It wasn’t the jagged scar marring his face that made the passersby hug their children closer and sidle out of his path. It was the look in his eyes. His burning gaze searched every face that passed, evoking a shiver in everyone it touched.
The irony was not wasted on Gabriel. He could finally see, but he was denied the one sight he most desired. Every sunrise, no matter how breathtaking its pinks and golds, only lit up the dark road ahead of him. Every sunset foretold the long and lonely night to come.
He stalked through the falling dusk, keenly aware that the shadows were descending earlier every day. The year was growing older and so was he. Soon it wouldn’t be rain falling to wet his cheeks, but snow.
Despite the generous retainer Gabriel had offered them to keep looking for Samantha, Steerforth and his Runners had been forced to admit defeat. After that, Gabriel had taken to the streets himself, returning to his town house in Grosvenor Square each night only after he was too chilled and exhausted to take another step. He’d visited every hospital in London, but no one remembered a former governess named Wickersham who had tended the wounded soldiers and sailors.
He had only one fear greater than not finding Samantha—what if he didn’t recognize her when he did?
He had dragged Beckwith along with him for the first month of his search. The shy butler had looked equally miserable huddling in the corner of some squalid tavern or questioning the street vendors in Covent Garden. Gabriel had finally taken pity on him and sent him back to Fairchild Park.
Now, just like the men he had hired to find her, Gabriel was forced to rely on descriptions that varied depending upon whom you asked. As best as he could tell, he was searching for a slender woman of average height with thick auburn hair, delicate features, and eyes too often veiled by those homely spectacles she had worn. Some of the servants insisted they were green, while others swore they had been brown. Only Honoria believed them to be blue.
He knew it was insanity, but Gabriel had to believe that if he came face to face with Samantha, something in his soul would recognize her.
He turned down a poorly lit street that wended its way toward the docks. The crowds were thinner here, the shadows deeper. Whenever Gabriel explored the seedy underworld of Whitechapel or Billingsgate, he wasn’t so much afraid that he wouldn’t find Samantha, but that he would. The thought of her wandering some dark alley, heavy with his child, maddened him. It made him want to start kicking down doors and snatching up strangers by the throats until he found someone who could prove she wasn’t a figment of his imagination.
His determination to find her had not wavered, but the doubts he’d suffered since his visit to the Carstairs estate still haunted him. He remembered the rainy afternoon when she had read to him from Speed the Plough. She had played every role with such conviction. What if she’d only been playing the role of a woman falling in love with him? But if that were so, how could she have given herself to him so generously? How could she have surrendered her innocence without asking for anything in return?
As he crossed a narrow alley, an elusive whiff of fragrance drifted to his nose. Halting in his tracks, he closed his eyes and drew in a deep breath, embracing the darkness instead of fleeing it. There it was again—an unmistakable hint of lemon verbena rising above the mingled aromas of scorched sausages and spilled ale.
Opening his eyes, he scanned the shadowy figures around him. A cloaked woman had just passed him on the other side of the alley. Through the mist of rain, he could have sworn he saw a strand of dark auburn hair escaping her hood.
Racing after her, Gabriel caught her by the elbow and jerked her around to face him. Her hood went tumbling back to reveal a nearly toothless grin and a pair of sagging breasts that threatened to spill out of her gaping bodice. Gabriel recoiled from the gin-saturated stench of her breath.
“Whoa, there, guv’nor, there’s no need to get rough with a lady. Unless, of course, you like it that way.” She fluttered her sparse eyelashes, looking less coy than grotesque. “For a few extra shillin’s, I just might be willin’ to find out.”
Gabriel lowered his hand, barely resisting the urge to wipe it on his coat. “Forgive me, madam. I mistook you for someone else.”
“Don’t be in such a rush!” she called after him as he turned and began to hurry away, nearly trampling a cursing chimney sweep in his haste to escape. “For a pretty fellow like you, I might even give you a taste for free. I know I ’aven’t got too many teeth, but some gents says that only makes it sweeter!”
