, willing her to believe him.
“In point of fact, I wouldn’t have allowed him to do it anyway if I’d been strong enough to bloody stop him.”
Her brow creased in confusion at his words,
but he didn’t stop. He needed to get this out. All of the things he’d whispered into the night, hoping that somehow, miraculously, she would hear him.
“I can’t imagine what you’ve suffered, Gabby,” he said more gently now.
She hadn’t moved, just allowed herself to be held, tears still falling from her eyes.
“I can’t even think of what it must have been like for you without feeling sick. To know that you were alive, lying there, bleeding.”
He dropped his hands and turned away from her, his anger and guilt threatening to overwhelm him.
“If you think I walked away whole and just as I was, then you are very much mistaken,” he admitted softly. “That night changed me. Destroyed me. I’m not the man I was. And I had no interest in being him. He belonged to you, completely and utterly, and with you gone, I wanted no part of him anymore.”
He turned back to her.
She had wrapped her arms around her middle as though trying to protect herself. She looked so vulnerable, and he hated that circumstances had done that to her. She’d always been fiercely strong. Unconquerable. And he’d contributed to her destruction.
“Now that you’re back, I feel like I don’t even know who I am anymore. But I do know one thing with absolute certainty. I would never, ever have left you behind by choice. And I will never forgive myself for doing so.”
The silence when he’d finished stretched yet again.
Still she didn’t move. Still she didn’t react.
He didn’t know what he expected, what he wanted. Even another facer would have been preferable to nothing at all.
What he didn’t expect, what he couldn’t have hoped for in his wildest dreams, was for her to suddenly fly at him and throw her arms around his neck.
She was real, he thought. Real and warm and in his arms.
As the shock of her actions wore off, and he wrapped his arms tightly around her, burying his face in her lavender-scented hair, Jonathan thought that maybe there was a chance that Gabby would forgive him, or at least listen to his apologies. Maybe.
AS GABBY FELT Jon’s arms around her, so familiar, so strong, she knew she was probably making a colossal mistake.
After all, for the past few years she’d been plotting his murder, and now, within the space of a couple of hours, she was flinging herself into his arms.
Perhaps she was losing her touch. Perhaps she was letting her long-dead heart rule her head. And perhaps she was making a fatal mistake.
But she believed him, as foolish as that seemed. At least, she thought she did.
Standing there, speaking as he had been, looking so tortured, so wracked with guilt, he hadn’t looked like a man who had intended to kill her.
In fact, even though he was still the most sinfully attractive man she’d ever seen, he looked like a shell of the man he’d been years ago. He looked tired, broken by some invisible weight on his shoulders, his eyes dead and empty.
They both needed to hear the other’s version of events to try to piece together what had happened that night.
If, after hearing what had happened to him, she still believed him, then she might consider trusting him with her plans for revenge. Might even allow him to help.
God knew she needed all the help she could get.
Piers was wonderful and had supplied her with a safe haven in which to get well again.
But he was old and retired, and she couldn’t ask him to risk himself for her. Not more than he had.
But Jonathan Spencer had the brightest mind she knew; he was also hugely skilled and seemed to still be trustworthy.
Gabrielle’s head spun with the implication of her thoughts.
Could it really be that after three years of feeling utterly crushed and devastated, angry and betrayed, she had been mistaken? Could it really be that Jonathan was the man she had always thought he was? Kind and just and loyal?
And if that were the case, then what did that mean for them? Could they go back to how things used to be? Would they even want to?
As Gabby’s thoughts became confused, she pulled back slightly to look into the intense amber of Jonathan’s eyes. The eyes that had always held her captive. Some things never changed.
“I thought you had betrayed me,” she whispered, needing to say the words, needing to see his reaction.
His face blanched and paled, and he lifted his hands to cup her cheeks.
“Never,” he said fiercely. “I would never betray you. I loved you, Gabrielle. I still—”
“Don’t,” she interrupted him. So much had happened that day. Things she had believed for years were suddenly untrue, or so he would have her think. She couldn’t deal with her conflicted emotions and his on top of everything else.
