She was studying him from behind the rim of her cup, watching memories sketch across his brow as if they were written there and she could easily read them. Brushing away that utterly nonsensical notion, he leaned back in his chair and returned her regard. “Speaking of names,” he ventured, “your own is certainly unusual.”
“My brothers and sisters and I are all named after plants. The Linnaean classifications.” As she spoke, she returned her goblet to the table, though her fingertips continued to trace its curves. “Camellia, Paris, Erica, Galen, Daphne, and Bellis. My father is something of an amateur botanist, you see. He calls us his little garden.” That revelation was accompanied by a little spasm of embarrassment and a becoming flush. “Although not a terribly exotic one: just herbs and heather, laurel and daisy.”
“Camellia is the exception, it would seem,” he murmured, caressing her name with his voice. “A rare bloom indeed in this part of the world.”
Once more, she took refuge behind her goblet.
For a long moment, neither spoke. “Forgive me,” he said at last, rousing himself from thoughts that persisted in wandering in directions they ought not. “I have been imagining you tasked with keeping five tender shoots in a neat row. A difficult undertaking, I suppose. I have no siblings, you see. I am perfectly—”
“—independent,” she supplied, her voice tinged with something very like envy.
But certainly he had imagined it, for how could anyone envy his isolation?
At that moment, a mother and her three daughters approached their table, stopped short, and turned back in the direction from which they had come—no easy feat in the crowded supper room. Above the din of chatter and the clatter of silver against china, nothing more of their conversation could be heard than two shocked words, part recognition, part warning.
Gabriel gave a wry smile. In his experience, there were only two types of women: those who sought him out, and those who shunned him. The society matron clearly belonged to the latter camp—or wanted everyone around her to believe that she did.
“Why do they do it?” Camellia asked when the foursome was well out of earshot. “Why do they all call you ‘Lord Ash’?”
She was studying him again, her head tilted ever so slightly to one side. She seemed to be one of those women who was drawn to his darkness. But what drew her? Some misguided hope to save him from his sins?
Or a far worldlier—and more interesting—desire to share in them?
“I believe the general consensus is that I earned the name by blackening reputations and charring hopes.” Would the answer warn her off, or intrigue her? Which effect was he hoping to produce?
In fact, Fox had fallen into the habit of addressing him as “Ash” when they were boys at school and “Ashborough” had seemed a pretentious mouthful. At the time, Gabriel had been glad of the respite from the weight of a title he had never expected, and certainly had not wanted, to bear so soon.
Others had taken up the nickname afterward, for far less genial reasons. He might have challenged them, called out their blatant disrespect, but why trouble himself to deny such a fitting soubriquet? Everything he touched turned to cinder.
He was Ash.
Her skirts rustled as she uncrossed her ankles and sat more upright. Her right forearm flattened against the table. She was preparing to take flight.
As she should.
Unwilling to let her go, however, he lifted his chin and said, “My father had me christened Gabriel. Perhaps you think that better suits?”
He could feel her eyes on him, accepting his invitation to study his profile. “I—I cannot say, my lord.”
“‘My lord’? Come now, Camellia. We are to be cousins, after all, are we not?” Ridiculous, really, how he longed to hear his name on her lips. It was courting an intimacy on which he dared not act.
“I—” The catch in her voice tugged his chin back into its proper place, and he lowered his gaze to hers. She did not blush at having been caught in her inspection of his face. He could almost fancy she liked what she saw. “I believe an angel’s name is entirely fitting, my lord.”
“Oh?” More breath than speech. He cursed the hopefulness in the sound.
“Of course. After all, even the devil was an angel once.”
Damn her. Even hardened gamblers did not trick him into letting down his guard. A familiar wave of cynicism swept over him like a domino at a masquerade, hiding what he never meant to reveal, curling the corners of his lips. “I see. By all means, call me Ash, then. All the best people do.”
A rather schoolmarmish grimace quirked her lips. “What nonsense, my lord. I most certainly will not resort to spiteful nicknames.” There was an odd sort of reassurance in her refusal. “I simply meant that even the worst of men were innocent children once, and deserving of compassion, not mockery.” Her restive fingertips plucked up a wrinkle in the tablecloth, then smoothed it away. “Which reminds me. The other day, in the park, you stepped away before I could—that is, I wished to say…”
His heart knocked against his breastbone, urging him to stop her from speaking her piece. But how foolish. Words had long ago lost the power to wound him. Why should her words, spoken with that soft Irish lilt, somehow be different?
At least she seemed to be choosing them with care. “On the matter of your late father, may I—?” A pause. “May I offer my condolences?”
Condolences? Had anyone ever thought to offer him any such thing? He dipped his head to hide his confusion and spied her hand still lying along the edge of the table. Covering it with his own, he squeezed and murmured, “Thank you.”
Then, an impulse—he could not call it gallantry—prompted him to lift those ink-stained fingers to his mouth, to brush
