CHAPTER 13
N avigating his way through Rosewood made Gabe’s hair stand on end. The rain outside didn’t help, he supposed. It only served to make the private asylum darker than normal and give it an even grimmer ambiance than it had most days. Someone cackled behind a closed door at the end of the corridor and Gabe suppressed a shiver, but he pressed forward to Clayton’s chamber. He opened the door to find his brother sitting peacefully in a rocking chair.
Clayton glanced up upon Gabe’s entrance and he smiled. His brother looked so healthy and whole, just like he had before Gabe had left to join the 9th in Spain. “You didn’t have to rush home on my account.”
Gabe shrugged. “Hill said you had need of me, Clayton.”
His brother nodded. “I’m dying, Gabriel.”
But he didn’t appear it. “Don’t say such things. I’m sure the doctors here—”
“And I’m leaving you with nothing. Less than nothing, really.”
“The same father left you with,” Gabe replied, crossing the floor to better see his brother.
“Even less than that, I’m afraid.” Clayton frowned. “The only thing he ever truly gave me was a title that I don’t really have a legal claim to.”
And neither did Gabe, but to say that so openly... “Shh!” He lifted his finger to his lips. God forbid anyone at Rosewood overhear that awful truth. Any shred of respectability they possessed would be gone in the blink of an eye.
But his brother laughed in response. “No one knows, Gabriel. And I doubt they would care if they did.”
“Beckbury knows,” Gabe said. “He’s the one who told me, Clayton.”
His brother nodded, clearly remembering that detail. “Yes. But as long as you stay away from his daughter…” Then he shrugged. “An easy exchange, Gabriel. So many women in the world, certainly you can stay away from the one.”
Gabe snorted. “Says a man who’s never been in love. I could look forever and a day and there’d never be anyone else like Sophie.”
Clayton laughed. “Says a man who clearly needs to know more women.”
Of course if Clayton knew fewer women, he might not be dying of syphilis.
“Take a page out of father’s book,” his brother continued. “Marry a number of them, don’t even bother with annulments.”
“For God’s sake, Clayton!” Gabe grumbled. “It’s hardly a joking matter.”
“When you’re dying none of it matters anymore.”
“Well, I’m not dying. And you can get better. If we just—”
“Gabe!” Sophie’s voice sounded so strange, so far away, almost like a dream.
What in the world was she doing at Rosewood? He glanced toward the corridor in surprise.
“Gabe!” She sounded so panicked as though she was in trouble.
Gabe sat bolt upright and his eyes flew open. The coach was stopped, though the rain still battered the conveyance.
“Gabe!”
Damn it all! That was definitely Sophie!
Gabe scrambled from the bench, tossed open the carriage door and…
Sophie was dressed as a boy and being dragged backward on her arse toward the stables by the Weybourne coachman. Panic seized Gabe’s heart as he bolted into the rain after the pair.
“Unhand her this instant!” he ordered, reaching the two of them a second later.
“Her?” the coachman said, releasing Sophie and backing up several paces.
But Gabe paid the man no attention, not with Sophie lying in the middle of the coaching yard, staring up at him and drenched from head to toe. Dear God, his heart ached for her, but what the devil had she done now? How was she even here? Gabe shook his head, scooped her off the ground and made a direct path to the coaching inn.
Sophie trembled in his arms which pushed Gabe to quicken his step to get her into the safety of the establishment. He hastened inside the taproom and immediately caught the barkeep’s eye. “I need a room, and I need a bath drawn,” he barked at the man behind the counter.
“Of course, sir,” the barkeep said, not even batting an eye at Gabe carrying a drenched pageboy in his arms. Of course, who knew what sort of things the man saw on a regular basis in his line of work? “Up the back stairs—” he gestured to the far corner “—then the second door to your right is available. I’ll send Millie along with the bath in a thrice.”
“G-Gabe,” Sophie stuttered slightly as he started up the stairs. “Don’t be angry with me.”
For God’s sake. He’d never been angry with her, not one day in his life. Even still… “What the devil have you done, Sophie?”
She shook her head and it looked like she might cry. “I-I, well, I just wanted to talk to you.”
To talk to him? Was she serious? Gabe stopped on the landing and looked down into her miserable blue eyes. How he hated that expression on her face. She was so lovely, so exuberant, the last thing she should ever be was miserable. “So you dressed like a boy and followed me out of London through the rain?”
Sophie winced. “I didn’t follow you. I told Lord Kelling’s driver that I worked for you. I rode up top with him.”
Honest to God, she was lucky he didn’t drop her right then. She had not been this reckless four years ago. If she had been, he’d have remembered it.
