“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.
He had greeted the day with every intention of traveling in the other direction, eager to confront his uncle face-to-face. Determination had burned in his belly, hot and bright. Over the course of the last hour, however, that flame had begun to sputter and smoke. Soon enough, it would be snuffed out entirely.
What did it matter, really, whether he went forward or back? Whether he was charged with treason and hanged? Hadn’t he always expected to meet some scandalous end? And as for Stoke, what had possessed him to believe that its people were better off with him as its master, that he ought to fight to keep it out of his uncle’s hands? Camellia’s reminder, though unintentional, had been timely.
He was and never would be anything more than Ash.
In the doorway of the inn, she appeared in her plain woolen dress, covered by her usual brown pelisse. Once, he had read the loose fit of her garments as a kind of disguise; now, he found himself wondering if they had been cut for a fuller figure that had since been worn away by work or worry or homesickness. In one hand, she carried her bonnet by its ribbons; the stack of papers she held against her breast with the other. Her hair hung over one shoulder in a thick, black braid, and her chin tipped upward when he caught her eye.
Altogether a much more appealing picture than it had any right to be.
With slow steps, but no obvious limp, she crossed the cobbled inn yard to the carriage. To his side. “I hope I did not keep you waiting, my lord.”
For answer, Gabriel held out one hand to help her up. Instead, she laid the bundle of papers on his palm, followed by her bonnet, and clambered into the coach—favoring her right ankle, yes, but determinedly unassisted.
Inside the carriage, she arranged her skirts and her bonnet with care to take up the entirety of one bench. When he looked into the coach, she was sitting primly with the bound stack of pages in her lap. He could order the coachman to drive on and send her away, alone. Or he could take the seat facing the rear, facing her, and subject himself to her tale.
You are curious, I suspect, about what I have written. But what sort of man felt curiosity when looking into a mirror?
With a muttered oath, he hoisted himself into the carriage.
Hardly had the coach rolled into motion when she slipped the knot from the ribbon and took up the first sheet of paper, holding it just high enough before her that she could fix him with those sharp green eyes from time to time as she read. He had the distinct impression she was enjoying herself.
With a slight clearing of her throat, she began. “Róisín Nic Uidhir had been born with a fiery spirit to match her red hair, and so it came as no surprise to her brothers, Cathal and Fergus, when she told them she had been invited to the Belfast Harpers Assembly and meant to go, with or without them.”
Camellia’s voice, which always had a lovely, lyrical quality to it, took on a new and unfamiliar note. There was something at once alienating and compelling about it. On her tongue, the foreign names might have been invocations to a deity—some Celtic god that probably meant Englishmen like Gabriel mischief.
“‘Father needs us on the farm,’ Fergus said. He had learned to stress what was practical when trying to persuade his sister of anything. ‘And it would not be safe
