Page 47 of The Companion’s Secret

Only he had been blind.

* * * *

Cami clung stubbornly to the last fragments of sleep. Yawning, she stretched. Her muscles felt stiff and sore, as though she had slept the whole night through without stirring once. She also was not wearing a nightgown.

The previous night’s activities came back to her in a rush, and she clutched the sheet to her chest. But when she at last opened her eyes, she discovered the room was empty. Passing a hand over her hair, she found Gabriel’s cravat still tangled in it. Deftly, she twisted the strip of linen to keep her unkempt locks out of her face. As she moved, a silvery gleam caught her eye. Her spectacles lay on the table beside the bed. He had found them. With fingers that fumbled in their eagerness, she unfolded them and put them on.

Suddenly all was in sharp relief. The faded floral paper on the walls of the shabby but clean room. Steam rising from the pitcher of water on the washbasin. On the chair in the corner someone had laid out her clothes; her dress had been brushed, the linen was fresh. Her eyes traveled to the place where her bag and writing desk had sat, but someone must already have carried them down to the coach. When had Gabriel risen? Just how long had she been asleep?

She stepped out of bed with caution, but her ankle gave her very little pain. After she had splashed water on her face, dressed, and arranged her hair as best she could, she made her way down to the public room of the inn and found him seated at breakfast. The aromas of toast and coffee and other good things wafted from the table. Yesterday afternoon’s meat pie was no more than a distant memory, and she approached the repast with an eager, slightly embarrassed smile.

Gabriel rose. He was handsome as ever in his well-tailored clothes, with his crisp linen, his freshly shaved jaw, and…a look in his eyes she had never seen before. She had not realized how warm their hazel-brown depths had always seemed to her, until she saw their cool, wary expression now.

Suddenly nervous, she dropped her gaze to the table and saw what she had not noticed from across the room. At her place lay the thick stack of paper that made up her life’s work, neatly tied with red silk ribbon. Her stomach, which had been growling keenly over the other contents of the table, performed a poorly executed somersault and landed somewhere in the vicinity of the floor.

“Please sit down,” he said, as if he suspected how her knees wobbled beneath her skirts. “I regret to say that your writing desk was another casualty of yesterday’s fall.” The explanation was offered in a voice as distant as his eyes as he resumed his seat opposite. “It was resting atop my valise. I did not realize that the hinge holding the front panel in place had broken. When I picked up the desk to set it aside, everything spilled out. Including that.” He gestured toward the stack of bound pages.

She fought the impulse to snatch it up and clutch it protectively to her chest.

“Did you—did you read it?” she managed to whisper.

The wait for his answer was torture, and after last night, she suspected he enjoyed keeping her on edge. “No,” he admitted at last. “But I gathered from Mr. Dawkins’s letter it is a novel, one in which my own likeness features rather prominently.”

She nodded, but hidden beneath the table, she twisted her fingers in her lap. “Are you…are you angry with me?”

“Angry?” His expression of wide-eyed surprise was tinged with mockery. “Why, Miss Burke! What would there be to anger me in your tale? I trust you’ve told only the truth. Say rather, flattered,” he corrected, pausing to take a sip of coffee. “Not every villain can hope for the lasting infamy of print.”

No, he wasn’t angry. That much was true. He was… She raked her eyes over his face as her mind flailed for a word. Resigned. Yes, that was it. Resigned to being thought a villain. At the discovery of what she’d done, he’d slipped back into his comfortable role, donned once more the familiar mask.

She’d gone to bed with Gabriel, and woken up to Lord Ash.

He pushed away from the table, as if preparing to rise. Did he intend to punish her presumption by abandoning her in—in—? Why, she didn’t even know the name of the village. Almost every coin she’d had to her name had been spent on a ticket for the public stage. She hadn’t enough now to return to London, to say nothing of getting home. Her heart rattled in her chest.

Time for a gamble of her own.

“Is there anything more calculated to bring on a bout of ennui than driving through the Midlands?” she asked. He hesitated, and a shadow of confusion flickered across his gaze. After a moment, he gave a cautious nod in acknowledgment of the truth of her observation. “Miles and miles of nothing but fields and sheep. Hours and hours with nothing to amuse the traveler. Fortunately,”—she lifted her hands and laid them, palms down, on her manuscript—“I have had the foresight to bring a book.” Now, his dark brow arced. “And so, I wish to make a proposal.”

Though he said nothing, she knew from his posture she had his full attention. But as she weighed her next words, his expression smoothed into something unreadable, part and parcel of the skills that made him successful at the card table—an ability to lure others into risking what they could not afford to lose.

“Despite the admirable restraint you have shown, you are curious, I suspect, about what I have written,” she said. “If you will agree to convey me at least as far as Shropshire, I will read to you from The Wild Irish Rose.”

He was much too skilled to allow surprise to show on his face, though she felt sure he had not anticipated such an offer. Would he refuse it? She thought of what she had written about Lord Granville. No, she did not expect Lord Ash to sit quietly through a recital of his sins. But there were certain things he needed to hear.

“As Lady Merrick’s companion, I often read novels aloud,” she reminded him encouragingly. “She seemed to find my voice pleasant enough.” Despite my accent.

He stood. “I’ll leave you to your breakfast,” he said, nodding at the table. A pause, while his long fingers drummed against the back of his chair. “And I will tell the driver to have the carriage ready in a quarter of an hour.”

It was not precisely an invitation to accompany him, but it was answer enough. A species of relief curled through her, but its unusually sharp claws dug into her belly, robbing her of any remaining appetite.

Gabriel seemed to read her thoughts. “Eat, Camellia.” That tone of command again, softened when he added, “You’re far too thin.”

A flush swept over her skin—embarrassment, yes, yet tinted with the memory of his touch. The strange realization that he had seen more of her than her nakedness. The possibility that in some corner of his charred heart he cared—or would care, if anyone had ever shown him how.

With the slightest of bows, he strode to the door. When he had left the room, she picked up a piece of toast and forced herself to take a bite. For what lay ahead, she was going to need her strength.

Chapter 15

The morning sky was bright without being sunny, damp without being rainy. Gabriel stood beside his coach, glanced at the low hanging clouds on the horizon, and wondered what other nonsensical observations about the weather he could make to pass the time until Camellia came to resume her travel northward.