Page 57 of The Companion’s Secret

A faraway look settled in his eyes. “My cousin Julian, my Uncle Finch’s only son, has been raised with the expectation of one day becoming Marquess of Ashborough. I’ve always known it, though for most of my life it had been easy enough to ignore. Then one night, I overheard him gambling against what everyone believed to be his future inheritance.” One hand lifted to gesture at the room, at Stoke. “I realized I couldn’t let my uncle win that bet….” A sharp shake of his head, as if clearing it of the memory. “I decided to spite him. I would take a wife, get an heir on her, and cut him off.”

Her gut churned. How lightly men sported with women’s lives. And one another’s. “What made you choose Felicity?”

He lifted one shoulder in a guilty-looking shrug. “Her brother’s note happened to be at hand. Though she seemed a perfectly pleasant young woman, I felt no particular attraction to her when we met—which was exactly as I’d hoped.” Cami’s surprise must have shown on her face. “As my history would suggest, my…affection can lead to no good end. I did not want a wife for whom I felt…anything,” he explained. “I meant what I said: she would have been perfectly safe from me.”

You, on the other hand…

Even the memory of those words against her lips had the power to send a secret thrill of longing through her. If the attraction between them was dangerous, Cami didn’t want to be safe. Hadn’t been safe for some time.

“What happened to change your plans?” she asked.

“Uncle Finch was not willing to concede defeat. Some weeks back, I made the mistake of trying to help a young Frenchwoman.” A bitter laugh barked from his lungs. Vaguely, she recalled the gossip column’s quip about the Frogs he had been said to kiss. “He learned of it and spun yet another tale. Now she’s in the Tower, suspected of involvement in the assassination attempt on the king—wrongly, I might add. And I am very shortly to be accused of treason as her associate.”

She popped to her feet, and his coat slithered off her shoulders and onto the chair. Unable to contain herself any longer, she took two unsteady steps toward him. “But—that’s—that’s preposterous. Treason? Why—why on earth did you leave London? Why not stay and fight? Did you come here thinking to—to—?” A horrible suspicion had begun to form in her mind.

“To take my father’s way out?” He looked up at her with another grim smile. “You needn’t worry. I haven’t his courage.”

Warily, she moved closer to him, as one would approach an injured animal. When he did not object, she perched on the edge of the cushion in the narrow space between the rolled arm of the sofa and his body, not touching him. Just there. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, watching the flames lick along a stout log. “Sorry for what you suffered as a child. And for being the cause of your having to relive it tonight. But what you’ve told me only increases my certainty: Your uncle must be stopped. You must go back. You must defend yourself.”

“Lord Ash has done too many indefensible things.”

“Lord Ash? Are you speaking of the same man who tried to help a poor émigré? Who spared Felicity’s feelings? Who kept her brother from debtors’ prison? And all of it to their benefit, not your own. You’re not a villain, Gabriel.” Two hot tears rolled down her cheeks, but she did not try to check them, not wanting to draw his attention. “Oh, I thought myself so clever when I began Mr. Dawkins’s revisions. I n-never th-thought…” The tears came thicker, faster, clouding her spectacles.

Suddenly, she felt his hands on her shoulders, gently turning her to face him. His face too was streaked with tears. Carefully, he unhooked her spectacles from behind her ears and set them on the table beside the sofa. Then he wrapped his arms around her, and she laid her cheek against his chest, as she had done that day in the carriage. Her fingertips played in the knot of his cravat, stirring up the warm scent of his cologne, and she nestled closer to draw it in, draw him in.

They fit together, two sharp edges locked tight and smooth, and she knew then that she would fight his demons bare-handed if she must, but they could not, would not have him. He was hers.

“Oh, Gabriel. I never thought I might be adding to your pain.” His heartbeat muffled her whisper. “I never thought to fall in love with you, either. But I have.”

Chapter 18

Still trembling from the release of his confession, weak from laying down the burdens of his past, Gabriel tried very hard not to hear her.

No, no, no. The denial scrubbed through his brain with the pounding of his pulse.

But her words were more insidious still, slipping past his hard shell, his thick mask, to wend their way into his bloodstream. Heat bloomed in his belly and spread to his limbs in a tingling rush. His arms tightened around her.

Yes, yes, yes.

Malevolent forces had been at work in his life from the beginning. In time he’d even come to court them. But surely, surely, their appetite had been sated. They had taken so much. Mightn’t they let him have this? Just for now? Just tonight?

Because, of course, he dared promise her nothing more. He’d spent a decade or more making enemies of the very men who would decide his fate. He’d likely be convicted—if he hadn’t been already.

Cold terror came rushing back, creeping through his veins the way frost spreads across a stream and turns its merry babbling inexorably to ice. He forced himself to set her away from him before they both froze solid.

“I think, my dear, you cannot have been paying attention,” he said, looking at her with what he hoped was his customary mocking expression. “Did you not hear me explain what has happened to the people who care for me, or for whom I have dared to care? I’m damned, Camellia. I ruin everything I touch.”

As he spoke, he watched an unexpected sternness settle over her features, the face of a woman who had scolded and cajoled five younger siblings out of their childish fears. When she parted her lips to speak, he spoke first.

“Please.” He certainly was not a child, in some ways had never been a child, but he was not above begging. “Please don’t let me ruin you too.”

If anything, his plea only served to etch the expression deeper. “It seems I am not the only one who hasn’t been listening,” she said. Shifting, she settled on her knees facing him, palms flat against his chest. “I do believe I told you I cannot be ruined.”

“Camellia.” It was his turn to be stern. “I’m quite serious.”

“As am I,” she said, laying a string of whisper-soft kisses across his cheeks, tracing the path of his tears. “I am used to being in control of a plot’s twists and turns. But every encounter with you has been something unexpected. You sent all my careful planning out the window. From this point forward, however, I’m taking back the pen. This is my story too.” Her lips were at his ear. “And I’m not going to leave you tonight, no matter what you say.”

His tears kept flowing, melting away the mask he’d worn for so long—it had only ever been papier-mâché—but he let them come, let her see the grief he’d been hiding. Her fingertips whisked the moisture away, but she did not tell him not to weep. Instead, she held him, murmuring words against his hair, in a language no one had ever spoken to him before. Beneath her gentle ministrations, the shudders of anguish became tremors of need.