He made no objection when she stopped from time to time to study a painting, picking out the features that had become his, a strong nose here, thin lips there, a Scottish ancestor with ginger hair that had likely lent Gabriel’s that hint of copper when the light touched it.
He made no comment, either, until they came to a large portrait that looked, from the subjects’ clothing, to have been completed sometime near the middle of the current century. A man in a powdered wig, a woman with a powdered face, and two somber-eyed boys in short pants, who looked to be about five years old. “My father and my uncle were twins, as you see, born just a few minutes apart. Identical, though by the time they were grown men, even a brief acquaintance would have enabled you to tell them apart.”
“I suspect it would have been more difficult when they were young,” Cami said, looking from one face to the other. Even the artist had struggled, falling back on the traditional symbolism—the heir standing beside his father, the other brother kneeling at his mother’s feet—to differentiate them.
“Impossible,” Gabriel agreed. “At least, according to my uncle, who claims to this day that he was in fact the elder, stripped of what was rightfully his by a careless nursemaid.”
She sucked in a breath. “Could he have been right?”
“No one else ever thought it likely.” His fingers tightened around hers. “But he let it drive him mad.”
She had met the man and knew it was not an idle remark. Now she searched for signs of that madness in the haunting eyes that bored through her from the canvas. “They both look…forgive me…rather unwell.”
“They were not expected to survive their infancy. Born too soon, as sometimes happens with twins. Both of them suffered from chest complaints. My uncle still has weak lungs. And this,” he said, gazing down the shadowy gallery, “is not the sort of house that invites boys to run and play and outgrow their childhood ailments.”
With a tug on her hand, he urged her away from the family portrait. “Now, as for your story. I do indeed have a cruel uncle, and had I been entrusted to his care—well, I would probably be dead.” A chill shuddered through her, and he released her long enough to shrug out of his coat and lay it over her shoulders before taking her hand again, almost as if he expected at some point to have to keep her from running away from what he had to tell. “When my father died, Uncle Finch was desperate to find some way of disinheriting me and restoring what he saw as his title and lands. Whether my father believed him capable of murder, I do not know, but he made explicit provision for my guardianship in his will. I was immediately sent to live with Sir William Hicks, my mother’s brother, a man of some property in Lancashire. Unlike your Granville, I was in fact raised by the soul of kindness and generosity. After my father’s funeral, I saw little of my Uncle Finch until I was a grown man, though his son and I were at school together. So I do not think a cruel uncle an adequate excuse for your villain’s scurrilous behavior. At least, my uncles bear no responsibility for what I am.”
Cami was tempted to protest. Of course a child’s experiences shaped his character. So far as she could see, he had been influenced by both his uncles. He was kinder and more generous than he would admit, but he had also been affected by the threats from his father’s brother. How could he not?
He paused now before a portrait of a young woman, whose dark blond hair and light eyes gave no hint at her relationship to Gabriel. Cami would have called it an ordinary picture, but for the dusty black crape draped around the frame, which made a haunting impression. Their movement had stirred the air, making the crape sway slightly, like something out of a horrid novel. The effect was complete when he spoke in his deep voice. “My first victim.”
“Your mother?” Cami whispered, not daring to look at him.
“She died in childbirth. My birth.”
“A tragedy,” she said, tightening her grip on his hand. “But not your fault.”
He reached up with his free hand and tugged down the ancient black fabric, which disintegrated in his fingers. “Tell that to my father.”
They left the gallery through the doors on the opposite end and descended another curved stair, two flights this time, and into what she thought must be the east wing of the abbey. She knew she would never find her way back to her room on her own, knew also that she must not hope he would accompany her there. Gabriel, however, strode down the corridor with the confidence of a man who walked these halls daily, rather than someone who had not set foot in them in years.
At the midpoint, he stopped before a door on their left. “My father’s study,” he said, and opened the door to show her in. Gabriel lit a few candles, revealing a large room, but not overlarge, without either the dining room’s soaring ceilings or the drawing room’s ornate furniture. Comfortable. He knelt at the hearth to set fire to the kindling and logs that had already been laid.
Perhaps someone had guessed he would come to this room, after all.
The room bore no signs of disuse; no dust marred the tabletops and the air was not stale. During the day, it would probably be quite a cheery space, with tall windows overlooking the valley in which the abbey was nestled, just visible in the dusky twilight.
“Sit,” he said, motioning her to a chair near the hearth while he seated himself in the center of a small sofa, facing
