“I don’t—how dare—who would think—wait until Merrick hears of this!”
When they arrived at Trenton House, Wafford bowed them in, and Lady Merrick marched past, still muttering a half-voiced tirade against the bad behavior of both Lord Sebastian Finch and his nephew. “Tell King to make up one of her special tisanes for my headache,” she barked, then pressed the fingertips of her free hand to her temple with a moan.
Both Tom and Wafford were only too willing to believe that the order had been directed at them, if it provided an excuse to escape her ladyship’s black mood. With quick steps, they tried to hurry past one another to deliver the message. Linking elbows with her daughter, she began slowly to ascend the stairs, leaning heavily on Felicity’s arm, though Felicity’s wan face and stumbling steps suggested she might really be the one in need of assistance.
Cami waited until the creak on the stairs rose high enough that she did not think she would be called upon to follow, then strode to the back of the house to take the servants’ stairs to her attic room. When she opened the door, warm air, heavy with the scent of camellias, greeted her. Without even pausing to light a candle, she crossed the room, thrust open the small, high window, and tossed the bouquet out, chipped tumbler and all. The satisfying crash of glass against cobblestones never reached her ears, however. The street was too far below.
And the flowers’ distinctive aroma lingered in her small, stuffy chamber.
Pacing back to her desk, she caught a shadowy glimpse of herself in the looking glass above the washstand. The ribbon. That damned ribbon. Scratching at her throat, spearing her fingers into her hair, she struggled to free herself from it. But it only wound itself tighter, tangling, snarling. Oh, what had she done? To Felicity? To herself?
After dragging a deep breath into her lungs, she lit a candle, then began again, methodically unwinding and unthreading until the silk coiled on her palm like a living thing. Her eyes darted to the open window, but this time her fingers gripped convulsively and would not obey her rash command to be rid of it. With a sigh, she let the ribbon spill into a drawer. It would be a reminder of his touch, of his tempting kiss. A reminder of her foolishness.
Desperate for something to distract her, she opened her writing desk and looked at her book. She had heeded Mr. Dawkins’s directive to make the villain more realistic, more believable. He was real all right. Real enough that she swore she could still feel the heat of his palm where it circled her hip, smell the sinful lure of his cologne, taste his lips on hers. But readers were supposed to despise Granville, not desire him. Had she saved her book, or ruined it? With unaccustomed hesitation, she withdrew the final pages of the manuscript, the scene in which Róisín saved herself and secured her freedom through Lord Granville’s death.
Did Cami have the strength to face the story’s inevitably tragic end?
She picked up her pen, but before she could dip it into the ink, there was a soft rap at the door. Hurriedly, she stuffed the few loose sheets of paper into the drawer atop the ribbon and closed the lid to her writing desk. Who could be knocking at this hour?
“Yes?”
“May I come in, Cousin?” Though muffled by the thick oak panel, Felicity’s voice betrayed her exhaustion.
Cami rose and opened the door. Even by the light of the single candle, Cami could see that Felicity’s eyes were still rimmed with red. “Are you all right?”
“I shall be, if a certain gentleman will find the courage to defy his uncle and come to the point.”
Cami did not think it was courage Lord Ashborough lacked. “The, uh, the uncle who served as his guardian?”
“No. That was his mother’s brother. The gentleman we met this evening is his father’s. Mama says he disapproves most strenuously of the reputation his nephew has acquired and has been quite public with his protestations.”
“That is unfortunate,” Cami said. Though perhaps understandable. “Still, has he any particular claim to authority over…?”
Felicity bristled. “Lord Ash may do as he pleases, of course, with or without Lord Sebastian Finch’s consent. So it cannot be for that reason he refuses to propose.”
“Refuses?” Cami cursed the spark of something very like hope that flickered to life inside her. No. No. He was not free. And she ought not to want him, even if he were. “I thought all had been arranged?”
