You are curious, I suspect, about what I have written. But what sort of man felt curiosity when looking into a mirror?
With a muttered oath, he hoisted himself into the carriage.
Hardly had the coach rolled into motion when she slipped the knot from the ribbon and took up the first sheet of paper, holding it just high enough before her that she could fix him with those sharp green eyes from time to time as she read. He had the distinct impression she was enjoying herself.
With a slight clearing of her throat, she began. “Róisín Nic Uidhir had been born with a fiery spirit to match her red hair, and so it came as no surprise to her brothers, Cathal and Fergus, when she told them she had been invited to the Belfast Harpers Assembly and meant to go, with or without them.”
Camellia’s voice, which always had a lovely, lyrical quality to it, took on a new and unfamiliar note. There was something at once alienating and compelling about it. On her tongue, the foreign names might have been invocations to a deity—some Celtic god that probably meant Englishmen like Gabriel mischief.
“‘Father needs us on the farm,’ Fergus said. He had learned to stress what was practical when trying to persuade his sister of anything. ‘And it would not be safe for you to go alone.’
“Cathal, the eldest of the three, was more decisive in his refusal. ‘You play well enough, for a girl, Róisín, but the festival will bring bards from every county. You cannot hope to compete with the likes of them. There’s no need for you to go at all, at all.’”
“So Cathal has not learned how to manage women,” Gabriel interrupted, though his tongue felt strangely inadequate to forming the name.
Her gaze flickered up from the paper, then back down. “You assume women need to be managed by men, my lord…or can be,” she countered.
He parted his lips to retort but in the end said only, “Go on with the story.”
“As you please, my lord.”
Oh, she would be the death of him with her prim, distant “my lord” this and “my lord” that. But he supposed there were worse ways to die.
“Róisín merely smiled at her brothers and set to work packing her harp. Fergus argued. Cathal scolded. Nevertheless, on a fine day in June, they left County Fermanagh exactly as she had intended they would, Fergus leading the donkey-cart that carried her precious instrument, while Cathal brought up the rear of the party, muttering dire predictions of the dangers they would face.”
The story did not attempt to disguise its allegorical qualities, as the three wide-eyed characters set out on a sort of pilgrimage. While Camellia read, Gabriel allowed his gaze to drift to the window and found himself vaguely disappointed at being surrounded by ordinary English hills and fields, rather than the rugged, green landscape of northern Ireland through which Róisín and her brothers walked. By midday, the siblings’ journey had managed to incorporate, with remarkable seamlessness, several lessons in Irish history, a description of traditional Irish clothing, and an encounter with a Catholic priest also bound for Belfast who found some excuse to give his presumably like-minded fellow travelers a lengthy discourse on the many misunderstandings to which their faith was subjected by outsiders.
“Rather heavy-handed, is it not?” Gabriel shifted awkwardly in his seat, stiff from holding himself in a position that kept their knees from brushing. “This panegyric on all things Irish? I am surprised Mr. Dawkins made no complaint.”
Camellia laid the page from which she had been reading facedown onto the steadily growing stack beside her. “You didn’t.”
He should have guessed she had noticed. In truth, he was stiff from having sat through the past three changes of the horses, held spellbound by her tale. And when he watched her plump lips curve in a provoking smile, and remembered the feel of them against his own mouth, certain parts of him grew stiffer yet.
“That’s enough for now,” he said, crossing one booted foot over the other leg and glancing toward the window. “We’ll be at the next village soon, and if the inn’s decent, we’ll stop for a meal.”
“As you wish.” She began rearranging the papers, which crinkled as she neatened the two stacks, turning one sideways before placing it atop the other so that the unread pages would not be mixed in with those she had finished.
He felt a sigh of something like relief ease from his lungs. She had at last forgone the damned honorific she’d been wielding all day with the subtlety of a beadle waving a rod at unruly schoolboys to keep them in line. As if they were strangers. As if he had not swept his tongue over every inch of her ivory skin.
Then she lifted her gaze to him and added, with quiet dignity, “My lord.”
* * * *
Róisín played for their supper or a room for the night, and all who heard her were enchanted.
When she had written those words, Cami had never imagined they would be a sort of premonition of her own fate. As soon as they sat down to a simple luncheon in the public room of the Green Hart Inn, she drained her cup of tea in a single swallow, though it was hot enough to sear her throat in passing. As soon as she returned her cup and saucer to the table, Gabriel picked up the teapot and refilled it without being asked, looking ever so slightly guilty for having kept her at her task for so long. Lady Merrick’s considerably more limited span of attention had never required her to sit and read for hours at a time.
“I have been thinking about our conversation at Lady Penhurst’s,” he said. “So, you decided to come to London in hopes of finding a publisher for a book I assume you wrote in secret?”
She nodded. No point in denying it now.
“But why not stay in Dublin? A work of such obvious Irish pride, as Dawkins himself noted—”
“My intention was not to reach an Irish audience, my lord, but an English one.” Picking up her spoon, she prodded at the bowl of lamb stew the servant set before her. “There are those who know nothing more of my country than what may be displayed on the London stage or sketched in a broadside cartoon. How can they be expected to imagine Ireland as a country with its own culture and traditions, a place quite apart from Britain, and worthy of its independence? I hoped to help them see another side of the story.”
