A queer burning sensation prickled at the back of Effie’s eyes. Again, she feared she might cry. “It is.”

The truth was, she didn’t know what she wanted anymore. Her head and her heart were in a terrible muddle. She’d seen a man die tonight. She’d learned that the gentleman she was coming to care for had lied to her. The same gentleman she’d shared intimacies with that she’d never shared with anyone before.

She needed to think. To gather her wits and regain her composure. Until such time, she needed to be as far away from Gabriel Royce as possible.

20

Gabriel was accompanying Effie out of the woods and back onto the main promenade of the Gardens when Mannering intercepted them. Seeing the young lord step into their path, Gabriel’s already dangerous mood took a sharp turn for the worse.

He might have known Mannering would come searching for Effie. The idiot was plainly infatuated with her. He’d been pursuing her doggedly enough with all his formal calls and bloody invitations.

Gabriel should have been amused. But he was no fool. For all Mannering’s faults, he was still in possession of an estate and a title. The woman he married would become Lady Mannering. She would have a position in society that demanded respect. While the woman who married Gabriel…

But Effie didn’t want marriage—or so she’d claimed. And Gabriel didn’t know what he wanted anymore.

He had begun the evening determined to rid himself of his attraction to her, but he was ending it in a far different frame of mind. Perhaps it was because of how well she fit in his arms. Perhaps it was because of how she’d returned his kisses. Whatever the reason, in those moments after Effie had discovered the truth about Wingard’s documents, knowing that she was about to walk away from him forever, Gabriel would have done anything—said anything—to keep her there.

He’d had but one final card in his favor—the location of the old woman in Hertfordshire. He hadn’t intended to play it. When he had, it had been less out of strategy than desperation.

A novice mistake. A desperate card player was a losing card player. Everyone associated with the world of betting knew it. When the stakes were high, a man had to remain cold and emotionless in order to win.

For Gabriel, the stakes had never felt higher.

He supposed he was infatuated with Effie, too, in his way. How else to explain the fact that he couldn’t stop thinking about her? That he wanted to see her every minute? Kiss her, talk to her, make her smile one of her genuine smiles?

But infatuation was too small a word.

When a man contemplated giving up everything he held sacred for a woman, it surely must be love.