“There has been no offer, no announcement of our betrothal. But our names are already linked. You heard them tonight. The gossip is on everyone’s tongue.” Lowering her gaze, she began to twist her fingers in her skirt. “I begin to fear he has set out to punish our family further by humiliating me.”
Cami recalled Lady Penhurst’s smirk. If Lord Ashborough did not propose marriage soon, Felicity would be an object of derision among the ton, perhaps even unmarriageable, depending on the quantity of venom in those wagging tongues.
“But I thought you did not wish to marry Lord Ashborough?”
“Well, I—I don’t,” Felicity admitted, flustered. “It would be misery.”
“Misery? Surely not.” Cami spoke, as she so often did, before she thought how it would sound. Rather, she had been thinking of his kiss. Felicity’s eyes flared with surprise at her denial. “Unless there is another to whom your heart belongs,” Cami added hastily. Although they were alone, she dropped her voice to a whisper. “I have thought, perhaps, that you and Mr. Fox…”
Now, Felicity fixed her with eyes that burned. “Do not speak of it. Only Lord Ash can save my family. I would be an utter fool to think of anyone else.”
Cami reached out and took her cousin’s icy hands in hers. “Oh, Felicity, I am sorry. But I do believe he is an honorable man….” A soft scoffing noise scraped the back of Felicity’s throat. It was a rather ridiculous claim to make; Lord Ash was a rogue, a rake, a murderer. And if her guess was right, his uncle intended to accuse of him of yet another terrible crime. A man of honor? What a laughable notion. Except that she felt the truth of those words in her very core.
Unless the hard, hot ache behind her breastbone was merely her deep desire that those words were true?
“He will keep his promise to your father, and to you,” she said. His promise to me.
Although marrying Felicity was not quite what she had asked of him.
Through sheer dint of will, Cami had kept her voice even, her expression calm, her posture relaxed as she spoke. If the riot inside her stomach, her brain, her heart was revealed anywhere, it could only be in her eyes. Thank God, her spectacles had always provided some shield when others sought to pry.
Not enough, though. Not this time. Felicity was studying her, precisely in the way Cami often took the liberty of studying everyone else. And she saw…something. Something that made her brows, her lips, her fingertips twitch. But whatever it was she had imagined she glimpsed, she did not speak of it.
Instead, she freed herself from Cami’s hands and stepped back across the threshold. “I should leave you to your rest, Cousin. Mama is likely to be a bear in the morning.” Cami nodded her understanding of the warning and closed the door behind Felicity as she left.
Ought she to have confessed what she had done? Confession was good for the soul, it was said. But not as good, perhaps, for Felicity, who would rightfully feel betrayed. Cami had set out with the intention of protecting her. Oh, where had it all gone wrong?
Her eyes darted about the room as if seeking an answer and settled at last on her worktable.
With the book.
She had let herself be drawn to a flesh and blood man merely through the power of her own pen. She pulled the closing pages of the manuscript from the drawer with trembling fingers.
She could fix this. She must.
Chapter 10
As he walked back to St. James’s, Gabriel found himself wishing for more seasonable weather. Cold, damp. The sort of air that would cool a man’s ardor
in half a moment, or at least half a mile. Instead, the balmy warmth encouraged his thoughts to persist in untoward directions.
After a while, he gave up and let himself think of her. Of Camellia. Dark hair spilling from a band of poppy-red ribbon. Another flash of color, another glimpse of the woman inside. On her lips, he had tasted the lemonade she had drunk—or perhaps that delicious combination of tart and sweet had simply been the taste of her. God, but he wanted to kiss her senseless. Every inch of her. But worse than that, he wanted to talk with her. Tease out her thoughts on import tariffs, the value of native culture, and Irish independence—issues about which he had never troubled himself before. Before making love to her. After. Perhaps even while making love to her, if that’s what it took to put a spark in those green eyes…though there were a few other things he’d want to try first.
