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?
He leaned his body away from the possibility. “About last night…”
Her eyes darted nervously around the room, looking anywhere but at him. “Oh, please do not.”
“Do not what? Speak of it?”
One hand released the papers and fluttered in search of a word. “Apologize. Scold. I—I had done with all that nonsense years ago. A woman of my age and situation may, I trust, be permitted to indulge her curiosity from time to time, and I merely wanted to know if certain rumors about…Lord Ash were true.”
He dared to catch her chin in his hand and bring her gaze to his. “And were they?”
Rebelliousness sparkled behind her spectacles. “No.”
He recognized the challenge in that word. The invitation. The lie he did not dare to correct. As he lowered his mouth to within an inch of hers, her eyelids fluttered down obligingly. “Then I’ll wish you a good night, my dear,” he whispered. “So sorry to disappoint.”
Five minutes later, when he stopped at the stable door and looked back, he could still see her at the window, backed by the candles’ flickering light.
* * * *
Cami made certain to rise early enough that she was dressed and waiting downstairs when Gabriel came to fetch her. No more intimate moments behind closed doors. No more courting disaster. The Wild Irish Rose was not a romance. She knew how the story had to end, and she must not try to rewrite history, neither his nor her own. He was an English nobleman, unmoved either by Ireland’s past glory or its present plight, and—
In her mind, she heard him ask for another chapter of Róisín’s sad story. Heard the quiet fury in his voice as
