by Gabriel
“I truly do.” Aaron eased him onto the bed. “You said Miss Hunt refused you. She’s not acting like a woman indifferent to your situation now.”
Gabriel went still in the act of pulling the comforter up over his lap. “She isn’t, is she? Ah, well, she has a big heart, does Polonaise. She feels for creatures too stupid to stay out of the rain, and if I’m not mistaken, I hear the footsteps of her invading army.”
A knock verified the evidence of Gabriel’s ears.
“I’m back,” she said, striding into the room, several footmen behind her. They dipped buckets to empty the tub, quickly, silently, and were soon wheeling the thing from the room, the door left open behind them. “You’re clean?”
“And fed and a good deal warmer. My thanks.”
“You made him eat?” This to Aaron, whose smile disappeared when Polly swung her gun sights on him.
“I didn’t have to. The repast was sufficiently enticing on its own.”
Polly rewarded him with a smile. “A fine answer. I’ll take the first shift here, and you can attend your lady wife, who needs more than a few comments regarding your progress in London, my lord.”
“You needn’t be my lording me, Miss Hunt, not on Gabriel’s say so.”
“Don’t give her an inch,” Gabriel warned softly.
Polly put her hands on her hips. “You are in enough trouble.”
“Out of my room, Polonaise,” Gabriel retorted. “I’m not so helpless I need witnesses to any further indignities.”
“Well, I’m leaving.” Aaron backed toward the door. “Miss Hunt has given me my orders, which, like the dutiful, prudent soldier I am, I will heed.” He offered Polly a bow, his brother a smirk, and took his leave.
Polly advanced on the bed. “You can stop pretending now. I know it hurts like blazes, Gabriel, and I’m sorry for it.”
“It isn’t your fault,” he said, smoothing a hand over the comforter. “You really need not hover, Polonaise. Only Aaron knows you’re closeted in here with me, and myself undressed down to my nappies, but the footmen will squawk.”
“Like geese. It’s complicated, having help underfoot. Where did you say that salve was?”
“I’m not telling.” Though he longed for the feel of her strong, competent hands on his person, and for once, not in any sexual sense.
“Ah-hah.” Polly closed the drawer to the night table. “This helps, Gabriel, you know it does.”
“Peace and quiet help,” he grumbled as he shifted onto his stomach.
“So you accomplished little in Town?” Polly sat on the edge of the bed and waited for him to get settled, clearly knowing better than to try to assist him.
“A lawsuit is like a military campaign, I gather.” Gabriel did let her deal with his pillows until he was flat on the mattress, like a day-old filleted herring. “There is endless strategizing and gathering intelligence and planning supply lines and moving cannon into position and so forth. You prepare thoroughly, in hopes you’ll have to skirmish only briefly, with all the casualties on the opposing side.” He fell silent, then couldn’t help an oath of combined pain and relief as Polly’s hands smoothed the salve into his skin.
“This is bad,” she observed some minutes later, her fingers kneading gently. “That hurts, doesn’t it?”
“I should say, rather, it agonizes. Promise me something, Polonaise.”
“What?”
“No laudanum. Not to get me to sleep, not to ease the pain, not for the sheer pleasure of disobeying me.”
“Disobey…?” She fell silent while Gabriel struggled to shift to his back. “You fear to be insensate.”
“That’s my girl. Bad things have happened to me often enough that I need not compound incapacity with insensibility.”
“We’ll post a footman.” Polly rose off the bed. “Two footmen, and someone can stay with you.”
“Polonaise.” He pushed the covers back as if to get out of bed, and she stopped halfway across the room.
“Back under those covers, Gabriel, now.”
“And you,” he said. “Quit haring off to post guards and advertise to the entire world that I’m sitting here like a trussed goose.”
“All right, but I’ll stay with you.”
“You cannot,” Gabriel insisted, letting some of his irritation show in his voice. “It would be unseemly, and you know it. Those commissions you value so highly would evaporate overnight, Polonaise.”
