They were passing Uncle Merrick’s study at that very moment, and Cami could not help but catch the sound of voices. A familiar voice. Not raised, but clearly angry.
“I would have succeeded, you know, if not for your interference.” The speaker hesitated between phrases, as if his lungs were too weak to draw a full breath.
“I would not call it success, sir, if threats were needed to get the votes.” Her uncle’s voice, considerably calmer.
“But it was you, was it not, who put it about to the papers? His—his philanthropy?” He spat out the word. “Well, it doesn’t mean he’s not a rat. A rat with a guilty conscience.”
Felicity tried to urge her to continue down the corridor, but Cami’s feet felt glued in place.
“Five thousand pounds to St. Luke’s,” the rough voice continued, “with the promise they’d never reveal his name. Now, what I’d like to know is how you found out about it.”
“I had a letter.”
Cami’s heart leaped. She knew her uncle must be referring to her letter, in which she’d told him what Mr. Hawthorne had said. From the sounds of things, it had helped to sway opinion in Gabriel’s favor and thwart his uncle’s plot.
“Hmph. Anonymous, I suppose.” Before she and Felicity could move, the door flew open and Lord Sebastian Finch stomped through, leaning heavily on his cane. “Out of the way, girl. You?” He caught sight of Cami as he passed, and now paused to look her up and down. “This is your niece, isn’t it, Merrick? Your Irish niece?”
Her uncle now stepped into the doorway, and a smile warmed his blue eyes, so like his daughter’s. “Why, Camellia. This is a pleasant surprise. Welcome back.”
“So you’re the one my nephew took to Dublin, eh?”
Cami snagged her lip between her teeth, while her uncle’s eyes widened at this revelation and Felicity looked down at her hands.
“Didn’t think I’d know, did you?” Lord Sebastian sneered. “But the coach came from Finch House, and there are those who remain loyal to me.”
Oh, that ill-fated journey. Why, why had Gabriel ever undertaken it?
But she knew the answer to that question now. The terrible, wonderful answer.
He had done it for her.
Lord Sebastian crossed his hands over his cane. “Strange place for an Englishman to be, on the eve of a rebellion.”
“What are you insinuating, Finch?” Uncle Merrick demanded.
Cami, however, had already begun to put together the scattered pieces of the man’s puzzling words. It sounded as if he hoped to find a way to associate Gabriel with the rebellion, to implicate him in something illegal, as he had, thank God, apparently failed to do with the assassination attempt on the king.
Only this time, as she well knew, his talk of treason would be true.
“And then there’s that story everyone’s blathering on about,” Lord Sebastian continued, “The Irish Something—”
“The Wild Irish Rose?” Felicity chimed in. Only sheer force of will kept the gasp of shock from passing Cami’s lips. “Oh, isn’t it thrilling?”
“It’s dreck, girl,” he declared, thumping his cane against the floor for emphasis. “But there’s a character in it who seems more than a little familiar. Almost as if the author had a close, personal acquaintance with such a villain…” He sized Cami up once more. “An Irish writer, of course. Has to be. And likely a woman…”
“Enough, Finch. Surely you’re not suggesting my niece is acquainted with the person who penned a popular work of fiction, merely because they are both Irish?” Her uncle glanced her way, and with the eye farthest from Lord Sebastian, out of that man’s line of vision, he gave a slow wink. Again, she fought to keep her reaction from showing on her face. “Or that your nephew is somehow involved with the United Irishmen? Have done with your tiresome theories about Ashborough. They grow wilder than The Wild Irish Rose.” Lord Sebastian scowled, but Uncle Merrick’s expression remained remarkably pleasant. “Won’t you let me walk you out?”
With another smile of welcome for Cami, he motioned her and Felicity down the corridor while ushering his unwelcome guest in the opposite direction.
In another moment, she found herself in Aunt Merrick’s sitting room. “Well,” Felicity said as she seated herself, “that was an odd encounter.”
“Yes,” Cami agreed, taking a chair. Her head whirled with the strange and surprising things she’d heard, along with a few new questions. She decided to begin at the beginning. “I gather you knew that Lord Ashborough took me to Dublin?”
“Of course. I sent him after you. I could not let you travel alone.”
Cami parted her lips to reply, though she could not think what to say. The cousin who had worried over her reputation on the public stage had thought her safer in the hands of a notorious rake?
“Oh, Camellia,” Felicity said with a laugh, “I suppose you thought you were keeping a great secret, but if you could have seen your eyes every time the man spoke to you.” She shook her head in a mock scold, and her golden curls caught the room’s primrose-tinted light. “He was relieved, I think, not to have to make me an offer. But you could have knocked me over with a feather when he wrote a letter for Papa and in it—why, what do you suppose?” Cami shook her head. “He agreed to waive Stephen’s debt and restore my dowry.”
She had known of the former provision, of course, but not the latter, even more generous, one. “On condition of your father’s assistance with the treason charge, I suppose,” she said, thinking of Lord Sebastian’s complaint.
Felicity’s lips lifted in a small smile. “Papa was grateful, to be sure. But no. He asked only that my father be willing to consider an honorable suitor for my hand: Mr. Fox.” From the sparkle in her
