Page 16 of Lord Gabriel’s Undoing

He frowned. “You mean I’m not the sort of person, the sort of class of person, you think should concern themselves with the poor?”

She shifted. “Well, if you want me to be honest, yes.”

He eyed her for a long moment, wondering if he’d been wrong and she didn’t believe him, and if so, what he was going to do about it if she suddenly set up the loud screaming she’d threatened. He wasn’t in a fit state to stop her. He was going to have to tell her the truth. The truth he’d never told anyone. Not even Ambrose, and he was his brother.

“I’m not really a duke’s son. I’m from the sort of place from which I want to rescue the children.”

She sat up a bit straighter. “You’re… How? That’s impossible. I know who your father is and he’s from Dorset, not from what you call a rookery. And he’s definitely a duke. You were born in a castle. You’re a duke’s son.”

“I’m not, and I wasn’t.”

Outside a couple of late-returning drunks shouted insults at each other, but otherwise total silence reigned.

“You weren’t?” Her voice had dropped even lower. “I don’t understand.”

Gabriel tried to sit up a bit straighter as well, but failed because it made his arm hurt all the more. “I was a foundling.”

She bit her lower lip again. “A foundling?”

“An abandoned child.”

She shook her head. “But your father is a duke. I know he is. Aunt Fanny could talk about nothing else all the way home from the ball. I longed to close my ears but couldn’t.”

“He is my adoptive father only.”

A series of emotions flitted across her face: surprise foremost, followed by guilt, possibly at having damaged him, then curiosity, and finally something that might have been sympathy. “Good heavens,” she said. “And I fear I’ve broken your arm. Before you go on, you must let me fetch something to make a sling for it. I know how to do that because my cousin Tobias broke his arm twice as a child—once falling from a horse and once when he managed to tumble off the edge of the terrace at Coakham. He can be nearly as clumsy as me.”

She got up, the shawl hugged close about her shoulders, and rummaged in a drawer before returning with a square scarf. “Let me knot it behind your neck, and then we can put your arm in it. I’m rather wishing I hadn’t hit you so hard.”

He was too.

He sat still while she tied the knot, breathing in the delicious scent of her warm body and the perfume she’d been wearing at the ball. A heady mixture that threatened to make his head spin all over again. He needed to control himself but it was difficult.

She stepped back. “Shall I put your arm in the sling or will you?”

He did it himself, an action that caused sweat to spring out on his forehead. Once it was done, though, and his arm supported, he felt a little better.

She nodded in satisfaction. “And now perhaps you can tell me more about how you came to be the adopted son of a duke.”

He gave an experimental nod, aware that his right eye was closing. How he was going to explain that to Ambrose he had no idea as yet. His brother would likely accuse him of fighting, not an unknown occurrence in their youth. “All I know is that my mother was a poor Frenchwoman who thrust me as a baby into the arms of the woman I would come to believe was my mother before fleeing.”

“A Frenchwoman?”

“Yes. It was at the time of the Terror in France. Large numbers of refugees, almost all of them without any possessions, were escaping for fear of the guillotine. Many fled to the area of London known as St Giles and are still there now. I can only assume she was one of them.”

“But wasn’t that just the aristos? I had a French governess, Madame Dupont, for a while after I came to live with my aunt, and she said it was just the aristos who fled.”

He gave a wary shake of his head. “No. People from all social levels escaped. It was a time of great danger for everyone, of neighbors informing on neighbors. My mother told me the woman who gave me to her was poorly dressed. She said she seemed terrified, and was being pursued. She spoke French to my mother and asked her to look after me, but refused help for herself. That was how my mother knew she was French.”

“So your mother, I mean your adoptive mother, kept you?”

“She did. My father, the duke, had his men search everywhere for the poor woman who’d given me to her, but they never found her. He’s a kind man and has been a loving father to me. He loved my mother dearly and I think he indulged her in allowing her to keep me. She only had the one son, you see, and she told me many times she thought God had given me to her as a second son.” He held out his left arm. “Here. Look. She said I’d been kissed by an angel. That was why she named me Gabriel.”

His sleeve slipped back an inch to reveal his birthmark and Phoebe leaned forward to peer at it. He’d always been proud to have had the mark of an angel on him as a child, feeling it singled him out and made him special. Maybe not so much now he was an adult and didn’t believe such things could happen.

She nodded gravely. “I see it.” At least she seemed to be taking this all in.

“So who told you all this?”