“No.” His hat sliced through the air and landed on a nearby table. “I just had the dubious pleasure of an encounter with my Uncle Finch on Oxford Street. He’s up to something. See what you can find out. Anything…useful, you understand?”
Remy nodded once, not a hint of surprise in his face. In all his years with Gabriel, he had been asked to perform tasks far outside a manservant’s normal sphere of duty, many of them unsavory. And he had never blinked at any of them. On occasion, Gabriel wondered what it would take to shock him.
Without pausing to remove his greatcoat, he marched down the corridor to his study. Fox found him there a moment later. “Killing the king? You cannot seriously believe your uncle would make such an accusation,” he demanded, breathless from the pace Gabriel had set.
“God knows what he has up his sleeve.”
Gabriel had not realized he was pacing until Fox stepped into his path and brought him up short. “But you also cannot deny you have helped him blacken your reputation over the years. For the sake of your future, then, isn’t it time to move ahead with your plans to turn over a new leaf?”
Fox was right, of course. Whatever Gabriel’s desires where a certain lady’s companion was concerned, he must put them aside in favor of the only proper match he was ever likely to make—and with it, the hope of saving Stoke and its people from future devastation. Better his bollocks than his neck in a noose.
Without replying, Gabriel turned and strode back toward the window.
“I am fully prepared to stand before you at the altar, if you will have me, and celebrate the union of my oldest and dearest friend to a woman worthy of his regard,” Fox vowed, his solemnity entirely in keeping with his future as a clergyman. Gabriel did not doubt his sincerity.
But the earnest note in his voice—Gabriel might have been tempted to call it longing—forced Gabriel to meet his friend’s eyes. What he saw there sliced open his veins as neatly as the bloodletter’s lance. He thought of Fox walking with Felicity, talking with Felicity, dancing with Felicity. Oh, from a practical standpoint it was a perfectly ineligible match: a younger son could not afford to fall in love with a dowerless girl. But love was not a practical matter. Or so Gabriel had heard.
Fox was willing to give up a woman for whom he obviously was coming to care deeply. Give her up for Gabriel. For a man who did not deserve such a woman—or such a friend.
“From here on out, though, I expect you to be on your best behavior,” Fox concluded. “Felicity Trenton is a lady, Ash. So you must be a gentleman.”
“For once,” added Gabriel wryly. Compared to Fox’s sacrifice, it was a trivial request, really. It was only giving up a flirtation in which it was ridiculous to indulge.
It would go badly for him and rather worse for Miss Burke if he should offer anything more.
His feet once more began to wear a path across the rug. For the first time since he had rented these rooms, the moment he had been of age and legally entitled to do so, the flat felt like a prison to him.
Remington backed into the room carrying the breakfast tray. “When you have finished with the other matter,” Gabriel said to him, “see that the Grosvenor Square house is opened and prepare to move us there at the earliest opportunity.”
The tray clattered onto the desktop. “You—you mean to—to relocate to Finch House?” Remy stammered.
“Rented rooms are an appalling waste of money when a man owns several perfectly good homes,” he said, echoing the words his trustee had spoken to him on the morning of his twenty-first birthday, as he had handed over the last of Gabriel’s dreadful inheritance. Finch House was an elegant, luxurious townhouse nestled in the heart of the beau monde—entirely out of keeping with the life he lived. Gabriel had resolutely refused to occupy it.
But orchestrating a campaign to thumb his nose at his uncle and take his rightful place in society would benefit from a proper base of operations. The home of a gentleman. “And besides, I cannot very well bring my bride here.”
At that announcement, Remy positively goggled.
“That’s the spirit.” Fox clapped Gabriel on the back. “I shall rejoice to see you settled at last. And on the way to restoring the thing fate stole from you all those years ago.”
Gabriel hesitated. “And what would that be?”
“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
