Page 56 of The Companion’s Secret

“They were not expected to survive their infancy. Born too soon, as sometimes happens with twins. Both of them suffered from chest complaints. My uncle still has weak lungs. And this,” he said, gazing down the shadowy gallery, “is not the sort of house that invites boys to run and play and outgrow their childhood ailments.”

With a tug on her hand, he urged her away from the family portrait. “Now, as for your story. I do indeed have a cruel uncle, and had I been entrusted to his care—well, I would probably be dead.” A chill shuddered through her, and he released her long enough to shrug out of his coat and lay it over her shoulders before taking her hand again, almost as if he expected at some point to have to keep her from running away from what he had to tell. “When my father died, Uncle Finch was desperate to find some way of disinheriting me and restoring what he saw as his title and lands. Whether my father believed him capable of murder, I do not know, but he made explicit provision for my guardianship in his will. I was immediately sent to live with Sir William Hicks, my mother’s brother, a man of some property in Lancashire. Unlike your Granville, I was in fact raised by the soul of kindness and generosity. After my father’s funeral, I saw little of my Uncle Finch until I was a grown man, though his son and I were at school together. So I do not think a cruel uncle an adequate excuse for your villain’s scurrilous behavior. At least, my uncles bear no responsibility for what I am.”

Cami was tempted to protest. Of course a child’s experiences shaped his character. So far as she could see, he had been influenced by both his uncles. He was kinder and more generous than he would admit, but he had also been affected by the threats from his father’s brother. How could he not?

He paused now before a portrait of a young woman, whose dark blond hair and light eyes gave no hint at her relationship to Gabriel. Cami would have called it an ordinary picture, but for the dusty black crape draped around the frame, which made a haunting impression. Their movement had stirred the air, making the crape sway slightly, like something out of a horrid novel. The effect was complete when he spoke in his deep voice. “My first victim.”

“Your mother?” Cami whispered, not daring to look at him.

“She died in childbirth. My birth.”

“A tragedy,” she said, tightening her grip on his hand. “But not your fault.”

He reached up with his free hand and tugged down the ancient black fabric, which disintegrated in his fingers. “Tell that to my father.”

They left the gallery through the doors on the opposite end and descended another curved stair, two flights this time, and into what she thought must be the east wing of the abbey. She knew she would never find her way back to her room on her own, knew also that she must not hope he would accompany her there. Gabriel, however, strode down the corridor with the confidence of a man who walked these halls daily, rather than someone who had not set foot in them in years.

At the midpoint, he stopped before a door on their left. “My father’s study,” he said, and opened the door to show her in. Gabriel lit a few candles, revealing a large room, but not overlarge, without either the dining room’s soaring ceilings or the drawing room’s ornate furniture. Comfortable. He knelt at the hearth to set fire to the kindling and logs that had already been laid.

Perhaps someone had guessed he would come to this room, after all.

The room bore no signs of disuse; no dust marred the tabletops and the air was not stale. During the day, it would probably be quite a cheery space, with tall windows overlooking the valley in which the abbey was nestled, just visible in the dusky twilight.

“Sit,” he said, motioning her to a chair near the hearth while he seated himself in the center of a small sofa, facing the fireplace rather than her. For a time, the only sound was the popping and crackling of the fire. When he spoke again, she felt as if he had been telling a story in his head and only thought to speak it aloud halfway through. “People said it was a mercenary match, but he loved her more than life itself.” Another pause. “A curious phrase, is it not? ‘More than life itself.’ But true in his case, at least. When she died, he simply…stopped living. Of course, I had no way of knowing what he’d been like before, but people were always happy to oblige me with tales of the man he’d once been. Before I came along and blighted his happiness.”

“I’m sure he—” Cami bit her lip to stop herself from offering the platitude. Perhaps his father had felt that way about his son, and perhaps he’d made his misery known, cut himself off from the child whose birth had changed his life so dramatically. She recalled a detail from earlier in the evening. “Before supper, when you said you used to eat in the schoolroom, you were going to say something about your father and stopped yourself. Did you never even dine together?”

Gabriel shook his head. “He didn’t eat. Sometimes not for days at a time. He didn’t bathe, either. He slept, he moaned her name, and when his physician gave him laudanum to dull his senses, he slept some more. Once in a while, he would rouse himself, promise to shake off his doldrums. And he would, for a few days, a week or two at most.” The memory roused him to his feet, and he paced across the hearth rug as he spoke. “Then, he would dress, read, take an interest in Stoke. In me. I would fall asleep, letting myself dream of the next day, but inevitably when I woke, it would be as if a window had shut, or a light had gone out.” He threw himself once more onto the sofa, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. “I knew I had done this to him, and I could never be enough to make up for what I had taken from him.”

