Page 8 of The Companion’s Secret

The letter slipped from her trembling fingers and drifted down to the coverlet. Despite his reservations, Mr. Dawkins was willing to take the time and trouble to read her book again. He hoped to purchase it, to publish it! He would not say that if he did not have some confidence in its potential to succeed.

Unexpected tears sprang to her eyes, fogging her spectacles. All the sacrifices—rising early, scribbling frantically by the light of a candle before even the housemaids were awake; exchanging the green of Dublin for the grime of London; even leaving her family, wondering if she would ever see them again—would be worth it.

If she could find a way to render the despicable Lord Granville more believable, or at least more palatable, she would be an author.

But just how on earth was she going to manage that?

Without a knock of warning, the door to her room swung open. Cami hastily folded the letter and thrust it into the drawer of her bedside table.

Felicity wandered in and flopped onto the bed, not waiting to be invited. “Oh, Cousin Camellia,” she sighed, a tremor in her voice, “Mama says I must marry Lord Ash.”

Cami sat more upright. “Marry him?” Although the news was not entirely unexpected—in the Earl of Merrick’s circle, unmarried gentlemen visited unmarried young ladies with a single goal in mind, after all—the speed with which the decision had been made alarmed her. She had never even heard the man’s name mentioned before today.

“Papa has reached a—an understanding with him, it seems. Something about Stephen’s debts.”

Just yesterday, Uncle Merrick had lit out for Derbyshire with his wayward son in tow, muttering something about teaching him the meaning of “rustication.” Did the arrangement with Lord Ash also have something to do with their sudden departure?

“Are you to have no say in the matter?”

A thin smile, followed by an almost imperceptible shake of her perfect blond ringlets. “You know Papa is too gentle to force me to do anything against my will. But Mama says if I accept Lord Ash, we are saved,” Felicity said. “If I refuse him, we will be ruined. If he asks me, how can I say no?”

Heat flared in Cami’s chest and spread through her body, warming even the tips of her ears. When the first flush of shock passed, it left her chilled. She struggled to find words of consolation. “Perhaps it will not be an intolerable match. He is rather…that is, he’s very…” Arrogant? Sardonic? No, those would never do. She needed a description Felicity might actually want to hear. Finally, she settled on “…handsome.”

Felicity’s pert nose wrinkled. “Do you think so? But he’s…why, he must be even older than you, Cousin. And he’s so…dark.”

Felicity could be forgiven for thinking of thirty as old, she supposed. But dark? The writer in Cami wanted to press for more specific adjectives, words that would leap off the page and belong only to Lord Ash. Hair the color of burnished mahogany wainscot that disguised a secret passageway, eyes the precise shade of the forest floor in early autumn. And a voice…but here Cami had to concede that dark suited the timbre of his deep voice—a fitting pitch for the dark, troubled soul to which it belonged, if Mr. Fox’s story was to be believed.

“King says Lord Ash’s reputation is quite as charred and sooty as his name,” her cousin continued. “He is said to be a—a rake.” The last word was little more than a scandalized whisper. Cami knew she ought to chide Felicity for repeating servants’ gossip, but she could not bring herself to do it. Not with his friend’s revelation still ringing in her own ears.

Despair at her cousin’s predicament mingled uneasily with the elation Mr. Dawkins’s letter had brought, leaving Cami feeling something she could never remember having felt before: light-headed. And at a distinct loss for words. Should she repeat what Mr. Fox had said? But if Felicity’s fate was already sealed, what would be gained by frightening her cousin further?

Felicity spoke for her. “Is it…is it true, do you suppose, Cousin?”

Cami started. Well, Mr. Fox had spoken as if everyone else already knew what he had told her. Why, that meant even Uncle Merrick must have heard what Lord Ash was said to have done and was nevertheless willing to sacrifice his daughter to atone for his son’s improvidence.

Anger rose like bile in her throat. “Is what true, dear?” she managed to ask.

Felicity’s smile was still weak, but hopeful. “That reformed rakes make the best husbands. You know…like in the novels.”

Biting back an automatic denial—along with a stern recommendation that her cousin read better books—Cami reached out to pat her cousin’s icy fingers where they lay on the coverlet. “If it is, then you will be the happiest of brides, for even Lord Ash could not fail to be improved by a girl as sweet and gentle as you.”

Felicity’s laugh sounded surprisingly jaded. “If you were a man, Cousin, people would call you silver tongued. Mama says it must be your Irish blood.”

Cami twisted her answering grimace into something approximating a smile. She was quite familiar with the qualities—the failings, rather—her aunt attributed to her Irish blood. This despite the fact that so little of it actually ran in her veins, her mother being entirely English and her father half so.

But Cami never denied being Irish. She was not ashamed of her origins, and no Englishwoman—or man, she added, thinking of Lord Ash’s mocking expression—could make her so.

“Still,” said Felicity, pushing to her feet, “I hope you’re right. He makes me so terribly nervous. Oh, I am glad you’ll be joining us tomorrow.”

Tomorrow? Ah, yes. The stroll in the park. She had forgotten in the rush of excitement about the letter.

Papa had cautioned her against taking the post as her aunt’s companion, insisting that there was bound to be more to the task than managing correspondence and reading bad novels aloud. But she had never imagined her role would extend to chaperoning a sweet but sometimes heedless girl of almost nineteen.

She would do it, of course. She had always felt a strong sense of duty to family—even the branch of her family of whose existence she had learned just a few months ago. It was not why she had come to London, but if Felicity’s parents were too weak to stand up for their daughter, then she would have to be strong.

Lord Ash might have cowed her aunt and uncle into accepting his suit, but he had not reckoned on Camellia Burke.

“You have nothing to fear,” she assured her cousin.