by Nicole Byrd
It was his turn to nod. He would not dispute that. But what she did not know, and what he did not yet dare to tell her, was that the danger existed not just from Barrett and his hired killers, but closer at hand. Who would protect Psyche’s good name, Psyche’s pure loveliness from Gabriel himself?
The carriage rocked over a bump in the road, and the steady cadence of horses’ hooves was the only discernable sound. Neither spoke, but the silence between them was pregnant with emotions so powerful that the air itself seemed to pulsate, like the blood in Gabriel’s temple and the thundering of his heart.
The moon was waning by the time they reached the village which lay nearest to Gabriel’s hard-won estate. The carriage slowed and rolled at a leisurely pace through the quiet lane; all the houses and the one tiny inn were dark and shuttered; all the residents seemed to be asleep in their beds, quiet of conscience and easy of mind.
Gabriel wished he felt the same. Would Barrett think to come after them here? Was Gabriel taking too much of a gamble? If it had been only his own life he was risking, he would have chanced it all with his usual rakish grin, but when Psyche’s well being also depended on his choice, he found he had much more reason to second guess himself.
The hours of their travel had passed without conversation; he thought that Psyche had dozed in her corner of the carriage. He had too much to think on for sleep to claim him; he was taut with all the emotion that he had to suppress: the worry for Psyche’s safety that he did not wish to alarm her with, the pent-up longing that he also did not wish her to guess. Sleep was a luxury he would not be granted.
It didn’t matter. He’d had many sleepless nights in his lifetime, many flights from danger. But for the first time, he was fleeing toward something–his redemption, his personal victory, his chance to reclaim his rightful status.
He stirred, wanting to tell the driver to hurry. The first sight of his new property, the property he would never again risk in a card game, the property he meant to leave to his sons and his grandsons. . . When it was restored, it should even be suitable to bring a wife to, it should be an almost suitable haven for–he glanced at the quiet figure slumbering in the corner of the carriage. For the most generous, most courageous, most beautiful woman he had ever hoped to find. He was not worthy of her, and he knew it. Did he have any hope of claiming her heart?
He would do his damnedest. But he had to bring the estate back to some semblance of normalcy first; he knew that with Barrett as its absentee owner, the place was bound to be shabby and in need of polish and paint. But it would be done, with love and responsible care, he would see to it, perhaps do some of it with his own hand. He longed to have roots again, to have responsibilities, to prove that he was man enough to shoulder them.
They left the village behind, passed a last farm house or two, and the carriage picked up speed once more; Gabriel could hear the driver urging on the tired team. Only a mile or two, now, by his solicitor’s directions.
When they turned off the main road into an overgrown driveway, Gabriel leaned out the window of the carriage door, trying to make out the first sight of the house that should be at the end of the drive. He could barely contain his excitement. His movement seemed to wake Psyche, though he had not spoken. She straightened, too.
“Are we there?”
He nodded, grinning like a schoolboy.
Psyche seemed to share his eagerness. “Oh, is it in sight?”
“Not yet.” Gabriel had a sudden intense desire to see his new home for the first time without any witnesses, except for Psyche, of course, with whom he would willing share any treasure. Something so important as reclaiming his lost birthright should be a private moment.
He called to the driver. “Pull up, if you will.”
The carriage slowed.
“What are you doing?” Psyche asked, her tone puzzled.
“I want to examine my property for the first time without anyone nearby,” he said, unable to adequately explain his mad jangle of emotions; he knew that his voice was unsteady. “I’d like you to come, if you wish, but if you are too weary–”
”No,” Psyche said quickly. “I will stay with you.”
He helped her out of the carriage onto the narrow dirt lane. The driver peered at them with sleepy eyes.
“Go back to the village and wake the innkeeper; ask for grain for the horses and food and drink for yourself,” Gabriel told the man, handing him a half crown. “We shall interview the caretaker and look over the house. You can come back for us after you’ve had a short nap, just after the noon hour perhaps, and tell the landlord to have a meal waiting for us when we return.”
