His cousin recovered himself fast. Gray ducked out of the way of a wild left hook, then Henry was boring in, fists flying, some science returning to his blows as he got his temper under control. Gray took a punch to the solar plexus, went down, taking a chair with him, painfully.

  He surged to his feet, seeing red, knowing only that the man in front of him had put his hands on Gabrielle, his Gabrielle, had got her with child. He swung with his right fist and Henry went flying on to the hearthrug in a clatter of fire irons. Gray took one stride towards him and was hit in the back of the head with cold liquid.

  ‘What the hell?’ He turned, fists up, ready to take on whoever dared to intervene and found himself face-to-face with his godmother, milk jug in hand. Behind her Fredericks, normally more than capable of repelling any unwanted visitor, stood helpless.

  ‘Lady Orford, my lord. I explained that you were not receiving, but—’

  ‘Not receiving?’ His godmother’s gaze swept up and down his body, then moved to Henry who was clambering out of the hearth in a clanking of poker and tongs. ‘Not receiving? Is this how you spend your mornings, Gray? Brawling with your cousin? No wonder Gabrielle has left, poor child.’

  Tomkins appeared, presumably summoned by Fredericks, with comb and clothes brush and trailed by a footman with a basin of water. ‘My lord?’

  Either he’d suffered a blow to the head at some point this morning and this was all some kind of hallucination or he was dead drunk or, and it seemed the least likely, he and Henry were fighting over Gabrielle and his aunt was standing in the midst of the melee as an improbable referee.

  ‘Fredericks, please show Lady Orford to the small drawing room and bring her refreshments.’

  She bridled at him, then swept out. ‘I will be back in fifteen minutes, Gray.’

  Henry was dabbing at his nose with a cloth while Tomkins straightened his clothing. ‘What was that for?’ he demanded.

  ‘Later,’ Gray promised grimly, towelling milk out of his hair. ‘When I have got rid of my godmother. For now, try to pretend we have had a minor falling-out over some bet or another. The last thing we need is for her to be spreading this far and wide among her circle of gossips.’

  Henry bared his teeth in what might pass for a smile. ‘I will do my best.’

  Lady Orford was readmitted to a scene which, if she chose to ignore Henry’s swelling nose and Gray’s split lip and reddening eye, appeared to be a normal bachelor breakfast.

  ‘I apologise, Godmama. A minor dispute over a wager got rather heated. Will you join us for breakfast?’

  ‘Breakfast? Certainly not. How can you eat so calmly when my niece has jilted you and fled the country?’ Even so, she flung herself into a chair and added, ‘More coffee,’ to Fredericks.

  ‘The post has arrived, my lord.’ James proffered a laden salver. On top was a slim letter addressed in a hand he recognised.

  ‘If I might have a moment to read my own letter from Miss Frost.’ Gray felt sick, but he kept his face expressionless as he broke the seal.

  I cannot bear to hurt you. This has become so complicated.

  Several words had been heavily scored out.

  I cannot deal with my own feelings for you either. Not when we are so close and I can see you, touch you. Kiss you. I wish I could tell you.

  Again something had been crossed through.

  I must make the break and do it at once. I see that. I must go home and be practical now. Devote myself to managing Frost’s for the future...

  I am sorry to leave you to cope with Aunt Henrietta...

  The future. Henry had given her the future that she had dreamed of—a child and her independence to raise it. So Gabrielle had found the strength to break away, end this thing between them. Perhaps it had only been an illusion if she had been able to go to another man, lie with him like that.

  She had found the strength that he did not have because somewhere, nagging at him, there was a solution to her dilemma. One she no longer needed.

  Gray closed his eyes for a moment, shut out Henry’s distressed expression, his godmother’s indignant fluster.

  Deal with Godmama first.

  He opened his eyes, took a breath. ‘We found we could not agree on many things, and because of that marriage was impossible. Gabrielle clearly feels that a clean break is best.’