Weary to his very soul, Gabriel fled the shadows of the alley, determined to seek the refuge of the carriage he’d left parked around the corner.
Turning the collar of his greatcoat up against an icy gust of wind and rain, he crossed the busy street, dodging a carriage stuffed with giggling belles and a ruddy-faced lamplighter. The urchin scampered from lamp to lamp, igniting the oil with the briefest kiss of his sputtering torch.
Gabriel might not even have noticed the shabby figure huddled on the sidewalk beneath one of those lamps if he hadn’t heard the man call out, “Alms, please! Spare a halfpenny to help them that can’t help themselves!”
“Why don’t you crawl off to the workhouse and help us all?” a passing gentleman snarled, stepping right over him.
His cheerful smile undaunted, the man thrust his tin cup toward a hatchet-nosed woman who was trailed by a maid, a footman, and a beleaguered African page struggling to juggle a towering armful of packages. “Spare a halfpenny for a warm cup of soup, ma’am?”
“You don’t need a warm cup of soup. You need a job,” she informed him, jerking her skirts out of his reach. “Maybe then you wouldn’t have time to harass decent Christian folk.”
Shaking his head, Gabriel drew a sovereign out of his pocket and tossed it in the man’s cup as he passed.
“Thank you, Lieutenant.”
Those soft, cultured tones stopped Gabriel in his tracks. He slowly turned.
As the man lifted his hand in a salute, it was impossible not to notice his uncontrollable shivering or the glint of intelligence in his light brown eyes. “Martin Worth, my lord. We served together aboard the Victory. You probably don’t remember me. I was only a midshipman.”
Looking closer, Gabriel realized that what he had mistaken for rags was actually a tattered naval uniform. The faded blue jacket hung loose over a chest so bony it was almost skeletal. The dingy white breeches had been pinned up over Worth’s legs—or what was left of them. He no longer had any need for stockings or boots.
As Gabriel slowly lifted his hand to return the salute, a hacking cough rattled up from somewhere in Worth’s chest, nearly bending him double. It was clear that the damp had already settled deep into his lungs. He would not survive the coming winter.
Some men still haven’t come home from this war. And some men never will. Others lost both arms and legs. They sit begging in the gutters, their uniforms and their pride in tatters. They’re jeered at, stepped on, and the only hope they have left is that some stranger with an ounce of Christian charity in their soul might drop a halfpenny in their tin cups.
As that damning voice rang through his memory, Gabriel shook his head in stunned disbelief. He had been searching for Samantha for months, yet it was here on this unfamiliar street corner, gazing into a stranger’s eyes, that he finally found her.
“You’re right, Midshipman Worth. I didn’t remember you,” he confessed, dragging off his greatcoat and kneeling to sweep it around the man’s gaunt shoulders. “But I do now.”
Worth gazed up at him in open bewilderment as he beckoned toward the other side of the street and let out a piercing whistle, summoning his waiting carriage to their side.
“I can’t believe I let you bully me into this,” Cecily whispered as she and Estelle descended the polished parquet steps that spilled down into the crowded ballroom of Lady Apsley’s Mayfair mansion. “I’d never have let you drag me to London at all if our parish didn’t have a new curate.”
&n
bsp; “Unmarried?” Estelle asked.
“I’m afraid so. Although if my mother has anything to say about it, not for long.”
“I gather from your glum tone that you don’t find him a suitable prospect for matrimony.”
“On the contrary. He’s everything my family believes I should desire in a husband. Dull. Stolid. Given to long rambling dissertations on the charms of raising blackface sheep and curing tongue sausages. They’d be perfectly content for me to spend the rest of my days darning his stockings and raising his plump, placid children.” She sighed. “Perhaps I should allow him to court me. It’s no more than I deserve.”
Not even Cecily’s elbow-length gloves could soften the bite of Estelle’s fingernails into her arm. “Don’t even think such a terrible thing!”
“And why not? How would you prefer I spend what’s left of my life? Crying on your shoulder? Mooning over a man I can never have?”
