A few miles farther up the road, the driver steered the coach into the yard of a posting inn to change horses. A servant came to the carriage door, carrying a tray laden with meat pies and mugs of ale. Cami pressed her palm against her abdomen to keep her stomach from rumbling. As the young man handed in the food to her, Gabriel dug in the pocket of his coat, retrieved his purse, and spilled coins onto the servant’s palm. “And,” Gabriel added, “I believe the lady wishes to descend here.”
The servant turned to peer up at her inquiringly. “Ma’am? Will I help you down?”
Cami, who had fallen quickly on the simple repast, swallowed noisily, then twisted her head just enough to glance across the carriage at Gabriel. Having had the responsibility of caring for younger siblings, she knew well the old trick of saying one thing, in hopes of prompting the opposite action. By suggesting she leave, did he hope to goad her to stay? He lifted his brows, taunting, mocking…but beneath them, what little she could see of his shadowed expression was haunted. She began to suspect he wanted her company.
And heaven help her, she wanted his too.
Turning back to the waiting servant, she said, “Thank you, but no. You may give the order to drive on as soon as the horses are ready.” She could not be expected to give up the comfort and safety of a private carriage, traveling in precisely the direction she wished to go, after all.
Though she would not try to persuade herself that traveling with Gabriel was exactly safe.
The young man nodded and folded up the steps again. In a short while he returned for the empty mugs and tray, and moments after the door snapped shut, the carriage spun into motion once more.
Her belly full, she felt her eyelids begin to droop. The various ordeals of the last day had been draining, and the rhythmic sway of the coach was a powerful lullaby. With one fingertip, she traced the erratic path of raindrops down the window to keep herself awake.
“You look tired,” he said. A most ungentlemanly observation.
She met his gaze with every intention of denying it. She could not bear for him to discover that she had passed a sleepless night because of him. A yawn caught her off guard. She tried to hide it behind her hand, but he was not fooled.
He leaned forward and placed a hand on either side of her portable desk, clearly intending to relieve her of the burden. When she thought of what he could discover inside, she curled her fingers tighter around its worn corners. Relenting, he reached up to untie the ribbons of her bonnet instead, removed it gently, and laid it next to him. Then, he drew her spectacles carefully from her face and tucked them into the discarded bonnet. Last, he shifted to the seat beside her. “Rest,” he said, patting his own shoulder to indicate she might use it as a cushion. Automatically, she shook her head. A sigh of exasperation parted his lips. “You’re exhausted, Camellia.”
At this distance she did not need to squint to see the smudge of shadow beneath his own eyes. The produce of his usual vices, no doubt. A late night at the tables. Too much drink, too many women. Or…?
How dare she hope he had been kept awake thinking of her?
“It would be most improper,” she said, though she really might be too tired to care.
A smile quirked his lips. “Of course it would be improper.” Again, she recognized the challenge in his words. “Everything about this is improper, Miss Burke.”
She remembered the day they had walked in the park; he had asserted that she feared nothing. Tentatively, she laid her cheek against the point of his shoulder. A hard pillow. Rather damp and cool too. Before she could try to settle into whatever meager comfort the position would allow, she felt his finger brush the underside of her chin. When she lifted her head to look up, he shifted, settled his arm around her shoulders, and nudged open his greatcoat, exposing the plush, dry wool of his coat beneath.
Undeniably more comfortable. Undeniably more dangerous. Had she really tried to claim he could not ruin her? At the time, she had meant it.
But experience was teaching her there were many kinds of ruination.
She allowed herself to lean against him, this time resting her cheek against the curve of his chest, in a little hollow that seemed perfectly fitted to her head. She could feel his breath stir her hair. With the steady thump-thump of his heart beneath her ear, she snuggled into his warmth and fell fast asleep.