“Yes, milord,” the driver agreed, brightening at the suggestion.
There was a patch of open meadow just ahead where the driver was able to turn the carriage, his hands on the reins deft and sure. All of Psyche’s servants seemed both capable and loyal, Gabriel thought. Perhaps because she, like her parents, treated them generously and with consideration. How many mistresses taught their kitchen maids to read or worried over an injured footman? Too bad his own father had never learned that lesson.
The carriage retraced its path, leaving them standing alone amid dark quiet woods. Gabriel hoped this was not a mad impulse. “We will likely have to return to the inn ourselves later,” he told Psyche. “There is supposed to be a caretaker, but he did not answer my solicitor’s letters. I’m sure the beds will be damp and unaired and the furnishings covered in dustcloths, probably not habitable until I can get some servants in.”
She nodded and reached to tuck her hand inside his arm. “You are brimming with excitement,” she said. “I can feel it, too.”
He grinned, still drunk with exhilaration. “I have waited so long,” he tried to tell her. “I know it may not be just as I’d like, but as long as I can reclaim the land, refurbish the house. . . “
”Let us not waste another minute,” Psyche told him, her tone almost as impatient as his. “Come!”
They hurried up the lane, stumbling a little in the darkness over the rough clods of dirt that littered the way, large trees again crowding the narrow strip of road. He would have to trim some of these trees, widen the drive, Gabriel thought. He would have a great deal of work to do on this place, yet the thought did not dim his sense of expectation but only made his ownership seem that much more real. A slight breeze stirred the leaves of the trees, and somewhere, a sleepy bird twittered. It was not far from dawn.
Walking rapidly, they turned one last curve and then the trees fell away, and the landscape opened up. He could make out the outlines of a sizable house, its silhouette dark against the skyline. Gabriel stopped for an instant, and Psyche, as if sensitive to his mood, paused, also.
It looked like a handsome dwelling, better than he had dared hope for. There was a fine line of rooftop, a solid set of stone steps that led to the front entrance, and two ells reaching back on either side of the main house. The stables and other buildings were no doubt hidden around the back. Before the residence stretched a swathe of overgrown lawn, and he caught a glimpse of a stone wall to the side–perhaps a formal garden.
Yes, it had the prospect of a fine gentleman’s seat. Gabriel would no longer be a vagabond, a homeless gamester living hand to mouth, never sure where he would find himself at the next sunrise, the next sunset. This would be his home, won by his own hand. He would owe nothing to his father’s bitter bequest, and that made the victory even sweeter.
He had come home.
Gabriel found that he could not speak; the lump in his throat was too big, and he feared that his vision had blurred. He blinked hard, not willing to reveal such unmanly weakness before the woman at his side.
Psyche stood quietly, giving him the privacy of the moment. She made no comment, and he blessed her for her perception and her containment.
At last he felt that he could trust his voice. “It looks reasonably well,” he said. “Shall we go closer?”
“It’s a very handsome building,�
�� she said. “At least, as much as we can see of it.” Psyche glanced toward the east. The first faint touches of dawn lightened the darkness; while they had stood there, the ebony sky had faded to gray and then to lavender. Almost as they watched, a faint wash of gold and peach showed above the treetops. A bird sang, and then another, and another, the chorus slowly building. The sound was exultant, matching Gabriel’s mood.
“I’m glad you are here.” His heart full, he reached to take her hand.
Psyche smiled up at him, her face pale in the dimness but her eyes shining with a radiance to rival the rising sun. She gripped his hand firmly, and they walked closer to the house.
The front carriage way was almost bare of gravel, weeds thrusting through the once carefully combed drive. The stone steps had withstood the passage of time, but Psyche could see that the large windows were dark with grime and she made out one or two broken panes. She hoped that the interior was not in too bad a shape. Gabriel had his whole heart already committed to this place; she did not wish to see him disappointed.
