Chapter 17
Gabriel felt her eyes upon him and wondered precisely when, over the course of the last fortnight or so, he had lost the ability to look at the hand he’d been dealt without reacting—or at least, without revealing his reaction.
The driver was meant to have turned north at Shrewsbury and taken them toward Holyhead. Gabriel thought he had been explicit in his instructions. Instead, they would be at Stoke in a matter of moments, almost as if the old coach had known its way home and driven them there of its own volition. The road here was too narrow to attempt to turn around; branches scraped the sides of the carriage as they passed. There was nothing for it, now, but to go on.
Without meaning to, he sent another hard look across the coach at Camellia, and she too slid back in her seat, notching her slight frame into the corner farthest from him, eyeing him as she would a mad dog.
Desperate for something to busy himself, he began to collect the scattered pages of her book, sorting and stacking them until they were neat, a ritual he had enacted countless times with a pack of cards. The paper fluttered in his shaking hands.
Never hold your cards during the game.
“I suppose the estate has been in your family for generations?” She was holding out the last few sheets in one hand and the silk ribbon in the other.
The ribbon slipped through her fingers as he pulled it toward him, a bright thread of connection across the chasm of the coach. “Stoke Abbey was a gift to my ancestor more than two hundred years ago, following the dissolution of the monasteries.”
“Ah, yes.” Her sigh was world weary. “Henry VIII. Ever so fond of claiming what wasn’t his.”
“I suppose you would include Ireland on his list of improper acquisitions.” History had never been Gabriel’s favorite subject, but his memory was impeccable—a blessing at the card tables, if a curse at other times. “Though strictly speaking, his predecessors had already acquired the land. He simply—”
“Named himself its king.” She accepted the bundle he had assembled and held it on her lap. “I’d say it still fits the pattern.”
Gabriel forced himself to look out the coach window. He had visited just twice since moving away, once on the anniversary of his father’s death, at his guardian’s insistence, and once to take official charge of the property when he had achieved his majority, at which point he had promptly put the estate’s management into the very capable hands of his steward.
Would this third return prove to be the final leave-taking? Or, with Camellia at his side, could it somehow be a homecoming?
“In half a mile, the abbey should be visible to the west,” he said. Without asking her permission, he shifted to sit beside her so they could keep watch together, though it was less a matter of wanting her to see his birthplace than of his being unwilling—unable—to face it alone.
The coach struggled to climb a rise, but when they reached its peak, the valley spread below them, undulating waves of green that would carry them to the splendid island at its center: Stoke Abbey. He heard Camellia draw in her breath before the carriage rattled on through a copse, along a stream. Seamlessly, the wilderness gave way to formal gardens and graveled drives. Generations of renovations and improvements had transformed a medieval monastery into a modern dwelling place, though it still retained much of its gothic character, with narrow leaded windows and flying buttresses supporting the long roof of the Great Hall.
In short order, they were rolling beneath a massive, ivy-covered arch into the courtyard. Had he announced his arrival—had he known of it himself—no doubt uniformed servants would have been turned out in two neat rows to flank the master as he entered, even if they would have to have been hired from the village for the occasion. No need to keep a full staff on hand; after all, three-quarters of Stoke had been unoccupied for twenty years. Only the east wing had a regular tenant, the steward having taken up residence there some time ago.
As if the thought had conjured the man into being, Gabriel spied John Hawthorne, a tanned, wiry, pewter-haired man of fifty, striding across the flagstones. With more eagerness than he had anticipated feeling, he reached past Camellia to open the carriage door.
She cringed, but not at his touch. “What—good God, what is that thing?” Her voice was a harsh whisper; all her breath seemed to be held captive in her lungs.
At Hawthorne’s heels plodded his mastiff. “A dog,” Gabriel said, hoping that, despite her fears, the answer might provide some reassurance, as the creature indeed looked like the sort of beast one’s imagination dredged up during a nightmare, with its loose jowls and massive build. “It’s a gentle breed. He wouldn’t harm a flea.”
“It’s not really the fleas I’m worried about.”
When the door swung open, he expected her to refuse to exit the coach, but she nodded once and stiffened her spine as if arming herself with his promise. Ducking through the door, he made certain to position himself between her and the dog as he helped her down, then extended a hand to the other man. “Hawthorne,” he exclaimed. “Well met! Miss Burke, may I introduce John Hawthorne, my steward?”
“This is certainly unexpected,” Hawthorne said. Dark eyes darted in Camellia’s direction before returning to Gabriel’s face. “But no matter, no matter. Glad to have you back at last. Miss Burke?” Hawthorne bowed and the dog sat, or rather sagged beneath the weight of its frame and its years.
“That cannot be Titan?” Gabriel marveled. At hearing his name, the dog tilted its enormous, graying head. The last time he had been at Stoke, Titan had been a pup. Not quite ten years had passed, but, like Finch men, mastiffs were not an especially long-lived breed.
“It is, it is,” Hawthorne