Chapter 13
Cami awoke with a start. The carriage had stopped; the sky beyond its windows was growing dark. Beneath her cheek, her pillow rose and fell with even, rumbling breaths. Confused, she pushed herself upright to find she had been curled against Gabriel’s side like a child. For what must have been hours, through even the changing of horses. She had probably snored. Or worse, drooled.
How could she have let herself sleep so soundly? How could she have let herself—? She clutched automatically for her writing desk and found it missing.
By the light of the inn yard’s lanterns, she fumbled searchingly, silently through the carriage’s dim interior. Vaguely, she remembered him trying to take the desk from her. Her fingers passed lightly over Gabriel’s hard thigh and knee—he wasn’t holding it either. With her toes, she felt about the floor—no, it hadn’t slid off her lap while she slept. Reaching out, more than half-blind, she slid her hands over the opposite seat until they struck the box’s wooden edges. When she grabbed it to her, she heard something else, something light—her bonnet, perhaps—fall to the floor. Where were her spectacles?
Heart racing, she opened the carriage door. She needed more light. She needed air. She needed to come to her senses, to throw off the disorientation of sleep. Without really meaning to, she stepped out into the night, discovering as she did so that the carriage steps had not yet been put down.
A simple misjudgment of distance. If she had realized the situation, she could have jumped down with ease. But now her foot, expecting to meet a level surface some inches above the ground, must stretch out farther. The awkward weight of her lap desk pitched her forward. And before she could reach to catch herself, she was falling. Her desk flew from her hands to land with a crash on the cobblestones some feet away. Twisting and flailing, trying to keep herself from meeting a similar fate, Cami threw up her arms and gave a cry as the ground rushed up to meet her.
“You, boy. Over here with some light.” Gabriel’s voice was husky with sleep. She could hear the carriage creak as he eased himself through the door, felt his boots strike the ground as he stepped down carefully to avoid her prone form. “Camellia.” He knelt beside her head and brushed her hair away from her face with fingers that did not seem to be quite steady. “Can you hear me?”
“Yes,” Cami managed to whisper. All the breath seemed to have abandoned her lungs. Oddly, her pain gave her some consolation. She knew she could not be badly injured if she could still feel everything. Scraped palms. Bruised knees. And—oh! “My ankle,” she gasped. “I think I must have twisted it.”
“Lie still,” he ordered. She felt his hands rearranging her skirts to cover her bare legs before he turned her and lifted her with surprising ease, cradling her against his chest as he nodded silent commands to the small crowd that surrounded them: the driver, grooms, servants of the inn, and even, to her deep mortification, some of the inn’s other patrons.
As they passed into the inn, she closed her eyes against the light and allowed them to stay closed. “I’m sure I could manage on my own,” she murmured, but he did not hear her, or pretended not to, at any rate. Without even an exchange of words, they were shown upstairs to a room, and in another moment, he was bending to seat her on the edge of a neatly made bed.
“I’ll just fetch some hot water for your missus, shall I?” An older woman’s voice, probably the innkeeper’s wife.
When Gabriel replied, she expected him to correct the woman’s error. But he merely thanked her. “And have someone bring up our things.”
“Very good, sir.”<
br />
Then they were alone. She peered up at him, a handsome blur. “Do you know what became of my spectacles?”
He lowered himself to her eye level; at this distance, she could make out every feature without squinting. “Tucked inside your bonnet. Which I very much hope I didn’t squash as I got out. Now, let’s see those hands.” Obediently, she held up her palms for his inspection. Some scrapes, but mostly dirt. Already the stinging had begun to abate. “And your ankle?”
Slowly, she rose and tested whether it would support her weight. It ached, to be sure, but she gritted her teeth against the pain. “Bearable.”
“Thankfully, there is no need at present for you to bear it.” He wrapped his fingers around her elbow to urge her back down to the bed.
A tap at the door gave way to a small parade of people: a maid with a ewer of steaming water in one arm and a stack of towels in the other, a boy with their bags, another carrying her writing desk, and finally the innkeeper’s wife to oversee the rest. When they had deposited their loads, the woman flapped them through the door with her hands. “Is there ought else?”
