CHAPTER EIGHT
We have the utmost sorrow for the new Earl of Wolverston, who assumes his title upon the brutal death of his brother. It might be uncouth of us to say so, but the earl has set new standards for mourning stylishly. We cannot help but wonder if we might have our next Brummell, but with a far better character of course.
-Whispers from Lady X, June 1816
Mayfair, London
Ten days since the death of the Earl of Wolverston
By the time they reached St. Saviour’s Docks, it was past midnight. Gabriel ought to have been dead on his feet, from working a full shift at the station and then tromping about Jacob’s Island. Instead, a restless eagerness filled him, as it always did when he was near the end of a successfully solved case. He paced from one corner of the platform to the next, his long strides eating up the distance, his hands stuffed in the pockets of his coat as they waited for the ferry to return. When he returned to his flat, he’d take out his energy on the punchbag he kept just for this purpose.
They were close—so close—to nabbing David. He could feel it in his very bones, in every breath he took of the putrid air. His mind sorted through every piece rapidly, forming a completed puzzle.
Yet, for all his excitement, Jemma remained eerily calm. She said little on the ferry ride back to the docks and even less on the hack ride to Mayfair. When the cab dropped them off a few streets away from Hill Street, Gabriel reached for her, intending to link her arm in his and escort her. She shied away from him, shaking her head. She uttered a terse “not now” before she continued on, rubbing her hands up and down her arms as if to warm herself.
He followed, watching her with concern. While it was brisk for a June night, it wasn’t cold enough to warrant a chill. She hadn’t been the same since Mauly Jives confirmed David had contacted her to set up a buyer for the gold buttons. It scared him to see her like this, withdrawn and defeated.
Especially now that they had the gold buttons back. While the testimony of a well-known thief and fence wouldn’t hold up against the word of a peer, combined with the other incidents, it’d be enough to get the magistrate to listen to them. That was what Jemma had wanted all along—justice for Philip.
They came to the back gate. The house was quiet. Nary a candle burned, as the servants had retired for the night. The courtyard was lit only by the light of the moon, silhouetting them in a soft glow.
Jemma hesitated, key in her hand, a myriad of emotions splashing across her heart-shaped face. Worry, he understood. Exhaustion too, for it had been a long night. Yet there was something deeper, more intimate, he could not completely discern.
“I suppose this is good night,” he said reluctantly, not wanting to leave before he was certain of her wellbeing.
Hell, regardless of circumstances, he never wanted to leave her.
She sighed, slipping the key in the gate. It turned easily, and then the gate was open, and she was going through it. Fruitlessly, he searched for the right words to bring her comfort. To prolong their conversation. To prove he was worthy of her notice.
But he couldn’t think of anything, except how badly he’d buggered everything three years ago. The weight of his own inadequacies smacked against him, ridding him of that giddy elation of discovery.
She was halfway across the empty courtyard before he finally stepped through the gate, closing it behind him. He followed her even though she had not asked him to, overstepping his bounds once more—for the last time.
“I’m sorry, Jemma,” he said quietly.
She turned around. “For?”
For kissing her three years ago. For abandoning his friendship with Philip—and her. For not doing more, being more.
He settled on one word that encompassed it all. “Everything.”
Her lips tilted up skeptically on one side. “Everything is a very large concept, Gabriel.”
“And I have made some very large mistakes.” He fought the urge to reach for her, to push back behind her ear the wayward cinnamon curl that had escaped from her coiffure. He didn’t—he wouldn’t, not when she’d shied from him before.
“As have I.” Her voice, so tender, so sweet, was a caress of its own. “Maybe it is time we move on. Those sins have held us hostage for a long time, haven’t they? We beat ourselves up over and over again, for what? I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t breaking myself down to please someone else.”
To a lesser extent, he’d done the same. When he’d graduated Eton, he’d floundered without purpose, wanting to make a difference in the world but without any idea of how to go about it.
“Did you know it was Philip who convinced me to join the Runners?” Gabriel didn’t need an answer—her surprise was enough of an indication. “He said I was the most doggedly determined person he’d ever known. While that was damnably irritating in school, he figured I might as well put it to good use by stopping crime.”
