The garage door down the bay grated shut with a thump and a cutting off of the light. Gabriel startled. He pushed off me into a kneeling position, peering through the window. I knew with the silence that had fallen that Tyler was gone. It was just us and our heaving breaths in the tight space of the car.
I couldn’t see Gabriel’s expression in the darkness, but I felt his body tighten. “Shit,” he muttered. “I didn’t mean to—” He eased farther back, reaching for the car door. “You should go. See if that plan of yours worked.”
His voice was strained but firm. I peeled myself off the seat, every nerve trembling. When I touched Gabriel’s arm, he flinched.Flinched. My heart dropped to my gut.
“I want you,” I said. “I want you with me, in case I wasn’t clear enough about that before. What you do with that information is totally up to you, but you have to know that much.”
“You don’t know me, Rose,” he said. “Not any more. Not really. The guy you want, he doesn’t exist. It’s been at least ten years since he did.”
He clambered out of the car and held the door for me to follow him. I scooted across the seat. My mouth had gone dry. “What makes you think I wouldn’t want the guy you are?”
He gave a rough laugh. “It’s better for both of us if we don’t go there, I think. I’ll help you. I’ll be here for you. But I shouldn’t have crossed that line. It won’t happen again, I promise.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Rose
It wasn’t hard to look as if I barely noticed or cared about Mrs. Gainsley bustling to the manor’s front door. I was still dazed from that… whatever that had been with Gabriel. I don’t think the estate manager even noticedme, perched there on the sitting room sofa, willing my stirred-up hormones to settle down.
It won’t happen again, he’d promised. But, snuff my spark, I couldn’t think of much I wanted more than another interlude like that, only more of it. I’d felt the desire radiating through him.
But desire wasn’t enough. He didn’t wantme, not completely. Only enough to give in to an urge when it was almost unavoidable.
The front door clicked shut behind Mrs. Gainsley. I pushed myself off the sofa. I had bigger concerns anyway. Four consorts who had dedicated themselves to me in every way that I had to protect. A life to claim for myself.
I headed up the stairs and stopped on the upper landing, where I could see through the large triangular window that loomed over the door. Mrs. Gainsley crossed the drive to the garage. A few minutes later, her Lincoln pulled up to the front gate. Beyond the wall, it turned left, the right direction to head to Master Cortland’s house.
My ploy had worked. He’d seen the magic and called on her to investigate.
Now I needed to do my own investigating.
When Meredith had been our estate manager, I’d never found her office locked with anything other than a regular key. Today, I could feel a tremor of magic as I reached my hand toward the office door. It wasn’t just Dad’s office Mrs. Gainsley had secured. She wasn’t taking any chances. Other than assuming there was no way anyone else in the house could work around her magic, that was.
It was only about a five-minute drive out to Master Cortland’s house. I didn’t know how long she’d spend there looking around, so I’d have to make this as fast as possible.
When I’d broken into Celestine’s private magicking room a few weeks ago, I’d had to strain myself to shift her spell. But that had been with an unkindled spark, only faintly lit by a guy I wasn’t yet consorted to. Now, with the passion of four consorts behind me, I found I could ease the protective spell on Mrs. Gainsley’s office door to the side with just a swift swipe of my hand. I didn’t disturb it, only moved it. It would feel exactly the same to her when she got back.
I eased open the door and slipped inside.
The space should have felt familiar. I’d been in here so many times when it had belonged to Meredith. The desk and the filing cabinets stood where they always had. But Meredith’s soft amber perfume had vanished, replaced by a sharper, citrusy scent. The old leather desk chair had been swapped out for a straight-backed wooden one, the only padding a thin velvet cushion inlaid in the seat. A small brass clock sat at the back corner of the desk, its faint ticking reminding me of the seconds speeding away until the time Mrs. Gainsley might return.
I yanked open the filing cabinet drawers one by one, with a twist of my fingers when I found one locked. A lot of the documents inside were left over from Meredith’s time, nothing Mrs. Gainsley had anything to do with. I knew for sure Meredith hadn’t been part of Dad and Celestine’s plotting. I’d practically toldheroutright what I’d suspected, and she hadn’t shown a hint that she was worried I’d uncover a real plot, only confusion.
If only she were still here. I didn’t even know where she and her husband would have left for. They’d lived on the estate since before I was born.
I shook that painful thought aside and kept digging. In the lowest drawer, I found some files Mrs. Gainsley had clearly put together. Some new vendor forms to do with the wedding. The reschedulings she’d started working on this morning, not cancelling but postponing. So Dad was smart enough to realize he wasn’t going to convince me to take a new husband in just two weeks’ time. He still expected it to happen in five. One week’s buffer before my twenty-fifth birthday…
What did he plan to do if I outright refused Killian?Coulda consorting work without both consorts’ agreement? Surely the Spark would know what was in a witch’s heart and refuse to form the connection if she were coerced…?
But Dad believed he had enough sway over me, I guessed. His little lamb. I’d always followed his guidance before now, hadn’t I?
How surprised he’d have been if he’d known how much I’d done in the last few weeks behind his back.
Nothing about those records was at all incriminating, though. I moved to the other cabinet, tuning out thetick tick tickof the clock as well as I could. Meal plans, notes on the gardening schedule for the summer, interviews arranged with a few possible temporary employees for when one of the kitchen staff was off on maternity leave… Everything neat and precise as the woman herself. Not at all what I needed from her.
My teeth gritted. Well, what did I expect? Mrs. Gainsley was the underling in this scheme. Dad had been so careful to keep himself out of the actual arrangements… He must have had Celestine handle everything even with Derek, so he couldn’t be implicated if Derek lost his nerve. He’d had Celestine so cowed…
A shiver ran through me as I tugged Mrs. Gainsley’s lock back into place.HadDad arranged Celestine’s “accident”? As much as I’d disliked the woman, the idea made me feel sick. But what better way to ensure that she never revealed what sort of man he was to anyone else? Who else would have had anywhere near as much reason to kill her?