The power felt heavy, but for the first time, it didn't feel corrupt. He turned toward the doorway. She was standing there. Norah hadn't run with the rest of them. She stood just outside the drawing room, her hands folded in front of her faded pink dress.
She looked at the gold ring on the table. Then she looked up at him. Her face was impossible to read. It wasn't awe. It wasn't fear.
It was a profound, quiet shock. “A coward,” Gabriel repeated softly, echoing the word she had used in the dark office the night before. Norah swallowed hard. She didn't back down.
I did not know. No, Gabriel said, taking a slow step toward her. The dirt flaked off his boots. You didn't? You thought I was a starving laborer who was going to die in a ditch, and you brought me water. her anyway.
Norah's chin raised a fraction of an inch. "You lied to us all. I survived you all." Gabriel corrected gently. He stopped a few feet away from her. The height difference was stark. The physical contrast between his filthy, bruised frame and her pale, defiant stillness electric. "My aunt is packing her carriage," Norah said, her voice trembling just slightly.
She was trying to hold on to her pride, the only thing she had left. "I must go. I have no place here. You have no place with them," Gabriel said. He reached out, his dirt stained fingers gently catching her wrist before she could turn away. He didn't grip her tightly, just enough to stop her. "Let them leave.
You are staying." Norah looked down at his large, dark hand against her pale skin. Staying as what, Your Grace? A charity case for the new duke? Gabriel's eyes darkened. Staying as the only person on this entire estate who actually saw me.
He released her wrist and took a step back, gesturing to the mud he had tracked across the floor. "I have a house to clean, Miss Hastings, and a great deal of dirt to wash off. Have dinner with me tonight, not in the servants hall. At my table, Norah looked at the man who possessed enough wealth to buy small countries, standing in his own drawing room, looking like a vagrant. She remembered the way he had caught the whip. She remembered the way he had looked at her when he drank from the tin cup.
A slow, tentative smile touched the corner of her mouth. “Only if you bathe first, Your Grace,” Norah said softly. “You smelled terrible.” Gabriel threw his head back and laughed. It was a loud, booming, joyous sound that echoed through the empty halls of Foxwood, washing away the silence, the cruelty, and the ghosts of the past. The Duke was finally home, and he was exactly where he wanted to be.