“He was right.” Jemma’s sad smile didn’t reach her eyes. “You are good at what you do, Gabriel. I had no doubts about your capability before, but in the last two days, I’ve seen you in action and you have not disappointed.”
Her praise washed over him like the calming waters of a hot bath. The tense knot in his shoulders, beginning upon finding Philip’s body, relaxed more and more with each minute spent around her.
She was a ray of sunshine in the cold, dismal world he’d created for himself. An honest, forthright relief from the obfuscation of criminals and the complex legal system.
“You ought to give yourself the same credit,” he told her. “Mauly Jives wasn’t going to tell me anything. It’s your quick thinking that got those buttons back, Jemma. You read the situation correctly, and you reaped the benefits. And with Osborne, it was your story that convinced him to help.”
“So again, it’s my lies that make me successful.” The anguish crossing her features wasn’t the reaction he’d expected. “The only time my father ever approved of me was when I married Philip. My sham of a marriage meant more to him than anything else—more than helping Rosie, more than my happiness.”
“He was wrong.” Gabriel had only met the Marquess of Sayer once before he’d died from a heart failure. Like Lord Marlburg, Sayer represented all the things Gabriel disliked about the aristocracy, with his selfish focus on “bettering” his family through marrying off his two daughters to men with fortune and titles. “Don’t think me an arse for speaking ill of the dead, but your father didn’t strike me as a particularly perceptive man. He didn’t see the real you, Jemma.”
“And you do?” She turned her face to him, those beautiful brown eyes beseeching him.
He could not resist her siren call. Closing the distance between them, he reached out for that tantalizing loose lock of dark umber, intending to push it back from her face. Yet once it was in his hand, he could not resist weaving it around his finger, watching the light from the moon contrast the pure satin of her hair with the tanned leather of his glove.
“I have always seen you.” His voice came out husky, roughened by the damned ache of touching her but never being able to truly have her. “And I like what I see.”
Her cheeks pinked, that pretty blush making him feel like the strongest, the most skillful of men. Then, when he told himself he’d step back from her, end this madness and walk away, she whimpered—a quiet, delicious sound of pleasure that slammed into him, leaving him hot and hard.
He released her hair to cup her face in his hand, tracing his thumb against her trembling lips. So perfect, those lips, plump and rosy pink, made to fit precisely over the top of his own. For three years he had remembered the shape and taste of her, yet he had never—never—dared to hope he’d be with her again.
He nudged her chin up, so that he could look in her eyes, realizing he’d made a fatal error. Whatever hope he’d had of reeling himself back disappeared, for in those eyes he saw the haze of desire, the headiness of encouragement.
Kissing her would be madness. Not a slow slide, but a skipping, damn-near-galloping tumble into a bout of insanity fit for Bedlam.
He did not care.
His lips came down upon hers, all those wasted nights without her searing into this one powerful, passionate embrace. She was exactly as he remembered—lush, vivacious, smelling of summer and tasting of everything sweet and good. His arm fell naturally around her, pulling her to him. Needing her close to him, needing to feel her warmth.
As he angled her mouth to take her deeper, her arms wrapped around his neck. One kiss blended with another until it became impossible to distinguish the beginning and ending of this rhythmic, desperate dance. He drank her in with an almost feverish intensity, marveling at the little sounds she made in the back of her throat, the softness of her body against his own harder proportions, the way she returned his kisses with the single-minded determination in which she approached everything in life.
She was his.
Finally.
For now, at least.
He did not let himself think past this moment, though promises bubbled at the seams of his consciousness, endless vows he wanted to make to her. It was not the time. There was no forever for them. Nothing but this moment together, her fingers tangled in his hair, his hand at the sensuous curve of her hip.
Her lips parted to release a breathy moan. He seized upon the opportunity, his tongue stroking hers, playing with her, eagerly studying the lessons of her body he’d been introduced to that night in Vauxhall.
That kiss had been enough to torture him for years, but this one was something more. Not the furtive, guilty rush of two young fools who knew damn well they ought to keep their hands off each other. In the darkness, enveloped in each other’s arms, they explored each other, committing the secrets of each other’s passions to memory.
