Page 23 of The Companion’s Secret

“Well, I would not need to put so much store in her titbits if you would only tell me what you and he discussed. You spent more than an hour in his company last night.” As she spoke, Felicity curled the corner of the newspaper around her fingertip, then frowned at the black smudge it left behind. “Surely, in all that time, he must have said something worth repeating.”

Had he? Their talk had been commonplace, yet a strange sort of intimacy had surrounded their exchange, a cocoon of calm amid the noise and bustle of the ballroom and the supper room. Talk of childhood and family. The sound of her name on his lips. Those lips pressed impertinently, improperly to her hand…

A wave of heat swept up her chest to her cheeks, chasing some sensation, some emotion for which she had no words.

“Lord Ashborough is courting you, Cousin Felicity. He had no particular call to make himself agreeable to me.”

“He is not courting me, Cousin Camellia,” Felicity corrected, an uncharacteristic sharpness in her voice. “I’m a bought bride, and we both know it. Though I doubt he feels much obligation to make himself agreeable to anyone, come to that.”

“Was he disagreeable?”

“No.” Felicity sounded nonplussed. “Merely…distracted.”

At that moment, Tom the second footman entered, bearing an enormous bouquet in one hand and a salver on the other and extending them both to Felicity.

“How lovely! Why, they look just as if they had been gathered from a meadow.” Felicity’s expression of surprised delight was nearly obscured by a profusion of what looked like wildflowers, although it was really too early in the year for them to be any such thing. The splendid riot of pink and yellow and lavender blooms came together in an artful arrangement that appeared free of artifice, perfectly suited to a young lady of Felicity’s romantic tastes and nothing like the nosegays more typically sent by eager young men the morning after a ball.

“Who could have sent them?” she exclaimed, though the answer seemed obvious enough. “Who knows me so well as to choose all of my favorites? Do open the note, Cousin Camellia.”

Tom’s face was contorted in what might have been intended as a speaking glance, though its message was opaque. Wordlessly, Cami motioned for him to give her the letter.

My dear lady,

Thank you for the favor of your company last evening. Though these blooms cannot rival the bloom of your cheeks, I hope this small token, and the memory of my esteem it carries, will call up the luster of your charming smile.

Yours &c.

Ash——

Only the first three letters of his signature were legible, as if he too thought of himself by the shortened version of his title. The hand was as bold and dark and strong as the words themselves were, well, flowery. “The bloom of your cheeks”? “The luster of your smile”? Did such obvious and hackneyed sentiment produce the desired results? Were women really wooed with such utter nonsense? Although she had little experience with rakes on which to draw, Cami had somehow imagined their techniques a bit more refined.

“Lord Ashborough sent them, of course,” she told Felicity, dropping the note onto the table. A flicker of something—disappointment?—crossed her cousin’s face, but Cami’s attention was claimed once more by Tom, who was standing just out of the line of Felicity’s vision, nodding first at Cami, then jerking his head in the direction of the door.

Cami frowned. “Is something the matter with your neck, Tom?”

“No, miss.” But while Felicity examined each petal and leaf, he went through the same elaborate routine, this time moving only his eyes. Torn between exasperation and worry that he might do himself an injury if allowed to continue this pantomime, Cami rose from the table. “I promised my sister a letter,” she said, excusing herself.

“Goodness, Tom,” she scolded as soon as the door to the breakfast room shut behind her. “What are you about, making such dumbshow? Is it another letter from Mr. Dawkins?”

“No, miss.” With a more restrained tip of his chin, he indicated the florist’s boy standing just inside the front door.

Cami walked slowly down the stairs and across the marble-tiled foyer, stopping in front of him. “Have you a message? If it’s money you want, you’ll have to wait for the butler.”

“You’re Miss Burke?” Before she could even nod, he drew a second, smaller bouquet from behind his back. “I was ’structed to give these into your hand, direct.”

“For Lady Felicity?”

“No, ma’am. For you.”

Wide eyed, she took the flowers from his outstretched hand. With a touch to the brim of his cap, the boy was gone.

“Well, I never,” Cami gasped to no one in particular, as Tom had already made himself scarce and the hall was otherwise empty.

She had taken three swishing strides back to the staircase before her curiosity got the better of her and she glanced down at the bouquet she carried. At first, she saw only what she expected to see: a proper, predictable nosegay. A small, neat arrangement of hothouse flowers that might have been meant for any woman who merited some little notice. A kind gesture from the always thoughtful Mr. Fox, perhaps. Certainly nothing that required subterfuge or secrecy. Merely ordinary blooms bound with a length of ribbon.

Silk ribbon, she realized as her fingers curled more tightly around the stems. An almost unthinkable luxury for a woman in her position. Oh, Aunt Merrick saw to it that Cami had everything she truly required. A lady’s companion simply did not require silk ribbon.

Especially not silk ribbon in the most glorious shade of red she had ever seen.