Gabriel felt the sharp stab of guilt. She had probably been crying all morning.
"Phoebe?" he said gently.
"Yes, my lord?" She did not look up from the book in her lap.
"I came to see what you were doing."
"I am reading." She still did not look up. She seemed totally consumed by whatever it was she was studying.
"I see." Gabriel closed the door and walked forward. He came to a halt near the fireplace and stood gazing down at her bent head. He realized he did not know what to say next. He sought desperately for the right words. "About last night … "
"Hmm?"
Her obvious lack of interest in the subject left him floundering again for words. He took a deep breath. "I apologize if it was less than you might have wished for in a wedding night,"
"You must not blame yourself, my lord,' she said, head still bent over the book. I am certain you did your best."
Her condescending tone took him back slightly. "Yes. Well, that is true. Phoebe, we are husband and wife now. It's important that there be complete honesty between us."
"I understand." Phoebe turned the page in her book. "I had not planned to complain, mind you, because you really did try very hard to make the experience a pleasant one. But since you believe so keenly in honesty, I am willing to be blunt."
He frowned. "You are?"
"Of course. To be perfectly frank, my lord, it was all something of a disappointment."
"Yes, I know, my dear, but that is only because you had some highly unrealistic notions about married life."
"I suppose so." Phoebe turned another page and studied an illustration. "But that was partly your fault. After what happened that night in Brantley's maze, I'm afraid I assumed I would experience the same interesting sensations when we actually engaged in the marital act. I had quite looked forward to it and no doubt my expectations were far too high."
Gabriel felt himself turn a dull red as it struck him that she was talking about his lovemaking, not the conversation which had followed. "Phoebe, for God's sake, I'm not discussing that."
"Weren't you, my lord?" She looked up at last, her gaze politely quizzical. "I'm sorry. What were you discussing?"
He wanted to shake her. "I'm talking about the conversation we had after you found The Lady in the Tower."
"Oh, that."
"Yes, that. Damnation, woman, as far as the love-making is concerned, you need have no fears on that account. I told you it would improve mightily for you the next time."
Phoebe pursed her lips in a considering fashion. "Perhaps."
"There is no perhaps about it."
"Then again, perhaps not."
Gabriel narrowed his eyes. "Perhaps I should take you straight upstairs to your bedchamber and demonstrate."
"No, thank you."
"Why not?" Gabriel's hand clenched around the edge of the mantel. It was either that or he would find himself wrapping his fingers around her throat. "Because it's the middle of the afternoon? Don't tell me my reckless Veiled Lady has suddenly turned prim and proper. Have I married a little prig?"
"It's not that." She returned her attention to her book. "It's simply that I do not believe the experience will improve until I can be certain that you truly love me. I have therefore decided there will be no more such incidents until you have learned to do so."
His fingers were clamped so fiercely around the mantel that it was a miracle he had not cracked the marble. He stared at her angelically bent head. "You little devil. So that is your game, is it?"
"I assure you I am not playing any games, my lord."
"You think you can continue to manage me the way you did before our marriage? I am no longer your personal knight-errant, madam. I am your husband."
"I have come to the conclusion that knights-errant are a great deal more fun than husbands."
He must not lose his temper, Gabriel told himself. He must not let his self-control slip. If he was to gain the upper hand in this domestic skirmish, he was going to have to stay cool under fire.
"You may be right, madam," Gabriel said evenly. "I have no doubt that a headstrong, willful female such as yourself would find an obedient knight-errant vastly more amusing than a husband. But it is a husband you have got now."
"I would prefer to keep the relationship in name only."
"Hell and damnation. Have you gone mad? There is absolutely no possibility of that. I will not allow you to manipulate me in such a fashion."
"I am not trying to manipulate you." Phoebe finally looked up from her book. "But I am determined that you learn to love me before you make love to me again."
"You do realize men have beaten their wives for less cause than this?" Gabriel asked very politely.
"We have already been through this, Gabriel. You will not beat me."
"There are other ways of exercising my husbandly rights. I found a means last night, did I not?"
She sighed. "1 was under a misapprehension last night. When you took that terrible risk of climbing down from the roof, I thought you were proving your love for me. In future I will not be so easily fooled. You need not bother to risk your neck again in that fashion."
"I see." Gabriel inclined his head with icy civility. Two could play at this game, he decided. "Very well, then, madam. You have made your position clear. You may be certain I will not force myself on you."
She looked surprised. "I did not think you would."
He took a grip on his temper. "When you are ready to resume your duties as a wife, be so good as to let me know. In the meantime, rest assured you will receive every courtesy as a guest here at Devil's Mist." Me started toward the door.
"Gabriel, wait, I did not mean to say I considered myself a guest in your home."
He paused briefly, careful to hide his satisfaction. "I beg your pardon? 1 thought that was the sort of relationship you wished."
"No, of course it isn't." She scowled in consternation. "I want us to get to know each other better. I feel certain you can learn to love if you will only give yourself a chance. 1 mean for us to live as man and wife in all other respects save in the bedchamber. Is that too much to ask?"