Surely Gabriel would request a second room, would put an end to this charade. Instead, he stepped closer to the door, clearly intending to shut it tight after her. “That will do. Thank you.”
Though as far as Cami could tell, Gabriel was making no particular effort to be charming—in fact, to her ear, he sounded rather terse—the innkeeper’s wife simpered nonetheless and curtsied on the threshold. “Well, ring if you need me.”
“But…but she thinks we’re married,” Cami whispered when the door closed.
Gabriel turned to face her, but at this distance, his expression was unreadable. “It’s for the best. This seems a respectable inn. We might have been turned away if she knew we weren’t.” She watched as he shrugged out of his greatcoat and slung it over a chair in the corner. “I’ll say you needed your rest after the fall and sit up tonight in the pub. It won’t be the first time,” he added with a self-deprecating laugh as he strode to the washstand and poured water from the ewer into the basin.
“Let’s see about getting you cleaned up first, though, shall we?” He approached with a damp cloth and she reached up for it automatically. A blurry smile spread across his face as he caught one wrist in a gentle hold and began carefully wiping the grime of the inn yard from her palms. It stung a bit, but less than submerging her hands in the basin would have. “There, see. Much better. Now…” He rinsed the cloth and wiped her face next. Was it streaked with dirt too? Either way, she could not deny how good the warm water felt against her skin.
“Thank you,” she murmured when he returned to the washbasin.
“Don’t thank me yet. There’s still that ankle to tend.”
“It’s fine.” She perched more upright on the edge of the bed, a position that required her to brace herself with her toes.
Gabriel must have seen the grimace that flickered across her face. “Fine, eh? Well, then, it won’t hurt to take a look.”
A look? It was not his eyes that worried her, but rather his long, clever fingers traveling over her foot, up her leg. But before she could wipe the image from her mind, or the flare of heat from her cheeks, he was kneeling on the floor before her. Without conscious thought, she drew her foot back under the protection of her skirts.
“Modesty, Camellia? I wouldn’t have thought a sensible woman like you would be susceptible to such nonsense.”
It wasn’t nonsense. Not really. More like self-preservation. With a deep breath, she stuck out her injured right foot. He slipped her shoe off and ran his fingers over her stocking-clad ankle. “A little swelling. Not as bad as I’d feared. Can you undo your stocking? I want to see if there’s any bruising.” To her relief, he rose and stepped back to the washstand while she hurriedly undid her garter, rolled down her stocking, and tugged it free of her toes with a little gasp of discomfort.
The sound did not escape his notice either. “Let me see,” he commanded in a brusque, businesslike voice she had never heard him use before. He dropped to one knee, lifted the hem of her skirt, and took her foot in his hands. “Can you bend it this way? Like that?” Slight pressure of his fingers directed which way she was to flex her ankle. She felt the heat of his palm against the sole of her foot as he asked to her press against him. “Good, good. Clearly not broken. Just strained a bit. It should be easy enough to rest it for a couple of days. By the time you reach Dublin, it should be back to normal. I’ll just—” He held up one of the linen towels, ripped it in two neat halves, and began to wind one strip around her foot and up her ankle to support the injured joint. She raised the hem of her dress a little higher to watch him work. How had he acquired this skill? Was it wrong to take pleasure in his touch?
“What’s this?” His fingertips skated over an old scar, a series of jagged lines that stood out pearly white against the pale skin of her calf. When she did not answer, he lifted his face to hers, questioning; his hands did not release her leg. His position on the floor before her allowed her to see him quite clearly, even without her spectacles. His dark eyes clouded with uncertainty. A frown notched the space between his brows.
“Nothing,” she said, dropping her skirt so that the fabric draped over the scars and his wrists too. “It happened when I was a child.”