As she spoke, she could feel his eyes on her, watching her shift the peas to one side of her dish. A childish habit. Reluctantly, she swirled her spoon through the brown gravy, mixing them back in again. Then she forced down a bite, peas and all, swallowing too quickly to taste them.
“And Dawkins believes he will find readers for that story? To be honest, I had not thought a novel the proper medium for politics.”
“I suppose you mean to imply it is an improper one?” Crumbs scattered across the table as she gestured impatiently with the hunk of bread she had torn from the loaf to chase the dreadful stew. “Because ladies read novels?”
“And write them, it would seem. As do gentlemen,” he added hastily when she reached for the butter knife. “I meant what I said, Camellia. I have no patience with those of my sex who would argue that ladies have neither the brains nor the stomach for politics. The men who hold to such a belief cannot have known many women.”
“Whereas you have known a great many, I suppose.” The words popped from her mouth before she thought how they would sound. All those months in Aunt Merrick’s reproving company and she still had not learned to restrain her tongue.
He did not laugh, as she had half expected, though there was amusement in his eyes as his gaze flickered over her. “Perhaps I only thought I knew them.” Before she could revel in her satisfaction at this admission, however, he spoke again. “It is tempting, is it not, to presume greater knowledge of another than we can possibly have, even after intimate study?”
It might have been an allusion to his own behavior of last night. But she felt certain it was intended to be a reprimand of the use she’d made of him in her book.
Why on earth should she be expected t
o feel remorse for what she had done? He himself had said that everyone knew the extent of his villainy.
Still, she wondered what he would say when he heard the rest of Róisín’s tale.
While she poked at the contents of her bowl, Gabriel finished his stew, even wiping the bowl with a bit of bread, then drained his mug of ale. “Order something else, if you’d like. I’m going to stretch my legs.”
She could think of several perfectly rational reasons to stay put. For one thing, as he’d pointed out, she hadn’t finished eating—or even started, really. And her ankle was tender, though admittedly not so badly injured that a little exercise would harm it. Most of all, she sensed that he wanted time alone.
Hesitating only a moment, she swallowed the dregs of her now tepid tea, picked up a thick slab of the crusty bread and a piece of cheese, and went after him.
She caught up with him just outside the door. Wordlessly, he held out his arm to her, and she took it. Walking slowly, almost certainly for her benefit, he set out in the direction of a tumbling-down pile of stones in the distance that passed for a picturesque ruin, the village’s sole attraction to travelers. When they drew within a hundred yards of it, he stopped. “Any closer and the effect will be spoiled entirely.”
Already they were close enough to see that the dilapidated structure was too small ever to have been a castle or a church. A byre, more likely. A few sheep wandered among the rocks, nibbling at the weeds.
Cami seated herself on the stile and finished her bread and cheese, while Gabriel stood nearby. The peace and quiet here was nothing like the bustle of London. Not even Dublin. It unsettled her, reminded her that she was meant to be racing home to avert a disaster.
Though he was staring into the distance, Gabriel seemed to read her thoughts. “What do you expect to find when you get to Ireland?”
“I cannot say. My brother Paris may be involved in—well, what he does is entirely his own choosing, of course. The real worry is that he may have involved my brother Galen in something—something—”
“Something dangerous,” he finished as he came to sit down beside her. “Your cousin feared that it might have to do with the United Irishmen.”
Cami felt her eyes flare and knew her surprised expression was as good as a confession, but she could not stop herself. The United Irishmen had been driven underground years before. The very name was forbidden to be spoken by its members. If Felicity could guess as much, though, how secret could their plots be? How long before her brothers were caught up in one of them?
“Yes.” The whispered word was soon lost among the wind rustling through the grasses and the plaintive notes of a ewe bleating to her lambs.
“I see.” He looked grave. And very, very English. Good God, he was an aristocrat, a member of the House of Lords. As far as the British government was concerned, the United Irishmen—her brothers—were traitors and criminals. Why on earth had she trusted him with that admission?
Probably because last night she had trusted him with everything else.
“Cathal and Fergus are really Paris and Galen, are they not?” he went on. “With their love of country and eloquent pride in its history…” As he spoke, he took her hands in his, and she realized she must have left her gloves lying on the table in the inn. “Along with an utter inability to see how their sister’s gift could save it. And you are the wild Irish rose herself…though I do not think you play the harp.” When he lifted her fingers as if to inspect them for the telltale calluses the instrument’s strings would produce, he found only ink stains, of course. His thumb brushed across them, but this time, he did not lift them to his lips.
Disappointment tickled in the back of her throat like tears.
Abruptly, she freed her hands from his and rose. “There’s a bit of myself in all of my characters, I suppose,” she said, brushing the crumbs from her skirt.
“Surely only the virtuous ones.”
She flinched at the sardonic edge to his voice. For just a moment, she had forgotten.
