A Secret Love (6 page)

They'd seen him and called—now there was no escape. As he crossed the grass toward them, she drew in a breath, lifted her chin, tightened her fists about her parasol's handle—and tried to quell her panic.

He couldn't recognize lips he'd kissed but not seen, could he?

Smiling easily, Gabriel strode into the trees' shadows. As he neared, Mary and Alice stopped jigging and contented themselves with beaming; only then, with his eyes adjusting and with their dancing parasols no longer distracting him, did he see the lady standing behind them.

Alathea.

His stride almost faltered.

She stood straight and tall, silently contained, her parasol held at precisely the correct angle to protect her fine skin from the sun. Not, of course, waving at him.

Masking his reaction—the powerful jolt that shook him whenever he saw her unexpectedly and the prickling sensation that followed—he continued his advance. She watched him with her usual cool regard, her customary challenge—a haughty watchfulness that never failed to get his goat.

Forcing his gaze from her, he smiled and greeted Mary and Alice, veritable pictures in mull muslin. He made them laugh by bowing extravagantly over their hands.

“We were utterly amazed to see you!” Mary said.

“We've been to the park twice,” Alice confided, “but that was earlier than this. You probably weren't about.”

Refraining from replying that he rarely inhabited the park, at least not during the fashionable hours, he fought to keep his gaze on them. “I knew you were coming to town, but I hadn't realized you were here.” He'd last met them in January, at a party given by his mother at his family home, Quiverstone Manor in Somerset. Morwellan Park and the Manor shared a long boundary; the combined lands and the nearby Quantock Hills had been his childhood stamping ground—his, his brother Lucifer's, and Alathea's.

With easy familiarity, he complimented both girls, fielding their questions, displaying his suave London persona to their evident delight. Yet while he distracted them with trivialities, his attention remained riveted on the cool presence a few feet away. Why that should be so was an abiding mystery—Mary and Alice were effervescent delights. Alathea in contrast was cool, composed, still—in some peculiar way, a lodestone for his senses. The girls were as bubbling, tumbling streams, while Alathea was a deep pool of peace, calm, and something else he'd never succeeded in defining. He was intensely aware of her, as she was of him; he was acutely conscious they had not exchanged greetings.

They never did. Not really.

Steeling himself, he lifted his gaze from Mary's and Alice's faces and looked at Alathea. At her hair. But she was wearing a bonnet—he couldn't tell whether she was also wearing one of her ridiculous caps, or one of those foolish scraps of lace she'd started placing about her top knot. She probably was concealing some such frippery nonsense, but he couldn't comment unless he saw it. Lips thinning, he lowered his gaze until his eyes met hers. “I hadn't realized you were in London.”

He was speaking directly to her, specifically of her, his tone quite different from when he'd spoken to the girls.

Her lashes flickered; her grip on her parasol tightened. “Good afternoon, Rupert. It is a lovely day. We came up to town a week ago.”

He stiffened.

Alathea sensed it. Her stomach knotted with panic, she looked at Mary and Alice and forced herself to smile serenely. “The girls will be making their come-outs shortly.”

After a fractional hesitation, he followed her lead. “Indeed?” Turning back to Mary and Alice, he quizzed them on their plans.

Alathea tried to breathe evenly, tried to hold her sudden lightheadedness at bay. She refused to let her gaze slide his way. She knew his face as well as her own—the large, heavily hooded eyes, the mobile lips given to wry quirks, the classic planes of nose and forehead, the uncompromisingly square chin. He was tall enough to see over her head—one of the few who could do so. He was strong enough to subdue her if he wished, and ruthless enough to do it. There was nothing about him physically that she didn't already know, nothing to set such a sharp edge to her usual tension.

Nothing beyond the fact that she'd seen him last night in the porch of St. Georges, while he hadn't seen her.

The memory of his lips covering hers, of the beguiling touch of his fingers beneath her chin, locked her lungs, tightened her nerves, set her senses leaping. Her lips tingled.

“Our ball will be in three weeks,” Mary was telling him. “You'll be invited, of course.”

