He stepped forward and stumbled, pain ripping through his side.
“Do not be a dimwit, you’re hardly recovered. You had a life-threatening surgery to remove the piece of shell from between your ribs for Christ’s sake. It took you days to come from the bed, and you are here making an ass over a lady who may or may not be Miss Markham,” George said, fisting a hand on his hips.
“It was her,” Gabriel insisted stubbornly, fighting the panic rising in his chest the further away the figure appeared. Some instinct warned him that her walking away was the very worst thing he could imagine. Had she been hurt? “Primrose!” he bellowed.
George winced. “That lady was at a distance, Gabriel, you could not be—”
“I’m certain,” he rasped, hobbling down the path and toward the manor. “I’m certain because every part of me came alive.”
His brother sucked in a sharp breath and glance behind him. Gabriel looked around to see Lady Beatrice’s mouth frozen in a small o and a look of injury in her eyes. Her eyes held an expectation he did not understand, and a sliver of discomfort darted through him.
He frowned, not understanding. He'd made no promises to her or even intimated he was interested in a courtship. She had been very kind and gracious these past few days, putting up with his black, irritable mood as he struggled to be on his feet. Several times she'd attempted to lighten his temper and had failed, for only Primrose occupied his mind and heart. He and Lady Beatrice had never been alone despite the machinations of his mother, and even the lady’s mother herself. Nor had Lady Beatrice hinted of any romantic feelings toward him. For if she had, Gabriel would have made known that his heart irrevocably belonged to another.
So why did she appear so disappointed now? “Lady Beatrice, thank you for your charming company as always,” he said with firm politeness. “But I must take my leave. I bid you good day.”
She nodded gracefully and hurried passed him, slashing him a rather intent and anxious scrutiny, but he offered no reassurance. No doubt his mother had made foolish promises, but he would not be persuaded to abandon his love.
Gabriel resumed his hobble toward the side entrance, ignoring George’s muttered curse. Every hurried step had pain lancing through his side where the doctors had cut deeply to excise the infected flesh and remove the shrapnel and bits of bones. He’d been abed with fever for days he’d been told, and had spent quite some time sleeping, only to surface when he’d been roused for sustenance. Gabriel recalled none of it.
He made his way inside and down the hallway to the sitting room. It would take too much effort now to climb the stairs. The pain was already clawing through him like a poison-tipped dagger, beading sweat on his skin. He would need his strength soon, for he would order the carriage to take him to their cottage. What he should have bloody done days ago even though he had felt so damnably weak and pain filled. Instead, he'd entrusted George with messages for Primrose, and she'd made no response to any.
A cold knot of suspicion sat heavy in his stomach. He shrugged away George’s touch when he attempted to help him into the sofa by the fire.
“Good God man, let me help you.”
Gabriel lowered himself onto the cushions and pinned his older brother with a glare. “Did you deliver my messages to Miss Markham?”
“I told you I went by the cottage.”
Gabriel stared at his brother, and slowly said, “Yes, but did you actually deliver my messages as you promised?”
George grimaced and looked away briefly before returning his regard. “It appears as if she packed her belongings and left a week ago. That is why I doubted the woman you saw now was her.”
A week? A peculiar hollowness formed in his gut. Had Primrose left him? While he lay abed recovering? Dear God, why? With what money?
“Tell me again,” Gabriel said softly. “From the moment she dropped me off here. What did she say, what was her countenance?”
George scrubbed a hand over his face with a wary smile. “Gabriel, let her go. She bloody well dumped you here, feverish and rambling, walked away and never looked back. I did as you bid and visited and she was no longer living at the cottage.”
“Surely there must be some mistake,” he rasped, his heart hammering sickly.
“There is more,” George said, regret and some other elusive emotion in his gaze. “Mother informed me she offered her money and Miss Markham took it and negotiated for a larger sum.”
Sharp edges of pain, confusion, and denial darted through him. The agony tearing through his soul was shaper than the bullet which had ripped through his side and almost taken his life twice. And in the midst of the loss tearing through his heart, her eyes bright with love and trust floated through his memories.
It centered him, muting the terrible do
ubts and fear. Gabriel struggled to his feet and made his way from the sitting room toward the dining hall. With a muttered curse, George followed. His mother sat at the table beside the earl who read a freshly pressed morning paper the village boy had delivered. His mother slathered jam on toast, and her eyes lit up with pleasure when she saw him.
“Gabriel! How wonderful you look today. I detect a certain spring in your steps. Will you join us?”
He paused at the head of the table, waiting until George entered the room. Then he looked at his family whom he loved and had always trusted. Until now. “Upon rousing from the bed and that damn laudanum-induced sleep, I asked George to deliver several messages to Miss Markham for me. She did not reply to any, nor did she visit. He informed me just now that she has moved away from the cottage I rented to be our home, and that she has taken the money you offered her."
The countess lowered the knife and lifted her chin. “It was crass of me to offer it, but I did.”
“And she took it?”
“Yes,” she said firmly. “That should tell you the sort of woman you were foolhardy to think might be fit to be your wife.”