"Yes, Phoebe, it is. As I said, let me know when you are ready to be a wife. In the meantime I shall consider you a guest."
Gabriel went out into the hall without a backward glance and stalked through the rows of armor suits to the staircase. He was going to get some writing done this afternoon if it killed him. He was determined that the day would not be a total loss.
Three days later Phoebe retreated again to Gabriel's magnificent library and curled up in her favorite chair.
She gazed out a window and acknowledged that she was in serious danger of losing the grimly polite war that was going on between Gabriel and herself. Indeed, she did not know how much more she could stand of it. Gabriel's will was proving more than a match for her own.
Perhaps she had been doomed to lose from the beginning simply because she was more vulnerable than he. After all, she loved him with all her heart and he knew it. The knowledge definitely gave him the advantage, she realized glumly. Gabriel was clever enough to reason that if he simply waited, her defenses would collapse.
The worst of it was that as far as Phoebe could tell, she was not making any headway at all in teaching Gabriel to love her.
It was not that he was ignoring her, she reflected. It was that he insisted on treating her with an awful politeness that almost brought her to the point of tears. He no longer argued with her or lectured her or complained about her lack of wifely obedience.
He was treating her as a guest, just as he had said he would, and it was enough to make Phoebe grind her teeth in frustration.
Yesterday, in search of common ground, she had attempted to discuss a volume she had discovered in his magnificent library. She had brought the matter up at dinner.
"It is an absolutely magnificent copy of Malory's Morte d'Artfiur," she remarked as she nibbled at her boiled rabbit smothered in onio
n sauce.
"Thank you," Gabriel said. He forked up a bite of boiled potato.
Phoebe tried again. "I recall that on the night we visited Mr. Nash you asked him if he had a specific copy of Malory's book. One that had an inscription on the flyleaf. Why would you want that particular book when you have such a fine copy of your own?"
"The copy I asked Nash about was the one my father gave me when I was ten," Gabriel said. "When I left England I was forced to sell it."
Phoebe was stricken. "You had to sell a book your father had given you?"
Gabriel looked at her, his eyes cold. "I was obliged to sell all the books I had inherited from him as well as the entire contents of my own library. I needed the money to finance my trip to the South Seas and to set myself up in business there."
"I see."
"A man who intends to survive cannot afford to be overly sentimental."
"How terrible for you to have to sell off the things that meant the most to you."
Gabriel had shrugged. "It was all part of the lesson I learned at the time. The bullet your brother lodged in my shoulder and the manner in which your father crushed my investment ventures concluded my instruction. I have never again allowed my emotions to rule my head."
Phoebe sighed as she recalled the conversation, 'leaching Gabriel to love was going to be a more formidable task than she had first imagined. She stared out the library window into the gray mist and wondered if there was any hope at all of convincing Gabriel to trust his emotions again.
After a moment she got up and went to sit behind Gabriel's desk. It was time she sent a note off to Mr. Lacey. He would no doubt be wondering what had happened to her. Left to his own devices, Lacey would quickly drive the flourishing little publishing business back into oblivion. The man was interested only in gin and the craft of running his beloved printing press.
Lacey could be difficult at times, but Phoebe had known the instant she met him that he was the perfect business partner for her. In exchange for her financial support and editorial expertise he was content to keep silent about their association. There were other printers and publishers she could have approached when she decided to go into business for herself. Most had far greater literary pretensions than Lacey did. But Phoebe was afraid that most of them would not have been able to resist the urge to gossip. Being in business with the youngest daughter of the Earl of Clarington was simply too choice a tidbit for most people to conceal. Lacey, on the other hand, hated to waste his precious time talking, let alone gossiping.
A knock on the door interrupted her reverie. She closed a desk drawer and looked up to see a maid whom she did not recognize. A new member of the staff, Phoebe supposed. The woman was surprisingly pretty with her blond hair and lush figure, but she looked rather old to still be a housemaid.
"Who are you?" Phoebe asked curiously.
The maid blinked as if she had not expected such a question. "I'm Alice, ma'am. I've been sent with a message."
"What is the message, Alice?"
"His lordship would like to show ye an interestin' part of the castle, ma'am. He says he'll meet you down in the catacombs. I'm to show ye the way."
"Wylde has sent for me?" Phoebe leaped to her feet. "I'll come at once."
"This way, ma'am. We'll need candles. It's very dark down there. And filthy dirty, too. Would ye like to change yer clothes first?"
"No," Phoebe said hastily. "I do not wish to keep his lordship waiting."
Gabriel had sent for her. Phoebe was overjoyed. He was going to show her the mysterious passages below the castle. In his own awkward way he was attempting to break down the icy wall that he had erected between them.
Alice led the way down a dark stone staircase at the rear of the huge hall. At the bottom of the dusty steps she removed a key from a hook on the wall and unlocked a heavy timbered door.
A dank, musty odor wafted upward from the darkness. Phoebe sneezed. She plucked a handkerchief from her pocket.
"Good grief," Phoebe muttered as she blew her nose. "When was the last time these passages were cleaned?"
