Page 19 of The Companion’s Secret

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