“I can’t predict how you’re going to spend the rest of your life,” Estelle said as they reached the bottom of the stairs and began to wend their way through the crush of chattering guests, “but I do know how you’re going to spend tonight. Smiling. Nodding. Dancing. And making scintillating conversation with besotted young men who care nothing for sheep or curing tongue sausages.”
“So what esteemed occasion are we celebrating tonight? Did Lord Apsley’s horse win another race at Newmarket?” Cecily knew as well as Estelle that the most renowned London hostesses were quick to seize upon any excuse to brighten the long, dull months between Seasons.
Estelle shrugged. “All I know is that it has something to do with Napoleon following through on his threat to blockade us. Lady Apsley decided to throw a ball in honor of some of the officers who are shipping out tomorrow to spare us the horrors of a life without Belgian lace and Turkish figs. Why don’t you think of tonight as your sacrifice to support the noble cause?”
“You forget,” Cecily said lightly to hide the sudden ache in her heart, “I’ve already done my duty for king and country.”
“So you have.” Estelle sighed wistfully. “Lucky girl. Oh, look!” she exclaimed, distracted by the sight of a liveried footman weaving through the crowd bearing a silver tray of punch glasses. “Since we haven’t yet caught the eye of any prowling gentlemen, I suppose we’ll have to fetch our own punch. Wait here. I’ll be right back.”
Cecily bit back a protest as Estelle melted into the crowd, the white muslin train of her gown flashing behind her.
She peered around the heavily thronged ballroom, fixing an awkward smile on her lips. Estelle had insisted that she twine a fetching ribbon that matched her peach gown through her silky curls.
Although the dancing had yet to begin, a string quartet was warming up on the balcony at the far end of the ballroom. Cecily had just caught the hopeful eye of a young militia soldier when a lone violinist began to pick out the plaintive notes of “Barbara Allen.”
Cecily closed her eyes, remembering all too clearly another ballroom, another man.
When she opened them, the young soldier was making his way through the crowd toward her. She turned away, thinking only of escape.
It had been a mistake to let Estelle coax her into coming here. She scanned the crowd, but her friend was nowhere in sight. She would simply have to find their carriage and demand that the driver take her back to the Carstairs’ town house immediately. He could return for Estelle later.
Glancing over her shoulder to find the soldier still pursuing her, she hastened toward the stairs, trodding heavily on a slippered foot.
“Watch it, girl!” a scowling matron bit off.
“I’m so sorry,” she murmured, shouldering her way past a squat man with a bulbous red nose.
She finally emerged from the milling throng, nearly trembling with relief to find herself at the foot of the stairs. Only a few more steps and she would be free.
Already feeling as if a crushing weight were slipping from her shoulders, she glanced toward the top of the stairs, only to find herself gazing directly into a pair of mocking sea-foam-green eyes.
Chapter Twenty Two
My dearest Gabriel,
(There I have said it! I hope you are satisfied!)
Gabriel Fairchild stood at the head of the stairs, garbed in the full dress uniform of a Royal Navy officer. He wore a dark blue frock coat with brass buttons and a narrow ribbon of white piping around the lapels. A plain blue stock had replaced his ruffled cravat. His waistcoat, shirt, and knee breeches were a dazzling white while a pair of shiny black Hessians hugged his lean calves. His tawny hair was still unfashionably long and drawn back in a leather queue.
A flurry of murmurs and admiring glances greeted his arrival. Just as Estelle had predicted, the scar only added to his mystique, made him seem even more of a dashing and heroic figure. Only Cecily knew how much of a hero he really was. She wouldn’t be standing at the foot of those stairs if he hadn’t risked his life to save hers.
Her heart staggered beneath the blow of seeing him this way. She had expected him to resume the frivolous lifestyle he had enjoyed before they met at Lady Langley’s house party. But this was an entirely different Gabriel—more somber, yet somehow more irresistible.
There was some reckless part of her that almost wanted him to recognize her as Samantha instead of Cecily. She’d rather see loathing in his eyes than have him look at her as if she were of less consequence than a stranger.
