How to Woo a Reluctant Lady (14 page)

Her voice caught as if on a sob, and Gabe’s smirk turned to alarm. “Come on, Minerva, I was fine!”

“Yes, but you could have been killed!” When she drew out her handkerchief to dab at one eye, Giles wondered cynically if her tears were real. He’d seen his sisters manufacture tears often enough.

If she had manufactured them, it was a clever way to defuse her brothers’ anger and draw attention away from what she and Giles had been doing. Gabe wore an expression of pure chagrin, and the other two exchanged nervous glances.

“And you, Jarret, of all people,” she continued, rounding on that brother. Her tirade was drawing a crowd, but she
didn’t seem to care. “You
let
him do it, even after seeing him practically kill himself last time! You ought to be ashamed of yourself!”

“Now see here, sis,” Jarret protested. “I tried to talk him out of it.”

“Not hard enough. Perhaps you were more interested in wagering on the race than on keeping your brother from dying.”

“Certainly not!” Jarret said, now on the defensive. “I didn’t . . . I would never . . .”

“Then there’s you, Oliver,” she said, turning her heart-wrenching gaze on her eldest brother. “You know how badly he was hurt before. He could easily have broken his neck. Did you
want
to see him die?”

“Of course not!”

“Then why not demand that he stay home? Why come here and help him?”

“Someone had to make sure that Chetwin didn’t cheat, and keep watch in case—” Oliver broke off with a grimace.

“He had an accident, like last time?” she said. “Is that what you were here for, to pick up the pieces afterward?”

“No . . . I mean . . .” To Giles’s vast amusement, Stoneville sent him a helpless glance. “Would you please explain to my sister that a man has to stand by his brother, whatever choice he makes? What was I supposed to do, tie him up and never let him out of the house? He’s a grown man, for God’s sake.”

When some of the onlookers watching their very public family spat murmured their agreement, Minerva rounded on Giles, her eyes flashing fire. “Don’t you dare tell me you agree with them!”

He held up his hands. “I’m staying out of this fight. I brought you here, remember? I did my part.”

“And anyway, it turned out fine,” Gabe said irritably. “I don’t know why you’re making such a fuss. I didn’t die, and I won the race besides. That’s all that matters.”

A new voice entered the fray. “Yes, that’s always the only thing that matters to you, isn’t it, Lord Gabriel? That you win.”

They all turned to see a young woman standing there, accompanied by a gentleman who looked as if he wanted to be anywhere else but there. Giles tried to place the woman, who looked familiar somehow.

But apparently not to Gabe. “Who the devil are
you
?” he asked.

“Someone who hasn’t forgotten the last victim of your recklessness,” the woman said with great anguish in her voice. “But
you
have, haven’t you? You’ve forgotten completely how you came to be called the Angel of Death.”

Giles groaned as the truth registered, and the blood drained from Gabe’s face.

“You’re Miss Waverly,” Gabe said, his eyes suddenly haunted.

“Exactly. Miss Virginia Waverly. And you killed my brother.”

Minerva was thunderstruck. Virginia Waverly. She’d met the girl only once, at Roger Waverly’s funeral, when Miss Waverly had been thirteen and quite unremarkable.

She wasn’t unremarkable now. At twenty, she was a beauty, with a willowy figure, eyes of cornflower blue, and hair a mass of black ringlets set off by a pretty little straw bonnet with pink ribbons. And she fairly glowed with righteous anger as she confronted the man she saw as her brother’s murderer.

Poor Gabe looked as if someone had struck him in the head with an ax. At least someone was trying to knock some sense into him, although the woman had no right to claim that he’d killed her brother.

“Miss Waverly,” Minerva said, forcing a smile as she stepped forward, “I believe you’re laboring under some misapprehension about your brother’s death. You see—”

“Stay out of this, Minerva,” Gabe ordered in an emotionless tone. “Miss Waverly has come here to get something off her chest, and I for one would like to hear it.”

“Actually,” Miss Waverly said hotly, “I came to see you race, Lord Gabriel. I couldn’t believe you’d be so reckless again. That you’d risk another man’s life after what—”

“Chetwin chose the course, not Gabe,” Jarret put in. “As my
sister said, you’re laboring under a misapprehension.”