“What happened?” Without looking, he tucked in the end of the bandage to secure it, but still he did not let her go. She could feel his gentle touch tracing the rough edges of the scar over one side of her calf, then the other. “It’s shaped like a—”
“Like a dog bite. Yes.” Though it sent a twinge through her ankle, she tugged her foot free of his grasp. “I was six—no, seven, I suppose. Erica was almost two. I don’t have any memory of it, really. Mama says we were playing in the square, inside the walled garden, when our neighbor’s dog broke free of its leash and began to chase us. Erica ran, of course, because she was of an age when she ran everywhere. It made the dog…wild.” She’d heard the story so many times, she could almost see and hear what her mind refused to recall—the dog’s growls, flecks of spittle flying from its jaws. Erica’s squeals. Her own screams. “I picked her up and ran with her to the gate.” It hadn’t been locked, but panic had made her little fingers fumble nonetheless. “When we couldn’t get through, I lifted her over and was just scrambling up after, when—”
His kiss was swift, hard. Intended more to silence than seduce. But not without passion, for all that. When she reached for something to steady herself against the surprise, her hands settled on his shoulders and she felt the tension there. “My God, Camellia.” He pulled her closer, buried his lips in her hair. She tried to steel herself against his reaction, his embrace. Tried and failed. “That’s why you… Foxy’s pups…and that damned Chien. He—he growled at you. The day we met. And you were expected to—to—”
It was her turn to quiet him. “Shh,” she soothed. “Aunt Merrick said it was high time I conquered my fears, and I daresay she was right.”
“It was heartless and cruel!”
She pulled away to look him in the eye. She would not be enticed into wanting—to say nothing of needing—a man’s protection. “If there are a hundred ladies’ companions in London, ninety-eight of them are surely tasked with worse things than looking after a bad-tempered, gassy pug.”
His answering expression was skeptical, but reluctantly amused by her description of the dog. He rocked back on his heels, increasing the distance between them. “I did not mean to… I should leave you to your rest.” Standing, he wiped his hands on the remaining scrap of toweling and tossed it over the washstand. “Do you—do you wish for me to call for someone to help you—?” With one hand, he gestured toward her clothes, which were streaked with mud, and likely worse.
“Undress?” She fought down a laugh. So he still imagined she was some sort of grand lady accustomed to having a maid at her beck and call? “I’m
sure I can manage.”
“Right.” He moved hesitantly toward the door. “Anything else?”
“My spectacles?”
She saw his head turn in the direction of the window and the yawning blackness beyond. The little sparkles of light against the glass must be a scattering of raindrops. “Can you manage tonight without them, do you think? It’ll be impossible to find anything in the dark. I’ll go out at first light to look for them myself.”
Hesitantly, she nodded her agreement. She did not need them. After all, she was just going to undress and slip into bed.
But when she heard the rattle of the door latch, her pulse quickened. Not fear of being alone. Longing for a few more moments with him. She flailed about for something to stay him. “Did you mean it?”
She watched him turn toward her, wondering about the expression on his face, which at this distance, was unreadable to her. Without her spectacles, she felt slightly nervous. Uncertain.
As though she oughtn’t to be held responsible for what happened when she couldn’t see straight.
“What you said when you found me at the posting inn,” she explained. “Were you really worried? About me?”
* * * *
Worried?
His heart had begun hammering the moment Felicity had told him what Camellia had done. As the old coach had crawled toward the posting inn, he feared she would already have left.
At the first glimpse of her in the public room, he had expected to feel relief. Instead, his heartbeat had turned frantic at the sight of her alone, among the riffraff who traveled on the stage. Desperate to gather her in his arms and never let her out of his sight again, he’d settled for creating a distraction and getting her away.
His plan all along had been to surrender the coach to her at the first opportunity. She could then travel in reasonable comfort. Alone, yes, but the burly coachman would see to it that she came to no harm. And he had fully intended to hire a maid from one place or another, to lend an air of respectability.
The Companion's Secret Page 15