Her heart threw itself against her ribs, as if it were trying to break free and go to him. “Gabriel—”

“Don’t.” The fire painted his expression with streaks of light and shadow. She wished she could see his eyes. “I know now that it was a sickness. Of the heart. Of the mind. But I couldn’t understand it then. The week before my tenth birthday was one of his good weeks. We read Robinson Crusoe and declared this Stoke Island and tromped through the woods on the lookout for cannibals. For my birthday, he promised to take me out and teach me how to shoot a stag. I imagined making a suit of its hide, patterned after poor Crusoe’s, though his was made from goatskin, of course.”

He paused, and she leaned forward too, apprehensive of what was to come. “I was up and dressed before dawn,” he continued. “I’d even slept with my gun at the ready beside my bedroom door, just like Robinson in his cave. As soon as there was light to see by, I picked it up and went downstairs to my father’s room. All was dark, quiet. When he didn’t answer my knock, I went in and—and found him. He’d taken his gun to bed too. Don’t,” he said again, though she’d been careful not to make a sound. Tears glimmered on his cheeks, but he warned off her sympathy with the wave of his hand. “He had no manservant. No one had heard the shot. And all I could think—” A rattling, rasping breath shook his shoulders. “All I could think was that he’d go to hell if anyone found out what he’d done, and he’d never see my mother again. So I—I opened the window, and I fired my gun into the air. Then I called for help, and when help came, I told them I’d done it. That I’d killed my father.”

Camellia dug her fingers into the arm of the chair to keep herself still. “And they believed you? You were a child….”

“I thought it was my fault he’d done what he did. I wanted them to believe me. I made them believe me. And when my Uncle Finch arrived, he was only too happy to think it was true. He seemed sure I’d be hanged for my crime. But there wasn’t even an inquest. The magistrate declared the shooting had been an accident, I went to live with my Uncle Will, and that was that. It wasn’t until I went away to school that I learned everyone seemed to know my history—and they were only too willing to believe the worst of me, thanks to Uncle Finch. I couldn’t deny having done it, of course, or I’d tarnish my father’s name. Even Fox does not know the truth.”

She wanted to contradict him, certain Mr. Fox knew more than Gabriel realized. But she didn’t, conscious as she was of the enormous trust he had placed in her. Stories were powerful things, whether told or untold, and to hold such a story inside, for twenty years…

“I buried myself in my schoolwork,” he went on, his voice calmer, more distant. “But there were no books, no lessons, deep enough in which to drown my guilty secret, or to hide me from the taunts of my peers.”

“But—but you weren’t really guilty of anything,” she protested.

The familiar, cynical smile crept across his lips. “If that’s true, I’ve made up for it since. I discovered I had a certain knack for cards. As well as what dear Foxy calls ‘a way with women.’ I ceased to be Gabriel and became ‘Lord Ash.’ Blackening reputations and charring hopes, remember?” he said wryly, repeating what he’d told her the night of the Montlake ball. “One year, I was to spend Christmas with Fox’s family in Sussex, probably the last respectable household in Britain in which I was grudgingly welcome. I fixed that by indulging in a flirtation with his sister Victoria, which nearly cost her Dalrymple’s more serious affections. The old earl had had enough and tossed me out on Christmas Eve. Uncle Will had died the year before. I was utterly alone.”

A small noise of pity escaped her throat, but he seemed not to hear it. Certainly, he had made it clear he did not want it.

“I had cut myself off from polite society,” he continued. “The only place I felt at home was at the card table, and when my peers sneered and called me ‘Lord Ash,’ I decided to drag them down to hell with me. Like your Granville, I was ruthless. And I made more enemies along the way. Fortunately Fox was, well, dogged in his affections—he refuses to let my soul go without a fight. He ignored his father’s dictates and dug me out of the pit time and again. But in the end, I found a way to ruin him too.”

“No,” she breathed.

“Oh, yes. He’s more than half in love with Lady Felicity, and I would not be surprised to learn she returns his affections.” He glanced at her. “I would have married her in spite of it.”

And in spite of your feelings for me, she wanted to add, though she was neither brave nor foolish enough to speak the words. She rather feared he might say he would have married her cousin because of them.

“I don’t—I don’t understand,” she said instead. “What made you decide to marry to begin with?”