  ‘And because of you, my poor George lost the opportunity to woo her. It would have been a perfect match.’ His godmother was shedding angry tears into her table napkin.

  ‘Gabrielle would never have married George. She was quite clear about that.’

  ‘You cannot be certain.’ She threw down the napkin. ‘Go after her, make her come back. I am past caring whom she marries—it is impossible that she is out there alone, running a business.’

  ‘No,’ Gray said flatly. ‘I will not.’

  * * *

  ‘I don’t know what the matter is with me.’ Gaby clutched the side of the bunk with one hand and the basin Jane had just passed her with the other. ‘I have never felt seasick before.’

  ‘Possibly because you are not seasick.’ Jane pressed a damp cloth to her brow.

  ‘I’m not? But I am not feverish, I can’t believe this is some infection or food poisoning. It is probably a judgement on me for all those lies about how we were laid up with a cold,’ she added miserably.

  ‘When did you last have your courses?’ Jane whisked away cloth and basin.

  ‘Er...’ Gaby sat up and waited until the cabin stopped spinning. ‘Let me see. About a week before Gray arrived at the quinta. But that’s... That means I have missed two.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘You think I am pregnant? But I can’t be. I’m irregular because of the travelling and the change, that is all it is.’ But she had never been irregular before, not by more than a day or two.

  ‘You are not irregular. You are late. Two months late. Are you saying it is impossible that you are with child? You are queasy, you are dizzy and you are tired. You tell me you can’t eat fish suddenly and you want sweet things. Can you think of any other explanation?’

  ‘No. But I only... It was only twice and he—’

  ‘Withdrew?’ Jane said crisply. ‘It is not an infallible method.’

  Thank goodness for a natural philosopher, Gaby thought rather wildly.

  It was true, of course. Nothing else explained this.

  At least one of us is not embarrassed. And thank goodness I have discovered it here and not in London. I cannot tell Gray. He would insist on marriage. But a baby. My child. I will be such a good mother, she vowed. But what will I tell everyone?

  Her thoughts were spinning out of control and she pulled herself up sharply. There was no way she could create a convincing marriage and widowhood now. She would just have to brazen it out and do everything in her power to keep her child happy and accepted. She was Gabrielle Frost of Quinta do Falcão, she had power and she would use it, call in every favour, to protect this baby.

  * * *

  They sailed into Lisbon on December first under a cold blue sky. Gaby leaned on the rail, thankful for the calming waters as the ship reached the estuary and slid between the shelter of the towering hills that contained the city.

  A night to recover from her shock had done no good at all. Gaby felt unwell, thrilled, terrified—and conscience-stricken. This was Gray’s child as well as hers and she had no right to keep it from him. And she knew what he would say when he found out—that they must marry.

  Was she hard enough, strong enough, to go against her conscience in order to do her duty to her inheritance? The answer was no, even though it meant losing the company, meant that this child would not inherit one day but that James, the little boy she had never seen, would be master of Frost’s—if Gray did not sell it first.

  But I love him. Surely I can trust him not to sell?

  She had not been able to give him that trust up to now, she acknowledged. It would be a leap of faith and the fact that she wanted to be with him, wanted to be his wife, only made it harder to decide. Was she doing what she wanted or what she ought to do?

  But first she must be certain that she really was carrying a child. She knew the name of the best doctor in Porto, the one that all the ladies summoned to their childbeds. Because he specialised as an accoucheur she had never met him, so a false name would protect her privacy a little longer.

  * * *

  The next day Gaby managed to secure an appointment with Dr Riberro. She went to his consulting rooms veiled and returned dizzy with the knowledge that she was, indeed, with child, that she appeared to be perfectly healthy and that she now had the most important decision of her life to make.

  ‘If I love him, then I must trust him,’ Gaby said to Jane as they sipped, grimacing, the camomile tea the doctor had recommended. ‘I wish I had realised that before, had not been so stubborn.’

  ‘But you feel the responsibility to the family firm very deeply.’

