My dear Miss March,
I must confess that since I first laid eyes on you, I’ve thought of nothing—and no one—else…
Gabriel came creeping down the stairs the next morning, sniffing at the air with each step. He flared his nostrils, but couldn’t detect so much as a whiff of lemon. Perhaps Miss Wickersham had heeded his warning and taken her leave. With any luck, he would never again have to tolerate her impertinence. The thought left him feeling curiously empty. He must be hungrier than he realized.
Abandoning any attempt at stealth, he charged toward the drawing room, already bracing himself for his shins’ first impact with some immovable piece of furniture. In truth, he welcomed the pain it would bring. Every fresh bruise or scrape only served to remind him he was still alive.
But there was no preparing himself for the blow to come. As he crossed the drawing room without encountering so much as a wayward footstool to break his stride, a lance of sunlight struck him full in the face. Gabriel staggered to a halt, throwing up a hand to shield his face from its dazzling warmth. He instinctively squeezed his eyes shut, but could do nothing to defend against the cheery lilt of birdsong or the lilacscented breeze caressing his skin.
For a minute he believed he was still dreaming in his bed. Believed he would open his eyes and find himself lying in a shimmering green meadow beneath the silky white blossoms of a pear tree. But when he opened them, it was still night, despite the treacherous warmth of the sun on his face.
“Beckwith!” he bellowed.
Someone tapped him on the shoulder. Without thinking, Gabriel swung around and made a grab for his assailant. Although his hands closed on empty air, the tart tang of lemon still tickled his nostrils.
“Hasn’t anyone ever told you it’s extremely bad form to sneak up on a blind man?” he snarled.
“Dangerous, too, it would seem.” Although that all-too-familiar voice lacked none of its usual asperity, there was a breathless quality to it that made his pulse quicken.
Struggling to tame more than just his temper, Gabriel took several steps backward. Since it was impossible to escape the seductive warmth of the sunlight, he deliberately turned the left side of his face away from the sound of her voice. “Where in the devil is Beckwith?”
“I’m not sure, my lord,” his nurse confessed. “There seems to be some sort of curious malady going around this morning. Breakfast isn’t prepared and most of the servants are still abed.”
He spread his arms wide and executed a full turn, not hitting a single object in any direction. “Then perhaps the more appropriate question should be: Where is my furniture?”
“Oh, don’t worry. It’s still here. We just pushed most of it against the walls so it wouldn’t be in your way any longer.”
“We?”
“Well, mostly me.” For a rewarding second, she sounded nearly as confounded as he felt. “Although it seems the servants must have decided to lend a helping hand after I was abed.”
Gabriel blew out a sigh fraught with exaggerated patience. “If all of the rooms are exactly the same, how am I to know whether I’m in the drawing room or the library? Or in the compost heap out behind the house, for that matter?”
For one blissful moment, he actually succeeded in rendering her speechless. “Why, I never thought of that!” she finally said. “Perhaps we should have the footmen drag a few pieces toward the middle of each room to serve as landmarks.” Her skirts rustled as she paced around him, plainly engrossed in her plans. Gabriel turned with her, keeping his right side to the sound. “If we pad the sharp corners with quilts, then you would still be able to negotiate the house without risking an injury. Especially if you learn to count.”
“I can assure you, Miss Wickersham, that I learned to count in the nursery.”
It was her turn to sigh. “I meant to count your steps. If you memorize the number of steps it takes to get from room to room, you’ll be able to keep your bearings.”
“That would be a refreshing change. I’ve certainly lost them since you set foot in my house.”
“Why do you keep doing that?” she suddenly asked, genuine curiosity softening her voice.
He frowned, struggling to follow the gentle tap of her footsteps as she circled him. “Doing what?”
“Turning away from me when I move. If I go left, you turn right. And vice versa.”
He stiffened. “I’m blind. How can you expect me to know which way I’m turning?” Eager to deflect her questions, he said, “Perhaps you should be the one explaining why someone deliberately defied my orders and opened the windows in here.”
