Page 26 of The Companion’s Secret

“On occasion, yes. But my mother is…”

Too lazy for letter writing, Gabriel silently supplied.

After pausing and pressing her lips together, giving the unexpected impression that she had restrained a similar observation, Felicity began again. “The letters, I believe, go to some Irish correspondent of my cousin’s. She has several family members in Dublin.”

Gabriel nodded. “Yes. I believe Fox mentioned something about it.”

But those overwritten outpourings of Camellia’s pen surely were not destined for a doting parent or a curious sibling. A lover, jealousy whispered petulantly in his ear.

Damn it, why did he care to whom she wrote?

Because he did not like to imagine those eyes scouring some other man’s face. Because he wanted to believe that she too had spent a lifetime seeking a match she had never found, a game of chess in which she would not have to resort to swiping at the pieces like a bored house cat merely to liven up the contest. Because when he thought of her a thrill of something like terror chased through his veins, and because he knew he didn’t frighten her at all.

Though God knew, she should be frightened.

“My dear Felicity,” he began, determined to do the thing he must do. Utter madness to be thinking of anything other than his duty. Utter madness to be thinking of Camellia.

Her breath caught. Anticipation, but not of the pleasurable sort. “Yes, my lord?”

My lord. He might have corrected her. After all, they were to be married, were they not?

Curious that he had no particular desire to hear his given name on her lips.

Afterward, he could not have said what his next words to her had been. Some commonplace about the weather, he thought, and after she had recovered from her surprise, Felicity had turned the conversation toward Lady Penhurst’s musical evening, which promised to be dread…er, delightful.

Once five endless, respectable minutes had ticked and tocked their way into ten, he allowed the chair to propel him to his feet. “I will wish you good morning, ma’am. I will be disrupting your plans for the day, otherwise.”

She rose with him, bewildered though not disappointed. “You could do no such thing, my lord,” she insisted, curtsying. “My time is at your disposal.”

True, of course. Everything of hers was at his disposal. Lord Trenton had played the game and lost. Gabriel had played and…won, as he almost always did. One final card to toss on the table, and he would have everything he needed.

And nothing he wanted.

Better that way, his conscience scolded. Yes, yes…but he was finding it damned difficult to force himself to the point, nonetheless. He bowed and excused himself from the room. Only when the butler had shown him out the door and he was striding freely down Brook Street did he realize Felicity had never mentioned the flowers, conspicuous though they had been in the cozy sitting room.

It was as well. After all, they had as good as been chosen for her by Fox.

Chapter 8

“Miss, the carriage is here.”

At Betsy’s shout, Cami’s hand jerked. “Drat!” She had pressed down so fiercely on the tip of her pen, it had left a little blot and nearly made a hole in the paper.

Most of the manuscript will have to be recopied anyway, she consoled herself as she laid the pen in its tray. Mr. Dawkins could not be expected to make heads nor tails of her scribbles. Once it was legible, however, she felt certain he would agree that she had transformed her villain utterly, from a pasteboard shadow in a pantomime to a complex and compelling man. The changes to Lord Granville would make his attempt to destroy Róisín more forceful, more heart-wrenching. Surely even an English audience would grant that much.

From time to time, though, she found herself wondering if the closing scene as she had first written it was consistent with the character he had become. Would readers feel too much sympathy for Granville? Would it blunt the savage critique of England’s treatment of Ireland that lay behind Róisín’s tragic story?

“Miss?”

Betsy was still in the stairwell, but closer now, and the note of anxiety in her voice meant Cami would not have long before the door opened. After wiping her hands, she laid the still-damp page atop the rest of the manuscript of The Wild Irish Rose, already safely ensconced in her lap desk. Those last pages would have to wait until tomorrow.

Though Aunt Merrick had never been noted for her equanimity, since her head cold the servants had gone out of their way to avoid trying her patience further. Her increased peevishness, as everyone knew, was entirely a consequence of Lord Ashborough’s failure to come to the point. Three outings in the last week, three opportunties discreetly provided for him to propose to Felicity, and still nothing.

Cami had not been required to accompany them on those outings. She had, however, received a minute recounting—once from her aunt, and once from her cousin—of both his behavior and his appearance. As a consequence, Gabriel had been constantly in her thoughts; even her dreams had not been safe from him. More than once, she had awakened with her pulse pounding and damp sheets tangled around her limbs. And it had not been fear that had made her heart race.

Never one to waste an experience, however, she had used every detail she gleaned, every moment of the time she had spent in his imagined company, to better her book.

From her aunt, she had learned that Lord Ashborough did not even glance into the card room at the Crawfords’ ball. “Proof,” she had insisted, “that he means to turn over a new leaf.” Privately, Cami suspected that the card room at a ton ball was not up to his usual standards. Or at least, his usual stakes. Felicity had revealed his unexpected but similarly portentous move to Grosvenor Square, into the previously abandoned Finch House. “Not abandoned,” Lady Merrick had corrected her. Apparently, he had always kept a full complement of servants employed to care for the place, even though he did not live there. Aunt Merrick seemed to regard it as proof of his munificence, and certainly it would be futile to argue about pointless displays of wealth with a woman who seemed determined to live so that no one would suspect the Trenton family was teetering on the brink of ruin.