A Winter Scandal (32 page)

Gabriel was not sure how long it was before he returned to reason. They could have stood there, pressed against the heavy door, for a minute or an hour; it was all the same to him. Slowly he released her and moved back, letting her slide down to the floor.

“I would say I am sorry,” he said hoarsely, his breath labored, “but I am not.”

“Nor am I,” she replied, her voice barely above a whisper.

“I am accustomed to having more control. But there is something about you that drives me nearly mad.” He smiled and kissed her lightly on each cheek. “I had not meant to greet you quite this … effusively.”

Thea giggled and reached up to touch her hair, where several strands had escaped and fallen down. “I must look a mess. I was cleaning upstairs when I saw you walking up the path.”

“You look beautiful.” It astonished him that he had once thought her looks only passable. She dazzled him now.

Thea colored prettily at his words. “I should …” She made a vague gesture toward her clothes.

He turned away and righted himself, giving her a bit of privacy to adjust her own clothes. When he turned back around, Thea had gone to the mirror against the far wall and was busy trying to pin her hair back in place. Gabriel dropped down into a chair and watched her, enjoying the intimacy of the scene. He felt happier than he had in days.

Thea gave her hair a final pat and pivoted back to face him. She looked put together again, but the flush in her cheeks and the soft curve of her mouth gave her away. Gabriel’s smile widened, and her cheeks reddened a little more, but the flashing look she gave him did not seem displeased.

She went to the door and opened it, casting a quick glance out in the hallway. Turning back, she said, “Daniel is in Lower Leckbury today. There is a smaller parish there that he visits once a week.”

“Smaller than Chesley?”

“Yes, though you may not believe it. They have a church; it used to be a bit larger. But they have no pastor. So he will not be home until rather late. I was planning on having supper at the table in the kitchen, but perhaps you would like to stay and dine with me? It is quite informal, I’m afraid.”

He smiled, amused by her attempt at polite small talk after what had just occurred between them. “I should enjoy that very much, Miss Bainbridge.”

Thea grinned and sat down in the chair across from him. “How was your journey? Did you find any information?”

“No.” He sighed. “There was one man who was having supper in the tavern in … I cannot recall exactly, a village on the road to Oxford, in any case. He thought that he had seen a woman with a baby in the inn a week or two ago. Apparently he frequently eats there. He cannot be sure of the date, though he is fairly certain it was before Christmas. He does not remember two women, however, and he was unsure whether she had brown hair or blond, so I cannot put a great deal of faith in his account.”

“I am sorry.”

“Thank you. I suppose it was not entirely a waste. I don’t believe that Jocelyn and Hannah are currently at an inn in any of the nearby villages. Which leads back, of course, to their being somewhere in Chesley or the countryside around it. I would have thought we had checked everywhere close by, but obviously they must have gone aground somewhere.”

“Something will turn up,” Thea said consolingly.

“How have things been here? How is young Matthew?”

“I will go fetch him.” Thea popped up and left the room, returning a few minutes later with the baby.

Matthew greeted Gabriel with a squeal of delight, and Gabriel spent the next few minutes swinging him up above his head while Matthew erupted with laughter. Afterward, he set the baby down on the rug, and Thea handed Matthew a wooden rattle. He seemed uninterested in it, however, and was soon on all fours, rocking back and forth. Then, surprising them all, including himself, Matthew stuck out one hand, then another, followed by his legs.

“Look! He’s crawling!” Thea cried.

Gabriel laughed as the baby stopped, looking shocked, then moved forward again. “Good boy!”

Gabriel stood and pulled Thea into his arms, inexplicably filled with pride. Thea laughed and hugged him back. “That is the first time he’s done more than rock there as if he’s going to launch himself forward.”

“You will doubtless never have a moment’s peace from here on.” Gabriel watched the baby traveling on, already almost to the edge of the rug.

At that moment a knock sounded on the front door, and Thea and Gabriel glanced at each other in surprise. Thea started toward the front door, and Gabriel followed her, pausing to swoop Matthew up and take him along. As Gabriel stepped into the hall, he heard the front door open and Lord Rawdon’s voice saying, “Good evening. I hope I am not disturbing you. I had thought to see young Ma—”

Rawdon’s gaze went past Thea to Gabriel, standing in the hallway with the baby. “Oh.”

