Page 4 of The Companion’s Secret

The pug growled out a warning, and Cami jerked upright. The stranger’s touch fell away before she could decide it was unwelcome. A sideways glance gave her an impression of brown hair, brown eyes. Neither a spotted youth nor an octogenarian. Rather, a man her own age, perhaps thirty. One with the sharp, almost cruel features she had come to associate with the English nobility.

She dipped into a hurried, clumsy curtsy. “I thank you, sir—er, Lord Ash,” she corrected, then remembered herself. “Borough.”

The belated addition did not escape his notice. Thin lips curved in what countless women no doubt fancied a warm, amiable smile, though it did not reach his eyes. “I am glad to have been of service, ma’am.” His bow of acknowledgment was perfectly correct, yet somehow it managed to convey something else, something more. Something that made Cami flush in spite of herself.

“Merrick’s niece, Miss Burke.” Annoyance made her aunt’s introduction blunt. “And of course this is my daughter, Lady Felicity Trenton.”

Both gentlemen made their bows of greeting to her cousin while Cami walked stiffly to the farthest chair.

“May I present Mr. Christopher Fox,” Lord Ashborough said.

“Lady Merrick, Lady Felicity,” Mr. Fox said with another bow. “Miss Burke.”

At a nod from her mother, Felicity gestured for Lord Ashborough to take the seat Cami had vacated and attempted to engage him in conversation. Without waiting to be invited, Mr. Fox chose the chair nearest Cami. He was not quite as tall as his friend, with sandy-brown hair and pale eyes.

“It is a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Fox.”

“And you, Miss Burke,” he said, pulling his gaze from Felicity. Although his appreciation of her cousin was as undisguised as any man’s, it was far less practiced; at least, he was well mannered enough not to display disappointment that his lot had fallen to the companion. As a means of assessing a man’s character, it was not much to go on, but Cami decided in his favor nonetheless.

Before she could speak again, however, her thoughts were interrupted by a snippet of the others’ conversation.

“Lady Montlake’s ball?” Her cousin sounded as if the event was quite unfamiliar to her, although Cami recalled having received the card a week or more ago. “I don’t know….”

“Oh? I understood from your father that you planned to attend.”

The merest hint of reproach edged Lord Ashborough’s velvety baritone. Lady Merrick spoke sharply, with a scowl for her daughter. “Of course we do. We will account it a pleasure to see you there, my lord.”

“Ah, wonderful. Then I insist on being allowed to claim a set, Lady Felicity.” Lord Ashborough’s voice dropped lower still, the tone of a lover coaxing a promise.

Felicity swallowed visibly, as if words of refusal had risen in her throat but dared not be spoken. Poor girl. “I—I would be honored, your lordship,” she forced herself to say.

The contrarian in Cami wondered why beggars must be expected to forgo the dignity of choice. And why women were so often required to beg.

“A beautiful day, is it not?” Mr. Fox ventured.

Realizing she had been caught eavesdropping, Cami turned squarely toward him. She had been dragged here for her conversation, so converse she would. And if Aunt Merrick did not like the tenor of her questions, so be it. Someone had to ask them.

“How long have you known Lord Ashborough, Mr. Fox?” She felt uncomfortably aware of the man of whom she spoke, although he had not looked in her direction since she had sat down.

Mr. Fox warmed immediately to her choice of subject. “Oh, always, it seems. We met at school.” The wistful note in his voice called up an image of a boy beloved by all, bestowing the favor of his friendship on the less fortunate. But his next words whisked Cami’s mental picture away. “Ash was so terribly alone. So terribly miserable.” He gave a slow shake of his head. “I had my elder brothers to look after me, and so I—well, I took it upon myself to look after Ash.”

Even with the imagination of an artist, Cami was unequal to the task of envisioning a young Lord Ashborough shunned by his peers and a boyish Mr. Fox as his champion. “Have you sisters too, Mr. Fox?” she managed to ask. “Or only a surfeit of brothers?”

A wrinkle of uncertainty creased his brow at her turn of phrase, but his gray eyes sparked with good humor. “One sister, Miss Burke. Two brothers. All older than I, all married—and all quite eager to offer their opinions as a consequence. Especially the eldest,” he added, “although my sister Victoria gives him a run for it. And you?”

“Three sisters, Mr. Fox, and two brothers. All younger. And I am quite sure, were they here, they would tell you I am the very model of a managing, opinionated eldest sister,” she added, nudging her spectacles up to the bridge of her nose to underscore the point.

Mr. Fox smiled and glanced toward her cousin. “You are fortunate in Lady Felicity’s company, then, or else you would miss them more than you already must. Are they all still in—in Ireland, then?”

She nodded. Despite her aunt’s repeated…recommendation, she’d made no effort to disguise the telling lilt in her voice. “In Dublin, yes. My father is a solicitor there.” Another detail Lady Merrick would have preferred her to hide; the notion of having a brother-in-law who worked for his living seemed to distress her.

Mr. Fox nodded sagely, no hint of the familiar disdain in his expression. “I think sometimes that my father might have preferred I take up the law. It seems a surer route to public distinction.”

She found herself softening toward the man. She had not fully considered that even an earl’s son might have to train to some profession, if he had not the good fortune to be the eldest. “My brother seems to imagine it has a bit of glamor in it,” she acknowledged with a wry smile. And if it did not, then Paris—who was both too handsome and too clever for his own good—was determined to supply some.

“More so than the Church, certainly.”

The Church? “An honorable profession—provided one has a vocation,” she managed to say, struggling to imagine the circumstances under which this warmhearted, would-be clergyman willingly spent time with the kind of man who imagined a bride could be bought like a side of beef.