Gabriel stepped toward the table
Burke drew back, still suspicious. Moving closer, Camellia whispered, “Don’t. It would—it would be treason.”
He understood, then, the source of her concern. It was a gamble, certainly. Enough to condemn him—if he were not already condemned. Thinking again of the smattering of scars on her leg, the risks she’d taken for others, he thrust out his hand. Wasn’t it time someone took a gamble for her?
“I’ll try to break the code for you, Burke, on two conditions. First, you must swear to use whatever information the documents contain to disengage, not to take more lives. And second, after you deliver the message to your leaders, you must return to your family and keep them safe. For you, this war is over.”
Still, Paris hesitated. Camellia laid her fingertips on Gabriel’s outstretched arm.
“If no one finds out what’s in those papers,” Erica reminded her brother in a brittle voice, “Henry will have died in vain.”
Slowly, Paris gathered the papers and handed them to Gabriel.
Camellia’s fingers fell away. Without looking at him, at any of them, she turned and walked from the room.
* * * *
Upstairs, she entered the room she shared with Erica and threw herself down on her bed. Gabriel had already put himself in danger for her. But this…? She should stop him, of course. Except that if he succeeded, he’d made Paris swear to leave the rebellion. A tremor passed through her, and unshed tears burned in her throat and eyes. If she let Gabriel risk his neck, Paris’s might be saved.
She had not intended to fall asleep, but she must’ve, for she jerked awake when Erica entered the room. The gray light at the window told her nothing about how much time had passed.
“What—? How long—?” She scrambled upright, shoving hair away from her face.
Erica caught her hand, laid it on the coverlet, and began to smooth Cami’s wayward locks with gentle fingers. “It’s afternoon. Lord Ashborough insisted you be allowed to sleep. But I thought you would want to know that Galen is propped up in bed, drinking a bit of broth. The swelling has gone down. His toes are warm.”
“Oh, thank God.” The physician’s most dire prediction had been loss of circulation in the limb. Without proper blood flow, Galen might have lost his leg. “I should—I must go to him.” Erica moved aside so she could rise. Hand on the door, Cami stopped, remembering. “And—and Paris?”
“Gone to deliver a message to the Society. He vowed to be back by nightfall. Back to stay.”
“Lord Ashborough did it, then? He cracked the code?”
Erica nodded. “He did. It was—it was really quite amazing to watch him. His mind doesn’t work like other people’s. He sees patterns—like a man playing chess who knows every move his opponent will make before the game even begins.” Her voice fairly glowed with undisguised admiration. “It’s a remarkable gift—”
“Yes, well, it’s a gift he uses to gamble at cards, Erica,” she snapped uncharitably. “He sees others’ weaknesses and turns them to his advantage.”
Erica tipped her head as she searched Cami’s face. “Ah, I see. And you never did want anyone to see your weaknesses.”
She recoiled. Was her sister right? Was she acting out of fear not for Gabriel, but for herself? Certainly she’d made herself uncharacteristically vulnerable where he was concerned.
Setting her jaw, she marched to Galen’s room and found him just as Erica had said. Molly was with him, trying to spoon broth into his mouth, while Galen protested he could feed himself. Stubborn. Just like a Burke. Cami scolded him, dismissed the maid, and took over the task herself.
Though he was clearly improved from the day before, the effort of eating, combined with his pain, drained him, and in half an hour he was settling in to sleep again. As she was leaving the room, she spied Gabriel’s bag in the corner and carried it out with her. Whatever the perils to her own heart, it was dangerous for him to dally here, amid the chaos of the rebellion. If she loved him, and she did, she was going to have to find a way to say good-bye.
Back in her own room, she rummaged among her things until she found the tattered pages of The Wild Irish Rose, bound with the red silk ribbon. Róisín’s tale was still incomplete—not because she did not know how it ended, she realized suddenly, but because she had not been able to make herself write the words. Now, though, it was time to face what came next. Carefully, she tucked the manuscript into Gabriel’s bag. Would he destroy it, and the scandalous portrayal of him contained in its pages? Or would he cherish it as a memento of their days together?
Either way, it was now his story, as much as hers.
On the landing, she paused to listen to the sounds of a tea party coming from the sitting room, Daphne, Bellis, and…Gabriel. If only the world could see the man she knew. This man.
She stepped to the doorway, keeping the valise out of sight. “May I have a word?”
Gabriel rose from the floor, careful not to overturn the tiny tea table. “Is everything all right, Camellia?”
In this house, she had always only been Cami. It was how she’d come to think of herself. Until Gabriel had reminded her how beautiful her name could be.
She backed into the corridor without answering, and he followed. She knew the exact moment his eyes spied the bag she carried. “What’s this?”
“You said you’d stay until I asked you to go.”
As he looked from the bag to her face, she watched his features harden. “And you’re asking.”
“Gabriel, please.” She held up one hand, not quite laying it against his chest. “It was dangerous for you even to come to Dublin. In English eyes, the
