When he raised his head, his lazy gaze swept the ballroom, sending scores of blushing cheeks and curious eyes into cover behind a screen of fans, greenery, and other people’s shoulders. But when his dark eyes lit on Cami and Felicity, and that slow, certain smile lifted one corner of his mouth, the collective attention of the ballroom shifted to them, and Felicity gave a squeak of alarm.
“I certainly hope that scoundrel doesn’t imagine he’ll find such a welcome in this corner of the room,” sniffed Mrs. Kendal, a school friend of Lady Merrick’s whose hovering presence suggested that she felt—perhaps rightly—that Cami’s chaperonage was insufficient for the occasion.
In defiance of Mrs. Kendal’s earnest wish and despite the crush, Lord Ash was beside them in a moment. Behind him, the crowd shifted and swirled, like the waters of the Red Sea coming together again after parting. “Lady Montlake’s guests were only too happy to allow me to pass,” he explained in quiet answer to Cami’s unspoken question as he bowed his greeting. He was dressed entirely in black, the brilliant whiteness of his linen the only contrast. Against the more vibrant silks surrounding him, he ought simply to have disappeared. Instead, the sharpness of the contrast drew the eye. The severity of the costume suited him.
Mr. Fox, the next to be greeted by their hostess, was longer in crossing to them. As they recovered from the shock of the Marquess of Ashborough’s unexpected appearance, several people stopped Mr. Fox to speak with him. He paused the longest beside another gentleman with sandy-brown hair, who clapped him on the shoulder and, after a brief exchange of words, left his party and joined Mr. Fox in his journey across the room.
“Lovely to see you again, Lady Felicity,” Mr. Fox said when he reached them. “And you, Miss Burke.” After an uncertain pause, the second gentleman stepped forward. “Oh, er, yes. Lady Felicity, Miss Burke, may I introduce my brother, Lord Branthwaite? ”
“Pleased to make your acquaintance.” Branthwaite’s bow lacked both his brother’s endearing awkwardness and his enthusiasm.
Cami curtsied deeply and tipped her chin in acknowledgment of the greeting. “My lord.”
But Felicity’s shallower dip was succeeded by a flurry of words. “Branthwaite? I believe, my lord, I have a bone to pick with you.”
A frown of bewilderment. “With me?”
“Over Foxy’s pups,” said Lord Ashborough from his place near Cami’s elbow. She wished he would stand farther off.
“Pups?” Branthwaite’s brows rose. “I don’t—”
“Tiresias, Lelantos, Achilles, and Medea.” Felicity ticked off each dog’s name on the tip of one silk-gloved finger.
Branthwaite’s bemused expression was tinged with something like disapproval. “Your doing, I suppose, Ash?” he asked, his voice low.
To Cami’s surprise, Lord Ashborough’s head dipped slightly in acknowledgment.
“The dogs’ names are not at issue, my lord,” Felicity insisted, turning the gentlemen’s attention back to her. “Did you really mean to—to be rid of them?”
Branthwaite’s eyes darted toward his brother and, after a moment’s consideration, his lips twitched in amusement. In the gallery, the musicians picked up their instruments. “I believe the set is starting, Lady Felicity. Perhaps that will give me time to explain myself,” he said, extending his hand.
Fox looked pleased. “And you, Miss Burke—will you partner me? I wish to make amends for the other day.”
“Then for God’s sake, spare her your dancing,” Lord Ashborough said as he held out one hand, offering to lead her onto the floor. A flicker of surprise crossed Mr. Fox’s face; then he bowed, deferring to his friend.
Over his shoulder, Mrs. Kendal scowled and shook her head at Cami. Strangers surreptitiously awaited her reply. But Felicity’s blue eyes flooded with relief. This was the supper dance. If Cami accepted him, it would spare her cousin the marquess’ attentions for an hour or more.
To say nothing of providing a golden opportunity to mine his conversation for greater insights into his character.
