‘But what if he kills you? I couldn’t—’
Gabriel’s laughter cut her off. He laughed until it turned into a fit of coughing and he had to stop to catch his breath.
‘If you’re not going to take this seriously…’
‘Oh, Imogen love,’ Gabriel replied, still smiling. It really was so funny it hurt. ‘Perrin’s never been in a duel, and from what I’ve heard, he’s a terrible shot and an even worse fencer. By the time he has to stand across from me in some fog enshrouded field with the dew soaking through his boots, he’s going to be shaking too badly to be any threat at all. My only worry is that his seconds will inform upon us in an effort to prevent the meeting.’
‘But you are going to shoot him? Or stab him or whatever it is you do with a sword.’
‘Like the cur he is, love. Like the cur he is.’
‘And if I asked you not to?’
‘I’d advise you not to.’ Gabriel captured her gaze and held it. He had to make her understand. This wasn’t something he could back down from. Not if they were to survive.
‘But I am asking.’
A dog barked in the distance. The watch called the hour from just outside the window. Gabriel watched her. Willing her to understand.
‘Much as I hate to disappoint you, darling, that’s not a request I can honour.’
‘Then neither is our engagement.’ Imogen tugged the betrothal ring he’d given her only a few days previously off her finger.
It was Gabriel’s turn to glare. His eyes narrowed, and his nostrils flared. If she thought he was going to succumb to ploys such as this, she was mad.
He held out his hand and she dropped the ring into his palm. Without another word she fled the room in a flurry of silk and sobs.
Gabriel stared at the ring in his hand, clenched his fist around it. Blowing his breath out angrily, he stood and thrust the ring into his pocket. His nymph had a knack for making things far more complicated than they needed to be. Perrin needed to learn a lesson. And unless the lesson was delivered, he’d feel free to torture them both for the rest of their lives. If left unchecked, he’d quickly turn them into exactly the social pariahs that Imogen feared to be.
Perhaps George could explain it in a way Imogen would understand? Clearly his nymph wasn’t going to take his word for it, but he was learning, slowly, not to take her fits and starts to heart.
Chapter Thirty-One
Nothing could have prepared us for the delicious sight of a certain Tory MP slinking from Lord and Lady J——’s soirée with his tail between his legs and his new wife railing like a fish wife.
Tête-à-Tête, 16 December 1789
At eleven the next morning, Imogen climbed into the small traveling coach usually reserved for the servants and threw herself back against the squabs. George handed in a basket of food.
‘Are you sure, Imogen?’ the countess asked, her brow puckered with concern.
Imogen nodded, unable to speak. She just wanted to get underway. If Gabriel caught her now, she wouldn’t be able to go. With one last uneasy look, George stepped back and the footman threw up the steps and swung the coach door shut.
Imogen crumpled into the seat. She’d lain awake all night, trying to find a solution she could live with, and this was what she kept coming back to: escape. She wouldn’t call it running away, though the phrase was apt. She pulled the carriage rug up over her lap and settled into the corner as the coach got underway with a lurch, metal banded wheels clattering loudly across the cobbles in the stillness of the morning.
Gabriel couldn’t—wouldn’t—see that fighting Perrin would make everything worse. It would cause such an upsurge of gossip that she’d never be able to show her face again. The door to the ton had cracked open, but it was about to slam shut, right in her face. She’d either be the wanton who’d caused the death of a rising young politician or the slut who’d gotten her foreign lover killed.
Why couldn’t Gabriel see that? Why do men so often seemed to think that violence would solve anything? Violence might be necessary to counter violence, but didn’t seem all that effective for anything else.
A marriage between them would never work.
This was one case in which she was sad to have been proven right. All that was left was for her to get as far away from him as possible. And at the moment, that meant Scotland; to one of the estates belonging to the countess’s brother. George had promised to send along her things, and not to tell Gabriel where she’d gone, though ringing that pledge out of her had been hard.
But once given George’s word was sacrosanct. She wouldn’t go back on her promise.
Imogen touched the countess’s letter of introduction, flipped her book open so she could read the signature scrawled on the outside…Scotland.
Locks, heather, misty crags. It was not exile.
A tear slipped down her cheek, tracing a cold track down to her jaw. It wasn’t. It was an adventure.
As her second best carriage disappeared round the corner, George blew her breath out with irritation and went back inside. If Imogen wanted to escape, there was nothing she could do about it, except provide a place to go, and a safe means of getting there.
Gabriel would have her head if she allowed Imogen to slip off to parts unknown. And much as she thought Imogen was making a mistake, it was her mistake to make. But just because George was going to let her make it, didn’t mean she wasn’t also going to do everything in her power to counter such a gaff.
Imogen was mad if she thought she was going to find