It was a low, telling blow, and he delivered it with the right hint of condescension. In the moment when Polly stood there, hurt, angry, and framing her reply around a gathering scowl, Aaron knocked and sauntered in, leading Marjorie by the wrist.
“We’re visiting the sick,” Aaron said, “or is it the halt and the lame?”
“How conveniently Christian of you,” Gabriel drawled. “Lady Marjorie, my apologies for remaining abed, but certain people relieved me of nearly every blasted stitch of my clothing. One wouldn’t want to offend the innocent.”
“Don’t mind me,” Marjorie said with a sly grin.
“Gone over to the enemy, have you?” Gabriel closed his eyes. “Wait until we’re married, my girl, and see how I seek my revenge.”
“You said we wouldn’t be marrying.”
“I’m incoherent with pain and unwilling to die alone,” Gabriel threatened. “You’ve visited, Aaron. Now take your cruel wife and gloat elsewhere.”
“Marjorie has a point you ought to hear.” Aaron’s hand was still wrapped around his wife’s wrist, and Gabriel considered that anything causing the two of them to touch was likely worth taking an interest in.
“Seeing as my sickroom has become the local equivalent of Piccadilly”—Gabriel waved a hand—“say on.”
Aaron took a moment to bring the chairs to the side of the bed and get the women seated before he took up a position lounging at Gabriel’s feet.
“Go ahead, Margie. Tell Gabriel what you said in the kitchen.”
“I asked Aaron, if somebody is trying to kill you, wouldn’t now be the best time to finish the job?”
“Yes,” Gabriel said. “It would, which is why I will not be swilling any damned nostrums or patent remedies.”
“So why not advertise your helpless condition?” Marjorie went on. “When your attacker stalks closer, we can snatch them up.”
“Bait,” Polly said, looking grim. “You’re suggesting Gabriel use himself as bait.”
“He’s incapacitated,” Aaron pointed out. “We let him recover a bit, then put the word out he’s taken a turn for the worse and developed a lung fever and so on.”
“I should be substantially improved by morning.” Gabriel dearly hoped so anyway. “I like this plan.” He sought his brother’s gaze, willing Aaron to understand that not knowing who wished Gabriel harm, not knowing when they’d try again, not knowing why, was eating at him.
“We could move you into the lord’s chambers,” Aaron suggested. “There’s no way to get to the bedroom except from the sitting room, and it’s easy to stand watch from Marjorie’s sitting room.”
“I don’t want to discommode you,” Gabriel said, but he was considering the logistics, and Aaron had a point.
“Aaron and I can vacate that apartment by tomorrow night,” Marjorie offered. “There are plenty of connected guest rooms, and you’re expected to take over the main chambers at some point.”
“Polonaise?”
That he would ask her, and before others, was a risk, but she didn’t let him down, didn’t toss back some witty, cutting retort, though she would have been within her rights to do so.
“You are haunted by this,” Polly said slowly, “not knowing whom to trust and whom to watch. This is a sound plan, provided we can guard you closely enough.”
“Well, there you have it,” Gabriel said. “General Hunt is willing to give it a try, but then, she will be moving on soon, won’t she?”
“Soon enough,” Polly murmured, when Gabriel would rather have heard a rousing argument.
“I’d like to know you’re safe when I go.”
A telling shot. “Very well. Give me a day or possibly two to recover, and then I will make a tragic turn for the worse. Now, if you ladies would excuse me, I require my brother’s company for a few minutes.”
“It’s all right,” Aaron said to Polly. “I won’t leave him until you return.”
“Now I’m a third person,” Gabriel groused. “Not even a ‘his lordship’ third person, just a ‘him’ third person.”
Marjorie held out her hand. “Come, Miss Hunt. You no doubt forgot your own supper, and men need their privacy.”
The door closed behind the women, leaving a relieved silence in its wake.
“Did you have to get catty like that?” Aaron asked, putting the furniture to rights. “That woman you’re not involved with has feelings for you, Gabriel, and reminding her of her departure wasn’t especially kind.”
“What’s unkind is her deciding to leave me so easily,” Gabriel rejoined. “Get me to the damned privacy screen, if you please.”