They climbed the steps slowly, Gabriel seemed to be holding his breath. The daylight was growing brighter, and the birds in the trees now peeped loudly, a disjointed hymn of delight at the start of a new day.
Gabriel reached out to knock on the heavy wooden door. He rapped once smartly and then exclaimed in disbelief.
“Oh, no!” Psyche gripped his now slack hand in sympathy.
Beneath the impact of his touch, the door listed precariously, creaking as rusty hinges gave way. Then its own weight pulled it downward, and it crashed into the dark interior, sending up a cloud of dust that floated toward them, while the sound of the door’s fall seemed to echo through the house.
Gabriel stood very still; even in the pale early light, she thought that his face had blanched. Then he took a deep breath and stepped forward, treading on the dry-rotted wood of the door, which crunched beneath his weight.
“Gabriel, wait!” she called, but he did not seem to hear. He plunged into the house. Choosing her path carefully, Psyche followed.
The inside of the house would have daunted the most optimistic of new owners. Psyche looked around; the walls were streaked with damp, and the wooden wainscoting showed signs of rodents’ teeth. The house smelled strongly of mildew and mold and rot. Psyche put one hand to her nose to block the smell and walked further, glancing into the first doorway.
It had once been a small morning room, but rooks had nested in the paneled shelves beside the empty fireplace, and spider webs festooned the old-fashioned chandelier so heavily that she could barely make out the outlines of the piece. She took one step inside; there was little furniture, and what there was had been left uncovered and was dark with damp and streaked with mildew. An empty outline above the mantel marked where a looking glass or painting of handsome size had once hung; it had been taken away, and the wall showed only the lines of dust attesting to its loss. Psyche took another step inside the chamber, then heard a skitter as of tiny feet. Shivering, she retreated to the hallway.
The other rooms she peered into seemed no better. There was a library, thankfully with few books left on the almost bare shelves, because those which remained were certainly ruined by damp and cold and neglect, not to mention by the mice who scurried away every time Psyche ventured into a room.
It would be a cat’s paradise, she thought wryly, but as for Gabriel–she took a deep breath, then regretted it at once as she coughed on the dank odors. Oh, Gabriel, who had been so happy, so full of anticipation, who had entertained such high hopes for a new start. How could he bear such a disappointment?
She hastened further into the house as the brightening sunlight shone through dirty windows and allowed her a better view of the interior. Unhappily, more light did not alter her perceptions of the house.. Everywhere, there was damp and neglect; strips of wallpaper had loosened from the walls and drooped in sad fingers; cobwebs were thick in every corner, sometimes inhabited by dark shapes that scurried away from her passage and made her shudder again. And the track of small rodent feet made tiny trails through the dust on the floors, otherwise marked only by one man’s footsteps.
“Gabriel, where are you?” she called.
She found him at last, sitting on the staircase which curved up to the upper floors, his face hidden in his hands. From the touch of grime that marked his cheek, the wisp of cobweb that adorned his dark hair, he had ventured even further through the house, and from his silence, his bowed shoulders, he had found nothing to contradict the ruin of the ground floor.
“Gabriel?” she whispered.
When he raised his head, she was shocked by his expression. The spark of hope and happiness had vanished, and the bleakness of his face, his cheeks hollowed by shock, his eyes dark with a grief so deep that it cut her to the heart, made her take a shuddering breath.
“Gabriel, it will be all right.”
He shook his head. “This was to be my home, this estate was to be the key to remaking my reputation, restoring my lost status as a gentleman, giving me back the life I should have had. And it is as empty as all my most foolish dreams.” His voice was flat, so devoid of his usual intonations that she would have thought it belonged to a stranger.
“Gabriel, it is not so–your dreams were not foolish.” She tried to take his hand, but he waved her away.
“I had the presumption to think that someday, after careful stewardship, this would be well enough so that I could ask a woman of good birth to share it with me. It was to be the house to which I would someday be proud to bring my bride.” He could not seem to look her in the face.
