Gabriel turned to me with a devastated expression twisting his features. It ripped what remained of my composure to shreds. I couldn’t think. All I could do was rush out of the breakfast room, skirts flying.
“Wait!” He strode after me and caught my arm in the hall.
“Go away.” I jerked free. “I need to run. If I don’t, I’ll lose my mind.”
Not the obedient sort, he didn’t go away. “Very well, if you need to run, I’ll run alongside you.”
“You can’t.”
“Don’t let my lame leg fool you. I can keep up as well as any man.”
It wasn’t the old wound in his leg I was concerned about. “Not without tearing open the stitches in your shoulder.”
His posture stiffened. “I’m willing to take that chance.”
“Well, I’m not.” I backed against the paneled wall and pressed my hands over my face, roaring in frustration. He would’ve done the same if matters were reversed. I flung my hands down. “If you insist on accompanying me, my lord, I suppose I will have to settle for a brisk walk.”
“Gabriel,” he said. “For pity’s sake, call me Gabriel.” He motioned for me to lead the way. “You’ve been in my bedroom. I believe we can dispense with the formalities of my title, don’t you?”
I groaned. “I was there serving as your watchman, not your lover. So, no, my lord, I believe the formalities are still very much in play.”
We left the house by way of the garden.
“You will call me Gabriel.” He said this with a firmness that brooked no argument. “I never wanted the blasted title in the first place. Such things belong to men like my father. Men born to rule. It suited my brother. Not me.”
His words evoked memories for both of us. Gruesome images of the last time he saw his brother alive. And undoubtedly their violent duel. The secret haunted me then. It was harder than I thought not to relieve his pain. Except that would only bring a new torment. So I changed the subject and walked faster. “Perhaps you should sit here on this chair beside the garden and rest. It’s too soon for you to be walking after losing all that blood.”
“I find I am much improved this morning. I was surprised to find that I rested quite well last night despite having so many people in my room.”
He was baiting me, but I could not joust with him. Not today, not when my future was crumbling faster than I could run. I chose a path on the opposite side of the property, as far from Ravencross Manor as possible. We walked in silence until we were well away from the house. My thoughts fluttered about like frantic geese being chased by a dog.
When he finally broke the silence, it startled me. “Why were you screaming this morning?”
My scream? That’s what he chose to discuss? Not, what is all this talk of an attack?
Or, when will you leave?
Or, please don’t go.
“It was a bad dream. That’s all.”
“But your scream sounded real. Not like, well, not like something from a dream.”
“I’ve no idea how you heard it, all the way from your house.” I glanced over my shoulder across the distance to Ravencross Manor, trying to sound casual.
“Yes, that is peculiar. At times, sound carries oddly along the cliffs.”
“I suppose.” Why didn’t he ask about my leaving?
“What did you dream about that upset you so badly?”
“It isn’t important.”
“Important enough to send me tearing over here like a complete fool.”
“I apologize, my lord. You should’ve stayed in your bed. I shall endeavor to scream more quietly in the future.”
“Are you going to tell me or not?”
“Not.”
“And if I insist?”
“I’m told I can be rather obstinate.”
“I can attest to that. But I would like to know what upset you. You are not the screaming sort.”
“If you must know, it was Lady Daneska.”
He stopped walking, suddenly quiet.
I turned and waited for him to catch up. “I dreamt she was here, at Stranje House, with her band of assassins, and that she had captured Georgie.”
“Then do you mean to say it was she who was behind the attack yesterday?”
I wasn’t sure how to answer him without revealing too much. “Who else could it have been?”
“This is a very odd girls’ school.” He rubbed at the stubble on his jaw. At length he glanced at me, and I saw in his eyes that he was leaping to all sorts of dangerous conclusions.
“It was just a bad dream.” I lengthened my stride.
He matched mine. “And because of this dream of yours, you and Miss Stranje think Lady Daneska is actually coming here again? Is that the attack she mentioned? Surely not.”
I didn’t want to discuss this now. Not when I faced having to leave Stranje House and abandoning Georgie and him to deal with Daneska’s murderous intentions. I came to an irritated halt and balled my fists at my sides. Why didn’t he have the decency to ask about me leaving? He could at least act as if it troubled him. But no, he must bring up Daneska and the dreams.
I didn’t know what to say, or how to say it. After numerous false starts, I blurted, “I can’t leave. Not now. Not when you … when they…” I pointed back at Stranje House, at Georgie and the others. “You’re all in danger.”
