When he said nothing in reply, she decided he too must have fallen asleep.
Sometime later, whether hours or minutes she could not say, she heard the rattle of a door. Before she had time to decide what to do, footsteps bounded up the back stairs and a figure loomed in the doorway.
“Cami? Is that you?” Paris’s voice. Then, “What in the hell are you about?”
She scrambled to her feet, and behind her, Gabriel rose, his motions so swift and smooth and silent, she wondered if he had really been awake all this time. “My lord, may I introduce my brother, Mr. Burke?” she managed to say. “Paris, this is the Marquess of Ashborough. He has been kind enough to bring me all the way from London.”
“Burke,” Gabriel said in his deep voice, stepping forward, hand extended, as to an equal.
Paris, however, did not accept his hand. “You’re English.” Even in the darkened room, she could see the glitter of hatred in his eyes.
“So is our mother,” she reminded him.
“How dare you touch my sister?” Paris demanded, ignoring her.
“That’s enough, Paris,” she snapped, stepping between them. “How dare you leave Erica to manage alone? And Galen—”
The question softened him slightly. “Is he all right?”
“Of course not. It’s a miracle he didn’t lose his leg. Sir Owen Sydney came this afternoon. He’ll never walk without a limp, if he walks at all. And you left him—”
“If I’d left him,” Paris countered, jerking his chin a notch higher, “he be dead in a ditch outside Rathmines where the horse threw him. And if I’d stayed here with him, you might soon have had the militia breaking down your door.”
“My God,” she breathed. “What have you—?”
Paris held up a hand to stop her. Behind them, she heard Gabriel rattle a tinderbox; then a light flared to life, casting shadows across her brother’s face and its hard lines of dirt and grief and hate. “Not another word. Not in front of him.”
Gabriel calmly continued to light candles until the room’s darkness had been driven back. “I’ll excuse myself,” he said, coming to stand beside her. “Unless Camellia wants me to stay.”
She had never wanted anything more. But Paris’s fierce expression belonged to a man she hardly knew. “Go on,” she choked past the sudden knot in her throat. “I’ll be fine.”
Gabriel searched her face, then nodded and was gone. Hardly had he crossed the threshold before her brother bit out, “Ashborough? Not the man who was going to marry our cousin?”
“No,” Cami said without thinking. “I mean, yes. But he’s not marrying her now. And he’s not marrying me either, lest you get any ideas.”
“I should say not, Cam,” he declared. “I’d have thought you’d learned your lesson there.”
Her hand itched to slap him, as she would’ve done when they were young. But though he stood just half a head taller than she, the man before her now, darkly handsome and coldly arrogant, was clearly beyond her reach.
“Tell me what’s happened,” she said instead, leading him to a chair.
“Everything’s botched,” he declared, polishing off the tumbler of whiskey still sitting on their father’s desk. “I knew of the plans, of course. The idea was to seize the mail coaches as a sign for the rest of the country to rise. Then someone else swore it was off. Do you think I’d have let our parents leave town if I’d thought the rebellion was about to begin? I’d have been asleep in my bed if I hadn’t got word that Galen had sneaked off to join in the fray.” He shook his head, his expression a mixture of pride and disapproval. “Well, it was pretty much chaos. Dublin went out like a damp squib. But it seems the embers are still burning in the surrounding counties. I’ve just got word from Wexford—”
“Wexford?” The Nugents’ estate lay in that county to the south of Dublin. “Where Mama and Papa are?”
He nodded soberly. “The people there fought back and cut the militia down. It might be just the spark we need to set the whole country ablaze,” he added, his face animated with a grim sort of energy. “Dublin Castle is scared.”
“So am I.” She got to her feet and began to pace. What might become of her parents, trapped in the center of the fighting? What might become of them all? “If it’s known you’re involved, you shouldn’t have come home,” she told him. “You’ll bring this war right to our doorstep.”
“I had to come,” he insisted, catching her hand as she passed. “Henry Edgeworth was shot. He’s…he’s gone, Cam.”
Tears stung in her eyes, but she refused to close them. Still, her mind conjured the image of Erica’s face when she learned of her intended’s fate. “Oh, Paris.”
“Thank God you’re here,” he said, squeezing her fingers.
And then she did allow her eyelids to drop, for she understood he meant for her to deliver the news to their sister. After blinking back her tears, she searched his dark eyes. “Is this really what you wanted?”
“It means freedom,” he reminded her. “For us. For Ireland.”
One of Róisín’s brothers would have said as much. Oh, how had she ever imagined that a mere book could change the stubborn hearts of men?
Cami shook her head and released his hand. “It means death.”
Chapter 20
Gabriel made his way upstairs, but not before overhearing Camellia’s sharp retort to her brother: He’s not marrying me, either.
Was it the truth? There’d been no discussion of marriage between them, certainly, beyond his own insistence that he couldn’t marry anyone. He knew the source of his own hesitation, but
