by Gabriel
“No.” Aaron slapped his crop against his boot, and a leaf went twirling by, as if the crop were a magic wand that might bring the heavens crashing down with the right incantation. “I had you declared dead so that, having no other plan in hand, I could try getting on with your life.”
***
Gabriel wandered every wing and corridor of his former home—his home—saving the portrait gallery for last, because to him it was the heart of the Wendover family seat. Of the barons, three in number, there were no paintings, not even sketches, but when a grateful crown had created the Earldom of Northbridge, that good fellow’s countess had taken matters in hand and set the Wendovers on the tradition of portraiture.
Gabriel studied the portrait of him and Aaron for a long time, seeing the hubris of a wealthy heir in his younger self. God in heaven, he’d had a lot to learn.
Something made him turn, to watch the afternoon light cascading through the spotless windows. Polly had loved the fall light, calling it frisky.
He put that thought aside. A man was not entitled to dwell on a woman he’d loved and lost, much less one he’d disappointed in the process, and this gave the ache of missing her a particular resonance. He thought to bide a few minutes among the ancestors and guiltily savor his memories of his few intimate moments with Polly Hunt when movement caught his eye.
His gaze fell on a maid, catnapping, but when he crossed the room to rouse the slacker, he stopped cold, the hairs on the back of his neck and his arms prickling with anticipation.
Her lashes fluttered up just as he knelt to assure himself his eyes were not deceiving him, and then the lady did the most extraordinary thing. She rested a hand on his shoulder, leaned up on her elbow, and gently kissed his cheek.
“Polonaise Hunt, what in God’s name are you doing here?”
He hadn’t meant the question to sound so… panicked, so angry, but she couldn’t be here, could not.
“Hullo to you too, Mr. North,” Polly muttered, her smile fading to a frown. “I fell asleep. Did Beck tell you I was here?”
Gabriel rose lest she kiss him again and scatter his wits from Land’s End to Nova Scotia. “He most assuredly did not, and if he knew this was your destination, I’m going to make him regret his reticence. You must leave.”
“The room?”
“The property.”
She tucked a lock of auburn hair behind her ear, the gesture conveying a significant lack of concern. “I’m hungry.”
“Then take something from the kitchen when you go.”
She treated him to a mulish glance, and Gabriel swiveled to sit beside her before his knees gave out.
“I’m not going.” She rolled her shoulders and yawned delicately. “I have portraits to paint.”
“Go paint them somewhere else.” He was not going to tell her his own house wasn’t a safe place, especially for her, the first woman he could honestly say he’d cared for. More than cared for.
Polly eyed him curiously. “Hesketh has contracted for my services. Who are you to be countermanding a peer of the realm?”
Her hair was tousled, and she had a crease across her cheek from the pillow seam. He crossed his arms to thwart the compulsion to touch her. “I’m Hesketh’s older brother.”
The words were out, blunt, unpretty, and honest, and the effect on Polly was devastating. She didn’t move, she didn’t speak, but she silently withdrew to a faraway, untouchable place, where men could lie to the women they kissed and the women were too smart and tough to let it matter.
“Are you a bastard?” A trickle of hope escaped into her careful tone, and he winced to hear it, because this possibility would explain much and let her forgive nearly as much.
“Not in the manner you mean.”
“I see.”
Silence grew, and Gabriel had the sense Polly was drifting away on an unstoppable tide of hurt feelings and female ire. He wanted to explain, to excuse, to argue on his own behalf in mitigation, but more words would only give her more reasons not to go.
“You really do have to leave, Polonaise.” He said it as gently as he could. “I’m not asking.”
She studied him as she might peruse an anatomical drawing exercise. “Because you are the Marquess of Hesketh, and I am a lowly hired artisan. Your word here is law, and I am banished.”
She rose, not waiting for his reply, and when Gabriel came to his feet, he was reminded how wonderfully her body measured against his. If he took her in his arms, her crown would fit right under his chin. Her expression said he’d never again have that privilege, and though it cut deeply, that was for the best.
“As Marquess of Hesketh, you are bound by the contract that brought me here,” she said, stepping back and gazing across the room at a portrait of two handsome, dark-haired, green-eyed youths. “It is my first commission on English soil, my lord, and it will set the tone for the rest of my career. Aaron and Marjorie Wendover were chosen with care, for their pulchritude and for their social prominence. I will not step back from this assignment, not for any amount of damages, and certainly not because you’ve waved a lordly hand and willed it so. I’ll see you at dinner.”
She turned to go but stopped when he shot out a hand to encircle her wrist.
“At dinner,” he said, “we will be strangers.”
“Will we?”
“It has to be, Polonaise. For the well-being of all involved, we cannot have met prior to today.”
“Your family might not appreciate your larking away a couple of years in their backyard before assuming the title? Or did you already hold the title when you presented yourself to us at Three Springs as a poor land steward?”
“It’s… complicated, and delicate,” he said, not wanting to give her even that much.
“And you can explain these complications?” Her tone was imperious, but he saw the veiled plea in her brown eyes.
“I cannot. Not now.”