He looked about to argue, but he must have seen the panic, the chaos in her eyes, for he sighed and released her, taking a step back.
“As you wish,” he said quietly. “But I know how I feel about you, Gabby.”
His words, instead of making her feel elated, just saddened her. How could he say he loved her still? She wasn’t the girl she had been then. She didn’t even know who she was anymore.
“You don’t know me, Jonathan,” she said. “Not anymore.”
Once again, that awful, screaming silence fell between them.
Gabby thought that maybe too much had happened for them to ever be easy together again.
However, Jonathan’s sudden grin, so like that smile of old, suddenly lit up the room.
“Well,” he said, his tone suddenly charming and persuasive and very, very dangerous, “The solution is to get to know each other all over again. And I, for one, am looking forward to it.”
CHAPTER SIX
THE WAY JONATHAN saw it, he and Gabby could either keep going round in these circles of apologies and regrets and dwelling on the things that had torn them apart, or they could try their hardest to find a way forward.
They could try to find a way back to each other, while at the same time figuring out what the hell had pulled them apart the first time.
And, he thought fiercely, when he figured out who or what it was, he would destroy them.
There was a part of him that was hurt that she would think him capable of such things. Then, of course, he would think of what she suffered and feel like the biggest heel in the world for worrying about his own feelings when she had suffered so much.
His gut clenched as he remembered her limp, lifeless body.
But then, it hadn’t been lifeless, had it?
They definitely needed to talk.
“Would you like to sit down?” he asked, hating the feeling of them being strangers but unsure of how to bridge the gap between them. “Should I ring for tea?”
Dear God. Ring for tea? Never had he sounded so much like a simpering, silly miss in his life.
Gabby obviously thought so, too for she raised a brow before laughing softly.
“Ring for tea?” she repeated, and Jonathan felt himself grow more embarrassed by the second.
If he actually blushed, that would be it. He would very likely die from the humiliation.
“Hell, Gabby, I don’t know what to offer you,” he admitted.
“Well, you’ve never offered me tea, Jon,” she responded quickly.
“No, but I don’t think you’d be willing to take what I really want to offer you,” he said, delighted in her soft blush.
Suddenly, he felt much more himself. He’d always loved her reactions to his teasing.
“What about a real drink?” he offered, moving toward the bottle of brandy on display in the corner.
“Yes, I think a real drink is very much needed,” she responded and finally took a seat.
Not, he noted, on the chaise he had indicated, but on the chair facing it.
That was probably for the best. If he sat next to her, caught that intoxicating, floral scent that was hers alone, felt her body even brush momentarily against his, that kiss in the garden would seem tame to what he’d do.
She murmured her thanks as he took his seat opposite her.
And once again… silence.
The ticking of the ormolu clock on the mantle echoed round the room as they both sipped their drinks, and he tried to read her mind.
Actually, she sipped. He gulped.
“What happened to you?” he suddenly blurted.
But she had spoken at the same time.
“Why did this happen?”
Her question, asked in a pain-filled whisper, was like a dagger to the heart.
Leaving his glass on the side table by the chaise, he came to his knees in front of her, grasping her hand in his own.
“I don’t know, Gabrielle. But I swear to you, I will find out.”
She nodded her understanding, but he could see that she doubted him. And why wouldn’t she? After he’d professed to love her, he’d left her.
But there were things she didn’t know. Like the fact that the only reason he hadn’t stayed with her, even thinking she was alive, was that he himself had been shot and was physically dragged away.
She didn’t know that he’d spent the last three years in his own personal hell, and nothing — nobody — had been able to release him from it.
She didn’t know that he’d woken in the night reaching for her or that no woman had ever come close to holding a candle to her.
And she needed to know all of these things. Just like he needed to know her version of events so they could figure out what to do. And so that he could figure out how to win back her trust and her love.
A soft bang came from outside, no doubt one of the household staff going about his or her business, and they both looked up on alert, then grinned ruefully at each other. Neither had lost their instincts, it seemed.
“Perhaps we should discuss this somewhere more private,” he said quietly, his thumb making small, soft circles on the back of her hand. God, he’d missed this hand. Missed every single part of her.
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