In order to help her readers understand the motives of the fictional Lord Granville, she had been making rather free with Lord Ash in her mind, on paper. And in the process, she had found herself growing curious about the real man. Dangerously curious. About why, or even whether, he did the shocking things he was said to do.
About how it might feel to do some of those shocking things with him.
She smoothed her hand over her borrowed skirts, then laid it on Lord Ashborough’s outstretched palm. In recent years, her dancing had been limited to impromptu evenings in a neighbor’s drawing room, partnered by one of her brothers or perhaps a sister, if at all. Now, under the glow of a hundred candles and amid the whirl of fashionable gowns and sparkling gems, the familiar comfort of those home entertainments felt very far away. Anticipation fluttered in her belly, tingled through her fingertips.
Swallowing against the sensation, she allowed herself to be led onto the floor. She was not doing this to please herself, after all.
Dancing with him was simply the best way to keep Felicity safe.
* * * *
As he led her to her place in the ladies’ line and then bowed to her from the gentlemen’s, he could sense the eyes of the other dancers on them. He had fully expected his presence to invite attention, even speculation. He was accustomed to stares and whispers wherever he went.
But if he had imagined that it would be freeing to share the weight of scrutiny for once, he had certainly not anticipated the unfamiliar rush of protectiveness that replaced it, the desire to retrieve that heavy burden from the more delicate frame onto which it had unfairly fallen.
Not that he imagined Camellia too weak to bear it. But it could not have been clearer that she was unaccustomed to the load.
“I had not expected to dance this evening,” she confessed with a nervous twitch of her lips that might have been meant for a smile. “At least, not with you, Lord Ashborough.”
“You prefer to avoid the public eye.” His offer had been a selfish one, then. No, not even that, for dancing with her was against his own interests too.
He would much prefer to study her in private.
Her brow wrinkled. “The public eye? Why, I’m sure not a soul in this room has marked my existence. Their attention is all for you.”
Had he merely projected his own weakness onto every other man in the ballroom? He might have glanced around him to see if she was right—if he had been capable of looking away from her.
In contrast to the other women present, her dark hair was dressed simply, to the point of severity. Her spectacles caught the glare of the candlelight, effectively masking her best feature. And her dress was ill fitting, unbecoming, and at least a decade out of fashion, hastily made over from one of the countess’ castoffs, if he had to guess, and by someone with little skill with a needle, or else under orders not to reveal Miss Burke’s charms.
Further proof that Lady Merrick recognized the dangers of displaying her niece beside her daughter, of inviting comparison between interesting and insipid, sharp and dull.
Despite the dress, and despite her assurances, he could not quite convince himself that the collective eye of the assembly could overlook what was growing obvious to him: Camellia Burke’s extraordinary beauty. The blue-black sheen of her raven hair. The sparkle of her grass-green eyes. The promise of her slender body.
But would it be so surprising if the two hundred or so guests in Lady Montlake’s ballroom failed to see it? After all, she was teetering dangerously on the brink of spinsterhood; other men clearly had passed over this treasure of the Emerald Isle. By contrast, he had spent too much time since their stroll through Hyde Park imagining what it would be like to toss those wire-rimmed spectacles aside, tangle his fingers in the black silk of her hair, and put her curious tongue to better use than asking impertinent questions.
; “You attend such entertainments frequently, I suppose?” she asked when the music began and the steps brought them together.
After their last encounter, he had not known whether to expect conversation—or rather, since she seemed never to be at a loss for words, he had not known what sort of conversation to expect. “No. My own small circle rarely intersects the broader realm of polite society,” he replied. “Foxy is my nearest brush with respectability.”
Pursed lips warred between amusement and disapproval. “One wonders which of you is more tarred by that brush.”
Fox. Unquestionably. If only she knew the number of times Gabriel had pleaded with him to forgo their friendship and save his own reputation. He surely would have had a preferment by now, perhaps something even more lucrative than the place that had been promised him, if not for his association with the infamous Lord Ash.