“You don’t want to merely tumble her, do you? She’s the one you want to woo.”
“On three.” Gabriel got his arms around his brother’s shoulders, and Aaron lifted gently on the count of three. “Oh, holy, suffering Christ…”
“I’ll stay with you this evening.”
“My thanks.” Gabriel tottered over to the screen and dropped his brother’s arm. “If you don’t, Polonaise likely will, sitting upright at the foot of the bed like some loyal beast. She has a wide protective streak, too wide sometimes.”
“You know her that well?”
“We were part of the same household for almost two years,” Gabriel said, tending to his errand as he spoke. “She was the cook, I was the steward, and there was more work for either of us than you could imagine. You can’t help but develop some familiarity in such proximity.”
He emerged from behind the screen, trying to test his balance without courting disaster.
“Miss Hunt was in service?”
“In a manner of speaking.” Gabriel waved his brother off and made the long journey back to the bed on his own two feet. “Her sister was the housekeeper, and Polly took the post of cook when the person holding the position abruptly retired. It was a decided improvement, because Polly’s palate is as well educated as her palette.
“Don’t watch,” Gabriel said, lowering himself to the bed. “This is a tedious business and utterly without dignity.” He elbow-crawled back onto the mattress, pausing frequently and moving with all the grace of a jug-bitten tortoise.
When he was once again under his covers, Gabriel let out a disgusted sigh. “Growing old is not for the faint of heart.”
“You aren’t old; you’re just… a little worn.”
“Such a diplomat. Now, tell me whether you’ve been considering Kettering’s very sly suggestion that you and Marjorie start a family.”
“That is hardly your affair.” Aaron’s words were the verbal equivalent of the sleet now pinging against the windows.
Gabriel moved lower on the pillows, carefully, like an exhausted plow horse sinking onto a bed of straw after a day in the traces. “The hell it isn’t my affair, particularly when I’m facing another installment of my own attempted murder. I’d say one of us should be reproducing some legitimate offspring posthaste, and you’re the only one with a willing accomplice.”
Which frustration was almost enough to eclipse the pain and indignity of Gabriel’s blighted, benighted damned back.
***
Gabriel wakened from a drowse, not quite a sleep, because he couldn’t let his guard down enough to relax into slumber when he was completely alone with a bad back. Polly was silently padding across his bedchamber, a candle in her hand.
“You’ve come to check on the baby?”
“I’ve come to take you to my tower,” Polly said, setting the candle down by his bedside. “Aaron said you can walk if you move slowly.”
“Aaron knows precious bloody little of what he speaks.” Gabriel pushed to a sitting position rather than pull Polly into bed with him. “Do you promise to enslave me for eternity once we arrive to your tower?”
“I haven’t already?” She gathered up his dressing gown and reading spectacles, politely giving him time to dock at the edge of the bed like some ungainly human coal barge, steered by the primitive expedients of pushing and hoping.
Gabriel slid on his slippers while seated, in the manner of a man twice his age. “If you aren’t convinced of my adoration yet, Polonaise, then I’ve been too subtle. Or perhaps, you are too hardheaded.”
“That must be it.” She sat beside him on the bed. “I could not imagine you’d sleep well by yourself in here with your back paining you.”
“One does get to fretting, though at least four footmen and two chambermaids have been privy to my infirmity.”
“No one will think to look for you in my room. Up you go.” She slid an arm around his waist and waited for him to initiate the effort.
The woman was an optimist, for Gabriel went nowhere. “If I didn’t agree with you, you know, I’d be ordering you from the room.”
“You’ll likely order me from my own room,” Polly predicted. “You’re stalling, sir.”
“It’s always hardest when I’ve been inactive. Getting moving is uncomfortable, but it gets better once I’m under way. The footman is not yet on duty?”
“Not yet, but if you sit here prevaricating much longer, he’ll be right down the hall to witness your kidnapping.”
He rose, slowly, but not as painfully as he would have even a couple of hours earlier, and gave Polly a moment to get his dressing gown onto him.
