by Danice Allen
Regina’s blush deepened, and her fingers fumbled a bit in their task of putting Rory to rights. “Now I’m to be compared to a devoted spaniel, eh?”
“Spaniels don’t stammer and get a twitch in their eye when they’re nervous or asked to tell a simple little untruth,” Gabrielle reminded her. “I hope our charade doesn’t put you in such a situation too often, for you’re sure to give us away.”
“I don’t like telling lies!” Regina protested.
“Nor do I,” said Gabrielle. “But in this case it’s necessary and for a good cause.”
“Spinning whiskers don’t trouble me in the least,” Rory confessed cheerfully. “It’s really just acting, you know.”
Gabrielle shook her head at Rory, then moved to the bottom of the stairs, peering up. “You don’t think Zach heard us quarreling, do you?”
“There was no one in the gallery when I left my room,” Regina reassured her, then added, “but you can’t be too careful.”
Gabrielle chewed nervously on her bottom lip. “You’re right, of course.” She looked at Rory, willing him to be serious. “Rory, we must work together on this. We mustn’t fight. Promise me you’ll be good!”
Regina patted the folds of the much-improved cravat, while Rory assumed his most demure pose. “I’m always good, lass.”
“Oh, you devil… !”
“Lover’s spat?”
Gabrielle froze at the sound of Zach’s voice coming from behind her, not from the direction of the stairs as she’d expected. She pivoted and discovered him standing at the front of the hall that led to the library and the servants’ stairs. Each time she saw him, it was as if she hadn’t clapped eyes on him for ages. Each time she marveled at the effect he had on her senses—like a physical wrench. Today in a wine-colored jacket and black trousers close-fitted to his long shapely legs, and with his butter-yellow hair shining in the diffused morning light, he looked magnificent.
“Zach, where did you come from?” she blurted, worried lest he’d heard the substance of their conversation.
Zach shrugged and smiled. “I came from my room, of course. I had a book I wanted to return to the library, so I came down the back way. Seemed the most logical approach. Why? Did I err?” he teased. “Miss Murray, am I not to use the servants’ stairs?”
Regina forced a laugh. “Of course you may use any stairs you choose! And d-do call me R-Regina,” she added. Regina’s left eye began to twitch.
“You just surprised us, that’s all, old man,” Rory explained, stepping close to Gabrielle and draping his arm about her shoulders.
Zach raised a tawny brow, his gaze focused on Rory’s arm, then fixed piercingly on Gabrielle’s face. “Surprised you in the middle of a tiff?”
“Nonsense, Zach. Rory was just teasing me about something, and I called him a devil.” Gabrielle gave a chirp of laughter. “You know me and my quick tongue!”
Zach’s mouth twisted wryly. “Don’t I, though.” He peered at her from beneath slightly lowered lids, his golden eyes seeming to try to penetrate through her outer facade and into the hidden stores of thought and feeling. Gabrielle fidgeted under the scrutiny, a half-delicious sort of unease creeping along her spine. “At least I used to know you, Gabby,” he added.
No one seemed capable of dredging up a fitting response to such a cryptic remark, but luckily they were all saved from the discomfort of an awkward silence when Sir George, Lady Grace, and Aunt Clarissa could be heard chattering their way down the stairs. The Murrays looked their usual polished selves, both tall, delicate-thin and silver-gray, aging elegantly, like an heirloom sterling tea set.
Aunt Clarissa, decked out in her uniform gray, looked like a dormouse, as usual. Waggling her fingers in front of her, she immediately attached herself to Zach and demanded to know how he’d got the black eye. Since she’d been asleep last night at the ball and hadn’t had the opportunity to speak to him then, and had eaten breakfast at too early an hour to meet him in the dining parlor, he must tell her how dear Beth, Alex, and the children were! Amid several separate conversations and in the flurry of servant-assisted donnings of greatcoats and mantles, they left the house.
Zach squinted up at a cool white sun. Mother Nature had celebrated this first day of January 1832 by blessing the population with a cloudless sky as bright as a new penny, and with air as crisp as a pound note freshly printed from the London Mint. A fine powder of snow covered the roofs and laced the iron gates of Charlotte Square, and a grainy frost coated the walkways. Well-dressed ladies and gentlemen crunched along in their pattens and leather boots, laughing and talking and looking forward fearlessly to another prosperous year.
