By late afternoon, there wasn’t a speck of dust to be found anywhere in the foyer. The marble floor gleamed, so slick from its repeated polishings that Meg, the stout, red-faced laundress, nearly slipped and broke her neck. The woman had made so many trips through the foyer, her basket heaped with garments, that Samantha suspected her of dragging clean clothes out of the armoires to wash.
The next time Samantha came wandering through, ostensibly to return a book to the study, Mrs. Philpot herself made an appearance. Betsy had been polishing the wainscoting adjacent to the library for nearly an hour, rubbing so hard that some of the bare oak was starting to show through the gilt finish.
“What on earth do you think you’re doing?” the housekeeper snapped.
Samantha winced. But instead of scolding the young maid for loitering, Mrs. Philpot simply whisked the rag out of her hand and began to rub in the opposite direction. “You should always polish with the grain of the wood, not against it!”
Samantha couldn’t help but notice that Mrs. Philpot’s method put her ear very close to the keyhole in the library door.
By the time the sun began to set, Samantha and the other servants had given up all pretense of work. Samantha was sitting on the lowest step, her spectacles drooping and her chin propped on her hand, while the rest of the servants were draped over the chairs and stairs in various states of repose. Some were half dozing, while others waited in tense expectation, cracking their knuckles and exchanging the occasional whisper.
When the library door came swinging open without warning, they all jerked to attention. A half dozen dark-garbed men emerged, drawing the door shut behind them.
Samantha came to her feet, scanning their somber faces.
Although most of them took great care to avoid her eager gaze, a small man with kind blue eyes and neatly trimmed side-whiskers looked directly at her and shook his head sadly. “I’m so very sorry,” he murmured.
Samantha sank back down on the step, feeling as if a cruel fist had just squeezed all the blood from her heart. She hadn’t realized until that very moment just how high her own hopes had been.
As Beckwith appeared out of nowhere to show the physicians out, his jowls drooping, she stared at the impenetrable mahogany of the library door.
Mrs. Philpot was gripping the rounded ball at the top of the newel post, her long fingers pale. Her brisk confidence seemed to have evaporated, replaced with an almost touching uncertainty. “He must be hungry by now. Shouldn’t we—”
“No,” Samantha said firmly, remembering Beckwith’s admonishment that there were some paths a man must travel alone. “We can’t. Not until he’s ready.”
As sunset melted into dusk and dusk into the velvety dark of a warm spring night, Samantha came to regret her own forbearance. The minutes that had crept by while Gabriel consulted with the physicians now seemed to fly by on black, leathery wings. One by one the servants abandoned their vigil, drifting away to the kitchens or their basement quarters, no longer able to bear the deafening silence coming from the library. Although none of them would have admitted it, they would have much preferred to hear their master’s shouted oaths followed by the crashing of breaking glass.
Samantha was the last to go, but after a hollow-eyed Beckwith bade her goodnight, even she had to admit defeat. She soon found herself wearing a restless path in her bedchamber rug. She had donned her nightdress and braided her hair, but couldn’t bear the thought of climbing into her cozy bedstead of whitewashed iron while Gabriel was still barricaded in his own private hell.
She paced back and forth, working herself into a fine temper. Surely Gabriel’s father must have known the outcome of his quest. Why hadn’t the man accompanied his precious team of physicians? His presence might have softened the killing blow they’d come to deliver.
And what of Gabriel’s mother? Surely her negligence was even more unforgivable. What sort of woman would abandon her only son to the care of servants and strangers?
Samantha’s gaze fell on the trunk in the corner where she had tucked away his former fiancée’s letters. In some small secret corner of his heart, had Gabriel believed that his lost love might be restored to him along with his lost sight? Was he mourning the death of that dream as well?
The clock on the landing below began to chime the hour. Samantha leaned against the door, counting the mournful bongs one by one until she reached twelve.
What if Beckwith had been wrong? What if there were some paths so dark and dangerous they couldn’t be traversed without a hand to hold? Even if it was only the hand of a stranger.