“Prepare to give chase,” he warned before shuffling toward the door, leaning on Polly mostly for show. He might have moved more quickly, but tottering along at her side was a pleasure, and there really wasn’t any hurry.
In fact, now that he was heading for her room, there to spend the entire night with her in her bed, Gabriel had to wonder if he hadn’t exchanged one kind of misery for another of far worse variety.
***
Polly watched her patient teeter over to her bed and wondered if he’d move like that when he was elderly.
Probably not, unless he’d been foolish enough to forget his limitations and aggravate his back. In all likelihood, he’d be one of those men who was vigorous and attractive even to his threescore-and-ten years.
She’d like to do his portrait then, too.
“You coming to bed, Polonaise, or will you guard the door to my prison?”
“I’m coming.” She wedged a fringed rug under the door, then positioned a chair under the door latch, and finished with a string of bells over the chair back.
She expected to find him smirking at her for these ineffectual measures, but his expression was oddly grave, or perhaps puzzled. He ended the moment by shrugging out of his dressing gown and climbing onto the bed in all his scarred, naked glory.
Her slave, indeed.
“I’ll get you back to your bed before the maids are about,” she said. “Marjorie gave orders you weren’t to be disturbed in the morning.”
“Our Lady Marjorie is proving to have a brain in her head. One hopes my brother can appreciate it.”
“She wants me to paint him, you know.” Polly watched as Gabriel settled back against her pillows. How was it he could look so… alluring, when he was debilitated, tired, and he’d just deliberately treated her to an unfettered view of his horrendous scar?
“She wants any semblance of a normal marriage she can create with Aaron,” Gabriel said. “They are as nervous with each other as a pair of sixteen-year-old virgins. It’s an abysmal reflection on the prowess of the Wendover male.”
“Hush, you.” Polly blew out the candles, banked the fire, and only then folded her dressing gown across the foot of the bed. “There’ll be no talk of prowess from the man who turned me down flat only a few months ago.”
“I didn’t tur
n you down, Polonaise.” Gabriel’s voice had acquired a darkness all its own. Smoky and sweet, like the scent of a wood fire on a frigid, starry night. “I stated the conditions any gentleman would insist on, and you rejected me.”
“I rejected—?” Her mouth dropped open and her hands went to her hips, but she was backlit by the hearth—any artist had a sense for the light sources in a room—and caught the gleam in Gabriel’s green eyes.
“Come to bed, love.” Gabriel gestured with a hand. “We can argue in close quarters, and perhaps in my weakened state, you’ll have your way with me yet.”
“You’re ailing,” she said, advancing on the bed. “Helpless, and depending on me to keep you safe.”
“You’ve summarized the situation well enough, Polonaise, now come to bed.”
She took another step toward the bed, then whisked her nightgown, a voluminous business of thick cotton that covered her from neck to toes, right over her head.
“Sweet Infant Jesus and the singing angels.”
“You rejected me,” Polly said as she sauntered toward him. “Not well done of you, Gabriel.”
The look on his face expressed admiration for her pluck and her audacity, male hunger for her feminine charms, and something else she couldn’t fathom.
He lowered his hand. “I’ve changed my mind. Don’t come to bed just yet.”
Her courage faltered as she stood a few steps from the bed, naked, hands at her sides, eyes searching his for… another rejection, or reassurance?
“You are so lovely,” Gabriel said. “But you’ll be safe enough with me tonight, Polonaise, and not because I’m rejecting you. When we make love—and it will be lovemaking, my dear, regardless that your fevered brain tries to rationalize otherwise—I will not have our first encounter hampered by my feeble back.” His expression promised Polly it would be perfect. She tried to ignore that promise and seized on the lifeline he’d tossed her pride.
“Empty boasts,” she rejoined. “Move over. I won’t have you hogging the middle.”
“A slave driver.” Gabriel sighed, obliging her. “And me so meek and obliging.”
“You haven’t a meek bone in your body.” Polly bounced onto the bed and saw him wince at the movement of the mattress. “Roll over.”