  ‘It took so long to build the quality, the reputation. All those years of work by my parents, my grandparents and their forefathers. It should have been Thomas’s. Our workers have been with us for generations.’

  ‘There is no reason to suppose Lord Leybourne would damage such an inheritance.’ Jane experimented with a spoonful of honey in her tea and pushed the jar across the table to Gaby. ‘Try that. It improves the taste.’

  ‘It is trade, a business, and he is an aristocrat. And it is hundreds of miles from England. It would be a smudge on the family name and a great deal of work for what he probably thinks is foolish sentiment, although he is too kind to say so.’

  Gaby looked around the tea room of the hotel. She could not go home yet, not with this decision hanging over her. If she did, she feared she would act out of sentiment alone, shut herself into the quinta and ride out the scandal, learn, somehow, to live with her conscience over deceiving the man she loved.

  They were at the hotel they normally used in Porto. It was quiet, respectable and comfortable, but not one that her neighbours and friends patronised. She knew what she looked like from her mirror—pale, tense and with dark shadows under her eyes. It would be best not to be seen and her health commented upon before she knew what she was going to do.

  ‘I love him,’ she said out loud. ‘And I have to do the right thing and believe that he will, too.’ But the right thing as Gray saw it might well not be the same as her vision. ‘I will go down to the docks tomorrow, book a passage back to England. I cannot do this by letter.’

  ‘You must. Summon him here,’ Jane said firmly. ‘It cannot be good for you in your condition to go back and forth on that wretched journey. The Bay of Biscay is bad enough when one is feeling in perfect health and it is December now.’

  ‘I have to and, besides, I am never seasick, so the rough weather is neither here nor there.’ The morning sickness would be as bad on the ship or the land. ‘It will doubtless be several days or so before I find a berth and can sail again.’ She leaned across the table and took the other woman’s hand. ‘I have to see his face when I tell him, Jane. I have to know what is in his heart.’

  In hers there was joy about the baby and there would be, even if there was nothing at stake, no inheritance, she realised. Before, she had been thinking like a dynast, not a mother, not a woman. This child would be loved by her whether they grew up wanting to run Frost’s or not, she realised. It felt strange to have that worry gone. It had obsessed her ever since she had begun to accept the finality of Thomas’s death and now... Now other things were more important.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  It was three days later that the shipping factor sent a message to come down to the docks. There had been a storm in Biscay, ships had been delayed and when she had enquired he had no way of knowing what bookings were already taken. Now ships were arriving, the note said. There should be plenty of choice.

  The wet weather, the tail of the storms, blew in from the sea in a fine drizzle that soaked everything, made the stone-flagged quayside gleam with damp and cast a miserable chill over the city and the estuary. Gaby refused to be depressed by it. There was too much else to think about and worry over.

  They were unloading a large vessel beyond the factor’s office, one of those delayed by the storm, she guessed. Passengers, some lurching slightly as they recovered their land legs, were making their way towards her in the wake of porters with laden barrows. One tall figure stood out in the murk and her breath caught as she narrowed her eyes against the damp. No, obviously it could not be Gray.

  ‘Gabrielle!’ He broke into a run as she stood staring, the crowd splitting around her as though she was a rock in the river. Then he was in front of her, his hands reaching for her.

  ‘Your face,’ she said, staring. Gray was sporting a greenish-purple left eye and a healing lower lip.

  ‘Nothing. It is nothing. Gabrielle, what are you doing here? I thought you would be back at the quinta by now.’

  ‘But what happened? Who have you been fighting?’ she demanded, a sinking apprehension in her stomach.

  ‘Henry. A misunderstanding. He is all right and this is nothing. Gabrielle, I had to come and tell you—’

  ‘No, me first.’ Whatever he had come all these miles through the teeth of a storm to tell her must wait until he heard about the child. ‘You have to hear what I need to say.’