Her own hand trembling, Samantha took up her pewter candlestick and slipped out of the room. She was halfway down the stairs before she realized she had forgotten to don her spectacles. Her candle cast flickering shadows on the wall as she crept through the foyer. The silence was even more oppressive than the dark. This wasn’t the cozy silence of a house at rest. It was the smothering silence of a house holding its breath in tense expectation. It wasn’t so much the absence of sound as the presence of fear.
The door to the library was still closed. Samantha closed her hand around the handle, half expecting it to be locked. But the door swung open easily beneath her touch.
Her mind was assailed by a dizzying array of half-formed impressions: the desultory crackling of the waning fire on the hearth; the empty glass next to the nearly empty bottle of scotch whisky sitting on the corner of the desk; the papers scattered across the floor as if someone had knocked them away in a fit of pique.
But all of those impressions were vanquished by the sight of Gabriel sprawled in the chair behind the desk with a pistol in his hand.
Chapter Nine
My darling Cecily,
I doubt it will take me a decade to coax my name from your lips. Ten minutes alone with you in the moonlight should suffice…
“I used to boast to all my friends that I could load a pistol with my eyes closed. I guess I was right,” Gabriel drawled as he tipped a leather pouch over the muzzle of the weapon. Although the bottle of scotch at his elbow had less than three fingers of liquor left in it, his hands were so steady he didn’t spill so much as a speck of gunpowder.
As he used a slender iron rod to tamp down the charge, Samantha found herself transfixed by those hands—by their grace, their skill, their economy of motion. A helpless shiver of awareness rippled through her as she imagined them moving against a woman’s skin. Her skin.
Shaking off their seductive spell, she moved to stand directly in front of the desk. “I hesitate to mention this, my lord, but don’t you think a loaded pistol in the hands of a blind man might be just a wee bit dangerous?”
“That is the point, isn’t it?” He leaned back in the chair, his thumb toying with the twin hammers of the loaded and primed pistol.
Despite his lax posture and laconic tone, Samantha could sense the tension coiled in his every muscle. He no longer looked the part of the perfect gentleman. His coat was draped carelessly over a nearby bust, while his cravat hung loose around the broad column of his throat. Strands of dark gold hair had escaped his queue. A feverish glitter lit his sightless eyes.
“I gather the news you received wasn’t to your liking?” she ventured, gingerly sinking down in the nearest chair.
He turned his head to follow her motion, keeping the barrel of the pistol carefully averted from her. “Let’s just say it wasn’t quite what I was hoping for.”
She struggled to keep her tone carefully conversational. “When you receive bad news, isn’t it customary to shoot the messenger, not yourself?”
“I only had one pistol ball on hand. I couldn’t decide which doctor to shoot.”
“They offered you no hope at all?”
He shook his head. “Not even a crumb. Oh, one of them—a Dr. Gilby, I believe—put forth some balderdash about blood building up behind the eyes after a blow such as the one that I sustained. It seems there was a case in Germany where vision returned after the blood was absorbe
d. But once his companions shouted him down for the fool he was, even he had to admit that there had never been a spontaneous healing recorded after six months.”
Samantha strongly suspected that this Gilby had been the kind-eyed physician who had offered her his sorrowful condolences. “I’m so very sorry,” she said softly.
“I have no need of your pity, Miss Wickersham.”
At his harsh tone, she stiffened. “You’re right, of course. I suppose you have quite enough of your own.”
For an elusive instant, the corner of Gabriel’s mouth twitched as if he would have liked to smile. He gently rested the pistol on the leather desk blotter. Although she eyed it longingly, Samantha didn’t dare make a grab for it. Even half drunk and without benefit of sight, his reflexes were probably still twice as nimble as hers.
He groped for the bottle of scotch, emptying what was left of it into the glass, then hefted the glass in a mocking toast. “To Fate, a fickle mistress whose sense of justice is exceeded only by her sense of humor.”