Zach found himself very much a part of this army of prosperity, headed for an address on Queen Street, though he would much rather have Gabby all to himself for the indulgence of private conversation. Grudgingly, politely smiling, he toed the line just behind her and the marquess, who were just behind Sir George and Lady Grace. Regina marched on one side of him, her gloved hand wedged in the crook of his elbow, a large mulberry-colored feather in her bonnet tickling his chin every time she turned to greet an acquaintance, and Aunt Clarissa marched on the other side.
Regina seemed a very likable young woman, appearing upon first impressions to be altogether artless and simple in her conversation and manners. She didn’t try to impress him or flirt with him. She did not employ a single practiced feminine wile that he could discern, and, being a frequent target of females whose entire happiness was qualified by the admiration they inspired, Zach could spot the type clear across a room.
Regina, pretty, lithe, and auburn-haired, could certainly expect her fair share of admiration, yet she did not seem to feel the need to seek it out and store it up, like a squirrel gathering precious nuts for a barren winter. Zach could understand Gabby’s friendship with such a modest, lively young woman, and he approved. But he still hadn’t reckoned out what had attracted her to Rory Cameron! The marquess was certainly not in the least bit modest or shy. He seemed, in Zach’s “objective” view, to be the male counterpart of the female type he’d just been pondering, ever needful of admiration and notice.
Just two steps ahead of them, Rory and Gabby were perfectly positioned so that Zach could watch and study them. Gabby seemed completely absorbed in her fiance; however, Rory was not so oblivious to passers-by. He was especially cognizant of pretty young women who shyly nodded as they passed, dimpling and blushing in response to his bold look and sly grin. Then, when such diversions were gone, he turned back to Gabby, rewarding her devoted attention with intimate smiles, implying secrets and meanings that belonged to lovers; lengthy whisperings in her ear with his dark head bent close to hers; and the increased pressure of his large fingers round Gabby’s waist, so neatly nipped in, as it was, by the tailored lines of her rich brown pelisse. Such a tiny waist, such big hands…
Zach felt his chest constricting, as so often happened when a fleeting memory of last night’s ball came back to him. The one picture indelibly etched into his brain of the night before was of Gabby captured in the marquess’s embrace, the large Scot’s mouth moving over hers with the ravaging thoroughness of a love-starved inmate just escaped from gaol. Gawd, could there be a worse example of disrespect for one’s betrothed than to compromise her in public? The worst of it, however, was that Gabby had not objected. And today they were as cozy and cooing as two turtledoves in a cote. Even after their tiff.
Though they’d tried to deny the existence of an argument between them, Zach knew that Rory and Gabby had had a disagreement that morning, but had deemed it best to hide the fact from him when he ventured into the vestibule on the echo of raised voices. Another odd happenstance was Regina’s apparent willingness to help them hide the existence of an argument from Zach. Did Gabby care so much for Zach’s good opinion of her fiance that she would try to keep secret any unpleasantness attached to their engagement? Would she even involve Regina in this sort of subterfuge?
Zach shook his head, p
uzzled. To his mind, none of their behavior seemed precisely genuine. Their adoration for each other seemed rather overwrought at times; Gabby’s laughter too strident, Rory’s lovemaking a bit too violent to be sincere. Certainly Zach had not been long enough in their joint company to have formed an unshakable opinion on the unsuitability of their match, but he had an odd, rather disjointed feeling that they weren’t really a match at all… But it hardly seemed likely that Gabby and the marquess would impose on the Murrays’ trust, her mother, and Rory’s grandmother as well, by only pretending to be engaged … or would they?
Zach pushed the thought aside. Such a suspicion was precipitant and only based on a feeling. He had often enough derided Gabby for placing too much emphasis on that whimsical non-substance called intuition. Besides, what motive would she have to do such a thing? Maybe he was simply jealous—in the unromantic sense, of course—that she’d supplanted him as best friend with this swaggering Scot. If only he felt Rory truly deserved her.
