Page 35 of The Companion’s Secret

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.

“Remy, it’ll be down to you to help the girl. There must be some way to prove she’s innocent. But my hand must not be seen to be behind any of it, or it will only go worse for everyone involved.”

One crisp nod. No hesitation. And Remy was gone.

“Surely you can muster an ally in the Lords?” Fox suggested when they were alone. He did not add, though he might fairly have done so, that the task would have been easier if Gabriel had ever taken his own seat there. “My father, perhaps?”