“Will you come?” Alice asked.

“I wouldn't miss it for the world.” His gaze flicked to Alathea's face, then he looked back at the girls.

Gabriel knew exactly how a cat with its fur rubbed the wrong way felt—precisely how he always felt near Alathea. How she did it he did not know; he didn't even know if she had to do anything—it simply seemed his inevitable reaction to her. He'd react, and she'd snap back. The air between them would crackle. It had started when they were children and had grown more intense with the years.

He kept his gaze on the girls, ruthlessly stifling the urge to turn to Alathea. “But what are you doing here?”

“It was Allie's idea.”

Blithely, they turned to her; gritting his teeth, he had to do the same.

Coolly, she shrugged. “I'd heard of it as a quiet place to stroll—one where ladies would be unlikely to encounter any of the more rakish elements.”

Like him.

She'd chosen to live her life buried in the country—why she thought that gave her the right to disapprove of his lifestyle he did not know; he only knew she did. “Indeed?”

He debated pressing her—both for her real reason for being in the Fields and also over her impertinence in disapproving of him. Even with the girls all ears and bright eyes before them, he could easily lift the conversation to a level where they wouldn't understand. This, however, was Alathea. She was intractably stubborn—he would learn nothing she didn't wish him to know. She was also possessed of a wit quite the equal of his; the last time they'd crossed verbal swords—in January, over the stupid Alexandrine cap she'd worn to his mother's party—they'd both bled. If, eyes flashing, cheeks flushed with temper, she hadn't stuck her nose in the air and walked—stalked—away from him, he would quite possibly have strangled her.

Lips compressed, he shot her a glance—she met it fearlessly. She was watching, waiting, as aware of the direction of his thoughts as he. She was ready and willing to engage in one of their customary duels.

No true gentleman ever disappointed a lady.

“I take it you'll be accompanying Mary and Alice about town?”

She went to nod, stopped, and haughtily lifted her head. “Of course.”

“In that case”—he smiled disarmingly at Mary and Alice—“I'll have to see what amusements I can steer your way.”

“There's no need to put yourself out—unlike some I could mention, I don't require to be constantly amused.”

“I think you'll discover that unless one is constantly amused, life in the ton can be hellishly boring. What, other than boredom, could possibly have brought you here?”

“A wish to avoid impertinent gentlemen.”

“How fortunate, then, that I chanced upon you. If avoiding impertinent gentlemen is your aim, a lady within the ton can never be too careful. There's no telling precisely where or when she'll encounter the most shocking impertinence.”

Mary and Alice smiled trustingly up at him; all they heard was his fashionable drawl. Alathea, he knew, detected the steel beneath it; he could sense her increasing tension.

“You forget—I'm perfectly capable of dealing with outrageous impertinence, however unamusing I might find such encounters.”

“Strange to say, most ladies don't find such encounters unamusing at all.”

“I am not ‘
most ladies
.' I do not find the particular distractions to which you are devoted at all amusing.”

“That's because you've yet to experience them. Besides,” he glibly added, “you're used to riding every day. You'll need some activity to . . . keep you exercised.”

He raised eyes filled with limpid innocence to hers, expecting to meet a narrow-eyed glance brimming with aggravation. Instead, her eyes were wide, not shocked but . . . it took him a moment to place their expression.

Defensive. He'd made her defensive.

Guilt rose within him.

Hell!
Even when he won a round with her, he still lost.

Stifling a sigh—over what he did not know—he looked away, trying to dampen what he thought of as his bristling fur—that odd aggression she always evoked—and act normally. Reasonably.

He shrugged lightly. “I must be on my way.”

“I dare say.”

To his relief, she contented herself with that small barb. She watched as he bowed to the girls, setting them laughing again. Then he straightened and deliberately caught her gaze.

It was like looking into a mirror—they both had hazel eyes. When he looked into hers, he usually saw his own thoughts and feelings, reflected over and again, into infinity.

Not today. Today all he saw was a definite defensiveness—a shield shutting her off from him. Protecting her from him.