A brisk wind blew up from behind, lifting the tails of Zach’s greatcoat and even momentarily penetrating the wool of his trousers, sending a shiver up his spine. He smiled with malicious satisfaction, imagining the effect such a breeze might have on a man wearing a kilt. He sincerely hoped that Rory was feeling the chill right up to his—
“Here, Regina, trade places with me,” Gabby was saying suddenly, stopping to switch their positions. “I haven’t had the chance to ask Zach about my sister and my dear little nieces and nephew.” Regina moved with such alacrity that Zach was almost offended. Did all females find Rory’s charm so irresistible?
“You, too, madam,” Rory called back, offering his other elbow to Aunt Clarissa. “There’s a shivery sort of nirly, as we Scots say, blowing down from the northern hills today, and I could use me another fetching female to cuddle up to!”
Aunt Clarissa giggled like a schoolgirl. “Posh, my lord, enough of your flummery!” But she accepted Rory’s arm with nary a peep of demur.
As if by mutual consent, but without a word passing between them, Gabby and Zach began to lag behind. His long strides shortened to match hers, and she perceptibly slowed down. Rory and the others appeared oblivious to the increasing distance growing between them and did not bother even to look back. Indeed, Rory seemed to have enthralled the two women with his conversation. Perhaps, Zach thought wryly, he was reciting one of his poems.
Suddenly Zach realized that he and Gabby hadn’t spoken a word to each other in the interval. He was also abruptly aware of the almost too pleasurable sensation of having finally got her—relatively speaking—alone. Her arm was snugly tucked in the crook of his elbow, round and firm. His traitorous eyes flicked fleetingly over the curve of her bosom, also round and firm. He stared down at the crown of her bonnet and traced with his eyes the soft angle of her cheek and the downsweep of dark-brown lashes. She was looking at the ground in an unprecedented fit of shyness—if that’s what it was that kept her gaze averted and her quick tongue silent.
She smelled so good. Orchids again, those damnable, exotic, intoxicating blooms.
Gabrielle was in a tremor. How many nights had she imagined being close to Zach, as now, their bodies touching, their movements in perfect harmony? She felt her face flush with heat. They hadn’t been walking together in those vivid night fantasies, they’d been making love.
“They’re all doing very well.”
Gabrielle darted a surprised look at Zach, her blush warmed tenfold by the teasing slant of his mouth and the crinkled smile of his lionlike eyes. “What?”
“Beth and Alex and the children are fine, Gabby. Isn’t that why you wanted to walk with me, to inquire after our mutual loved ones?”
“Oh, yes! I’m so glad that all is well in Surrey. And how did you leave my mother?”
Zach’s brows puckered, but a ghost of a smile still curved his lips. “You’d probably be able to tell me more about your mother than I could tell you. Didn’t you say last night that you’d just received a letter from her yesterday? I haven’t heard from Mrs. Tavistock since I left Cornwall a fortnight ago.”
“Oh.” Gabrielle resumed her contemplation of the walkway. Her thoughts were muddled. The slight brushing of Zach’s thigh against her skirt had snatched away her powers of concentration.
Zach chuckled softly. “Is it possible, Gabby, that we’ve nothing to say to each other? So long as we’ve been friends, I can’t fathom this sudden dearth of subject matter.”
Gabrielle lifted her eyes again, studying Zach’s beautiful face. Yes, even with his bruised eye—which he’d offered several different tongue-in-cheek explanations for—he was still beautiful. He apparently felt the intensity of her gaze, and it made him uncomfortable to be studied so closely. His teasing expression faded away. He waited for her to speak, his features set in a tense mask of assumed pleasantry.
She took a breath and gathered her scattered thoughts. Hoping his discomposure was a good sign, she decided in a rush to make the point she most wanted him to concede. “Circumstances have changed. I’ve changed, Zach. I’m not a little girl anymore, you know.”
“I know.”
Her stomach flip-flopped. “You do?”
Zach’s mouth thinned, then with an obvious effort he turned the corners up in a stiff smile. “You’re betrothed, aren’t you?”
Gabrielle gave a quick nod of her head. “Yes, but I grew up long before I met Rory. I was quite grown up before I ever left Cornwall. You just didn’t notice.”
“Ah, but that’s a moot point, isn’t it? Now that the fact seems beyond debate—your maturity, that is—does that mean we have nothing to say to each other?”
