Notorious (Rebels of the Ton #1) - Minerva Spencer Page 0,46
unoccupied, although Abermarle has periodically stayed there during the summer.” The Marquess of Abermarle was Gabriel’s uncle, his mother’s only brother and the duke’s heir. He was a studious, bookish man who was a great disappointment to his father. The duke was a skilled rider to hounds, a crack shot, and a skilled political orator who was a close associate of the Regent and had long been part of the Carlton House set. His son, Cian, preferred solitude to socializing, history to hunting, and privacy to politics. Gabriel liked the quiet man, although he had spent very little time with him.
Gabriel unrolled the packet of information and studied it. There were drawings of the houses, additions, and outbuildings and also a survey of the land. It was near the coast but far enough inland to have plenty of fertile land worth farming. It was a modest-size manor house with perhaps ten thousand acres, most of it divided into tenant farms with a smallish plot reserved for the home farm.
A detailed plan of the property was included, and Gabriel felt a frisson of pleasure as he examined it. A stream, a small lake, even a little wooded area. It would be the perfect place for a boy to run wild. Samir could have a pony and explore and grow up without all the dangers Gabriel had faced as a boy: poison and assassination plots and the stomach-curdling jealousy of his half brothers’ mothers.
Yes, he could take a property like this and make even more of a success with it, just as he’d done for his father when the sultan sent him out to one of his holdings once he’d turned fifteen.
Gabriel could still recall the day he’d left home. His mother had been desolate and Gabriel, himself, had been more than a little concerned about leaving the only home he’d ever known. But leaving the palace and going to one of the Sultan’s palaces to prove himself was a sacred rite of passage for a royal heir.
And of course there had also been the lure of Fatima to ease his homesickness. Her family had once controlled the al-Kamat palace but her father had been relegated to acting as the sultan’s vizier after Abdul Hassan had seized the property over a decade earlier.
Al-Kamat was where Gabriel had been when his father died and Assad assumed the sultanate. Gabriel had been lucky to escape with his life when Assad made a secret deal with Fatima’s father: the return of his palace and lands for his support against the sultan’s chosen heir. And his daughter’s hand, even though Fatima had already been promised to Gabriel.
Gabriel had been over one hundred miles away from Oran when his friends—the men who’d supported him since he was a boy—sent a small contingent to tell him of his father’s death and his mother’s disappearance and to help him to safety. His life had changed forever that night, but he hadn’t known the full extent of those changes until weeks later. His sixteen-year-old self had been arrogant to a fault, believing all he had to do was return to Oran and summon his people—that they would rise up and support him without question.
Instead, it had been the beginning of a year-long civil war within their tribe. That’s how his father’s people had always viewed themselves: as a Berber tribe rather than an Arab nation. They had nominally accepted Arab and Ottoman customs, habits, and religion, but they remained, first and last, Berber, even hundreds of years after they’d been conquered.
Gabriel turned his mind from the past and focused instead on the plans before him: his new life and this new property. The Season would be over soon, and they would leave the city. He’d been looking forward to going to Sizemore Manor with Samir—before. Perhaps his new wife would rather go to Brighton and continue the endless round of balls and assemblies? He would speak with her. If she wished to stay in Brighton, they could rent her a house and he would spend his time at Sizemore. After all, it was a marriage of convenience. They might as well arrange it to be convenient.
He doubted his wife would find Samir’s existence convenient. Gabriel winced at the thought of that particular conversation. Whatever he decided, he had a little more than a month to say it.
He rolled up the papers and put them away. It was always possible he would never see this property—that he would die tomorrow morning.