It was a kiss of learning, of accepting, of coming to terms with the mistakes they’d made and the separate lives they’d had, for everything had led them to this one point.
He plundered her mouth, claiming her as his, wishing it could be more than this moment. His fingers strayed, stroking her breast, feeling the eager pebbling of her nipple through the thin fabric of her dress. She was fire in his hands, singeing his fingers wherever he touched, a temptation he’d never been able to resist.
The only woman he’d ever loved.
The only woman he’d ever felt right with.
“Jemma.” Her name came out in a harsh gasp, as she scooted closer to him, her breast pushing into his palm again. “You’re everything, you know that? All I ever wanted.”
She kissed him, fiercely, scorching him with her mouth, her fervor. He held onto her tightly, never wanting to release her, never wanting to part from this moment.
Until a noise from the house next door shattered the still of the night, bringing him back to reality swiftly. They were outside, at Wolverston Hall. Though the courtyard had a fence, and tall hedges, they could still be seen from the back windows of the house. Gossip spread like an entirely different sort of wildfire than the one he’d felt with her in his arms.
He forced himself to pull back from her, though the sight of her with her lips reddened from his kisses, her chest heaving with each shaky breath, her hair mussed and her dress wrinkled from his hands, made him crave her all over again.
“I should—” He did not want to finish that thought, for he knew it would only end with him leaving, and a return to their separate states of being. “Go. Shouldn’t I?”
“Yes,” she said, her voice still thick with honeyed desire.
He turned to go, but she grabbed his arm, stopping him.
“You should go, but I do not want you to,” she clarified.
His heart leapt. A hundred different fantasies spilled out in front of him, and she was naked in all of them. But when he’d pictured their first time together, it had been special—not with her being a widow for only a week.
“Jemma,” he tried again, reminding himself that he owed her something more than a tumble out of grief. “I want to, God I want to, but not like this.”
Her jaw dropped. She blinked up at him, mouth opening and closing before she finally settled upon a response. “Oh, no. That is not what I meant. I mean—I can see how you would think that—given the kiss—but—” She stopped, taking a moment to compose herself, so that she spoke in more than fits and pauses. “No. I may not have loved Philip, but I still believe in mourning him. He was my dearest friend, and he deserves that.”
“But you want me to stay?” He was not sure he understood.
She gifted him with a smile, the one she’d always used when she found his confusion adorable. “To keep me company. I do not want to be alone, not tonight. Seeing that godawful place, watching those people go about their lives in such conditions, it’s shaken me. And then hearing Mauly Jives confirm that David pawned those buttons…I knew it was true, Gabriel, but it still stings like someone is pricking my heart again, and again. Won’t you stay with me, just until I fall asleep?”
Gabriel’s drumming heart beat slowed to normal, his breaths coming easier. That sounded simple enough—though the thought of sitting so close to her, on her bed, and not being able to touch her was a torture in itself. But he would do it, for her.
“All right,” he agreed. “As friends.”
“No.”
That was the most beautiful negative he’d ever heard.
She took his palm in hers, closing her fingers over his hand. “We have never been friends, Gabriel. We have always been something more. I was so scared of it before—I still am scared—but it is inevitable, this thing between you and me. And I want to explore it, so badly. I just…need time.”
“I can give you time.” A smile spread across his lips so wide it stretched from ear to ear. “You know I’d do anything for you, and I’ve never been the impatient one. Glad to see you’ve finally come around to my way of thinking.”
“Good things take time, don’t they?” She laughed as she quoted one of his favorite sayings.
“Yes, they do.” He squeezed her hand. Together they walked to the house, sneaking up the servant’s staircase and slipping into her quarters. He turned his back as she put on her nightclothes, determined to keep his promise to her. As she slid underneath the covers, he sat beside her, holding her hand in his. When her breaths finally relaxed into the deep rhythm of slumber, he dared not stir. He stayed, for once in the right place, keeping watch as she slept.
She was his to protect, and he’d keep her safe.