“Rawdon.”

The other man inclined his head briefly toward Gabriel. “Morecombe.” He turned back to Thea. “Please forgive me, Miss Bainbridge. Perhaps I should come back another time.”

“No. Wait.” Gabriel went forward quickly. “Stay. I would like to speak to you.” He glanced at Thea. “I mean, if that is all right with you, Miss Bainbridge.”

“Of course.” Thea looked from one man to another. “Please allow me to take your coat, Lord Rawdon. Why don’t you gentlemen talk in the sitting room?” Thea hung Rawdon’s coat on the rack and went to take the baby from Gabriel. “I’ll just, um, see about some tea.”

With those words, she whisked the baby down the corridor and through the door into the kitchen. Gabriel regarded Rawdon for a moment, then led him to the sitting room. Rawdon went to the fireplace to warm his hands.

Gabriel stood for a moment, then said stiffly, “I must apologize to you.”

Rawdon looked up at him, surprise registering on his face.

“I tried to tell you the other day, after I read Jocelyn’s letter. But you had already left Chesley. I was wrong to assume that Jocelyn left because of you. Or that you were the father of her child. I greatly compounded that error by concluding that you must have forced her. I sincerely beg your pardon.”

Gabriel waited, watching Rawdon. It had never been easy to read Rawdon’s face, but the man was utterly inscrutable now.

“In your place, I probably would have thought the same thing.” Rawdon gave a careless shrug. “The world knows that the Staffords are a bad lot.”

“I did not judge you on your family.”

“No?” Rawdon turned his attention to picking a bit of lint off the sleeve of his jacket. “It must have been on the basis of the wrongs I had committed on you then.” He raised his head and focused on his gaze on Gabriel, the firelight glinting in his light eyes.

The implication of Rawdon’s words stung. “I am well aware of the quality of your friendship. Your loyalty,” Gabriel replied stiffly. “But I did not judge you without good reason.”

“Indeed?” The corner of Rawdon’s mouth lifted cynically. “Ah, yes, those rumors and innuendos regarding my bad behavior.”

“You are not one to accept an apology gracefully, are you?”

“I have little interest in grace. I am more enamored of honesty.”

“Honesty? You want honesty?” Gabriel stiffened, stalking toward Rawdon. “Very well then, yes, I had heard a great many rumors regarding your family. I paid no attention to them, for I
knew
you. Even when I heard rumors that you did not treat women as a gentleman should, I ignored them. Because I
knew
you. I trusted you as a man, as a friend; I trusted you so much I was willing to give my sister to you. I believed you would care for her, honor her, protect her. But when a woman runs away only weeks before her wedding, when she flees her home and family and the life she has always known because she cannot bear to marry a man considered by most to be one of the most eligible men in Britain, it becomes harder to ignore stories of that man’s mistreatment of women!”

“I have
never
mistreated a woman!” Rawdon roared, his eyes flashing and his hands doubling into fists, and he took a long stride forward.

Gabriel did not back away, but moved to meet him. “I might have believed that then—if you had reacted with the slightest anxiety or pain or even concern for that nineteen-year-old girl whom you professed to love. But when I came to you, when I asked you if you knew where she had gone or why she had left, you sat there, as cold as always, playing cards, without a care in the world. You shrugged—shrugged, as if Jocelyn was as unimportant as one of the fobs on your watch chain—and said you were not going to mourn because ‘some girl decided to cry off.’ And I realized then that I had been deceived in thinking you a friend. Or the man to whom I should entrust my sister.”

“You did not
ask
! You accused! You shouted at me that I had hurt Jocelyn, that I had driven her away. You demanded to know what had happened. What was I supposed to say? That she had ripped my heart from my chest and trampled on it?” Rawdon’s eyes were blazing blue, electric in his pale face.

“Your pride was hurt.” Gabriel’s lips curled. “The woman you said you loved was missing, and you did not bother to look because your pride had taken a fall.”

“Of course I searched for her. Are you mad? I sent men out in every direction I could think of—agents and grooms and Bow Street Runners, all looking for her.”

“But not you yourself.”

