Just as he finished drinking, he heard a rustle in the bed and turned around. Gabby was sitting up, her hair tumbling around her shoulders. “Good morning,” Quill said, with a faint pulse of guilt. It would be a rare day when he could give his wife as much pleasure as he had given his dream Gabby.
“You don’t have a migraine!”
He raised one eyebrow as he poured some more water. “And why should I? I think I drank a bit too much port last night, but migraines do not spring from an excess of liquor. Would you like a glass of water, my dear? It tastes unaccountably good.”
“It does?” She sounded dubious.
Quill put down his glass with a click and walked over to the bed. He bent over and kissed her lightly. But one touch wasn’t enough, so he sat down and ran his hands through her hair. “Let’s start over,” he whispered. “Good morning, my wife.”
Gabby’s cheeks turned rosy. “Quill, do you remember last—how do you …” She trailed off.
“Do I remember?”
“Last night, you and I—”
“Oh, Lord,” Quill said, chuckling. “I dreamt about you all night, Gabby. Did I caress you in my sleep?”
“Actually—”
He pulled her forward and Gabby lost hold of the coverlet she was holding to her neck. “I say!” he said, truly startled. “My beautiful wife is sleeping without her night rail!”
“Well, you—”
Quill groaned. “Oh, sweetheart, you must have felt as if I were attacking you. I truly apologize. I’m a beast. What happened?”
His wife was looking down at her hands. He pushed her curls back over creamy shoulders. “I like you without clothes. Perhaps I will pretend to be dreaming every night and disrobe you in the middle of the night.”
“Quill!” But the reprimand didn’t have its usual force.
“What’s the matter?” he asked, suddenly chilled. “Did I frighten you, Gabby? I’m so sorry; I can’t remember. But I assure you that this has never happened before and won’t happen again.”
“I know that,” Gabby said, almost inaudibly.
“What?”
“I said, I know it won’t happen again,” she replied.
Quill was lost. “What won’t happen?” He wasn’t terribly interested. “Perhaps I should make recompense for my impoliteness during the night.” His hand rounded the curve of her breast and he shifted her onto his lap. Gabby barely managed to clutch the sheet to her waist.
She swallowed. She had promised herself that she would deceive Quill only once, by giving him the medicine, and that afterward she would confess. And leave the house without protest if he sent her away.
“I don’t know why it is,” Quill was saying, his voice growing slightly hoarse. “I can’t seem to think about anything but you, Gabby.” He pushed her backward and she was laid out before him, beautiful, generous curves. “Why don’t we talk later, hmmm?”
“Quill—”
But his head was bent over her breast and she gasped into silence, her protest dying in her throat. Passion rose instantly, turned her legs to water. But guilt beat an opposing rhythm in her heart. Should they make love? Then he would realize that Sudhakar’s medicine had worked—perhaps he would think his injuries healed on their own.
No. The deceit would lie between them for their whole life. She would never be able to make love to him without thinking of it.
“I have to speak to you,” she said, pushing his dark head away from her.
“So serious,” Quill said, wicked lights dancing in his eyes. “Wouldn’t you rather—” And he smiled his devil’s smile.
“Yes—no!” Gabby scooted backward on the bed. “We made love last night,” she said bluntly.
He gaped at her, dumbfounded. “No.” But his tone was not certain.
“We did.”
“But,” Quill said slowly, “I don’t have a headache. I thought—it wasn’t a dream?”
“No.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
Gabby’s heart ached as she watched his brows knit together. She loved that scowl and his certainty that every puzzle had a logical explanation. She saw the moment that the truth dawned on him, the way his face grew rigid as he realized his wife’s betrayal.
She pulled farther back on the bed, just a fraction of an inch. Then she steadied herself. She had been right. Not right in her methods, but right in the outcome. They made love over and over during the night, and he was pain-free.
