He had shaved, the harsh lines of his jaw sharply defined in the candle light. He looked less like a laborer now, but he still didn't look like a duke. He looked like a man who had fought a war and barely survived the peace. Gabriel looked at the distance between the two place settings. He didn't say a word.
He simply picked up his plate, his silver, and his glass of wine, walked the thirty feet down the rug, and set them down directly to the right of Norah's chair. "I have had enough of vast, empty spaces," Gabriel said, pulling out a chair for her. Norah sat. The proximity was startling. She could smell soap, clean linen, and the faint metallic scent of the cold air outside. He sat beside her.
There were no footmen hovering against the walls. Gabriel had dismissed them all for the evening. He served the food himself. Roast beef, thick slices of bread, and roasted root vegetables. It wasn't the delicate, highly sauced French cuisine Croft had ordered for the guests.
It was heavy, honest food. They ate in silence for a long time. It wasn't the uncomfortable silence of strangers. It was the exhausted, heavy silence of two people who had just survived a shipwreck. "Croft is in the local jail," Gabriel finally said, staring at his wine glass. "The magistrate was terrified when I handed him the ledgers. Croft will be transported to a penal colony for the rest of his life." "And the boy?" Norah asked, "The one who collapsed?" "Sam, the doctor says he will live.
He was severely dehydrated. I've moved him and his mother into one of the empty tenant cottages near the south woods. He won't hold a shovel again. He's going to work in the kitchens when he's well. Norah nodded.
She took a bite of bread. What happens tomorrow? Your grace. Gabriel turned his head, his gray eyes locking onto hers. Do not call me that.
Not you. It is your title. “It is a title built on the backs of men bleeding in ditches,” Gabriel said, his voice dropping into a low, dangerous register. My father squeezed this land dry to fund his gambling debts in London. I inherited a graveyard.
I will not have you address me by the title that dug the graves. Then what do I call you? Gabriel, he said it softly. A concession, an offering. “Gabriel,” Norah repeated.
The name felt heavy on her tongue. Intimate, dangerous. What happens tomorrow, Gabriel? Tomorrow I pay the men, he said, turning back to his food. I pay them triple the back wages, Croft stole.