Page 22 of The Companion’s Secret

“A family.” With a sharp squeeze of his shoulder, as if for encouragement, Fox urged him toward his customary chair and came to sit beside him.

Remy approached with a cup in one hand and the teapot in the other. Neither hand seemed as steady as was wont. Gabriel had at last contrived to shock his manservant. “Tea, sir?” Remy asked Fox.

Absently, Fox nodded at Remy, his attention still focused on Gabriel. “I firmly believe Lady Felicity will make you…”

“Happy?” he suggested, a little wryly. What business had he dwelling on coquelicot ribbon and Camellia Burke?

“Of course,” Fox agreed. “But I was going to say, ‘a better man.’”

Laughable, really, to imagine that bland, blonde slip of a girl taming him. Nevertheless, in a matter of weeks, Gabriel intended to be a married man. With a proper wife, living in a proper household, forming proper habits.

Giving up his larks, just as Fox had said.

Swallowing against a sudden drought in his throat, he watched as the dark, steaming liquid poured from the spout into the cup Fox held. Gabriel never drank the stuff. But his recent discovery that those brownish bits of chaff were actually the dark, glossy leaves of the camellia plant made the beverage suddenly, surprisingly…tempting.

“Just a moment, my lord, and I’ll bring your coffee,” Remy said, returning to the tray.

But he knew coffee would not do the trick this time. Only one thing would slake this powerful thirst. And though he well knew its tendency to scald, surely he could dare just a sip.

“On second thought, Remy,” he murmured, “I believe I’ll have tea.”

Chapter 7

Cami reached under her spectacles to press her fingertips to her eyelids, hoping for relief. Instead the grit of exhaustion pricked her eyes and made them water. The third cup of coffee had done little more than make her irritable. The mere thought of a fourth made her stomach churn.

“Lady Montlake’s ball would seem to have done you in,” Felicity said, looking up from her perusal of her papa’s newspaper.

It was not the ball that had exhausted her, though they had arrived home only shortly before the hour at which Cami generally rose. No, her muse had been demanding. Or restless, at least. Pages and pages of corrections, additions, investing Lord Granville with a tragic past—father killed in a suspicious accident, a cruel uncle for a guardian—that made his present villainy believable, if not excusable. After breakfast, she would reread those scribbled words and pray that the energy with which they had spilled from her pen was matched by their quality.

“A headache, merely,” Cami lied, covering her ink-stained fingers—the ones he had kissed—with her napkin. No matter how she scrubbed, they never came clean. Fortunately, Aunt Merrick’s cold had made her so fretful that only King’s presence could be tolerated this morning, else she would already have been chided for her slovenliness.

Felicity’s eyes flicked anxiously across the page. “Oh, my. How dreadful.”

“What is it?” Cami demanded as she twitched the paper away. Her pulse leaped along with her imagination. A riot? Another assassination attempt? Some news from Dublin?

No. Merely a gossip column. Clearly, it would have been wiser to have stopped at two cups of coffee.

Your eyes did not deceive you last night, dear readers. It seems a certain sooty peer roams among us once more. Rumor has it, the Beast has even chosen a bride! One wonders if the lady in question has any notion of the Frogs he is said to have kissed….

“Oh, Felicity. Why do you read this nonsense? You can only expect to hear the worst.”

An inelegant shrug. “There seems to be nothing but the worst to be heard. I ought to know what I’m getting myself into, oughtn’t I? Why, last night I was reduced to begging Mr. Fox to tell me some good of him. As Lord Ash’s oldest friend, he must know something, even if it’s hidden from everyone else.”

Impatience itched at Cami. “And what did he say?”

“After a bit of hemming and hawing, he managed to recollect that Lord Ash had been something of a scholar when they were at university.” Felicity was clearly nonplussed by the revelation. “Apparently, he took top honors in mathematics at Cambridge.”

Of course. A successful gambler would have to have some facility for numbers. “At least you may take some comfort in the knowledge that he is not entirely—or at least, not only—a scoundrel,” Cami said, smoothing her napkin across her lap, then picking up her fork. “Though I confess I am somewhat surprised to hear that he bothered with university at all.” His description of learning the classics as torture suggested the sort of man who wasted little time on such activities. But then, from what she had heard and what Cousin Stephen’s experience had confirmed, a gentleman’s university experience had very little to do with books.

“Mrs. Kendal said his guardian—his uncle, that is—insisted upon it.”

His uncle? Cami’s fork slipped from her suddenly nerveless fingers and clattered onto her plate.

Some of the details of Lord Granville’s story had been drawn unabashedly from Lord Ashborough’s life. But the idea that she had accidentally hit on such a striking similarity gave her qualms. What would he do if he ever suspected she had used him as the model for her villain?

A moment’s reflection made her see the ridiculousness of her worry. After all, how likely was it that the Marquess of Ashborough would read The Wild Irish Rose and see himself in its pages?

“I really do not think you should be listening to Mrs. Kendal’s, or anyone else’s, ridiculous gossip,” Cami said firmly, retrieving her fork, forcing a bite of cold, rubbery egg past her lips, then immediately regretting the decision.