Instead, he forced himself to imagine sitting opposite Felicity in the breakfast parlor at Finch House, a twelvemonth hence, discussing…nothing of importance. They would have risen from their separate beds and met there quite by accident. She would be poring over her invitations. He would only too gladly offer to breakfast at his club instead.
Better yet, she would be at Stoke by next spring. A baby in the nursery, or on the way. He would stay in town, of course, and—and what? Visit Tattersalls and pretend to care about horseflesh? God, he could hardly imagine anything more boring.
But boredom was his goal in a way, was it not? No more gambles. Just a life of quiet respectability until he passed Stoke Abbey, his title, and all the rest, whole and—well, not unblemished, but hopefully polished up a bit—to his own son.
And to do that, he need only spend the rest of his life with Lady Felicity Trenton, for whom he did not, and thank God would never, feel anything like passion. If that seemed like too great a price to pay, then he had forgotten the most important lesson of his childhood: the sort of wretched bills that came due when a man wagered with his heart instead of his head.
When he let himself into his rooms with his key, all was quiet. His footsteps echoed along the corridor; the rugs had been rolled up in preparation for his move to Finch House. Here and there sat a half-full packing crate. Skirting them with care, he made his way to his study, expecting to find more crates, hoping at least that his chair still sat by the window.
It did. But it was not empty.
Clad in the sort of clothes that would allow him to slip in unnoticed almost anywhere, Remington sat hunched forward, elbows on his knees, an unlit pipe clutched in one hand. Fox sat in the chair opposite, in a similar posture of defeat. When Remy offered to rise, Gabriel waved him off. They had never really stood on the normal ceremony of master and servant; he saw no need to start tonight.
“What is it, then?”
Fox raised hollow eyes to his face. “I’ve come straight from Victoria’s. Lord Havisham was there, bending Dalrymple’s ear about the assassination attempt on the king. Seems the culprits have been caught. A French girl and two men claiming to be her brothers.”
French. Just as Uncle Finch had suggested. “Oh?” It was a struggle to keep his voice flat, uninterested. Had the man made a lucky guess, or was he in a position to know something? “That’s good news, I presume?”
“For some.” Remy fiddled with his pipe.
Crossing his arms over his chest, Gabriel looked from one to the other expectantly. “Out with it.”
“The girl’s name is Adele Vallon.”
Gabriel dropped like a stone onto the footstool. “Damn.”
“So it’s true?” Fox demanded. “You do know her?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
“Now is not the time for mincing words, Ash. Was she your mistress?” His friend did not meet his eye, clearly wary of the answer.
“No. No!” But even the second, more forceful denial was met with skepticism, a slight raising of the shoulders, like a man warding off a blow. Or a lie. “I met her at a gaming establishment—”
“One of those wretched hells, I suppose you mean?”
“Yes.” One of the seediest. The sort he frequented only when his prey could not be run to ground elsewhere. “She was working the floor. When Viscount Steyne made her a, ah, proposal, I…intervened.” He had spoken to her in French as she passed on Steyne’s arm, and relief had flooded her expression. Her dark eyes, overlarge in a narrow, sallow face, had been enough to confirm his suspicion: she was too young and knew too little English to be making the devilish sort of bargain he had just overheard her making with that libertine. Spurning the viscount, she had latched onto Gabriel instead, clinging to his arm, treating him as a sort of protector.
Foolish, foolish girl.
“Did you think how it would look?”
“What did I care? I had nothing to lose, while she had everything.” At that, Fox, who had been studying the scuffed toe of one boot with a frown, lifted his gaze, and Gabriel thought he glimpsed a slight softening in his steely eyes. “It’s nonsense, of course,” he declared. “Adele an assassin?” She was incapable of such a crime.
Still, he had to force a note of conviction into his voice. He could believe she might be guilty of poor judgment. Despite his efforts, had she fallen in with those of her countrymen who were less than fond of the English monarch, those less deserving of compassion? He could not help but ask, “Where is she now?”
“The Tower.”