She glanced down at where he still held her wrist. “You can let me go, Gabriel. I’ll not betray your secrets over the fish course. Nor will I leave.”
He did let her go, appreciating the view of her retreat, even as he knew he’d just been poleaxed, blackmailed, and kicked into a ditch in the space of five minutes. This was what he deserved, in the peculiar coincidence of circumstances he found himself.
But then a rare smile lit his features, for he recalled that in those same five minutes he’d also, however fleetingly, been kissed.
Two
Polly stalked away from His Lordship Gabriel North Wendover Hesketh Whoever He Was, and then rounded on him and marched right back. Afternoon light gilded him from above, as if he were a saintly apparition and not a damnably dear and dark man. She went up on her toes and kissed his mouth this time, a deliberate, angry laying of her lips on his, a battle kiss, without tenderness or artifice.
“That,” she informed him, “is a kiss of parting, as in I’m parting from you, not from your household.”
She whirled off again, feeling better for allowing herself a small display of temper, but by the time she’d gotten to her room, the anger had burned off, leaving hurt and bewilderment.
And shame.
Shame because of course the Marquess of Hesketh would not have a romantic interest in an itinerant artist, or in the former cook from Three Springs. In his way, Gabriel had been honorable, for he’d refused to enjoy the full measure of the liberties Polly had offered him.
Flung at him, more like.
Just as she’d flung herself at her sister’s husband all those years ago, a stupid girl, flattered by Reynard’s Gallic flirtation and a mature man’s manipulative interest. Dear God, would she never learn discernment when it came to men?
She’d been dreaming of Egyptian treasures on display in the Louvre one moment, opened her eyes in the next, and told herself she was still dreaming. Right before her knelt Gabriel North, whom she hadn’t seen or heard from for weeks, looking concerned and dear, but rested for once. She had kissed him without thinki
ng, without doing anything but giving in to the welling joy of seeing him again, apparition or flesh-and-blood man, and that kiss had been so sweet.
And it hadn’t been a dream, but rather, a nightmare.
For God help her, what of Allie? Polly cringed to think what North—no, Hesketh—would think of a woman who could bear a bastard child, then allow family to step in and raise the child for her. He wouldn’t understand, and he’d be particularly judgmental, because the child was dear to him.
A more reasonable voice told her a man who’d pose for two years as a lowly steward might understand some subterfuge and misdirection, but that voice was drowned out by indignation that Gabriel had never really trusted her, and worry that he could make good on his insistence she abandon her first commission.
Which she would not do.
She’d plead a headache at dinner, write to her sister, Sara, and pray for inspiration to strike. It wasn’t much of a plan, but it would do for now—because it was all she had.
***
“Margie!” Aaron called to his wife over the tattoo of her gelding’s hooves, while he took a moment to admire the picture she made. The woman could sit a horse, any horse, and the beasts seemed to wait for her cues and commands. Unwittingly, his mind took off in a spree of lusty associations involving him naked on his back under her. When he called her name again, it was with greater impatience.
“My lord?” She brought her mount down to the walk, looking elegant, composed, and a trifle flushed. Aaron shifted his gelding alongside hers, and peered at her more closely.
“If I forbid you to visit that miserable old besom who claims to have whelped you,” he asked, “would you cry less?”
“I haven’t been crying.” She drew herself up in her sidesaddle as she emotionally somehow drew herself away. “And you should not refer to your mama-in-law in such terms. For shame.”
“What did she say this time, Margie?”
“She is concerned for her daughter.” Marjorie tossed a glance over her shoulder at her groom.
“Will you walk with me?” Aaron posed the question quietly, because the groom had ears, and Marjorie must have caught the urgency in his tone, because she nodded and waited for Aaron to get down and help her dismount. He handed the reins to the groom and considered how one broached the topic at hand.
First, one waited for the groom to lead the horses away. “We’re married, right?”
“For two years now.” Marjorie regarded him with patient curiosity, while something flickered in her eyes. Something a proper husband would have been able to interpret.
“Is that what her mama-ship was beating you with? There’s no heir on the way, and this must be your fault? If she doesn’t leave you in peace, I swear I’m going to have to do something.”
“She means well.”
“Right, good intentions make every cruelty forgivable.” Aaron silently vowed to have a talk with dear Mama-In-Law. “I’ve some astoundingly good news, Margie.”
She fell in step beside him, and Aaron wanted to take her hand, which was silly really, when Marjorie Wendover would never be so indecorous as to physically flee his presence without being excused.
“Nobody calls me Margie except you.”
Aaron’s lips quirked. “I’m sure if we were honest, there are names only you have applied to my own person.”
She looked puzzled, then caught the humor in his eye. She was young. Not stupid, merely… inexperienced.
“What is your good news, my lord, because you don’t look like a man with good news.” She turned from him as they walked along, pretending to study the undergrowth dying back with winter’s approach.
“Let’s find somewhere to sit, but first tell me, was your mother harping on the need for an heir?”
Marjorie strolled beside him past some purple chrysanthemums. “She was. Again.”
“Do we need to have that argument again as well?”
“No.” She said it quietly, resignedly. “I understand you grieve for your brother, and haranguing you on this topic is not productive. Your decision still hurts me.”
