Camellia’s fingers twitched again. Suddenly aware he was still gripping her hand, he released his hold and stepped toward his friend. “Nonsense, Foxy. You can’t have looked very hard. And Lady Felicity has promised me the next dance,” he added, holding out his arm to her. “What could possibly drag me away?”
Felicity promptly let go Fox’s arm and took Gabriel’s instead. He did not fool himself into thinking she took pleasure in bestowing her attention on him. But neither did she resist.
Her complaisance was to be expected, given his hold over her family. Having recently been reminded of the delights of the unexpected, however, he found himself wondering whether they might not get on better if she’d slapped his face and told him to take a swim in the Thames instead. Then again, he knew better than to wish for some sort of grand passion to flare between him and his soon-to-be bride.
“Shall we join them in a turn about the ballroom, Miss Burke?” Fox asked, offering his arm to Camellia.
A bright spark of jealousy crackled through Gabriel once more, like the glow at the end of a cheroot being smoked in the dark. This time, however, he could not step between them without cutting the woman who was meant to be his intended.
Out of the corner of his eye, he caught the sharp movement of Camellia’s dark head. “I’m afraid you must excuse me, Mr. Fox. Another time, perhaps?”
Relief coursed through him, followed quickly by remorse. Good God, did he lack the decency to set aside his own decidedly illicit interests in favor of even the momentary happiness of the most honorable man he knew?
But Camellia was already gone, murmuring something about the ladies’ retiring room to her cousin as she passed, not sparing any of them a backward glance.
* * * *
Thwarted by the crush, Cami ducked through one of the disguised doors at the back of the room, those through which servants discreetly came and went. The narrow passageway behind was unlit and, for the moment, empty. She had no notion of where it might lead. But she kept walking, hurrying away from what she had just done. It had been one thing to divert the marquess from Felicity for an hour, another thing entirely to discover herself the sole focus of his attentions.
To discover those attentions were not entirely unwelcome.
When she could bear the heat of his gaze, the intimate murmur of his deep voice, no longer, she had tried to turn the tables. She had not set out to be cruel. It was only a silly game she sometimes played with herself, saying the most outrageous, unexpected things, merely to observe the response they produced—a sort of study in human nature. A way to understand how characters ought to act and react. She had prompted him to recall his boyhood, then offered unexpected words of consolation, thinking to see…guilt? Or anger?
Something, anything other than the raw grief that had streaked across his face, making her feel as if, with the crack of one whiplike sentence, she had flayed the tough hide from his heart. A heart everyone—even the man himself—seemed persuaded he did not have.
At the end of the dark corridor, a dim rectangle of light suggested a doorway, promised an escape. When she reached it, however, she paused to choose: go through it into the unknown, or turn around? Her hand trembled as she reached for the handle. The soft glow of unseen candles in the room beyond limned her hand, the ink-stained fingertips he had kissed in…in gratitude? As if he believed she understood, as if he imagined she cared.
Oh, God. That was the worst of it—the suspicion he might be right.
He…he intrigued her.
There. She had admitted it. She had set out to study him with the same detached, practiced observation a painter might apply to the subject of a still life. But Lord Ash—no, Gabriel—was not a plate of fruit, a loaf of bread, or a glassy-eyed fish waiting to be gutted. He moved. He spoke. He charmed.
A dark angel, indeed.
Nothing she had seen of him had increased her alarm on Felicity’s behalf. In fact, she was no longer certain he was the villain he had been painted. Cami balled her hand into a fist and scrubbed the pad of her thumb over the callus on her middle finger, where his lips had been.
No, this sudden rush of fear was all for herself.
“Your fears are entirely justified.”
She jerked her hand from the door and stuffed her knuckles into her mouth to stifle a scream. The voice was rough, low, breathless. And the speaker to whom it belonged was standing just inches away, on the other side of the service door.
“I am not afraid of him.” A second, younger man’s voice. Frightened, for all his bravado.