He had risen when she did, but he let her walk away without offering his assistance, for which she felt grateful. She suddenly understood his desire to be alone.
All the walking seemed to have done her some good; she could move now with very little difficulty. Always before, though, exercise had also helped to clear her head. Perhaps she had expected too much this time. She had never let her thoughts get into such a muddle before.
She felt confused. Lost.
Somewhere along this winding road from Dublin to London and back again—on which journey she was meant to have spared her innocent cousin, written the book that would transform English opinions of Ireland, and saved her brothers’ necks—she had slipped and wrenched something a bit more vital than her ankle. Her head might know that Gabriel was wicked and reckless and in every way unsuited to be a hero. But her spirit craved his quick wit and agile mind, just as her body craved his touch. Last night had resolved nothing in that regard; if anything, the ache was worse.
And now her heart ached right along with it.
Had she made a mistake this morning, offering to read The Wild Irish Rose to him?
Or had the mistake been made longer ago, the day she had given in to her aunt’s demand and her cousin’s plea to sit with them during that first visit from Lord Ash?
When she reached the coach, she glanced back once more at the ruin. At Gabriel, still standing near the ramshackle pile of stones, little more than a speck in the distance.
He was right. Sometimes it was unwise to inspect a thing too minutely.
Chapter 16
The innkeeper studied the register in front of him, frowned, and shook his head. “Haven’t got but the one room left, sir. Ye mun share. Sure, then, your…sister, did ye say…? would be willin’ to—”
“Cousin,” Gabriel corrected. “So you understand, of course, that we do not wish to—”
One brow shot upward. “Aye, sir. I do, that. But I cannot make a room where there isn’t one.” He appeared to give the matter some thought. “I s’pose you might make your bed in the stable loft with the coachmen and such, if you’ve a mind to.”
“Fine,” Gabriel readily agreed. Under no circumstances could last night’s interlude be repeated. A second night in her bed would be courting disaster, and not just because it would increase the risk, no matter how much care he took, that she might one day soon find herself carrying a dead man’s child.
“Not a word of this to her. My coach will be here any moment.”
Unable to bear being cooped up in the carriage any longer, he’d hired a horse after dinner and ridden ahead. It had not been a comfortable journey, but his desire to sit with her, to listen to her, convinced him he had made the only sensible decision. He was not supposed to be enjoying her tale.
Thankfully, this crowded, bustling inn would provide little opportunity for further entertainment, for intimate conversation of any sort.
Gabriel laid a hand on the counter, and the innkeeper looked up. “A private dining parlor is out of the question, I assume?” he asked.
“Th’ room has a small parlor adjoinin’. I s’pose I could arrange to serve supper to you and your lady—”
“Cousin—”
“—there. If you wish.”
“Yes, thank you. In an hour.” He turned toward the door to watch for his coachman, then added over his shoulder, “Oh, and nothing with peas.”
The unfamiliar request stymied the innkeeper. “How’s that, sir?”
“For supper. Please do not serve any dishes with peas. The lady—”
“Your cousin, you mean?”
Gabriel shot him a look that had persuaded many a gambling man to fold. “The lady does not enjoy them.”
“Aye, sir. So that’s one bed”—the innkeeper opened the register to make a note—“one private parlor, and no peas.”
/> “Precisely.”
A quarter of an hour later, Gabriel’s coach rolled to a stop and he reached up to help Camellia down. “Your room awaits you, Cousin,” he said, gesturing with his free hand for a servant to carry up her things.
She looked the picture of icy respectability, her long braid now wound beneath her bonnet and the ragged sheaf of papers nowhere in evidence, presumably tucked into the valise she was at that moment reluctantly surrendering to the innkeeper’s son. Even her missing gloves had been replaced. “How kind of you.” Cool green eyes looked him up and down. “Cousin.”
“I’ll join you for supper in half an hour, if I may?” An exercise in frustration. She had no real need of his company, and he was a damned fool for wanting hers.
She dipped her head and was gone, leaving him to carry his own things to the stable loft. The accommodations there were spare but clean, though he suspected he still smelled of horse when he returned to the inn to dine.
He found her in a room hardly deserving of the name of parlor; a table and four chairs nearly filled it. Small windows on two sides overlooked the stable and inn yard, while the other two walls boasted doors: one through which he had entered, and one through which he could just glimpse a narrow bed. When she rose and gestured him to a chair, he saw that she had changed into a fresh dress. Her braid once more swung freely across her back as she moved.
“Your room is satisfactory?”
“Yes, thank you. But—” Her gaze darted to the window.
So, she had watched him come from the stables. Before he could offer any explanation, a red-faced young woman backed through the door carrying a laden tray. He very nearly had to step into the bedchamber to make room for her to enter.
An indifferent dinner of roast chicken, underdone potatoes, and wilted greens was accompanied by a bottle of surprisingly good white wine, and by the time he had poured his third glass, and Camellia’s second, he had managed to persuade himself the silence that had loomed over them throughout the meal was more companionable than stony. When he poked suspiciously at the wobbly custard that had been sent up for dessert, she covered her mouth with her napkin—hiding a smile, he felt certain.
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