“I was the one who defied your orders. As your nurse, I thought a little sunshine and fresh air might improve your…your…”—she cleared her throat as if something had gotten hung in it—“your circulation.”
“My circulation is just fine, thank you very much. And a blind man has little need of sunshine. It’s nothing but a cruel reminder of all the beauties he’ll never see again.”
“Perhaps that’s true, but it’s hardly fair of you to drag your entire household down into the darkness with you.”
For a stunned minute, Gabriel couldn’t speak at all. Since he’d returned from Trafalgar, everyone had been tiptoeing and whispering around him. No one, not even his family, had dared to address him so bluntly.
He turned fully toward the sound of her voice, allowing the ruthless rays of sunshine to sear his face. “Did it never occur to you that I kept the drapes drawn not for my benefit, but for theirs? Why should they have to look upon me in the daylight? At least I have the blessing of blindness to shield me from my hideous disfigurement.”
Miss Wickersham’s reaction to his words and his face was the last one he expected. She burst out laughing. Her laugh wasn’t what he expected, either. Instead of a dry cackle, it was a bawdy, full-throated song that both mocked and stirred him, proving his circulation was even better than he realized.
“Is that what they told you?” she asked, merry little ripples of laughter still escaping her as she fought to catch her breath. “That you were ’hideously disfigured’?”
He scowled. “No one had to tell me. I may be blind, but I’m not deaf or stupid. I could hear the physicians whispering over my bed. When the last of the bandages came off, I heard my mother and sisters gasp in horror. I could feel the cruel stares on my skin when the footmen carried me from the hospital bed to my carriage. Even my own family can hardly bear to look upon me. Why do you think they’ve locked me away here like some sort of animal in a cage?”
“As far as I can tell, you’re the one who locked the cage doors and barred the windows. Perhaps it’s not your face your family fears, but your temper.”
Gabriel groped for her hand, capturing it on the third try. He was startled by how small, yet firm, it felt in his grip.
She let out a startled yelp of protest as he yanked her into motion. Instead of her leading him through the house, he led her, halfway dragging her up the stairs and down the long hallway that housed the family portrait gallery. He had learned every nook and cranny of Fairchild Park as a boy and that knowledge still served him well. He marched her down the gallery, measuring his long strides until they reached the end of the hall. He knew exactly what she would find there—a large portrait, veiled by a linen sheet.
He was the one who had ordered the portrait covered. He couldn’t bear the thought of anyone gazing upon it and wistfully remembering the man he had been. If he hadn’t been such a sentimental fool, he would have had it destroyed, just as he had been.
He groped for the edge of the sheet, then snatched it away. “There! What do you think of my face now?”
Gabriel stepped back to lean against the gallery rail, allowing her to study the portrait without him breathing down her neck. He didn’t need his sight to know exactly what she was seeing. He had gazed at that same face in the mirror every day for almost thirty years.
He knew the way shadow and light played over every beautifully sculpted p
lane and hollow. He knew the tantalizing hint of a dimple in its rugged jaw. His mother had always sworn he’d been kissed by an angel while still in her womb. At least once a golden haze of beard-shadow had started to darken that jaw, his sisters could no longer accuse him of being prettier than them.
He knew that face and he knew its effect on women. From the maiden aunts who could never resist pinching his rosy cheeks when he’d been a babe to the debutantes who giggled and blushed as he doffed his hat to them in Hyde Park to the beautiful women who had eagerly tumbled into his bed for little more than the price of a dizzying turn around the ballroom and a seductive smile.
He doubted even the prickly Miss Wickersham could resist its charms.
She studied the portrait in silence for a long time. “He’s handsome enough, I suppose,” she finally said, her voice musing, “if you fancy the sort.”
Gabriel frowned. “And just what sort might that be?”
He could almost hear her pondering her words. “His face lacks character. He’s someone to whom everything has come too easily. He’s no longer a boy, but not yet a man. I’m sure he’d be pleasant enough company for a stroll in the park or an evening at the theater, but I don’t think he’s someone I would care to know.”
