She was warm. Flesh and blood. Real.
“Gabriel?” As usual her green eyes were scouring him from head to toe.
At the questioning note in her voice, he gave a self-deprecating laugh, rose to his feet, and led her around the dog and into the room. “When did you return to town?”
“Only yesterday.” She was clad in one of her plain, loose-fitting dresses. Remy must already have relieved her of her pelisse and gloves and bonnet.
“Alone?”
To his relief, she shook her head. “Erica is with me. She was eager to leave Dublin.”
“Understandably so.” He gestured her to a chair and returned to his own. “Is she otherwise well?”
The question required more reflection than he had expected. “I—I am not entirely certain. Erica is my sister, and dear to me, but she and I have never…” She paused again. “I am not in her confidence.”
“I see.” It was Gabriel’s turn to hesitate. “And you? Are you well?”
“I hardly know that, either.” Her voice acquired a sharper edge. “Over the past six weeks, I have been torturing myself, thinking what might have become of you.” He’d been torturing himself, too, trying not to think of her and certain she had not been thinking of him. “I made myself picture you with my cousin,” she said, and he could tell by the uncomfortable set of her jaw precisely what that picture had entailed. “I even told myself you must be dead. I thought I had imagined every conceivable scenario. I did not, however, picture you cozy at home with a dog.”
Hawthorne had foisted the mastiff pup on him when he’d passed by Stoke on his way back to London, insisting Gabriel would benefit from the responsibility of caring for her, as well as from the canine devotion he would receive in return. Whether the steward had been right was a secret Gabriel intended to carry to his grave.
Realizing she was the topic of conversation, Elf paused in her destruction of the shoe, looked from one to the other of them, then heaved herself to her overlarge feet and came to lay her head on Camellia’s knee. Gabriel reacted swiftly to spare her, leaning forward to pull the dog away, but to his shock, Camellia laid her palm on Elf’s head and smoothed the wrinkled skin there.
“I met Mr. Fox today,” she continued, and her voice seemed to him to have lost some of its sharp edge. “He was walking his dogs on Hampstead Heath, near where Erica and I have taken a house.”
“Was it he who brought you here?” Gabriel asked in genuine surprise. Fox could be a stickler for propriety, and it was most improper for a lady to call on a gentleman—to say nothing of bearding a rogue in his den.
“No. He took me to Trenton House to see Felicity. I came away with a great deal of information.” That, Gabriel suspected, was a bit of an understatement. “From there I walked to Grosvenor Square, but the butler at Finch House insisted you were not at home. I had not yet decided what step I should take next, when your downstairs parlor maid—a French girl by the name of Adele—whispered to me I might find you here.” She paused. “Is she the one? Did you manage to help her once more?”
“Remy did it, actually. By the time I returned to London, he’d rounded up proof she could not have been involved in the assassination attempt. After that, it was no great matter to secure her release.”
“And to clear your name as well.”
“Yes.” Though the resolution to his uncle’s threat had been rather anti-climactic, the thought of what might have happened still had the power to make him wake in a cold sweat. Or perhaps that was simply a consequence of waking alone. “Of course, that was not all I had to do in town. You had given me a commission to execute.”
“You refer, I suppose, to taking The Wild Irish Rose to Mr. Dawkins. But I had not considered it a commission.”
Without conscious thought, he reached into his coat pocket and rubbed his fingertips over the length of silk ribbon he had secreted there. “Perhaps not. Still, Dawkins was glad to have it.” It had required all Gabriel’s strength to part from the pages over which she had labored, however. “He told me he considered it an ideal test for his new publishing method.”
Her eyes were fixed on the motion of her own thumb, stroking the dog’s short fur along the line where the black mask of her face met the tan of her body. Elf gave a blissful groan, and a damp spot began to form on Camellia’s knee beneath the dog’s drooping jowls. After a moment, Camellia said, “What if the story provides society with fresh proof that what your uncle says about you is true?”
“Because of Granville, you mean?” He made a scoffing sound in his throat. “People see what they wish to see. And in any case, it’s only a story, as someone once told me. It’s hardly proof of a crime. A solicitor’s daughter ought to know that.”
“Your uncle knows you were in Dublin, however. What if it’s also discovered you were aiding and abetting the United Irishmen? Oh, Gabriel.” Her whole body sagged. “Why did you do it? The trip, the code, the book…”
“Why did you send me away?” he countered.
“Because I was afraid,” she said, her voice raw in its honesty. “Because I could not bear to have you take more risks and make more sacrifices.” Briefly, her hand stopped its motion. “Because I love you.”
His breath caught in his chest. “Ah. Then you understand.” Withdrawing his hand from his pocket, he echoed her movement, fingering a seam in the leather of the chair’s rolled arm. “And because I love you, I could not bear it if your story were never told.”
“Róisín’s story,” she corrected swiftly. “Ireland’s story.”
“Your story.” He pushed himself forward in his chair, drawing her eyes with the movement.