Quill’s eyes had turned the color of an icy ocean wave. “You drugged me,” he said flatly. With a sudden lunge he leaned forward and pulled the sheet from her hands and flung it away. As Gabby gasped in protest, he pushed her roughly on her side. There on her hip was a bluish bruise, the shadow of Quill’s passionate hold from the night before.
He pulled back without a word. Had she thought his eyes were green? They were black. Gabby’s heart was bursting in her chest. This must be what it feels like to be dying, she thought numbly.
“Sudhakar’s medicine is potent,” Quill remarked. He had himself firmly under control now, she could see that.
Gabby nodded.
“What are the ingredients?”
“I didn’t—I don’t know.”
“You don’t know.” There was a chilly pause.
“Sudhakar gave it to a young man who injured himself falling from a tree,” Gabby whispered. “Whenever the man bent over, he suffered from a headache. The medicine cured him.”
“When did you give that medicine to me?”
“After dinner, in your port.”
Quill stood up. He realized for the first time that he was naked as well. “That was quite a performance you put on last night.”
Gabby willed herself not to cry. He had the right to be angry. “You had to engage in the movement that causes migraines.” Her voice came out in a wisp.
Quill’s eyes narrowed again. “That seems very odd. Why?”
“I believe that the medicine soothes the injured part of the brain,” Gabby said awkwardly. That sounded better than Sudhakar’s talk of putting one’s brain to sleep.
He was slowly working it through. “The patient takes the medicine and then performs the activity that brings on migraines. So the medicine has healed my concussion?”
“The medicine soothes that part of the brain—” She faltered, unable to make sense of the connections between injured limbs and injured brains.
“And if this medicine had not agreed with me, Gabby. Would I be lying in that bed, unable to move at all?”
“Oh, no,” she said eagerly, meeting his eyes. “There are no ill consequences when it doesn’t work.”
“What else did Sudhakar say about it?”
Gabby bit her lip.
“What else did Sudhakar say about the medicine?” Quill’s words were evenly spaced, although she felt as if he had shouted them.
“In some situations, it is a dangerous poison,” she mumbled. She looked imploringly at Quill. “But he promised that there would be no ill consequences, even if the medicine didn’t work. And it did work.”
But he was turning away, pulling on a robe. “So you gave me a dangerous poison,” he said. His voice sounded almost disinterested. “You must have been desperate, Gabby. Was it worth it, last night?”
She didn’t pretend not to understand him. Tears were falling hotly on her hands. “I couldn’t stand to see you in pain.”
“But you felt no guilt when you lied to me, Gabby? When you gave me a medicine that may well have killed me?” He turned around, and she shivered at the look in his face. “When my mother bought such a drug, at least she graced me with the decision whether to take it.”
Gabby’s voice was strangled. “You would have refused!”
“That is correct. I would not have taken it.”
“I had to,” she whispered. “I couldn’t see you suffer.”
“Somehow you seem to have missed the fact that I abhor deceit, Gabby.” His tone was almost genial. “So I
ask you again: do you think last night was worth it?”
In his face she could read the ruins of her marriage, as clear as day.
But he continued, relentless. “As I recall, I believed you were an angel. Quite a joke under the circumstances. Did you laugh? I don’t remember you laughing.” His voice was as sharp as the prow of a ship cutting through fog.
“I love you,” Gabby managed to say.
“I forgave my mother because she bought the potion out of love,” he said. He had no need to continue.
“You destroyed our marriage because our relations weren’t enough for you? Or was it because you wanted me to be more…more manly?” For all his control, he was practically speaking through clenched teeth.
“That wasn’t it!” Gabby cried. “I couldn’t see you in pain. I couldn’t bear it!”
“We had previously made love without my incurring a migraine, if you remember,” Quill pointed out. “Therefore I can only believe that you found the experience inadequate.”
Gabby couldn’t answer.
“I won’t be furnishing you with any further experience,” he said gently. “You know that, don’t you? I will never be able to trust you again, and no marriage could be successful in those circumstances.”