“Do you want to leave?” Gabriel gently took hold of my elbow, squinting at me, trying to decipher my muddled speech. “If it weren’t for all this other trouble, Tess, would you want go home to your aunt?”
“Don’t make me answer that.” I folded my arms and huddled over them. “What difference does it make? I’ve no choice in the matter.”
He let go and I wished he hadn’t. “It makes a difference to me.”
“There are far more important things to consider at the moment, my lord, than whether or not I want to go back to Tidenham. Georgie is not the only one in danger. You are, as well.” It was all I could do to keep from shouting. “I tried to tell you last night. Daneska sent those men to abduct Georgie, but she offered to pay them extra if they killed you.”
He nodded and strolled ahead as if I’d said nothing of importance.
I hurried up beside him. “And after that dream, I am convinced you are in far more danger than I thought.” For reasons I couldn’t tell him. Even though I itched to know why his brother hated him so much. Surely Lucien hadn’t tried to kill him that day in Möckern simply because they were on opposite sides of the war. “This was no idle whim on Lady Daneska’s part.” At least I didn’t think it was; with Daneska, one could never be too sure. “I don’t see how I can leave in the middle of—”
“Hold!” Gabriel stopped in his tracks, his eyes widened and his nostrils flared. “Am I to understand that you actually think you must stay here to protect me?” His eyes slowly narrowed until the dark slits resembled glinting daggers.
I swallowed, suddenly very sure I should not answer that question. I slid my foot back, preparing to skate away.
“Tess?”
A low warning rumble from deep in his chest made gooseflesh rise on my arms, but I stood my ground and didn’t bolt.
With a disgusted growl, he said, “I can take care of myself.”
It was the way he said it that made me mad, as if I was a foolish girl to have even thought such things. “Oh, yes. How silly of me. Of course, I should’ve known you are used to dealing with murderous henchmen. It’s an everyday thing for you, I suppose?”
“I should think I’ve a great deal more experience with it than you.”
There he was sadly and quite utterly mistaken. But I couldn’t correct him, not without revealing Miss Stranje’s school for what it really was. So I scoffed wordlessly.
He exhaled in a frustrated burst, filling his chest with stern bravado. His face became an unyielding mask, and it brought to mind the paintings of his father I’d seen hanging on his staircase wall, grim and cold. “You’re impossible. Besides, all of this is conjecture. You can’t know Lady Daneska is going to return here for certain.”
I said nothing.
“You dreamt it. Dreams can be false.”
I sighed. “Not mine.”
“You took a blow to the head. A bad one. More than likely, this is nothing more than wild imaginings brought on by your injury.”
Wild imaginings.
“I wish it were so, my lord.” I refused to call him Gabriel. We were no longer friends. My dreams were many things. Frustrating. Horrifying most of the time. Wretchedly inscrutable usually. But they were not wild imaginings. “You may think what you wish. But my dreams are not the ordinary variety.”
Ordinary. If only they were. What must that be like?
Perhaps it was the sadness in my voice that made him lean in as if he was trying to understand. “How is it they differ?”
I bowed my head, not wishing to watch his face as I unwound the ugly truth. “Like my mother, and her mother before her, I am the firstborn daughter. In our family, the eldest daughters are cursed with dreams of things yet to happen. It has been so for generations, clear back to when the druids inhabited the forests in my part of the country. We are inflicted with confusing visions, flashes of the future, inscrutable bits and pieces of terrible things, deaths and horrors. All of which I would give anything not to experience night after night.”
When I dared look up at him, I saw by his eyes my words had troubled him. “These things you see, do they…” He hesitated before answering. “Do they come to pass?”
“Often enough.” I sighed heavily. “Eventually, many of the fragments, these little bits and pieces of the future, prove true.”
Doubt lingered on him, plaguing me.
I could have told him about seeing the fight between him and his brother. But I couldn’t do that without bringing up things I would have to hide. So I flung down my last card. “That’s the reason we went to London. I’d dreamt about what would happen if we didn’t take Georgie’s new ink to Lord Wyatt. He would die. You helped us because you believed me. And you saw what happened there.”
“You told me only that Lord Wyatt’s life was in danger. That’s why we went. I didn’t know we were going because of a dream.”
“If I’d told you, would you have taken us?”
All of Gabriel’s beautiful golden color drained away. He turned ashen white.
“You’ve done too much, my lord. You must sit.” I checked for telltale bleeding coming through his bandages, but there were no fresh stains. Even so, I tugged him to a large overturned log.
“Do you mean you actually saw Lord Wyatt die in a dream?”
“No, my lord, that’s not how it works. I lived it. It was as if I died with him.” I could’ve told him that, once upon a time, I’d nearly died with him, too. But I didn’t.
