Page 52 of The Companion’s Secret

“He gave her a sweeping bow. ‘May I make so bold as to ask the favor of a name? I should like to be able to tell my friends I have seen the one who will win.’”

Inwardly, Gabriel winced on Róisín’s behalf. He knew precisely where such flattery led. Camellia resolutely kept her eyes on her paper.

“Róisín turned to look for the harpist who had passed. ‘Indeed you have, sir. ’Twas Denis Hempsey you saw.’

“Her modesty brought a smile to his lips. ‘I meant your name, my dear,’ he said.

“‘I’m called Róisín Nic Uidhir, sir,’ she said, when she could find her tongue. ‘In English, Rosie Maguire.’

“‘Delighted to meet you, Miss Maguire,’ he replied with a bow. ‘Granville, at your service. And one day soon, I hope you shall play for me.’”

Pausing, Camellia pressed the page from which she had been reading against her knees. Gabriel cleared his throat. “So Granville’s the one, eh?” he asked with false heartiness. “Clearly, a thoroughgoing rake.”

“But it is not too clear?” She looked up at him with something like alarm in her eyes. “It’s essential readers understand that Róisín embodies Ireland, of course, its beauty, its culture, its—”

“Its vulnerability to the rapacious appetites of England, in the form of one despicable Lord Granville?” He did not fault her approach. Readers would devour many things in the guise of a tragic love story. Even politics.

“But Mr. Dawkins disliked my portrayal of Granville, in particular. He thought it a caricature. Hence my need to study the habits and history of someone more…complex.”

“Complex.” He knew better than to think it a compliment.

“Mm, yes. It seems that England’s exceptional villainy with respect to Ireland cannot be represented by a run-of-the-mill rogue.”

In spite of himself, Gabriel laughed. What would she say if she knew that her paragon of English vice was suspected of treason against that very crown?

“I’m sure your revisions will satisfy Mr. Dawkins’s concerns. Most readers will not share my particular interest in the character,” he said, then paused. “To tell the truth, I expected to find him more…familiar.”

“He—” She reached for her wine and took one swallow, then another. “I confess I did not have you in mind when I first crafted this portrait,” she admitted when she lowered the glass. “He was based on another Englishman I once knew. The son of an old school friend of my father’s who stayed with us a few weeks one autumn on his way to join a shooting party in the south.” She paused, and the silence told him all he had not wanted to know. “I was young,” she added in a rough whisper. “Younger than Róisín. That, at least, is my excuse. We—I—I foolishly imagined we would marry when he returned to Dublin.” She restored the empty goblet to the table with fingers that did not look quite steady. “He took another route home.”

Gabriel reached out and caught her hand on its way to her lap. Even in the candlelight, he could see that the wine had brought a flush of color to her cheeks, but her fingertips were cold. “How young, Camellia?”

“Not quite seventeen.”

“He—he did not—?” He could not seem to push the necessary words past the anger that swelled his throat like the stings of a swarm of bees.

She took pity on him. “Force his attentions where they were not wanted? Oh, no. I threw myself quite willingly into his arms.” He could hear the anger in her voice too, the frustration. Along with a ripple of shame. Once more, she freed her hand from his.

“Why did your father not insist he make amends? Or your brother?”

“Paris was fifteen. Had he known, I’m sure he would have gone off half-cocked and got himself killed. And as for Papa…well, what was to be done? A duel? Only brash young men imagine those spectacles can make up for the honor that was lost.”

So much for his hope that either Cathal or Fergus would run Granville through to avenge the poor Irish Rose once she’d been plucked. Reluctantly, Gabriel nodded his agreement and tried not to think of Fox’s parting words to him.

“Papa found out only later that his friend had sent his son away from London in hopes of separating him from undesirable acquaintances and bad habits. A plan that seemed to have failed quite spectacularly, in my view…” Camellia’s voice trailed off as she gazed at the flickering candlelight like a distant star. Then she shook off the memory and met his eyes. “The following spring, when my friends could talk of nothing but come-outs and finding husbands, I was of course deemed perfectly ineligible for any desirable match, spared from all but a few pitying glances. I decided to embrace my fate—my freedom. I did not need a man. With five younger siblings, I had had my fill of raising children. All my life, I had been jotting down stories, but now that I was to be a spinster, I began to write in earnest.” Behind her spectacles, her green eyes sparked with familiar energy. “And if by chance the gossip about my indiscretion did not immediately deter a gentleman, I would simply say or do something rather outlandish to prove to him I would not suit.”

Recalling their first meeting, he had no difficulty at all imagining what those outlandish things might have been.

“Will you tell me what happens to Granville?” he asked after a moment, nodding toward the unread pages.

Her fingers tightened around them. “Nothing.”

“Nothing?” Surely Róisín’s seducer would be subject to a more fitting reckoning than Camellia’s had been.

“That is, I do not—I do not know anymore,” she said, rising. “Originally, I intended for Róisín to return to Belfast the following year, carrying her broken harp as if it were a child, playing the song of a woman scorned by her lover, who died when she pushed him off a cliff.”

It was a chilling image, both for what it revealed about the characters and what it foretold about the future of Anglo-Irish relations. But he took some comfort in Camellia’s hesitation. At least she was having some small bout of conscience about killing him off.

Gabriel, too, got to his feet, and in the small room they stood for a moment, toe to toe, separated by little more than the half dozen sheets of paper she held, close enough that he could feel her tremble. How he longed to take her in his arms, to prove he was something more than a convenient villain. Was any part of her hoping he would?