“Justice?” Samantha echoed, utterly bewildered. “Surely you can’t believe that you deserved to lose your sight. For what? Proving yourself to be a hero?”
Gabriel slammed the glass down on the table, sloshing scotch over its rim. “I’m no bloody hero!”
“Of course you are!” It took little effort for Samantha to recite what she knew of the events leading up to his injury from the accounts repeated with such relish by The Times and the Gazette. “You were the first to spot the sniper in the mizzentop of the Redoubtable. When you saw he had Nelson in his sights, you cried out a warning, then started across the deck toward the admiral at tremendous peril to your own life.”
“But I didn’t make it, did I?” Gabriel tipped the glass to his mouth, downing the scotch in a single swallow. “And neither did he.”
“Only because you were downed by a piece of flying shrapnel before you could reach him.”
Gabriel was silent for a long moment. Then he asked softly, “Do you know the last thing I saw as I was lying there on that deck, choking on the stench of my own blood? I saw that ball tear through the admiral’s shoulder. I saw the bewilderment on his face as he crumpled to the deck in agony. Then everything went red, then black.”
“It wasn’t as if you pulled the trigger that killed him.” Samantha leaned forward in the chair, her voice low and passionate. “And you won the battle. Because of Nelson’s courage and the sacrifices of men just like you, the French were defeated. They might still try to lay claim to our land, but you taught them who would forever be master of the sea.”
“Then I suppose I should thank God for being allowed to make such a sacrifice. Just think how lucky Nelson was. He’d already given an arm and an eye for the good of king and country, yet still was able to enjoy the privilege of forfeiting his life.” Gabriel threw back his head with a hoot of boyish laughter, looking so much like the man in the portrait that Samantha’s heart skipped a beat. “You astonish me anew, Miss Wickersham! Who would have thought the heart of a romantic beat beneath that stony breast of yours?”
She bit her lip, tempted to remind him that he hadn’t seemed to find her breast the least bit stony when his fingers had been curved possessively around its softness. “You dare to accuse me of sentimentality? I wasn’t the one hoarding old love letters in my dressing table drawer, was I?”
“Touché,” he murmured, his mirth subsiding. His hand closed over the pistol again, exploring its sleek contours with a lover’s caress. When he spoke again, his voice was low and devoid of mockery. “What would you have me do? You know as well as I that a blind man has no place in our society unless it’s begging on some street corner or locked away in a lunatic asylum. I’ll never be anything more than a burden and an object of pity to my family and anyone else unfortunate enough to love me.”
Samantha leaned back in the chair, a strange calm creeping over her. “Then why don’t you just shoot yourself and have done with it? When you’re finished, I’ll ring for Mrs. Philpot to clean up the mess.”
Both Gabriel’s jaw and his grip on the pistol tightened.
“Go on. Finish it,” she demanded, her voice gaining in both strength and passion. “But I can promise you that the only one who pities you is yourself. Some men still haven’t come home from this war. And some men never will. Others lost both arms and legs. They sit begging in the gutters, their uniforms and their pride in tatters. They’re jeered at, stepped on, and the only hope they have left is that some stranger with an ounce of Christian charity in his soul might drop a halfpenny in their tin cups. In the meantime, you sit here sulking in the lap of luxury, your every whim catered to by servants who still look at you as if you hung the moon.” Samantha stood, thankful he couldn’t see the tears shining in her eyes. “You were right, my lord. Those men are the heroes, not you. You’re nothing but a craven—a miserable coward who’s afraid to die, but even more afraid to go on living!”
She half expected him to pick up the pistol and shoot her. She did not expect him to rise and start around the desk. Although his steps were as steady as his hands had been, the liquor added an extra measure of swagger to his gait. She had believed the predator she had encountered her first day at Fairchild Park had been vanquished, but now she realized he had only been slumbering behind Gabriel’s heavy-lidded eyes, biding his time until he could catch the scent of his prey again.