“Good Lord.” He rested his head in his hands. A few moments later, he looked up to the cloudless sky and then back to me. “If what you say is true, if Lady Daneska is coming here bent on murder and kidnapping, then you must go home to your aunt. You’ll be safer there.”
He would send me away? Away from him? Away from my friends? I shoved my fists against my hips. “I’m touched, my lord, that you are so eager to be rid of me.”
He snared my arm and jerked me onto the log beside him. “Rid of you? Are you daft?” He held me close, and I watched his pupils widen into dark chasms. “You told me once you could see how I felt about you. Have you suddenly gone blind?”
No, his hunger was still plain to see. But there was something else, something bricking up in his heart.
I decided to try chiseling it free with the sharp edge of my tongue. “As I recall, for my honesty on that occasion, you called me a witch.”
“I did.” His voice dropped to a low whisper. “Because you were right.”
My lungs filled in a jubilant rush.
His grip on me softened. He stared at his fingers wrapped around my arm and loosened them so that his hand barely grazed my skin. “Truth is, to keep you here, I’d drop to my knees this instant and beg for your hand. That is, if I could stomach being that cruel to you. I want you, Tess, but you deserve a better man than me. A man with some semblance of a heart left. A man who would coddle you and treat you as you deserve. Not someone as worthless, and lame, and scarred—”
“Stop! Stop saying such things about yourself. You are worth ten of any other man I know.”
He let go of me and the absence of his hand made me feel unnerved, as if an important article of clothing had been stripped away and I sat there half naked. But I could hardly grab his hand and slap it back on my arm. So I settled on words. “Do you think so little of me? Can you honestly believe I have my sights set on a man who would coddle me? What do I care about fine jewels, or carriages, or trips to the theater? Look at me. Am I a china doll to be petted and cosseted?”
I waited, but he didn’t answer.
“Now who is blind?” I asked.
He stared at me, his lips parted as if he meant to say something, and then he closed them.
Lost.
Gabriel is normally a powerful man. Even though he bears a limp from the wound his brother gave him, it only proves his strength. He is a man who could not be cut down, even by a death blow. But all this—his height, his bearing, the powerful muscles in his shoulders and arms—only made that lost expression on his face all the more heartbreaking. I ached to throw my arms around him.
Instead, I clasped my palms together as if praying at an altar. “You can’t truly believe your scars bother me. How can you? When, God help me, I yearn to trace each and every one with my lips.”
Color returned to his face in a blazing crimson flood. He looked away as if my declaration pained him.
I stood, careful to keep my gaze from his, ashamed of my boldness but not yet finished with my confession. “Here is the saddest truth of all, my lord. My feelings are of no consequence. We have no future, Gabriel. Because there is only death ahead of me.”
I gave his cheek a sorrow-drenched kiss and ran.
Ran away, back to Stranje House. I didn’t run elegantly like a deer, or fierce like a wolf, or even like a frightened rabbit. I ran with no grace at all. Like a lost girl. A stupid, foolish lost girl. Half blind with wild thoughts, I stumbled on the stairs.
I never stumble.
Only death ahead of me.
I slammed through the garden door and practically flew through the corridors, up the staircase, down the hall, and flung wide the doors to the ballroom. She was there, as I knew she would be.
Madame Cho.
Waiting. Sitting beside the mats where we practice grappling and throwing one another.
The ballroom is the best of all the rooms in Stranje House. Better than even the dark maze of secret passages and deep hiding places. This is my favorite room. My haven. A climbing rope dangles from the two-story ceiling. Miss Stranje had it installed especially for me. I knew every knot intimately. Off to the side stood a full-size cloth man stuffed with sand and wadding, built so that we could learn to throw our punches and kicks more accurately. I remembered the day Sera inked a moustache and face on him. I passed the case of sabers, a pile of bamboo swords, the throwing knives, and the rack of foils we used for fencing lessons.
Only death lay ahead of me.
I clenched my fists. I didn’t want to leave Stranje House. And I didn’t want to die. Not because death frightened me. It didn’t. Not anymore. I’d died a hundred times in dreams and visions. Death had lost its mystery long ago. No, I wanted the one thing I could never have—a life with Ravencross.
I wanted to live.
My teacher sat, calm as sunlight, waiting for me, watching, as if her ancient dark eyes saw centuries beyond my pain. In a desperate childish rush, I ran and threw myself into Madame Cho’s lap. Dry choking sounds came from my heaving chest. I wasn’t crying.
I never cry.