The image of hulking stone walls rose in his mind, and he had to suppress a shiver, as if their chill pressed against his own flesh. “But she’s no more than a girl.”
“Sadly, children are not always innocent, my lord.”
Remy’s words were an unfortunate echo of Uncle Finch’s familiar charge, and they pushed his mind back once again to that odd encounter on the street. Chance, some would have called it. But he was too experienced a gambler to believe in any such thing. Understanding dawned with all the cruel clarity of sunrise after a night of too much brandy and too few scruples. When he spoke, his voice sounded curiously distant in his own ears. “My uncle has trumped up some relationship between me and the girl, has he?”
Remy shook his head, but not in denial. “Beggin’ your pardon, sir. But you made it dead easy to do.”
Gabriel nodded grimly. The owner of the hell, embittered over the loss of the girl, would have reported with a skeptical leer that Gabriel claimed to have found her a place in a milliner’s shop and rented her a respectable room—truth, but the sort of truth that was easily twisted. And Lord Steyne would have been only too happy to tell anyone who would listen that Gabriel had made Adele Vallon his mistress—a lie, but that mattered precious little now.
Any supposed evidence against Adele was likely fabricated too. She was merely convenient to his uncle’s purpose. Another victim of Lord Ash’s reputation.
“When we met him the other day…” Fox’s eyes narrowed. “You suspected something of this nature.”
Gabriel said nothing. Over the years, he had grown accustomed to his uncle embroidering on his misdeeds. Now, however, the man had begun to fashion them out of whole cloth, it seemed. And Gabriel rather feared he had planted the suggestion in his uncle’s mind with his mocking words: Killing a king is of a piece with my past crimes against the nobility.
“I think he must’ve done, Mr. Fox,” Remy answered on his behalf. “You sent me right out to see which way the wind blew, my lord. Remember? Didn’t take long to discover that Lord Sebastian had been making the rounds among your enemies and stirring up discontent.”
“And as you say, I made it dead easy.” Gabriel’s enemies were legion. He had bested too many men at the tables for it to be otherwise.
“You did, at that,” Remy agreed grimly. “But it took a bit more digging to find out about the girl. And then Mr. Fox said—”
His friend readily took up the story. “Dalrymple told me that if Havisham’s tale has even a grain of truth to
it, you’ll likely be charged with treason.” Another man would have shied away from revealing it; Fox had been his friend too long to be anything but blunt. Still, the words brought him to his feet, and he paced as he spoke. “There’s talk of a writ of attainder.”
“Attainder?” Remy repeated uncertainly, his eyes following Fox.
Gabriel was not surprised at his servant’s lack of familiarity with the term; the charge was rare. “Corruption of blood,” he explained. “It’s a fairly obscure provision of the law used to eliminate perceived threats to the monarch. All rather neat and tidy, actually. I need not even be convicted of treason—merely condemned for it. If attainted, I would be stripped of the marquessate, left a commoner, subject to all the punishments from which the nobility are usually protected.”
Fox stopped and folded his arms across his chest. “Including execution.”
Remington paled. “What sort of monster would destroy his nephew, his own flesh and blood?”
But the answer to that question was too obvious to require an answer.
For twenty years, Sebastian Finch had been railing against a patricide that had gone unpunished. Now, he meant to give Gabriel’s peers another chance to convict. His father’s death had eventually been dismissed as an accident. But he could not count on being forgiven for his crime the second time around. Especially in these dark days. People would take a rather dim view of an English nobleman who was said to have consorted with French assassins.
“What can he hope to gain by it?” Fox demanded.
“Everything,” said Gabriel simply. “He must hope that once he has disposed of me, the king can be persuaded to allow the title to pass to another branch of the family, rather than die out entirely.”
“To him, you mean. A sort of reward for his…loyalty.”
Gabriel nodded. It had been disconcerting enough to think of Stoke falling into his cousin’s hands. But if it somehow fell into his uncle’s first…? The thought did not bear completing.
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