Mr. Hawthorne shook his head. “Then others must fight for him. If it comes to that, I’ve got proof aplenty he’s not the man they believe him to be.”
“What sort of proof?”
“Why, the estate records alone will show he’s a good master, a responsible landowner—better, I’d wager, than many of them.” He turned and plucked up one of the ledgers from his desk. “Take a look.”
Warily, Cami accepted the baize-covered book. At first, she was not certain of the significance of what she was seeing. Estate records, of course. Investments. Improvements. Eventually, the orderly columns of figures revealed to her the extraordinary care that had been taken of a place many said had been abandoned.
“And then there’s this.” He stabbed at the facing page with a stumpy finger.
Her eyes flicked up and down over a tally of donations. Sizable donations. To foundling hospitals, orphanages, charity schools. And one particularly large sum to St. Luke’s Hospital in London, a reform-minded institution that had been established in recent decades to counter the infamous exploitation of the poor inmates at Bethlehem Hospital—Bedlam, as it was commonly known.
“Orphans and madmen, he wanted to help. Said he knew something o’ that.” Wordlessly, she returned the book to him, and he set it on the desk with the others. “If good works count for aught, he’s done his bit and then some. Why, he told me last night that so long as he was here, he wanted me to help him find a way to go on getting money to them, just in case something happened to him.”
It seemed Gabriel’s gambling had put something on the positive side of the ledger, after all. But would it be enough to change people’s minds about him? It did not explicitly counter his uncle’s claim.
“Will you help me, Mr. Hawthorne? Help me persuade him to go back and speak in his own defense?”
“And leave you to go haring off to Dublin by yourself?” He shook his head. “Sorry, ma’am. It won’t work. Ashborough’s always been one to protect what’s his. Since he was a lad.”
His.
Always before, she had recoiled at such notions of possession. But now, the word lit a spark inside her. If she was his, then he was equally hers. This time, she would rescue him.
And she would do it the way she did anything. With her pen.
“Very well, Mr. Hawthorne,” she said, rising. “Will I find paper and ink in that desk? I’ve a letter to write, and I’ll trust you to get it into the proper hands.”
Chapter 19
Gabriel gripped the ship’s rail more tightly. “Is the Irish Sea always this rough?” he asked, looking out over the churning gray water as dusk fell.
“No,” she said, her eyes scanning the horizon for the first glimpse of the Bay of Dublin. “Sometimes it’s worse.”
Once more, he was headed in the opposite direction from that in which he should have been traveling. But…no. Not really. In the process of telling his story, he’d realized he still wanted—needed—to fight his uncle. To fight for Stoke and claim what was his, the good he’d done, along with the bad.
None of it would matter, however, if he could not find some way to share it with Camellia.
She had said very little about his insistence on accompanying her to Ireland. Had said very little at all, in fact. When the coach had rolled into the courtyard at Stoke Abbey, horses fresh and prancing, she had stepped out neatly dressed and freshly combed, no sign of the passionate woman who’d ridden him to exhaustion the night before. After thanking Mrs. Neville, she’d shaken John Hawthorne’s hand, then, to Gabriel’s astonishment, patted placid Titan on his broad head before accepting his help, though the merest brush of hands, as she climbed into the carriage.
They’d arrived in Holyhead in time to catch the last packet, just as she’d hoped. All the berths had been taken, but she had insisted that the stifling air of a cabin would make her seasick anyway. As the ship battled through the waves for hours and darkness fell, he’d been content to stand quietly with her, facing down the spray, wondering what they would find at journey’s end. “We’re lucky the packet wasn’t delayed,” he said, breaking a long silence. “I overheard some passengers telling of another crossing, when they were forced to wait several days for a favorable wind.”
“On any map I’ve seen, the Irish Sea looks to be an insignificant body of water. Especially, I suppose, to people who have built great empires across oceans,” she added, her words almost lost to the noise of wind and waves. “Certainly England has never seemed to regard it as much of a barrier to their desires, despite its hazards.”
“Ireland’s ties with France cannot help but make Britons nervous, especially in a time of war. The island are too close, with too much shared history,” he added, thinking of her disdain for Henry VIII, “for them to be completely separate.”
“Proximity is not propinquity,” she countered. “The countries—their languages, cultures, religions—are too different to be successfully joined.”
“Hence the tragedy of Granville and Róisín.” For a long moment, he said nothing more, weighing her argument. “But if Granville were different… What was it you said? If he could be transformed from a stranger to a friend…”
In the light of a rising moon, the silvery rims of Camellia’s spectacles seemed to send out sparks as she shook her head. “It would not be enough. Róisín has learned the value of her independence. And she is determined to keep it.”
When they reached the harbor, Gabriel was at some pains to find a hackney willing to carry them into the center of the city. Though he had never been to Dublin before, he felt certain the streets were not usually so quiet, especially in the hours past dawn. An uneasy, unsettling sort