“Can you doubt how I suffer, Miss Burke?” he replied with forced glibness. “Ever under the watchful eye of our future clergyman? It’s a wonder I can dance at all.”
“Then I find myself doubly glad you asked me before my cousin,” she replied. “Once to save Lady Felicity from the uncomfortable scrutiny any partner of yours must endure.”
“Yes?” he encouraged, deliberately turning her toward him, rather than away as the dance demanded.
“And once to save her the embarrassment of dancing with a man who has forgotten the steps,” she chided, slipping back into her proper place.
When the dance at last ended, he ushered her through the curious but disapproving crowd, which again parted to make way for his passage, as if he were pitch and they wary of being defiled. In the crowded supper room, competing aromas of perfume and sturgeon and bodies combined to form a haze of scent that hung over the assembled company. He saw no sign of either Fox or Lady Felicity, so he steered Miss Burke to the last empty seats he could find, on the far side of the room. A nearby couple scraped their chairs across the floor, drawing away to avoid any appearance of association.
“May I fetch you some refreshment, Miss Burke?”
“No, thank you, my lord. I am not hungry.”
A pity. He so enjoyed satisfying a woman’s appetite. “Some wine, then?”
She conceded to that offer with a dip of her dark head. When he returned, she had drawn off her gloves and laid them aside. As her slender fingers curled around the goblet and lifted it to her lips, he spied a dark smudge of ink along the side of her right hand and speckling her first and second fingers—the mark of someone who had spent hours with her pen. Lady Merrick’s correspondence must be voluminous.
He had had similar stains himself, once, too stubborn for pumice. At school, translations of Latin and Greek had absorbed him, coming as they had at a time when he was desperate to find some meaning in those old adages about beauty in tragedy, desperate to find a way to allay his own suffering.
All his efforts had only proved that those grand truths were nothing more than lies.
“I assumed every English schoolboy was taught the classics,” she remarked as he seated himself beside her. An almost uncanny observation, given the direction of his own thoughts. But her conversation, like everything about her, seemed to be something out of the ordinary.
“Tortured into learning them, more like,” he corrected.
“Then I wonder why Lord Branthwaite should suspect you in particular of naming Mr. Fox’s dogs.”
Gabriel did not fool himself into thinking Branthwaite had meant the remark as a compliment to his wit. “Merely a jest between…” Fox’s eldest brother tolerated Gabriel better than most, knew his love for an ironic turn, though they could by no stretch of the imagination be called “…old friends.”
She was studying him from behind the rim of her cup, watching memories sketch across his brow as if they were written there and she could easily read them. Brushing away that utterly nonsensical notion, he leaned back in his chair and returned her regard. “Speaking of names,” he ventured, “your own is certainly unusual.”
“My brothers and sisters and I are all named after plants. The Linnaean classifications.” As she spoke, she returned her goblet to the table, though her fingertips continued to trace its curves. “Camellia, Paris, Erica, Galen, Daphne, and Bellis. My father is something of an amateur botanist, you see. He calls us his little garden.” That revelation was accompanied by a little spasm of embarrassment and a becoming flush. “Although not a terribly exotic one: just herbs and heather, laurel and daisy.”
“Camellia is the exception, it would seem,” he murmured, caressing her name with his voice. “A rare bloom indeed in this part of the world.”
Once more, she took refuge behind her goblet.
For a long moment, neither spoke. “Forgive me,” he said at last, rousing himself from thoughts that persisted in wandering in directions they ought not. “I have been imagining you tasked with keeping five tender shoots in a neat row. A difficult undertaking, I suppose. I have no siblings, you see. I am perfectly—”
“—independent,” she supplied, her voice tinged with something very like envy.
But certainly he had imagined it, for how could anyone envy his isolation?
At that moment, a mother and her three daughters approached their table, stopped short, and turned back in the direction from which they had come—no easy feat in the crowded supper room. Above the din of chatter and the clatter of silver against china, nothing more of their conversation could be heard than two shocked words, part recognition, part warning.