Gabriel reached toward the sound of her voice, his hand closing over the soft part of her upper arm through the wool of her sleeve. He tugged her around to face him, genuinely curious. “What do you see now?”
This time there was no hesitation in her voice. “I see a man,” she said softly. “A man with the roar of cannons still ringing in his ears. A man bloodied by life, but not beaten. A man with a scar that draws his mouth into a frown when he might actually long to smile.” She ran a fingertip lightly along that scar, raising gooseflesh on every inch of Gabriel’s body.
Shocked by the intimacy of her touch, he caught her hand in his, drawing it down between them.
She quickly tugged it out of his grasp, the briskness returning to her voice. “I see a man in desperate want of a shave and a clean change of clothing. You know, there’s really no need for you to go wandering about looking as if you’d been dressed—”
“By a blind man?” he dryly provided, as relieved as she was to return to familiar footing.
“Have you no valet?” she asked.
Feeling a determined tug on the cravat he’d fished off the floor of his bedchamber and draped carelessly around his neck, he batted her hand away. “I dismissed him. I can’t stand to have anyone hovering over me as if I’m some helpless invalid.”
She chose to ignore that particular warning shot fired across her bow. “I can’t imagine why. Most gentlemen of your station with two perfectly good eyes are quite content to stand with their arms outstretched and be dressed as if they were children. If you won’t stand for a valet, I can at least have the footmen draw you a hot bath. Unless you have some objection to bathing as well.”
Gabriel was about to point out that the only thing he had an objection to was her when a new thought struck him. Perhaps there was more than one way to goad her into giving notice.
“A nice hot bath might be just the thing,” he said, deliberately injecting a silky note into his voice. “Of course, there are many hazards in the bath for a blind man. What if I should stumble climbing into the tub and strike my head? What if I should slip beneath the water and drown? What if I should…drop the soap? I can hardly be expected to retrieve it myself.” He fumbled for her hand again, this time bringing it to his mouth and flowering his lips against the sensitive skin at the center of her palm. “As my nurse, Miss Wickersham, I think it only fitting that you should bathe me.”
Instead of slapping him for his impertinence as he deserved, she simply wrestled her hand away from him and said sweetly, “I’m sure my services won’t be required. One of those strapping young footmen of yours should be only too delighted to retrieve the soap for you.”
She had been right about one thing. Suddenly Gabriel did want to smile. As he heard her determined footsteps marching briskly down the stairs, it was all he could do to keep from laughing out loud.
Samantha held her candlestick aloft, bathing the portrait of Gabriel Fairchild in a flickering veil of light. The house lay dark and silent around her, sleeping, just as she hoped its master was. After their earlier encounter, the earl had spent the entire day barricaded in the stifling gloom of his bedchamber, refusing to emerge even for meals.
Tilting her head to the side, Samantha studied the portrait, wishing she were as immune to its charms as she’d pretended to be. Although it was dated 1803, it might as well have been painted a lifetime ago. The faint hint of arrogance in Gabriel’s boyish smile was tempered by the twinkle of self-mocking humor in his light green eyes. Eyes that looked toward the future and all it would bring with eagerness and hope. Eyes that had never seen things they shouldn’t have and paid the price with their sight.
Samantha reached up and drew a fingertip down his unblemished cheek. But this time there was no warmth, no staggering jolt of awareness. There was only cool canvas mocking her wistful touch.
“Goodnight, sweet prince,” she whispered as she gently draped the sheet over the portrait.
The tender green mint of spring drenched the rolling meadows. Fluffy white clouds frisked like lambs across a sky of pastel blue. Pale yellow sunshine bathed his face in warmth. Gabriel rolled to one elbow and gazed down at the woman napping in the grass next to him. A pear blossom had drifted down to nestle in her upswept curls. His thirsty eyes drank in the warm honey gold of her hair, the downy peach of her cheek, the moist coral of her parted lips.
