But surely it was better to at least try. Maybe Will would never be completely rid of his nightmares—maybe no one ever was—but he could at least fight them. What other option did he have? Giving up, giving in was intolerable.
Struggling as I was with such dark thoughts, I nearly missed the soft click of the door opening and closing behind me. It was latched with care not to disturb those in the other rooms nearby.
I knew better than to suppose Lucy had forgotten something and come back to fetch it. Or that my sister was ready for a chat, when fatigue from her recent illness had marked her steps as she exited the drawing room after dinner. No one else should have been so presumptuous as to visit my room in the middle of the night, or to enter it without even knocking, but I knew who it was without turning. And somehow I felt I should have been expecting it.
The anger I had only recently dampened flared back to life, sweeping swift and hot through my veins. I almost felt grateful for the chance to vent my spleen, especially on the man who was my intruder.
Dropping the drapes, I whirled around to glare at him. “This is becoming rather a bad habit, isn’t it?”
CHAPTER NINE
Gage was not the least intimidated by my angry stare. In fact, despite his casual pose, leaning back against the doorjamb with his ankles and arms crossed, I could feel the full force of his displeasure across the twenty-foot room that separated us. It only served to enrage me further.
“What are you doing here?” I demanded.
He lifted one shoulder in the semblance of a careless shrug, but his posture was too stiff. “I thought we needed to talk.”
“At midnight in my bedchamber?” I could hear my voice rising with my temper and made an effort to check it.
“It was the only time and place where I knew we would have some privacy.”
I narrowed my eyes, uncertain whether there was a hidden barb in there somewhere. “You are aware that just because I gave you leave to enter my chamber twice during your visit to Gairloch does not give you permission to do so now.”
“Three times.”
I had sucked in breath to offer him a set-down when his words caught me off guard. “What?” I snapped, shaking my head in agitation.
“I entered your chamber three times,” he clarified. He pushed away from the door, stalking across the room toward me as he ticked off the encounters on his fingers. I stumbled back a step, but then planted my feet, refusing to give him the satisfaction of watching me retreat. “Once after Lord Westlock coshed you over the head, once when I brought champagne to celebrate Lady Stratford’s detainment, and once while Sir Graham Fraser questioned you after the ordeal in the boat.”
The ordeal in the boat? That certainly wasn’t how I thought of it. And I was surprised Gage could refer to it in such mundane terms. “You mean when I almost died?”
He stiffened, his steps faltering to a stop a few feet from me. “Yes. I well remember the more serious implications of that struggle,” he replied in a measured voice. He turned his face to the side and I could see the muscles in his throat working before he added in a huskier undertone, “I will never be able to forget them.”
My cheeks flushed with heat and my eyes dropped to his cravat and the sapphire stickpin glistening among its snowy white folds. Of course he remembered. He had saved my life, at no small risk to his own. And how did I repay his discretion, his avoidance in bringing up such a sensitive subject, but by chastising him like a resentful harpy? What was it about this man that so riled me that I could forget all prudence and decency?
“I . . . I’m sorry,” I murmured, stumbling over an apology. “Of course you remember.”
He shifted uncomfortably and cleared his throat. “Yes, well . . .”
I regained the courage to look him in the eye, noticing the faint lines at the corners of them. His finely sculpted cheekbones seemed tanner, as if he had been spending a great deal of time outdoors since last I saw him. If possible, I thought it made his already devilish good looks even more arresting, even at this late hour, with nary a stray beam of sunshine to highlight his golden hair. I had decided a portrait of Gage was best painted in the daylight, but now I wasn’t so sure. Here in the flickering shadows, his features might actually be more interesting.
“You look well,” he said meaningfully, and I realized that even as I had been standing there studying him, he had been doing the same to me.
I wrapped my arms around myself, suddenly self-conscious. Especially when I realized I was wearing naught but a thin night rail and my wrapper. When Gage had visited my chamber in the past I had always been properly attired in an evening gown or a morning dress, not bedclothes. “Thank you,” I murmured, praying he would not mention my state of dishabille.
“Cromarty told me you’ve suffered no lasting effects from your injuries.”
“Ah . . . no,” I told him. “Just a tiny scar.”
“Good.”