“Would the rest of you just shut the hell up?” Gabe snapped. “This has nothing to do with any of you.”

He approached Miss Waverly with leaden steps and a stricken expression that broke Minerva’s heart.

“What do you want as recompense for your brother’s death, Miss Waverly? Ask anything, and I’ll do it. I’ve offered the same to your grandfather in writing many a time, but he won’t even acknowledge my letters.”

“He wants to forget,” she bit out. “But I cannot.”

“I understand. Roger was your brother. If I could go back and do it over—”

“What a lot of nonsense,” she retorted in a bitter voice. “You’re here today repeating history. I might have forgiven you before, but not now. Not when I heard that you meant to do exactly the same thing again. I learned of the first race against Chetwin too late to attend, but this one, I wasn’t about to miss.”

Gabe stiffened, his voice turning chilly as doom. “So you came to tell me that I’m a conscienceless bastard.”

“No, I came to see you lose. But you never do, do you? Since you’re so bent on risking everyone’s lives on that wretched course, then you might as well race
me
, too. At least I can honor my brother’s memory by succeeding in the one thing he wanted: beating the almighty Lord Gabriel Sharpe.”

Gabe seemed as startled as the rest of them. “I’m not going to race you, Miss Waverly.”

She set her hands on her hips. “Why not? Because I’m a woman? I’m an excellent whip, as good as my brother ever was.”

“She really is, you know,” her companion offered, a dark-haired fellow with an arresting face. “My cousin excels at
driving four-in-hand. She even won a race against Letty Lade.”

“I’ve heard,” Gabe said tersely.

Minerva certainly hadn’t. Letty Lade was the quite disreputable wife of Sir John Lade. Not only was she a notorious whip, but she was also rumored to have been the mistress to a highwayman before marrying her husband, who was famous as the founder of the Four-in-Hand Club. To beat Letty Lade would take a driver of much skill.

“But no matter how good you are, madam,” Gabe went on. “I won’t race you, and certainly not on this course. You’ll have to take your revenge upon me some other way.”

“You may change your mind after word gets around that a woman challenged you to a race and you refused,” she said, her countenance calm. “I doubt you’ll like being branded a coward by all your friends.”

And with that cutting remark, Miss Waverly turned and walked off.

Her tall cousin paused a moment. “You do realize she’s just angry and trying to provoke you.”

Gabe stared after her, his eyes bleak. “She’s succeeding.”

“I’ll talk some sense into her,” her cousin said, then hurried after her.

“Good luck,” Gabe muttered. Then abruptly he turned and headed away from where they stood.

“Where the devil are
you
going?” Jarret called after him.

“To get drunk!” he cried and strode determinedly toward the Black Bull.

“But Gabe—” Minerva began.

“Leave him be,” Giles said in a low voice. “This isn’t the time when a man wants his sister.”

Some unspoken communication passed between Oliver and Jarret, then Jarret nodded. “I’ll keep an eye on him. You can go
on home with Minerva.”

“Do you think Gabe will be all right?” Minerva asked Oliver anxiously as Jarret left.

“Hard to tell,” Oliver answered. “You know how he is.”

She did indeed. Gabe fell into a chilling silence whenever Roger Waverly’s name was mentioned and afterward invariably took whatever risky challenge anyone offered him. Lord only knew how he would react to
this.

Oliver stared after his brothers another moment, then turned to Giles. “I think Minerva should ride back to Halstead Hall with me.”

“Not a chance,” Giles said in a voice of steely calm. “I brought her here, and I’ll bring her home.”

“If you think I’ll let you have one more minute alone with my sister—”

“Oh, for goodness sake,” Minerva told Oliver irritably, “we’re in an open curricle and we’ll be following right behind you. What could he possibly do to me?”

The last thing she wanted right now was to ride alone with Oliver while he tried to determine the full extent of what she and Giles had been up to at the inn. She knew better than to think he had taken her tale of the afternoon at face value. Oliver was wily that way.

Finally Oliver nodded. “You’ll both give me a full report once we reach the house about what you’ve discovered concerning Desmond.” It wasn’t a request.

“Of course,” Giles said.

When Oliver strode off for his own carriage, Minerva let out a long breath. Thank heavens he’d given in. She needed time to prepare what she would tell him about her and Giles.