He’d never seen a hue quite so delectable…or so tempting.
As he lowered his lips to hers, her eyes fluttered open and her lips curved in a sleepy smile, deepening the dimples he adored. But just as she reached for him, a cloud came billowing across the sun, its inescapable shadow draining all the color from his world.
Swallowed by darkness, Gabriel sat bolt upright in his bed, the rasp of his breathing harsh in the silence. He had no way of knowing if it was morning or night. He only knew he’d been cast out of his only retreat from the darkness—his dreams.
Tossing back the blankets, he swung his legs over the side of the bed and sat up. He dropped his head into his hands, fighting to get both his breath and his bearings. He couldn’t help but wonder what Miss Wickersham might make of his current attire. At the moment, he wore nothing at all. Perhaps he should knot a clean cravat around his neck so as not to offend her delicate sensibilities.
After much fumbling and groping, he finally located the rumpled dressing gown draped across the foot of the bed and slipped into it. Without bothering to knot the sash, he rose and padded heavily across the room. Still disoriented by his abrupt awakening, he misjudged the distance between bed and writing desk. His toes slammed into one of the desk’s clawed feet, sending a tingling jolt of agony up his leg. Biting off an oath, he sank down in the desk chair and groped for the center drawer’s ivory knobs.
He felt inside the velvet-lined drawer, knowing exactly what he would find—a thick packet of letters tied with a single silk ribbon. As he drew it out, tantalizing tendrils of fragrance wafted to his nose.
This was no penny lemon verbena purchased from some common street vendor, but a woman’s scent—rich and floral and seductive.
Breathing deeply, Gabriel tugged loose the silk ribbon and ran his hands over the expensive linen stationery. The paper was crumpled and worn from the many months he’d carried the letters next to his heart. He smoothed one of them open, tracing the graceful loops of ink with his fingertip. If he concentrated hard enough, he might be able to make out a single word or perhaps even a familiar phrase.
Meaningless words. Empty phrases.
His hand curled into a loose fist. He slowly refolded the letter, thinking how ludicrous it was for a blind man to hoard letters he could no longer read from a woman who no longer loved him.
If she ever truly had.
> Even so, he painstakingly tied the ribbon around the letters before dropping them gently back into the drawer.
Chapter Four
My dear Miss March,
Dare I hope that you would allow me to woo you with honeyed words?
When Gabriel emerged from his bedchamber the next morning, desperate for a brief respite from his own company, his suspicious sniffing yielded only the mingled aromas of bacon and chocolate. He cautiously followed them to the dining room, wondering just where Miss Wickersham might be lurking. To his surprise, he was allowed to breakfast in peace without anyone critiquing his table manners or his attire. He ate hastily and with even less finesse than usual, hoping to make it back to the haven of his bed-chamber before his overbearing nurse could come springing out at him.
After swiping the grease from his mouth with a corner of the table linens, he went hurrying back up the stairs. But when he reached for the ornately carved mahogany door that led to the master bedchamber, his hands met only air.
Gabriel recoiled, fearing that in his haste he’d taken a wrong turn somewhere along the way.
A cheery voice sang out, “Good morning, my lord!”
“And a good morning to you, Miss Wickersham,” he replied through gritted teeth.
He took one tentative step forward, then another, robbed of his confidence by the treacherous warmth of the sunlight on his face, the gentle breeze caressing his brow, the melodic chirping of some bird perched just outside the open window of his bedchamber.
“I hope you don’t mind the intrusion,” she said. “I thought we’d air out your chambers while you were downstairs at breakfast.”
“We?” he repeated ominously, wondering just how many witnesses there were going to be to her murder.
“Surely you didn’t expect me to do all the work by myself! Peter and Phillip are preparing your morning bath while Elsie and Hannah change the linens on your bed. Mrs. Philpot and Meg are out in the yard airing out your bed hangings. And dear Millie is dusting your sitting room.”
Yours Until Dawn Page 4