He blinked, breaking the contact. With a curt nod, which she returned, he swung on his heel and strode off.

Slowing as he neared the edge of the lawn, he wondered what he would have done if she'd offered her hand. That unanswerable question led to the thought of when last he'd touched her in any way. He couldn't remember, but it was certainly not in the last decade.

He crossed the street, wriggling his shoulders as his peculiar tension drained; he called it relief at being out of her presence, but it wasn't that. It was the reaction—the one he'd never understood but which she evoked so strongly—subsiding again.

Until next they met.

Alathea watched him go; only when his boots struck the cobbles did she breathe freely again. Her nerves easing, she looked around. Beside her, Mary and Alice blithely chatted, serenely unaware. It always amazed her that their nearest and dearest never saw anything odd in their fraught encounters—other than themselves, only Lucifer saw, presumably because he'd grown up side by side with them and knew them both so well.

As her pulse slowed, elation bloomed within her.

He hadn't recognized her.

Indeed, after the total absence of his typical reaction to her when he'd met the countess last night, combined with the strong resurgence of it in the last hour, she doubted he'd ever make the connection.

This morning, she'd woken to the certain knowledge that it wasn't her physical self that he found so provoking. If he didn't know she was Alathea Morwellan, nothing happened. No suppressed irritation, no sparks, no clashes. Blissful nothing. Cloaked and veiled, she was just another woman.

She didn't want to dwell on why that made her feel so happy, as if a weight had suddenly lifted from her heart. It was clearly her identity that caused his problem—and it was, she now knew,
his
problem, something that arose first in him, to which she then reacted.

Knowing didn't make the outcome any easier to endure, but . . .

She focused on the wrought iron gates through which he had emerged. They were open to admit coaches to the courtyard of the Inn. She could see the Inn's archways and the glint of bronze plaques—it wasn't hard to guess the purpose of the plaques.

He'd seemed satisfied and confident when he'd strolled away from the gates.

Drawing in a determined, fully recovered breath, Alathea smiled at Mary and Alice. “Come, girls. Let's stroll about the Inn.”

Evening came, and with it a strange restlessness.

Gabriel prowled the parlor of his house in Brook Street. He'd dined and was dressed to go out, to grace the ballroom of whichever tonnish hostess he chose to favor with his presence. There were four invitations from which to choose; none, however, enticed.

He wondered where the countess would spend her evening. He wondered where Alathea would spend hers.

The door opened; he paused in his pacing. His gentleman's gentleman, Chance, pale hair gleaming, immaculately turned out in regulation black, entered with the replenished brandy decanter and fresh glasses on a tray.

“Pour me one, will you?” Gabriel swung away as Chance, short and slight, headed for the sideboard. He felt peculiarly distracted; he hoped a stiff brandy would clear his mind.

He'd left Lincoln's Inn buoyed by his small success, focused on the countess and the sensual game unfolding between them. Then he'd met Alathea. Ten minutes in her company had left him feeling like the earth had shifted beneath his feet.

She'd been part of his life for as long as he could remember; never before had she shut him out of her thoughts. Never before had she been anything but utterly free with her opinions, even when he'd wished otherwise. When they'd met in January, she'd been her usual open, sharp-tongued self. This afternoon, she'd shut him out, kept him at a distance.

Something had changed. He couldn't believe his comments had made her defensive; it had to be something else. Had something happened to her that he hadn't heard about?

The prospect unsettled him. He wanted to focus on the countess, but his thoughts kept drifting to Alathea.

Reaching the room's end, he swung around—and nearly mowed Chance down.

Chance staggered back—Gabriel caught his arm, simultaneously rescuing the brimming tumbler from the wildly tipping salver.

“Hoo!” Chance waved the salver before his unprepossessing visage. “That was a close one.”

Gabriel caught his eye, paused, then said, “That will be all.”

“Aye, aye, sir!” With cheery insouciance, Chance headed for the door.

Gabriel sighed. “Not ‘Aye, aye'—a simple ‘Yes, sir' will do.”