“You should be.”
Almost unwillingly, Cami leaned forward, drawn by the drama unfolding beyond the wall. Closer to the door now, she pressed one lens of her spectacles to the peep, a tiny square through which the parlor maid might look to make certain the room was empty before entering to clean it. Although her vision was partly obscured by the man leaning against the door, she could just glimpse the younger speaker. Lord Montlake, their host.
“I understand you had quite a near brush with him not long ago,” the rough-voiced man continued. The words seemed to be whispered in her own ear. “And emerged unscathed only through his…mercy, shall we call it?”
“I am determined he shall never have another chance to harm me or mine.”
A bark of sound that might have been meant for a laugh. “Given up the game, have you? Rather too late. The damage has already been done. You saw him tonight. With her. As did every guest in that ballroom.” Every few words, the man paused to draw a shallow, ragged breath. “They were all already imagining the worst.”
Lord Montlake swore.
“I may count on your support, then?” the other man asked.
Hesitation pushed the young viscount back onto his heels.
“Think of it as a vote for the safety of all you hold dear,” he prodded. “Desperate times call for desperate measures.”
“He’s a right villain, but I cannot believe—”
“Let me make it simple.” The other man stepped away from the wall, blocking her view entirely. “If you do not vote to ruin him, I will ruin you.” His erratic breathing made the chilling words more threatening still. “God save the king.”
“God save the king,” Lord Montlake mumbled after a moment.
When the two men had left the room, closing the door behind them, Cami’s breath left her lungs in a rush. She had never caught a glimpse of the second man’s face. She did not know that she ever wanted to.
For as long as she could remember, she had been interested in what went on in Westminster and how it shaped the lives of those who lived so far from it. The Lord Lieutenant and the policies he issued from Dublin Castle. And from outside its walls, the responses, calls first for an independent Irish parliament, then more recently, and more shockingly, for an independent nation. Her father read the papers aloud and encouraged her questions. Paris hoped someday to stand for election. Politics had always seemed to her to be imbued with honor and pride and…yes, a bit of glamor, as she had put it to Mr. Fox. Oh, even ladies heard whispers of backroom deals and shady doings, of course. But she had never observed such things firsthand.
Until now.
Lord Montlake and the unknown man were conspiring to destroy someone. Was the man truly guilty of whatever crime they intended to charge against his character? Or were they determined to ruin him merely because they had the power to do so?
With a shiver, she fumbled in the dark for the latch and pushed open the door, emerging into the study, a masculine room smelling of brandy and leather and books. A sudden longing for home, for Papa and the cozy safety of the family sitting room, struck her like a blow to the belly.
But Merrion Square was a long way off. And she was not charged with protecting some stranger, a man who had frightened Lord Montlake and angered another man to the point of provocation. When she tried to imagine what
he had done, her mind conjured Gabriel’s dangerous, cynical smile. I earned the name by blackening reputations and charring hopes. Perhaps the stranger did not deserve protecting. Almost certainly, such a man did not require her protection.
Felicity, however, did.
Briskly, Cami shook off the strange apprehension that had settled over her with the unknown man’s bitter words. No…earlier. With the touch of Gabriel’s hand, the brush of his lips.
In a half dozen strides, she was to the study door, and once a quick check had reassured her that her departure would go unobserved, she slipped through it and into a broad, well-lighted corridor. If she hurried, she could be back to the ballroom before the dance had ended.
Chapter 6
The flower shop hummed with the sounds of buying and selling, the snip of shears and shouted directions. Despite the alarmingly early hour, Gabriel welcomed the noise, first because it meant that he might at last have found a place of business capable of filling his order, and second because, amid the commotion, he could hope to remain relatively anonymous.
“I don’t know what was wrong with the last three shops, Ash,” Fox said, warily eyeing a cactus. “What can you want with all these hothouse blooms? I told you, simple and sweet will be the way to Lady Felicity’s heart. Wildflowers and the like.”
