“Madam, you try my patience.” A muscle ticked at the corner of his right eye. “You have five minutes, Mrs. Munroe.”
He could gift her five hundred minutes and it wouldn’t be enough. “You have already found me guilty. What matters what I say at this point?” Those words dripped with bitterness that came from years of scorn by polite and proper gentlemen and ladies.
“Your first minute is up,” he said, coolly unaffected.
Did you expect him to be kind and concerned? Not when he loved his siblings as he did? Still, for Jane’s indignation at Gabriel’s high-handed treatment and the fury in his tone and words, he was not undeserving of those sentiments. Not when she truthfully looked at the circumstances that had brought her to this moment and to his life. And now, she wished she’d handled everything so very differently. Wished that the truth she’d given to Chloe, she’d given to him before the likes of Montclair had robbed her of choice—once again.
“You are rapidly approaching the end of your second—”
“You asked if I know Lord Montclair,” she said tiredly. “And I do.” Her sudden admission cut into his warning. Unable to meet his probing gaze, Jane slid hers to the curtain. “Not in the way you…” Her skin warmed. “N-not in the way you alluded to,” she attested.
Gabriel’s eyes narrowed, but he said nothing. Finding courage in his silence, she continued. “I served in his father, the Marquess of Darlington’s employ as the governess for his youngest sister.” As vile as Lord Montclair had been, that was as kindhearted as his sister was. She and Jane had not had the close relationship that Jane knew with Chloe, but still the young woman had been kind and for that she would be eternally grateful. She stole a glance up at Gabriel, and though there was none of the warmth she’d known from him these past days, neither was there vitriol in his green eyes. Not wanting to relive the horrors of Montclair’s touch, she shifted the conversation to safer, more comfortable topics—other lies. “I do not need spectacles,” she blurted, in a desperate bid to slow the admission that she must give. Jane plucked the metal-wired frames from her face and fisted the delicate pair. “Chloe, Lady Chloe,” she corrected, “insisted they earned attention for the wrong reasons, and yet, when I did not wear them, I found far greater difficulties.” She clasped her hands together so tightly, the rims of her spectacles dug into her palm. Her skin burned at the intensity of his gaze trained on her.
At last, Gabriel broke his silence. “What manner of difficulties?” he asked through stiff lips.
That night in the Marquess of Darlington’s parlor flashed to mind. The door closing. The click of the lock. Terror churned in her belly, and even knowing she was safe and out of Montclair’s clutches, the vile remembrance of his hands upon her rolled through her as though it had just happened.
“Jane?” he prodded, and had his tone been cold and aloof she could have found the strength to conclude the telling. Yet it was so gentle and soft that a single teardrop rolled down her cheek.
She angled herself away lest he see that crystalline sign of her weakness. “Lord Montclair decided I was…” Her tongue grew heavy with embarrassment. She discreetly rubbed at that lone tear on her cheek. “There for his enjoyments.” Glasses in hand, she folded her arms and attempted to rub warmth back into the chilled limbs. She jumped as Gabriel settled his hands on her shoulders, angling her back around. Lethal fury emanated from his frame, potent and powerful, and oh so comforting that another blasted drop squeezed past her lid. Jane swiped it away.
“Did he put his hands upon you?”
Her skin crawled with the memory of his lips, hard and punishing on her skin, as he’d worked his wet, ruthless mouth over her neck. Her lips still throbbed in remembrance of his vicious kiss. She gave a jerky nod.
A black curse escaped him and echoed around the alcove. If she were a proper young lady, the ugliness of that obscenity would have stung her ears, and yet she’d been born to a different station and heard things no polite lady would have ever heard. She continued on a rush, desperate to have this admission complete. “I did not want him to.” Her fingers tightened reflexively so hard about the frame in her hands, she snapped the fragile metal. She stared dumbly down at the spectacles rendered useless. “He said I’d given him reason to believe that I did.” She drew in a shuddery breath. Her lips twisted up in a mirthless smile. Then since she’d come into Gabriel’s home she’d panted and sighed after him like the whore’s daughter she was.