“I know,” he said, wishing this quiet, steady honesty had remained beyond her. “But what I have to tell you should come as a relief in this regard, Margie. It really is good news, at least for us.”
“Us?” She imbued that one syllable with such a wistful longing Aaron felt it in his gut.
“Let’s take the bench.” He nodded to a low-backed wooden bench sitting among pots of asters. “We need privacy for this.”
She held her peace, but when she’d arranged the skirts of her habit, Aaron took the place immediately beside her, wishing there was some way to spare her this. He had the strangest urge to tuck her against him, to put his arms around her when she learned she wasn’t the Marchioness of Hesketh, and all her effort over the past two years had been for nothing.
What he ought to feel, what he was entitled to feel, was resentment.
He took her hand. “Gabriel did not die in Spain as we thought. He’s alive and well, and probably at his bath up at the manor.”
Her eyebrows—she had the most perfect eyebrows God ever gave a woman—knitted, as if he’d merely told her rain was likely later in the day. “Your brother, Gabriel, is alive?”
“Very much so. Upright, walking, breathing, and making grouchy remarks to all and sundry. He’s alive, Margie.”
“This is… good news.” She nodded, as if she’d reached for the words blindly and was relieved to have seized the right ones. “This is very good news. I’m happy for you, my lord, and for your… for his lordship.”
“You’re taking this well.” Too well?
“I can hardly fathom it.” Marjorie made to rise, but Aaron kept hold of her hand. “Has he some explanation for allowing us to believe him dead?”
Aaron laced his fingers through hers. “As usual, you ask a good question, Wife.”
“You think I ask good questions?”
“Yes, I do. You use your head, except with your damned idiot mother.”
“Language, my lord.”
They fell silent on that little normalizing exchange, until Marjorie looked down at their joined hands.
“Yes.” Aaron divined the direction of her thoughts. “You might be free of me. Is that what you want?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Margie, you have to realize that with Gabriel reappearing, you have leverage to put this farce of a marriage behind you and snag the prize you’ve waited your entire life to marry.”
She shook her hand free of his grasp. “Your brother is not my idea of a prize, unless he’s much changed.”
“Then what does that make me?”
“You are my husband.” She said this with rare heat, and Aaron had to admit to some relief. She wouldn’t toss him over without a show of loyalty, though he hardly deserved even that much.
“I may not be,” he countered nonetheless, “because you were betrothed to Northbridge, and that was Gabriel, not my humble self.”
“We are married.” Her voice broke on the word, and Aaron did put his arms around her. “Aaron, we are. To the world, we are the Marchioness and Marquess of Hesketh. It’s who we’re expected to be.” She bundled into him, her emotions obviously provoking an uncharacteristic display of… something. Husband and wife didn’t often touch, except for the barest civilities and in public, so Aaron let himself enjoy her fragrant, female curves in his embrace.
God knew, it might be the last time.
“What do you want, Margie?” He propped his chin on her temple and rubbed a slow hand over her back. It was a beautiful back, slender, strong, and graceful, and he’d never really appreciated that before.
“I want to hear what Gabriel has to say for himself,” she said, her words muffled against Aaron’s cravat. “I want some time to put our situation in some kind of order, I want…”
“Yes?” He let her sit up and passed her his handkerchief. “What do you want?”
“T
his is confusing.” Marjorie blotted her eyes. “Who is the marquess now, when your brother is legally dead? Who votes the seat in the Lords; who has title to the properties? Whose portrait is Miss Hunt to paint?”
Aaron tucked a lock of silky blond hair back over her ear. “That is the least of our worries. I’m more concerned with what we tell your mother.”
“Mama.” The word was a despairing oath. “Oh, God, Mama.”
“Mama and the entire world. You are my wife, for all legal purposes, Marjorie. I’ll not leave you to the vultures, but if Gabriel wants to put things right and have you for his marchioness, you’re going to have to tell me what you want—tell me honestly.”
“You’re saying you’d fight for me?” She smiled, and Aaron wondered why he’d so seldom seen her smile.
But then, he knew why.
“I’m saying, I’m your husband,” he reiterated, “and I will act in that capacity until you tell me you’d rather I didn’t.”
Marjorie sat a little straighter, and damn him, because he missed the feel of her in his arms. “We don’t know what Gabriel intends, your lordship. This whole discussion might be moot. He could have married some Spanish beauty and be waiting to shock us with that surprise as well. Where was he for two years while we were getting married and mourning and trying to get Hesketh set to rights?”
“I honestly haven’t asked him that, though in truth, Margie, I don’t think Gabriel will be your most challenging issue.”
She folded his handkerchief in her lap so the lace edges matched exactly. “If Gabriel intends to have me for some kind of wife, his wishes will carry great weight in the courts, won’t they? He’s used to getting what and whom he wants.”
Aaron drew her to her feet. “Maybe he was, but he seems different. Every bit as irascible, but not as arrogant.”
“That should be the subject of a notice in the Times,” Marjorie said, tucking her arm around Aaron’s. “Not that he’s miraculously restored to us, for Lazarus at least set a precedent in that regard, but that he might have learned some humility.”