“And it’s nothing but a moldering ruin. Barrett has stripped it of every item with any possible value, and then he used the deed, with lies about the property’s condition, as a stake in one final game. Lies and deception, and I bought them all, I–who counted myself such a sharpster.” He laughed, a harsh sound that cut her to the quick. “I was once again the most pathetic of fools.”
“Gabriel, stop it!” she said, her tone sharp. She could not bear the bitter anger of his words, nor the misery that she knew lay behind them. “It is not so bad.”
“You think not?” He raised his gaze to meet hers, and she saw again how deep this blow had struck. “You would wish to make your bed with the spiders, spend your time with the rats and the mice who are busily chewing away at what is left of the foundations? Such good caretakers they are.”
“Stop it, Gabriel,” she repeated. “It is in sad shape, I grant you. But the bones of the house are most likely sound–it has not been untenanted that long. You can still restore it, it will simply take longer than you had hoped–”
”And more money,” he added quietly. “I shall have to go back to the gaming tables, and desperation does not make for a clear head. And if I lose the property itself, my only asset, where do I go, then?”
She thought of Gabriel leaving England yet again, returning to exile, the wandering which had been his life, and she felt a wrench of her own. No, she could not allow it.
“I wanted this to be worthy of you,” Gabriel said, so softly that she wasn’t sure she heard him aright. “I wanted it to be clean and beautiful and good, like nothing has been in my life for so many years. I wanted to dust it off and polish it up and offer it to you on a velvet cushion. It would never have been enough, of course, for someone who deserves gold and diamonds and castles suitable for a queen. But I had hoped.”
His voice trailed off into silence, and she saw how his pride had been shattered, how much pain trembled behind the facade of control he strained to maintain. It was a mask more potentially concealing than the one he had worn for the masquerade–the night of fanciful deception that seemed so long ago, yet was only a few hours behind them.
It was time to put aside the masks.
“Gabriel.” Psyche took his hand. This time, he did not pull away, but regarded her with an almost puzzled look, as if behind his shock and grief and disappointment, he could not think clea
rly. “I do not need elegant houses, nor gold, nor jewels. I need you, Gabriel. I need only your love–that is the greatest gift you can bestow upon me.”
Unblinking, he stared at her for a long moment, then he laughed, an ugly sound of derision and pain. “Do you think I would accept your love out of pity?”
“It is not pity–” She tried to interrupt, but he was not listening.
“Or that any man who cared about you would allow you to throw yourself away on a wastrel with a stained past and a cobweb-cluttered pig sty for a home? You are worthy of so much more than that, sweet Psyche, with your clear eyes and generous heart, which even all your icy decorum cannot conceal. How could I offer you such base coin?”
“Offer me your heart,” she said, her voice soft but clear.
He was not sure that he had made out the sense of her words. How could she possibly consider loving a man so far beneath her? He had hoped for so much, and to find himself once more cast down upon a rubbish heap–the shock of disappointment made him almost mad with grief. He had wanted it in the beginning for his own selfish purposes, but lately he’d desired it even more for her, for Psyche, as a gift to offer the goddess who now held his heart in her keeping. Because of that, the regret was twice as hard to bear.
Unable to believe in her words, he shook his head. “Never would I allow you to lower yourself so far.” His voice was hoarse with pain and despair and a longing that made her ache.
She gazed back at him, her blue eyes hard to read. Her lips were pressed together–oh, if he could only kiss them open again, tease that full sweet mouth with his own lips, his questing tongue, taste her sweetness and teach her–
So much that he could have taught her about love and laughter and delight too deep for words. But only if the cards had fallen a different way. Not like this, with nothing to give her, no safe haven to offer, only this wreck of a house, which echoed the havoc of all his dreams.
“As soon as the driver returns, I will send you back to London,” he said, his voice dull with weariness. “You will be safer without me.”