Gabriel gave a wry smile. In his experience, there were only two types of women: those who sought him out, and those who shunned him. The society matron clearly belonged to the latter camp—or wanted everyone around her to believe that she did.
“Why do they do it?” Camellia asked when the foursome was well out of earshot. “Why do they all call you ‘Lord Ash’?”
She was studying him again, her head tilted ever so slightly to one side. She seemed to be one of those women who was drawn to his darkness. But what drew her? Some misguided hope to save him from his sins?
Or a far worldlier—and more interesting—desire to share in them?
“I believe the general consensus is that I earned the name by blackening reputations and charring hopes.” Would the answer warn her off, or intrigue her? Which effect was he hoping to produce?
In fact, Fox had fallen into the habit of addressing him as “Ash” when they were boys at school and “Ashborough” had seemed a pretentious mouthful. At the time, Gabriel had been glad of the respite from the weight of a title he had never expected, and certainly had not wanted, to bear so soon.
Others had taken up the nickname afterward, for far less genial reasons. He might have challenged them, called out their blatant disrespect, but why trouble himself to deny such a fitting soubriquet? Everything he touched turned to cinder.
He was Ash.
Her skirts rustled as she uncrossed her ankles and sat more upright. Her right forearm flattened against the table. She was preparing to take flight.
As she should.
Unwilling to let her go, however, he lifted his chin and said, “My father had me christened Gabriel. Perhaps you think that better suits?”
He could feel her eyes on him, accepting his invitation to study his profile. “I—I cannot say, my lord.”
“‘My lord’? Come now, Camellia. We are to be cousins, after all, are we not?” Ridiculous, really, how he longed to hear his name on her lips. It was courting an intimacy on which he dared not act.
“I—” The catch in her voice tugged his chin back into its proper place, and he lowered his gaze to hers. She did not blush at having been caught in her inspection of his face. He could almost fancy she liked what she saw. “I believe an angel’s name is entirely fitting, my lord.”
“Oh?” More breath than speech. He cursed the hopefulness in th
e sound.
“Of course. After all, even the devil was an angel once.”
Damn her. Even hardened gamblers did not trick him into letting down his guard. A familiar wave of cynicism swept over him like a domino at a masquerade, hiding what he never meant to reveal, curling the corners of his lips. “I see. By all means, call me Ash, then. All the best people do.”
A rather schoolmarmish grimace quirked her lips. “What nonsense, my lord. I most certainly will not resort to spiteful nicknames.” There was an odd sort of reassurance in her refusal. “I simply meant that even the worst of men were innocent children once, and deserving of compassion, not mockery.” Her restive fingertips plucked up a wrinkle in the tablecloth, then smoothed it away. “Which reminds me. The other day, in the park, you stepped away before I could—that is, I wished to say…”
His heart knocked against his breastbone, urging him to stop her from speaking her piece. But how foolish. Words had long ago lost the power to wound him. Why should her words, spoken with that soft Irish lilt, somehow be different?
At least she seemed to be choosing them with care. “On the matter of your late father, may I—?” A pause. “May I offer my condolences?”
Condolences? Had anyone ever thought to offer him any such thing? He dipped his head to hide his confusion and spied her hand still lying along the edge of the table. Covering it with his own, he squeezed and murmured, “Thank you.”
Then, an impulse—he could not call it gallantry—prompted him to lift those ink-stained fingers to his mouth, to brush his lips across the rough ridge that ran along the side of her middle finger, a callus worn by a firm and regular grip on a pen.
“Ash!”
Fox’s voice cut through the swelling hum. Against the stream of guests beginning to file from the supper room, he was bearing down on them, Lady Felicity on his arm. Quickly, Gabriel rose to his feet, drawing Camellia up with him.
“Why are you hiding in this corner, Ash? We’d begun to think you’d got quite away.”
The Companion's Secret Page 6
