Notorious (Rebels of the Ton #1) - Minerva Spencer Page 0,85

go around back and see if the door to the sunroom was unlocked. If it wasn’t, then he’d have to wake up a servant.

The narrow alley that ran beside the house was dark and he had to walk slowly. The servant’s entrance was at the rear of the house and the journey was treacherous it was so dark. He would tell Parker to hang a lantern outside the door and leave it all night. A person could break their neck in this gloom and the last—

“—all right, Dru. I understand. I do.”

Gabriel froze as a dark figure came out through the door in the high wall that led to his garden. What the devil?

The shadow stopped just outside the wall. “I shall see you on Thursday?”

Gabriel took a quick step back into the servant doorway, his hand clenching so hard on his walking stick it cut into his skin. He recognized the voice even though he’d only heard it once before.

Whomever Rowland was talking to—Gabriel’s wife, apparently—spoke too softly to be heard.

“What’s that you say?” There was another long pause: “Well, just once more, then—for old time’s sake. I know, me too. Thank you, Dru.” He shut the garden door and then turned—not in Gabriel’s direction, but toward the small stables that served the house. Rowland didn’t even hesitate before opening the door into the building and closing it softly behind him, behaving for all the world like a man who was comfortable in his surroundings.

Gabriel leaned back against the servant’s door, his brain refusing to admit what his eyes and ears had just witnessed. She was meeting a man she’d held hands with, a man he’d asked her not to see again—in their back garden, at two in the morning.

It was bloody amazing.

He stalked back around to the front door and rang the bell, coming to a boil as he waited. It was Parker who opened the door, and he was wearing his nightcap and a red plaid robe.

“I am sorry, sir. The evening footman said you’d dismissed him earlier and I took him at his word.”

Gabriel forced himself not to shove past his servant and thunder up the stairs to his wife’s room.

“He spoke the truth, Parker. I forgot my key.” He dropped his cane into the brass holder, tossed down his hat, and began yanking off his gloves.

A few letters were scattered on the salver, and one caught his eye. He turned his head to read the direction: Mr. Theodore Rowley.

Gabriel froze, his right glove only half off. His heart was pounding in his ears and his neck and back had become so tight—so tense—the muscles actually hurt.

He glanced up to find Parker looking at him, his gaze in the flickering candlelight . . . knowing. “You may go back to bed, Parker.”

“Thank you, sir. Good night.”

Gabriel waited until the older man turned the corner before looking at the letter. So, he had gone for a walk and she had not only had a secret meeting with her lover but she’d written him a letter, too?

He flung his gloves onto the table before picking up the letter, turning it round and round in his hands. The temptation to open it tore at him more violently than gale-force winds. It was his right to know whom she was corresponding with and what she was saying. As her husband everything she did was subject to his approval.

Gabriel suddenly envisioned himself lurking in the dimly lighted foyer, furtively reading his wife’s private correspondence like some sneak thief.

He tossed the letter onto the salver, snatched up the candlestick, and headed for the stairs. He took them two and three at a time, already composing the things he would say to her. He had told her he’d not tolerate a continued liaison with a man she was apparently accustomed to holding hands with and meeting in their back garden. Now she could deal with the ramifications of her willful, thoughtless actions.

He flung open the door to his room, startling Drake so badly the older man dropped a pair of boots he’d been carrying to the dressing room.

“What the devil are you doing still awake?” Gabriel snapped, slamming the candlestick down hard enough that it sheared a sliver of wood off the inlaid console table.

Drake’s eyes jumped from Gabriel to the table, back to Gabriel. He opened his mouth.

“Never mind,” Gabriel said, sliding a hand beneath his cravat and ripping it from his neck so viciously the fine fabric made a friction burn