“No. Not me.” Rawdon’s stiff form sagged a little, his fists loosening at his sides. “Not at first. I thought, if she wants to throw me over, then I would bloody well let her go. I refused to beg a woman to marry me. Not even Jocelyn. Later …” Rawdon shrugged and turned away. “When I saw that she had run from you as well, when my agents could not find her, I … looked for her. I drove down every blasted road out of London. I went to Southampton, to Liverpool; I went to bloody Gretna Green.”

“You thought she had run away with someone.”

“I thought everything. I even sent inquiries to Paris and Rome. To Brussels.”

Gabriel looked at his former friend, half-turned away from him. Something about Rawdon’s powerful frame was forlorn. Gabriel hardened his jaw. “And what of Grace Fortner?”

“Who?” Rawdon glanced at him. A puzzled frown began to form on his brow.

“Grace Fortner. She was the daughter of a gentleman from Sussex, the cousin of Anne Buntwell, and she came out with Anne two years before Jocelyn made her debut. You fancied her for a while.”

“Oh.” The other man’s face cleared. “Yes. I remember her. A pretty girl. Why do you ask?”

“What happened to her?”

“Happened? I don’t know.” Rawdon paused, thinking. “She—wasn’t there some sort of scandal? She left London, didn’t she? I believe I heard she married some fellow in Sussex.” His gaze narrowed, the frown returning. “What does it matter?”

“A few days after you shrugged off Jocelyn’s leaving, I learned that she was not the first girl to flee London because of you. Grace Fortner had, as well. You loved her; you pursued her. You maneuvered her into being alone with you. And when she rejected your advances, you would not let her go. You struggled, and she was hurt. She fled home because of her fear.”

The other man simply looked at him for a long moment. “And you believed this?”

“She had no reason to lie. The story compromises her honor. She had every reason to keep it hidden, so the telling of it makes it hard to disbelieve.”

“You heard this from Miss Fortner herself?”

“No. But the person who told me had it from her. And I trust that person.”

“More than you ever trusted me, obviously.” Rawdon came closer. His voice was flat, his gaze direct and cold. “If you were any other man, I would call you out. But for the friendship I once held for you, I will tell you this: I admired Miss Fortner a bit; I danced with her a few times and called on her once or twice. I believe I might even have sent her a nosegay. I did not pursue her. I did not trap her in a compromising position. I did not offer her any harm. I have never in my life laid an angry hand on a woman. I have never hit a female nor have I forced one. Miss Fortner lied or your friend lied. I frankly don’t care which. But I will swear to you on my own sister’s life that I have never harmed a woman. The only woman I ever loved was Jocelyn, and God help me, the only wrong I did to her was to allow our engagement to go forward even though I knew she did not love me as I loved her.”

Gabriel stared into Rawdon’s eyes, and in them he saw a cold, hard truth. He knew, with an empty sensation deep in his gut, that he had been wrong, terribly wrong. How could he have taken the word of a stranger, no matter how convincing the circumstances, over that of his trusted friend?

“My God … Rawdon. I am sorry.” Even as he said them, he knew how terribly inadequate his words were. He took a step forward, his hand reaching out.

Rawdon shifted and half-turned away, his voice cool and remote. “It is all in the past.”

“Yes, but … I …”

The other man shook his head once, briefly. “Please, present my apologies to Miss Bainbridge. I should go now. Tell her I shall return another time to see the boy.”

Rawdon strode away, but he paused at the door and turned back. “The reason I left the other day was to meet a man in Oxford—a Bow Street Runner I have used in the past. I hired him to look for Jocelyn. If I hear anything from him, I will let you know.”

“Thank you.”

With a nod, Rawdon left the room. He must have met Thea in the hallway, for Gabriel heard the murmur of voices, Thea’s lighter one mingling with Rawdon’s crisp tones. Gabriel stood, unmoving, still stunned, his thoughts spinning, until Thea walked into the room a moment later.

“Gabriel?” She paused just inside the door, then hurried forward. “What is it? What happened? You look like—well, I don’t know what.”

“Like a man who’s been kicked in the midsection?”

“What happened?” Thea repeated as she slipped her hands around his arm and looked up at him in concern. “Lord Rawdon looked a bit … overset, as well.”

“We talked. I—he told me that everything I’d believed was wrong, and I knew … I
knew
when I looked in his eyes that he was telling me the truth.”