  ‘In here. You are getting soaked.’ He pulled her towards one of the low brick buildings that lined the quay, a cake and coffee shop catering to the passengers waiting to embark or to do business. Gray pushed open the door to steam and the enticing aromas of baking and hot chocolate. ‘A jug of chocolate for two,’ he ordered in English, apparently too distracted to recall his Portuguese, but the woman behind the counter obviously understood.

  ‘This booth, Gabrielle. Give me your cloak.’ There was only one other couple in the shop, huddled together in conversation at the far end. Gray shook out her cloak and his greatcoat and hung them over empty chairs, then took her hands in his large warm ones. ‘You are chilled through and you do not look well.’ He pulled off his gloves and traced the circles under her eyes with one cold finger.

  ‘Just what every woman wants to hear,’ she said with an attempt at lightness as the chocolate and two cups were put in front of them.

  The woman smiled at her. Perhaps, Gaby thought, she is being sentimental over reunited lovers. Is that what we are?

  ‘Thank you.’ She took the cup Gray had filled for her, sipped the rich liquid for courage and to ease her cold lips. There was no way to soften this news. She put down her cup and looked him in the eyes. ‘Gray, I am expecting a baby.’

  Gaby had not known what to expect when she told him. Pleasure, joy, surprise... Not blank shock.

  ‘You are?’ Gray asked when she had, finally, to let go of the breath she was holding. ‘Henry’s?’

  ‘No! No, of course not. How could you—’

  ‘It is not mine,’ he said flatly. ‘Damn it, I thought I’d been mistaken in him. I apologised for hitting him, for believing, even for a moment that he and you, after all, had followed that lunatic scheme.’

  ‘What? You thought that I left England because I was pregnant?’ She got to her feet, the chair legs screeching on the tiled floor. ‘You thought I could...with someone else...after you and I had...’

  Gray was on his feet, too, the bruises stark on his face where the blood had drained away. ‘I was careful when I lay with you!’

  ‘You are an idiot!’ she flung back. ‘A hateful, suspicious idiot. I told myself I could trust you, now I find this poor child has to endure you for a father.’

  * * *

  Gray stood looking after her as the shop door slammed, sending the bell clanking. Across the room the other couple looked up, startled. The woman bustled out from behind the counter, picked up Gabrielle’s cloak and thrust it into his hands.

  ‘Estúpido! Burro! Imbecil!’

  ‘I—Oh, hell. Oh, my love.’ He ran, the door banging in the wind and rain, the cloak tangling around his legs. Gabrielle was easy to catch on the slippery stones. She wasn’t well, she was distressed and she could hardly see in front of her face because she was blinded by tears, he realised as he caught her. When he swirled the cloak around her shoulders she batted at it, her face worryingly white.

  ‘Gabrielle. I’m sorry.’ He scooped her up in his arms, kicking and struggling, spitting anger and misery at him. ‘I’m stupid, an ass, an imbecile. I can’t count. I’m jealous and fearful. I love you.’ He shouldered open the shop door and the woman gestured through to another room beyond, shaking her head at him.

  The wood-panelled chamber was empty and there was a fire. The woman came in with more chocolate and cups, a plate laden with pastéis de nata, the traditional custard tarts fragrant with cinnamon and lemon. She patted Gabrielle on the shoulder, shook her finger at Gray and bustled out, taking Gabrielle’s cloak with her.

  ‘I love you,’ he said again, urgently as though his words could bandage a bleeding wound. ‘I love you. I’m sorry. When you left so hurriedly and Henry was so... I saw the letter you wrote to him and then yours to me sounded ambiguous. I feared the worst. I thought you had...’

  ‘So you hit him.’

  Was he forgiven? Gray couldn’t tell, couldn’t recognise this thin, tense woman.

  ‘He hit me back. I deserved it. I was being an ass. When we finally got rid of your aunt, who managed to arrive in the middle of it, we talked. He explained what you two had been so secretive about at the Terringtons’ ball, explained that what you were thanking him for when you wrote was being a sounding board to talk everything through, someone to confide in.’

  Gabrielle reached out and touched the bruised skin under his eye. ‘This must have hurt.’