Gabriel nodded, only half attending. When at last it was his turn to place an order, he laid a carefully written note on the counter. The clerk glanced first at it, then at him. “This’ll cost a pretty penny,” he said, looking Gabriel up and down as if deciding whether he could afford the extravagance.
“But you can deliver these items as requested?” Gabriel demanded.
Something about him—his voice, his air, the cut of his coat—must have satisfied the young man, for the clerk nodded crisply. “We’ll have them there yet this morning, sir.”
While he was tallying the order, a rack of bright ribbons caught Gabriel’s eye. “For the nosegay,” he said to the young man, pointing to one.
“Red? Rather a bold choice for the lady in question, Ash.” Fox abandoned his inspection of an odd-looking orchid to peer over Gabriel’s shoulder.
“Coquelicot,” Gabriel corrected. At Fox’s amused expression, he explained, “Named after the poppy. The latest fashion from France.”
“I won’t ask how you come to know such a thing. I’m quite sure I wouldn’t like the answer.”
Gabriel drew a length of the orange-red silk between his fingers; the spool wobbled on the rack as the ribbon unfurled. “It behooves the intrepid explorer to study the habits of the natives, my dear Foxy—to learn their language.”
“The language of ribbons and flowers?” Fox gave a bewildered shake of his head.
“It’s a language I feel certain the lady in question will understand.”
“Well, you know best, Ash.”
No. No, he most certainly did not. He was not, by nature, a risk taker, whatever his opponents at the table persuaded themselves to believe. And he never tipped his hand until he was certain of the outcome of the game. Excitement, apprehension rushed through his veins, unfamiliar and more than a little unwelcome.
Once the order had been placed, Gabriel left the shop with Fox in tow. Oxford Street rippled before them, a river of humanity into which the two of them managed to merge on their second attempt. Though the air still felt raw after two days of cold rain, a few feeble rays of something that passed for sunshine seemed to have convinced fully half of the residents of London that spring had returned.
They had not taken many steps when a hoarse voice spoke in his ear. “So, the rumors are true, Gabriel.”
He would have recognized the voice anywhere, even without the troublingly familiar use of his given name. “And what rumors are those, Uncle Finch?” he asked without turning to look at his interlocutor.
“For one, the rumor that you have crawled out from under the rock where you have been lurking these many years.”
Gabriel squinted into a gray sky pierced here and there with the promise of blue. “I suppose you hoped I would shrivel and die in the sunlight.” He dropped his gaze and met his uncle’s sneer with one of his own. “So sorry to disappoint.”
More than a year had passed since Gabriel had seen his uncle last. Automatically, he steeled himself against the discomfort that always slithered down his spine when he was forced to confront that face—his father’s face, but attached to another man entirely. He recalled having once felt the briefest glimmer of hope that the two men would resemble one another in more than the physical, a spark that had flared and been stamped out long ago.
“Make no mistake, Gabriel. I am disappointed—”
“Lord Sebastian Finch.” Fox’s calm tones cut across their more heated voices as he gave a slight bow.
“This doesn’t concern you, Mr. Fox,” Uncle Finch declared. “I can’t think why you continue to associate with my nephew, under the circumstances. ‘He that toucheth pitch shall be defiled therewith,’” he quoted piously. “A man of God should surround himself with more fitting acquaintances.”
Gabriel very nearly nodded his agreement.
“Sage advice,” Fox replied, unperturbed. He folded his arms across his chest and rocked back on his heels. “Fortunately for us sinners, our Lord and Savior did not see fit to take it, either.”
“Was there something you wanted of me?” Gabriel asked, forcing himself to study his uncle’s pallid face; the man’s health had always been poor, but appeared now to be failing at a rapid pace.