His nostrils flared as he reached for her. Although she could have easily eluded him, something in his face stopped her. He captured her shoulders and drew her toward him, his grip rough.
“You haven’t been entirely honest with me, have you, my dear Miss Wickersham?” Her heart nearly stopped before he continued. “You didn’t choose this vocation because of your overwhelming compassion for your fellow man. You lost someone in the war, didn’t you? Who was it? Your father? Your brother?” As he lowered his head, the scotch-flavored warmth of his breath fanned across her face, making her feel as drunk and reckless as him. “Your lover?” Coming from his beautifully sculpted lips, the word was both taunt and endearment.
“Let’s just say that you’re not the only one atoning for your sins.”
His laughter mocked them both. “What would a paragon of virtue such as yourself know of sin?”
“More than you realize,” she whispered, turning her face away.
His nose grazed the softness of her cheek, although she could not have said whether it was by accident or design. Without her spectacles to shield her, she felt painfully vulnerable.
“You seek to goad me into continuing to live, yet you don’t offer me a single reason why I should.” He gave her a shake, his grip as harsh as his voice. “Can you do that, Miss Wickersham? Can you give me a reason to live?”
Samantha didn’t know if she could or not. But when she turned her head to reply, their mouths collided. Then he was kissing her, slanting his mouth over hers, sweeping the honeyed heat of his tongue over her lips until they parted with a small broken sound that was half moan and half gasp. Only too eager to accept her surrender, he drew her hard against him, tasting of scotch and desire and danger.
Her eyes fluttered shut, putting them on equal footing. In the seductive embrace of the darkness, she had only his arms to hold her, only the heat of his mouth to warm her, only the hoarse music of his groan to make her senses dance. As his tongue roughly plundered the softness of her mouth, Samantha’s pulse raged in her ears, ticking off each beat of her heart, each moment, each regret. His arms slid from her shoulders to her back, drawing her against him until her breasts were crushed to the unyielding wall of his chest. She curled one arm around his neck, struggling to answer the desperate demand of his mouth on hers.
How could she save him when she couldn’t even save herself?
She could feel herself descending into the darkness with him, only too eager to surrender both her will and her soul. He might claim to court death, but it was life surging between them. Life in the ancient mating dance of their
tongues. Life in the irresistible tug of her womb and the delicious ache between her thighs. Life pulsing against the softness of her belly through the worn cotton of her nightdress.
“Sweet Christ!” he swore, tearing himself from her arms.
Deprived of his support, Samantha had to brace her hands against the desk behind her to keep from falling. As her eyes drifted open, she fought the urge to shield them with her hand. After being lost in the delicious shadows of Gabriel’s kiss, even the waning firelight suddenly seemed too harsh.
Struggling to catch her breath, she turned to watch Gabriel grope his way around the desk. His hands were no longer steady. They knocked over an ink bottle and sent a brass-handled letter opener skittering into the floor before finally closing over the pistol. As he swept up the weapon, his expression as resolute as she had ever seen it, a strangled cry caught in the back of Samantha’s throat.
But he simply reached across the desk toward her. Fumbling for her hand, he pressed the pistol into it. “Go,” he commanded through gritted teeth, folding her fingers tight around the weapon. When she hesitated, he gave her a shove toward the door, his voice rising to a shout. “Go now! Leave me!”
Casting one last stricken glance over her shoulder, Samantha tucked the pistol in the skirt of her nightdress and fled.
Chapter Ten
My darling Cecily,
Have you decided yet which of my virtues intrigues you the most—my bashfulness or my humility…
When Samantha heard a muffled bang, she sat straight up in her bed, terrified it was the distant report of a pistol.
“Miss Wickersham? Are you awake?”
As Beckwith resumed his knocking, she clapped a hand to her chest, seeking to steady her pounding heart. Glancing at the trunk in the corner, she remembered that Gabriel’s pistol was now buried deep inside of it, next to his bundle of letters.