She stood frozen into place as he started down the stairs. But his graceful strides carried him right past her, almost as if he’d been struck blind all over again.
Her eyes widened. There could be no mistaking it. She’d just been given the cut direct with a rapier twist. She glanced down at her bodice, surprised to find that it wasn’t stained with her heart’s blood.
“Excuse me, miss?”
Cecily turned to find herself gazing into the eager young face of the militia soldier. “I know we haven’t been properly introduced yet, but I was wondering if you would care to join the dance with me?”
From the corner of her eye, Cecily could see Gabriel greeting their hostess, smiling as he lifted her hand to his lips. A dangerous thread of defiance curled through her veins.
“I most certainly would,” she informed the young man, tucking her gloved hands in his.
Fortunately, the sprightly notes of the country dance made conversation impossible. Even as they joined the rollicking line of dancers, she was keenly aware of every step Gabriel took, every hand he kissed, every hungry glance he received from some of the bolder women. It wasn’t difficult to follow his path. He towered head and shoulders over most of the men in the room.
In all that time, he didn’t seem to spare her a single glance…or a single thought.
She lost sight of him just as the musicians began to play the first tinkling notes of an old-fashioned minuet. After guiding them through an intricate set of figures, the music swept into a new key, signaling a change in partners. Grateful to escape the sweaty-palmed young soldier, Cecily gracefully pivoted.
Suddenly she and Gabriel were face to face, hand to hand, palm to palm. She swallowed hard, half expecting him to turn on his heel and cut her dead in front of the entire assembly.
“Miss March,” he murmured, proving he wasn’t quite as oblivious to her presence as he’d pretended to be.
“Lord Sheffield,” she returned as they circled each other warily.
Even through her glove, she could feel the heat of the hand pressed to hers. She tried not to remember the tenderness with which he had once touched her, the shattering pleasure his hands had given her.
Her greatest fear was that he might recognize her voice. She had modeled Samantha Wickersham’s stern tones after a spinster aunt. But she knew her natural voice had slipped through on more than one occasion—such as when she’d cried out his name in ecstasy.
“It’s gratifying to see you looking so well,” she said, deliberately affecting a breathy cadence. It wasn’t difficu
lt when she felt as if she were drowning in his crisp masculine scent. “I heard rumors about the miraculous recovery of your sight. I’m glad to learn they were true.”
He surveyed her through hooded eyes. “Perhaps it was fate that brought us together tonight. I’ve never had the opportunity to thank you.”
“For what?”
“For coming to visit me in the hospital after I was wounded.”
Cecily felt her heart lurch as he gave the rapier another twist. For the first time, she almost pitied the French. This was not a man to lightly engage as an enemy.
Tilting her face to his, she gave him her most dazzling smile. “You don’t have to thank me. It was no more than my Christian duty.”
His eyes darkened. It seemed she had finally succeeded in getting a reaction from him. But her triumph was short-lived. Before he could make any sort of response, the musicians finished their song. The last brittle note of the minuet hung in the air between them.
He bowed over her hand, brushing his lips across her knuckles in a perfunctory kiss. “It was a pleasure to renew our acquaintance, Miss March, if only to remind myself how very little I ever really knew you.”
As the quartet launched into the sweeping notes of an Austrian waltz, the other dancers began to drift off the floor, seeking gossip and refreshments. Nothing cleared a ballroom floor faster than a waltz. No one wanted anyone else to suspect that they even knew the steps of the scandalous dance.
As Gabriel straightened, Cecily fought a rush of panic. In another minute, he would turn his back on her and stalk out of her life forever. They had already attracted several curious stares. She saw Estelle watching them from the other side of the ballroom, her face nearly as white as her dress.
What did she have left to lose? Cecily thought. Her good name? Her reputation? Society might not know it, but she was already ruined for any other man.
Before Gabriel could move away from her, she lightly rested her hand on his sleeve. “Hasn’t anyone ever told you that it’s ill-mannered for a gentleman to abandon a lady who wishes to dance?”