her voluminous sage skirts. “What say Rafe and I go pay him a visit while you rest, dear. You look absolutely knackered.”
“A lovely idea,” Felicity agreed, offering her sister a wan and grateful smile.
“Yes,” Raphael agreed, his dark eyebrow lifted at his sullen brother. “That would give you time to talk about whatever is going on between the two of you, I think. I’ve been wanting to squirm out of my skin all afternoon.”
Mercy stepped on his toe and he merely grinned. “Ever the subtle rogue, my husband,” she muttered, though her eyes were fond as she gazed over at him.
Emitting a sigh from deep in his chest, Gabriel heaved out of the carriage and held his hand out for Felicity.
A hand that had pleasured her out of her mind just this morning.
Taking it, she stepped down and led the way into the house as the driver turned the carriage in the tight courtyard and clopped back into the mild London afternoon.
“Will you come with me to the parlor?” she asked.
He nodded, his stony expression never changing.
Are you having regrets? She wanted to ask him. Are you feeling guilty because you are still going to leave?
What would it take for him to stay?
Because if there was a price, she’d be willing to pay it.
Even if it meant losing everything to gain his heart.
“Gabriel, I—”
Without preamble, he seized her roughly and shoved her behind him, his finger held to his mouth in a signal for silence.
The knife he kept against his back appeared in his hand as he cocked his ear toward her father’s study.
Felicity could hear nothing above her racing heart, but she trusted his senses and was happy to allow him to stalk to the door like an advancing buccaneer, ready to slice their intruder to shreds.
Shoving the door open, he lowered the knife immediately, though his grave frown remained firmly in place.
“Mrs. Winterton,” he said in a bemused voice. “I think you need to explain yourself.”
Gasping, Felicity shimmied past him through the doorframe to see her friend and companion frozen over her father’s desk, papers clutched in her hand.
She’d never looked so terrible. Her gold dress hung from a frame that’d become alarmingly thin in the matter of only several days. Her eyes, so lively and blue, had sunken into pallid skin that seemed to all but sag from tired bones. Hair usually the lambent color of copper escaped a hasty knot in limp, dull strands. The papers in her hands shook, and she let them fall to the desk to wring her fingers together.
Moving as if her joints hurt, Emmaline Winterton turned to Felicity with lashes gathered in spikes as tears leaked out the corner of her eyes. “I’m so sorry,” she all but croaked. “I didn’t mean for any of this to happen. You have to believe that—”
“Oh, do shut up, you dull bitch.”
The moment the masculine voice slithered from around the other side of the door, Felicity could feel Gabriel surge behind her, moving to place himself in between her and the interloper.
Something stopped him.
Looking behind her, Felicity despaired to find that a thin metal garrote had been slipped around his neck by a cutthroat, and two other burly brutes had ahold of each straining arm.
His knife clattered to the floor. A furious roar became a choked groan as the weapon cut into his windpipe, strangling his breath.
“No.” Felicity reached toward him, only to have her elbow seized by a clawlike hand that jerked her off her feet and tossed her against the desk.
She whimpered as her hip caught the edge, but wrenched her hand away when Emmaline reached for her.
Facing her enemy, she was astonished to find him a perfect stranger.
Though his suit was at least a year or more out of fashion, it might have been expensive once. It stretched over a paunch that’d increased significantly since the initial tailoring of his vest and jacket. Grey hair was pulled back into a queue over a face that might have belonged to a raven in another life, it was so beakish and gaunt.
“You let these men into my house?” she accused Mrs. Winterton, gagging on her first bitter taste of true betrayal.
“Oh, don’t be too hard on our Emmaline.” The man tapped on the desk with a heavy cane, causing Emmaline to flinch. “I didn’t give her much of a choice.”
She glanced from Emmaline to her assailant to Gabriel, as her terror spiked.
Gabriel’s face had gone red, but at least his chest was heaving