Lord preserve her if he ever guessed the truth. Yes, she wanted him to be concerned about her association with Giles,
at least enough to talk Gran out of making her marry. But she didn’t want Giles hurt. And Oliver would most assuredly hurt him badly if he learned that she’d just spent part of the afternoon being fondled and driven to distraction by the man.

It was going to be hard to pretend that her entire world hadn’t just shifted on its axis. At last she knew firsthand some of what men and women did together once they moved past kissing. And now that she did, she had to wonder how any woman ever stayed chaste.

What had started out as acquiescing to Giles’s seductions so she could get some answers from him had rapidly become the most thrilling afternoon of her life. Such new feelings he’d roused in her! And when he’d slid his finger inside her drawers . . . No wonder women threw themselves into bed with scoundrels. Men like him were a danger to any woman’s composure.

Giles was a masterful seducer. Because he could rouse a woman’s body so easily that she lost her mind to his delicious kisses and caresses. Because he could make a woman forget all her plans for the future.

No, not that. Never that. Though he’d heated her blood, that wasn’t enough to build a marriage upon, especially when he had a habit of heating
every
woman’s blood. She wasn’t about to end up in Mama’s situation.

Besides, after today she would surely be one step away from freedom. Gran would be alarmed after Oliver told her his concerns. Then Gran would cut her off for good—her and only her—leaving her free to write her books in a cottage somewhere. She already made enough money to support herself that way.

And that’s all Minerva wanted. Her own life.

Still, when Giles took her hand to help her into the curricle, she couldn’t help thinking of where that hand had recently been, exactly what it had been doing to her, and how wonderful it had made her feel. Worse yet, the heated glance he gave her told her that she wasn’t the only one thinking about it.

And when he climbed up to sit beside her, she was painfully conscious of the warmth of his thigh against hers, the masterful way he took up the reins and set the horses going at a steady pace behind Oliver’s rig.

“Are you all right?” he asked in a low voice.

She stiffened. Had he read her mind? “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Because you just heard a woman practically accuse your brother of murder.”

Oh,
that.
“I’m fine. I’m just worried about Gabe.” She thought of the stricken look on his face. “I understand why Miss Waverly is angry, but she had no right to blame Gabe for Mr. Waverly’s death.” When Giles said nothing, Minerva’s temper sparked. “You don’t agree?”

He cast her a searching glance. “Would you have blamed Chetwin if Gabe had died today?”

The remark caught her off guard. She searched her conscience. “Since he was the one to challenge Gabe . . . I suppose I might have. But Gabe didn’t challenge Mr. Waverly to that race.”

“You know that for certain? Has Gabe ever said so?”

She thought back through everything that had been said when it happened and let out a long breath. “No. I just assumed . . .” She looked at him. “Do you know?”

“No one knows, except a couple of their friends who refuse to say. Which leads me to believe that Gabe might have laid down the challenge. If Waverly had done it, the friends would
have no compunction in saying so, since the man is dead.”

She scowled at him. “I hate it when you’re logical.”

A faint smile touched his lips. “Only because you’re blind when it comes to seeing your family clearly.”

“And Miss Waverly isn’t?”

“I didn’t say that.” He flashed her a brief, thoughtful glance. “But I’d think that you, of all people, would understand what it’s like to want justice for someone you love, yet feel utterly incapable of gaining it through any legitimate means.”

Something in the way he said “justice” and “legitimate means” arrested her, reminding her that his father had committed suicide after losing a great deal of money, probably by gambling it away. “Are we still talking about me and my family?”

His face closed up. “Of course. You want to know the truth about what happened to your parents, and you’re willing to go to great lengths—like sneaking into Desmond’s room—to get it. You and Miss Waverly are alike in that respect.”

Why did she get the sense that there were things he wasn’t saying? “She doesn’t want justice—she wants revenge.”

“You would, too, if you knew for certain that Desmond killed your parents.”

“Perhaps.” She eyed him closely. “So did you want revenge for your father’s death?”

He wore a bland expression. “He killed himself—how can one get revenge for that?”

“I don’t know—I’m asking
you.
You say I’m blind to my family’s faults. I just wondered if you were equally blind to your father’s.”