She’d hated the feeling of relief when Reeves had closed the door behind him. Her father had left her to her own devices all month, tiptoeing around her and Rory, finding a reason to leave a room if she entered, eating in his study instead of at the dinner table. Gabby should have missed him more. Before, when she and Mama and Ingrid and Grayson were all living in London together with him, she would have. Before, she would have begged him to take her with him to Fairfax Downs. It bothered her how drastically things had changed.
That evening, she and Rory sat at the long dinner table, their cutlery scraping at their plates and their eyes drifting to the wall of windows that overlooked the lawns. Perched on the ledge of the window closest to Gabby was a raven-winged corvite. It stared into the dining room, its red-ringed pupils darting between Rory and Gabby. She wondered why Hugh would send another demon bird to sit outside her windows. Was it there to spy yet again? Or had it been sent as a pictorial invitation for her to return to Belgrave Square? She hoped for the latter.
“What will happen to Nolan?” she whispered.
“I wouldna worry.” Rory speared his Cornish hen with his fork and carved it using one of his own blades instead of the one laid on the table before him. “He’s a fox when he needs to be.”
Nolan was a fox, sly and cunning and quick. But he’d still appeared shaken that afternoon in the carriage. Not being able to trust the Alliance must have felt like the earth giving way underneath his feet.
“You don’t trust Hugh Dupuis,” she said, thinking of the angel blood and her plan to take it to him. Nolan had left the carriage with the blood, saying he’d see her soon; she hoped it would be by tomorrow. There was simply no time to waste.
“I don’t trust any man till he’s saved my skin at least once,” Rory replied, laying down his fork without finishing his hen. She hadn’t touched anything since the soup course. Cook Edna would be vexed.
Rory wiped the blade of his dagger with one of the dinner napkins. “I don’t trust Hugh Dupuis, but I do trust ye, laoch.” He pushed back his chair and stood. “If ye trust him enough to bring him angel blood, I won’t stop ye.”
Rory bid her a good night and left the dining room. Gabby sat back in her chair, her eyes drifting toward the corvite demon at the window. She didn’t know if she trusted Hugh, but she did know that there was only one way to find out.
Gabby stuck her tongue out at the corvite and made her way up to her room. She passed a number of guest chambers and was equal parts glad and frustrated that Nolan wasn’t able to occupy one of them. She was proud of how she’d acted in the carriage earlier, refusing to melt into a puddle at his feet. She wasn’t so pigheaded as to deny that she’d missed him, or that she had wanted to crawl into his lap and kiss him until they were both gasping for air. But Gabby’s pride had been akin to iron, easily crushing the urges.
She entered her room and found that her maid had prepared it for her. The lamps were on and the fire was going, her nightgown draped over the duvet.
“Kendall?” Gabby shut the door and moved toward the bed. Her maid wasn’t in sight, but Gabby’s senses were humming.
Someone else was in her room. And she knew exactly who it was.
Nolan stepped out from behind her four-panel silk changing screen. He’d shaved and changed his clothes, but his shoulders still looked like they were winched tight with a line of rope.
Gabby drew to a stop to stare at him and quickly realized that she’d drained every last ounce of her steely pride that afternoon. Tears welled up swiftly and unexpectedly. She didn’t even have time to be mortified by them. She didn’t see Nolan crossing the room, but then he was there, his arms closing around her, his lips in her hair. “I’m sorry, Gabby. God, I’m so sorry, lass.”
She couldn’t speak, her throat swollen with a suppressed sob, so instead, she wiggled her arm free and punched him in the stomach.
He answered by tucking her closer against him. She made another fist but only thumped it against his shoulder. How could he so quickly, so effortlessly, undo her like this?
“I know I did everything wrong,” he said, clinging to her, his lips trailing kisses through her hair and over her forehead. “I know I hurt you. I know I should have fixed things.”
Gabby found enough strength to untangle herself, but she couldn’t look up into his eyes. If she did that, she knew she’d just fall right back against him.
“But you chose to ignore me instead,” she said, busying herself by blotting the tears on her cheeks with as much dignity as possible.
“I couldn’t apologize on paper, not for the things I said to you. Not for the way I treated you that night,” he said.
He’d been cold the night his father had been killed, not allowing her even to touch him. Telling her she had to leave Paris and then acting as if he couldn’t have cared less.
“It would have been better than silence,” she said.
Nolan hung his head, his hands on his hips. He didn’t have any more excuses. He wasn’t the type of person to throw them out ahead of himself to clear a path anyway.
“I thought that you—” She took a breath, preparing to humiliate herself. “You told me you loved me.”
He clutched her arm and tipped her chin up so she couldn’t avoid looking into his eyes any longer.