Damn it all! Best to get her inside a room before she said something else that might make him drop her. What had the barkeep said? Second door on the right, at least he thought that’s what he’d been told. Gabe shook his head and started for the door in question. “Your father is going to have me drawn and quartered. You know that, don’t you?”
“He doesn’t have to find out,” Sophie said. “We could turn back for London right now and he’d never be the wiser.”
He snorted a response to her suggestion. She was out of her mind if she really believed that. After all, they’d been gone for hours, and it would be hours more before he could return her to Beckbury House even if they did turn around right this moment. Besides that, she was filthy, dressed like a boy and soaked all the way through to her skin. There would be no hiding any of that from her father.
Gabe opened the door and carried her over the threshold. The room was small but clean, cleaner than Sophie in any event after Lumley had dragged her through the muddy yard. Gabe lowered her to the floor and said, “Get out of those clothes. Take a bath when it arrives and I’ll see about getting something decent for you to wear in the meantime.” Then he turned to leave, and would have made it into the corridor if her words hadn’t stopped him…
“You’re not leaving me now?” She sounded like she might cry.
Gabe heaved a breath and turned back around to face her. Strands of her blonde hair had escaped from under her pageboy cap and her borrowed clothes clung to her like a second skin. And damn if the sight of her didn’t heat his blood like nothing else. “I’m not leaving you, but I’ve got to try and sort out this mess you’ve gotten us both into.”
“It’s not a mess, not yet,” she said. “No one will even know I’m gone. Well, no one except for Charlotte, but she’ll never say anything. And all I wanted was your undivided attention and no way for you to escape without answering all of my questions.”
She was mad. Gabe scrubbed a hand down his face. “For God’s sake, Sophie. You’ve always had my undivided attention.”
“We both know that’s not true.” She folded her arms across her chest. “And no one is quite as expert at evading my questions as you are.”
“And this—” he gestured to her state of dishabille “—was how you thought to go about changing that?”
“See!” She tipped her chin higher. “Even now you’re evading me.”
Gabe heaved another sigh and folded his arms across his chest to match hers. “All right, Miss Hampton, you win. What is so damned important that you’d risk your good name and your very life with this recklessness?”
Sophie squared her shoulders. She had come all this way, and she wouldn’t be a coward now, even if she was freezing and even if Gabe was glaring at her as though she was the biggest fool alive. “You asked Papa for my hand.”
He blanched slightly, so slightly in fact that a second later there was no indication she’d said anything even remotely surprising. “Years ago, and hardly worth you risking your neck over it now.”
The truth was worth it to Sophie. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“After my suit was rejected, there was nothing to tell you.”
A lump formed in her throat. “You thought it better for me to think that you didn’t care about me at all? You thought it better that I should cry myself to sleep over you every night after you left? You thought—”
“I said goodbye to you.” He swallowed and his brow creased in concern. “I wasn’t even supposed to do that.” He shook his head. “I thought if I said anything else it would make things worse for you and that was the last thing in the world I ever wanted, Sophie.”
That last goodbye. Sophie could still remember the feel of his lips against hers. She could still taste the salt from her tears as he strode away and had not looked back. “I wanted you, Gabriel. Nothing else in the world mattered.” And looking at him now, that hadn’t changed. There was still nothing else in the world that she wanted more than him. The truth of that nearly made her knees buckle beneath her.
“And I wanted you.” His warm eyes nearly seared her with his gaze. “Every night I was in Spain, I wanted you with me. Every night in Portugal, in France, even Canada for God’s sake. But it doesn’t matter, Sophie. It doesn’t change anything.”
It changed everything. Especially if he still wanted her. “You asked me last night if I still cared for you. Do you still care for me?”
Gabe raked a hand through his sandy-colored hair, and looked at her as though he was in the worst sort of pain. “You’ll never understand, Sophie.”
She waited for him to say more than that. To explain what in the world he was talking about, but Gabe said nothing else. “I’ll never understand anything if you don’t explain—”
“We’ve got the bath you ordered, sir,” a man called from the corridor as he pounded on the door.
Gabe turned on his heel, opened the door and admitted a fellow carrying a tub in his arms. “Right there, please,” he said, motioning to a vacant spot on the floor.”
“Millie will be up with the water soon,” the man said after he deposited the tub.
Gabe flicked his gaze toward Sophie and said, “I’ll be back after your bath.”
And Sophie’s heart twisted in her chest. He hadn’t answered her. He hadn’t said whether he still cared about her, and now he was gone. Again.