Alice struck a match and lit the candles she and Phoebe held. The weak light flickered on the gray stone walls. "His lordship said there weren't no point in cleaning the catacombs."
"Well, I suppose he's right about that." Phoebe stuffed her handkerchief back into her pocket and looked eagerly around. "My goodness, how fascinating."
They were standing in a narrow, windowless tunnel that appeared to run the length of the castle. In the frail, wavering light Phoebe could see dark openings in the tunnel walls that marked doorways and passages. The air was fetid and motionless with an underlying tang from the sea.
"They says in the kitchens that in the old days the lord of the castle used some of these rooms as dungeons." Alice started forward, moving warily down the subterranean passage. She looked nervous as she led Phoebe past a yawning black opening. "They says if ye go into some of these horrid little cells, ye can still find the bones of some of the poor wretches who was chained down here."
Phoebe shivered and shielded her candle with her palm. This was more atmosphere than she had envisioned. "Where is his lordship planning to meet us?"
"He said to bring ye to the end of this passageway and he'd show ye the rest. I don't mind tellin' ye that I'll be glad to get back upstairs."
"This is amazing." Phoebe raised her candle to peer into one of the dark passages that led away from the main tunnel. A handful of what appeared to be ivory-colored sticks gleamed in the shadows of a small cell. She swallowed heavily and told herself they could not possibly be bones. "Just think of the history that this castle has witnessed."
"Beggin' yer pardon, ma'am, but I don't think that history, whatever it was, would make pleasant listenin'. Here we are."
Phoebe gazed ahead into the shadows and saw nothing except more of the stone passage. She thought she could hear the distant roar of the sea reverberating through the stone. "Where is Wylde?"
"I don't rightly know, ma'am." Alice stared at her with a strange expression in her eyes. She retreated a step. The candle in her hand flickered ominously. "He said to bring ye to this spot and he would meet us. I've done as I was told, I have. I want to go back upstairs now."
"Run along, then," Phoebe said, impatient to get on with the adventure. "I can wait for his lordship by myself." She stepped forward into the darkness, holding the candle aloft. "Wylde? Are you here, my lord?"
The sudden and terrible shriek of metal on stone behind her caused Phoebe to nearly drop the candle. The shriek was followed by a clanging thud. A scream formed on Phoebe's lips as she whirled around.
She saw to her horror that a solid iron gate now-barred the passageway from floor to ceiling. She was trapped on the far side.
Phoebe realized the gate must have been hidden in the wall. Something had triggered the mechanism that activated it. She ran forward and pounded on the thick metal wall.
"Alice. Alice, can you hear me?"
There was no answer. Phoebe thought she heard the faint sound of fleeing footsteps in the distance, but she could not be certain.
She took a calming breath. Alice had no doubt gone for help. Phoebe studied the stone walls, looking for some evidence of a concealed mechanism that might open the gate. She saw nothing.
She took a few more steps into the darkness of the stone passage. The distant roar of the sea was louder now.
"Wylde? Are you here? If you are, kindly answer me at once. Do not tease me, sir. I know I have offended you, but I swear I do not deserve to be tormented like this."
Her voice echoed down the stone passage. There was no response. Phoebe looked back at the iron gate. Surely it would not take Alice long to get help.
Fifteen minutes later there was still no sign of rescue. Phoebe glanced down at her candle and saw that it was burning quickly. When it went out, she would be in pitch darkness.
It occurred to her that there was only one thing she could do to help herself. She must e
xplore the remainder of the passage in hopes of finding an exit. Surely this long tunnel had been constructed with some other door than the one that led up into the main part of the castle.
Phoebe nervously started down the corridor. There were no more doorways cut into the stone walls. That seemed odd.
Aware that the candle was burning precariously low, she quickened her pace. The smell of the sea was stronger and it seemed to Phoebe that the air was not quite so dank now. Her spirits rose. She would find her own way out of the catacombs.
She heard the soft lapping sound of water a moment later. Encouraged, she rounded a bend in the stone passageway and found herself in a cavernous room. A narrow wedge of daylight shone in the distance.
Phoebe held the candle higher and looked around. She was standing on the stone quay of what appeared to be a tiny subterranean dock. Seawater lapped at the stone. Rusted iron rings embedded in the quay gave evidence that this cavern had once been used to moor boats.
She had found a secret escape route from the castle. It had no doubt been designed by the original owner for use during a siege. The tiny slit of daylight at the far end of the cavern was the exit.
The only problem was that there was no longer an escape boat tied up at the dock. A large volume of black water stood between Phoebe and daylight.
The candle sputtered. Phoebe glanced down at it. She saw that she had no more than a few minutes of light left. Soon she would be trapped in this dark tomb.
She looked back over her shoulder. There was no sound behind her. She had to assume that her rescuers were unable to move the heavy iron gate. It occurred to her that perhaps it had been designed to seal the passageway permanently shut. If the lord of the castle and his family were attempting to escape via this route, they would want to be certain they were not followed.
The candle hissed and wavered. Phoebe made up her mind. She could not bear to wait here in the darkness in hopes of a rescue that might not come.
She would have to swim for it.
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