“Certainly not.” The mere suggestion that he had sought Gabriel out seemed to horrify him. “I was on my way to my club to discuss the news of the day. You have heard, of course, about the attempt on His Highness’s life? Terrible, terrible. But one can hardly claim to be surprised, when we welcome these Frenchmen—and women—into our country and believe their sad tales of persecution, their claims of opposition to that republican monstrosity they’re concocting across the Channel.” As he spoke, he watched Gabriel closely.
A certain sly uplift in his uncle’s brows, as if he anticipated some reaction to his words, prompted Fox to ask, “What has any of that to do with Ash?”
The old man gulped an anticipatory breath so sharp it sent his lungs into a paroxysm of shock. When the coughing fit had passed, he rasped out, “Ash? How—how dare—you—?”
Gabriel watched him struggle to breathe, impassive. “I cannot see that my title is any particular concern of yours, Uncle Finch,” he said, lifting one hand to stay the tide of vitriol. “As to the other, Foxy, I would not be surprised if my dear uncle intends to suggest I am in league with a den of French spies. Killing a king is of a piece with my past crimes against the nobility, I dare say.”
Uncle Finch favored him with a bitter stare that he managed, after a moment, to twist into a condescending smile. “If the shoe fits, Gabriel. Alas,” he said, crossing his hands over the knob of his walking stick, “the charges I have heard laid at your door are not quite so damning. Rumor has it you were vulgar enough to seek admittance to Lady Montlake’s ballroom without an invitation. And there are those who claim you intend to offer for some poor innocent girl, merely in hopes of depriving Julian of his rightful inheritance.” Between each accusation, his uncle paused to wheeze out one useless breath and replace it with another.
“Rightful—?” Fox sputtered. Gabriel gave an almost imperceptible shake of the head to silence him.
“It would seem the girl’s family has forgotten your…history.”
“Forgotten?” Gabriel brushed an imaginary speck of lint from his sleeve. Given the frequency with which his uncle had denounced him as a murderer over the last twenty years, the charge ought to have lost its sting. But it had not. “I very much doubt it can have escaped anyone’s recollection, given how you persist in bringing it up.”
His uncle shrugged. “Society has a regrettably s
hort memory. Someone must refresh it from time to time. Although really,” he added, “all my efforts seem to have been perfectly unnecessary. You have always been determined to prove me right about you.”
Gabriel could feel his anger rising, and Fox must have sensed it. “Let’s go, Ash. I cannot think you will wish to be seen engaging in a family squabble in full view of every shop on Oxford Street.”
With a cold bow to his uncle, Gabriel agreed. “Yes. Unless you’ve something more original and interesting, Uncle Finch, I’ll be on my way.”
Before his uncle could gather the strength to rasp out a reply, Gabriel began to walk in the direction of St. James’s. Footsteps scuffed behind him—one set, and by the lightness of their tread, they belonged to Fox. Still, he did not slow his stride. In another moment, he would have done the thing he had been longing to do since he was ten years old: smash his fist into his uncle’s face.
When he reached his rooms, Gabriel opened the door himself, swinging it inward with such force that it struck the wall behind and shuddered almost closed again. Remington stopped its motion with one hand and studied the mark its handle had made on the wallpaper. “All right, then?”
“No.” His hat sliced through the air and landed on a nearby table. “I just had the dubious pleasure of an encounter with my Uncle Finch on Oxford Street. He’s up to something. See what you can find out. Anything…useful, you understand?”
Remy nodded once, not a hint of surprise in his face. In all his years with Gabriel, he had been asked to perform tasks far outside a manservant’s normal sphere of duty, many of them unsavory. And he had never blinked at any of them. On occasion, Gabriel wondered what it would take to shock him.
Without pausing to remove his greatcoat, he marched down the corridor to his study. Fox found him there a moment later. “Killing the king? You cannot seriously believe your uncle would make such an accusation,” he demanded, breathless from the pace Gabriel had set.
“God knows what he has up his sleeve.”
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