Gabby pulled herself together. She had to make herself clear, and then she would leave. “I will not try to change your mind, but I want you to understand. Sudhakar assured me that the medicine would not injure you. Given that, I decided that lying to you was justified.”
“Justified!” Quill spat. “God, you are such a smug little thing. Justified lies! To your husband! Were you lying when you said you worshiped me, after we consummated our marriage?”
But she was battling tears again and couldn’t answer.
“Of course, that was before you realized just how much my injury was going to affect your daily life,” Quill remarked.
“No! That isn’t it. I won’t have you saying such cruel things!” Gabby had suddenly found her voice. “I never lied to you about important things.”
“Only when justified.” His voice had a savage ring to it.
“I never told you a lie as awful as the one you told me,” she retorted.
Quill folded his arms and regarded her. “And what lies have I ever told you, Gabby? I should warn you that I pride myself on my truthfulness.”
She raised her chin. “In that case, you should not have lied to me about the reasons you wished to marry me. You said that you loved me.”
Quill suddenly remembered a few details from his so-called dream of the previous night.
“I apologize,” he said finally. “I did lie to you.”
But Gabby was gratefully allowing anger to dull her grief. “You lied to me at one of the most sacred moments in life,” she spat. “You forced me to give up a man whom I loved, whom I wished to marry, and to marry you instead.”
“I forced you—”
“You and your brother schemed behind my back,” she said. Her eyes met his, and there were no tears in them now. “You were correct, last night. I am a romantic. I thought you loved me. I foolishly believed your lies, and so I jilted my fiancé. Of course, he was lying, too, since I gather he found me too fat to marry. Fool that I am, I even believed you when you said that I was beautiful.”
Quill opened his mouth, but couldn’t think of anything to say.
“At least I lied to you for your own good,” Gabby said. “I would never have tricked you into a loveless marriage. I wouldn’t have been able to stand the shame.”
“It is not a loveless marriage!”
She shrugged. “It is no longer a marriage at all, according to you.”
Too late, Quill understood that he had never really meant his earlier threats.
Gabby climbed out of bed and picked up her night rail from the floor. In the heat of anger, she had lost all self-consciousness.
“You are beautiful, Gabby.” His voice was hoarse.
She looked at him composedly. Then she pulled the night rail over her head. “I will never be able to trust you again, and no marriage could be successful in those circumstances.” There was a bitter edge in the way she repeated his words.
“They—your lie was different,” Quill said, rather desperately. “You might have killed me with that potion of yours.”
“And you might have broken my heart,” Gabby answered politely. “After all, I thought myself in love with Peter. But you didn’t give a damn about me, did you? I was just an awkward, plump heiress whom your father dredged up somewhere. I gather I should count myself grateful that I wasn’t simply jilted and sent back to India. After all, unlike Peter, you didn’t need my money.”
Quill searched for an answer. “I don’t see that you showed much concern for me when you gave me a deadly potion.”
“The potion is not harmful in small doses,” Gabby repeated. “Would you like to see for yourself?” As he watched, she opened a drawer and pulled out a tiny brown bottle. “I gave you precisely half of this small bottle. There is not enough poison here to harm anyone.”
“I doubt that,” Quill said, his guilt sharpening his tone. “How many times has Sudhakar administered this medicine? Hundreds?”
“No.”
“How many times?”
“Twice,” Gabby admitted.
“So based on the fact that two people were not injured by Sudhakar’s dose of poison, you decided I was an appropriate candidate for the third experiment?”
Gabby could feel hysteria rising in her throat. “Oh, what right have you to be so angry?” she cried. “You are cured! We made love and you didn’t have a migraine afterward. Now you can make love to those concubines you talked of—go ahead! I cured you!”
“I am angry because my wife showed a reckless disregard for my well-being. You know, I received a letter from your father warning me that you had so-called ‘nefarious plans for my life.’”
Her stomach clenched into an instant knot. “You have been corresponding with my father?”
“He wrote me a few letters.”