“No, of course not!” Gabrielle squeezed Zach’s arm. She felt the lean muscles contract against her touch. His gaze dropped to her gloved hand, then lifted to her face. “I hope you will talk to me just as freely as you used to do! I’m only explaining that perhaps this reserve we’re feeling between us has something to do with my growing up.” She forced a laugh. “Naturally it changes things a little. You do concede that I’ve grown up, don’t you, Zach? You do see me as a woman now?”
Gabrielle looked hopefully into Zach’s eyes. His casual facade slipped away entirely. He looked harassed; indeed, just as Rory had once suggested, he looked like a fox run to pieces by a pack of hounds. “I thought we’d settied that already,” he said flatly.
Gabrielle continued to study the play of emotions over Zach’s face, so familiar, yet so relentlessly stirring to her senses. She still rested her hand on his arm, and his muscles were still bunched and tense under her fingers. Watching him, feeling his reaction to her touch, she was struck with sudden insight. “Ah, now I understand!” she said, exultant. “You don’t like it that I’ve grown up! And all along I’d thought you’d simply not noticed! Oh, I’m so glad you noticed! That means—”
“This is an odd subject to pursue, Gabby,” Zach broke in, wedging a finger under the tight fit of his collar. “Only a pea-brain wouldn’t have noticed. And why wouldn’t I like you grown up? Why wouldn’t I like you just as much as a woman as I liked you as a child?”
“Why, indeed,” murmured Gabrielle, a thoughtful pucker forming between her brows. Zach kept his eyes fixed on some vista straight ahead. His mouth was drawn and slightly pinched, as though he had lately partaken of a sour piece of fruit. Another dawning revelation compelled Gabrielle to gently suggest, “Perhaps you don’t wish to admit that you like me even better as a woman.”
Zach never felt so trapped, nor so incapable of speech. The little scamp spoke freely, fearlessly, and had revealed the crux of the matter with disquieting astuteness. Not until that very moment had he fully admitted the truth of such a troublesome fact. He liked her as a woman, all right. He liked her too damned much for his own good—and hers. But what was her point in bringing up the matter? She was engaged to be married and ought not to care a smidgen about her old friend’s opinion of her. Her fiance’s opinion should be sufficient, and judging by the way Rory h
ad mauled her last night, there could be no doubt that he considered Gabby quite womanly.
That niggling, intuitive feeling returned. What if Gabby and the marquess weren’t really engaged and this was some sort of a ruse to … to do what? To make someone jealous? To make him jealous? It seemed an absurd idea, but Beth and Alex had hinted so broadly that Zach might have romantic feelings for Gabby, it was not beyond the range of possibility that Gabby might imagine herself to have romantic feelings for Zach! Gawd, could Gabby possibly think herself in love with himl The idea, coming upon him so unexpectedly, wrung from his soul a most unwelcome thrill of joy.
Zach suppressed the joy, scolded it, condemned it, and sent it ruthlessly back to the foolish heart that had given it birth. If Gabby thought she loved him, surely it was just a childish infatuation gone awry. For her own good, he would nip such misplaced and misunderstood ardor in the bud.
“Gabby, I—”
“Mr. Wickham, Gabrielle! Come along now, we’ve arrived at our first stop, the McLeods’!”
Aunt Clarissa, standing beneath a fan-shaped window at the steps of a house architecturally very similar to the Murrays’ residence in Charlotte Square, beckoned to them. Apparently the others had already gone inside.
“Goodness, I had not thought she could see so far,” said Gabby in a conversational tone, but Zach felt her arm shaking slightly against his side.
“I had not thought her capable of playing the part of chaperon so well, either,” Zach said, paused, then pointedly and brutally added, “Though it hardly seems necessary for her to worry whilst you’re in my company. I’m like an older brother to you, and, after all, you’re engaged to the marquess.”
Zach heard her faint, sharp intake of breath, then persevered in his quickly formed decision to clear the romantical cobwebs from her impressionable mind. He walked her firmly toward the house, patting her hand in a paternal manner. “Your aunt had ought to understand from whom she should be guarding you, eh, Gabby? Certainly not from an old family friend like myself! No, certainly not from me!”