She tried to match his careless tone. “Oh? What did he say? And why didn’t you mention the letters to me?”
“I thought he was out of his mind. The way he described you—”
“I’m certain I can fill in the adjectives,” Gabby said coolly. “I had no idea you were sharing confidences with my father.”
“Perhaps I should have paid more attention to his warnings,” Quill said, his voice dangerously quiet.
Gabby finally lost her temper entirely. “Yes, you should have! Because you and my father are two of a kind. You are childish, whining, stupid men!” she shouted at the top of her lungs. “You made an absurd vow not to take medicines, which you adhered to out of pure stubbornness. And now—and now that you’ve been cured, you stand around and complain, rather than saying thank you!”
Quill’s eyes flared. “Stupid, am I? At least I haven’t tried to kill anyone in the recent past!”
“I didn’t try to kill you!” Gabby shrieked. “This medicine is harmless! Harmless!”
“Yes?” Quill said, his voice low but razor-sharp. “I don’t see you volunteering to take poison! It’s easy enough to sneak a so-called harmless poison to someone else.”
Gabby met his eyes, and then with a lightning-quick movement she twisted off the top and poured the medicine into her mouth, just as Quill lunged forward and knocked the bottle to the floor.
“Too late,” Gabby said defiantly, her chin jutting forward. “I am not afraid to try the medicine, and I did not try to kill you.”
Quill had gone dead-white. “My God, Gabby, what have you done?” he whispered. “Where is Sudhakar?”
She shrugged. She walked past him and sat on the side of the bed. She was feeling a bit embarrassed by her own dramatics. “On his way back to India.”
“That medicine was measured for a grown man, wasn’t it, Gabby?”
“I’m as big as a grown man, almost,” she said.
??
?Hardly,” Quill said.
“I don’t mind feeling drowsy for a day or so,” Gabby said, “as long as you don’t keep saying I tried to kill you. Because I didn’t.” But her tone wasn’t very defiant anymore. She had a terrible feeling that her temper had gotten the better of her once again.
“Do you know what vessel Sudhakar was planning to take, Gabby?”
“No,” she replied vaguely. “But he’s likely well out to sea by now. Don’t worry. He said the dose wears off in twenty-four to forty-eight hours.” She felt as if her eyes were crossing. She could see two or three Quills. He was clutching her hands so tightly that it hurt.
Suddenly he threw open the bedroom door, shouting for Codswallop. She could hear him as if from a long way off, instructing the butler to find Sudhakar if he was still in London. She curled her fingers into the edge of the coverlet. She was starting to feel dizzy.
It felt like hours before Quill suddenly reappeared before her. She gasped as his face swung close to hers.
“The drug affects your eyesight,” Quill said. “Remember? I thought you had a halo last night.”
“This was quite idiotic of me,” Gabby said, her voice a reedy thread. “Wasn’t it, Quill?” She clutched the counterpane tighter. She felt as if she were on the deck of a ship as it listed in a storm. “I’m sorry I behaved so badly.”
He had her hands in his again and was looking down at them. “We were both idiots,” he said heavily. “I goaded you. I know you didn’t try to kill me, Gabby. I was angry.
“And you were right.” He was massaging her hands now. “I was stupid, stupid, stupid to argue with you. I should have just thanked you.”
“Not as stupid as I am,” Gabby admitted. “I’m glad Sudhakar has left. He has always scolded me for being impulsive. He didn’t want to give you the medicine,” she added.
“What did he tell you about the medicine? Can you remember anything?”
“No,” Gabby said vaguely. “He said it wasn’t dangerous in small doses.”
“Nothing else?”
“No.” She giggled.
“What is it?”
“I think your ears are growing, Quill! You look like a bunny!” Her eyes grew round. “Look at your nose!” She giggled again.
Quill sighed. When Quill had taken the medicine, it had transformed him into a cheerful, if incoherent, drunk. He could only hope its effect on Gabby was as mild. It was going to be a long night.