Camellia lifted her head to look around the sun-dappled, book-filled space. “I like it. It’s cozy. And I am used to small houses, as you know. Though it must be a trial for poor Elf.”
At the sound of her name, the dog scrambled once more to her feet and came to join them, wedging her head into the already overstuffed chair. Camellia shifted slightly to make room for her but did not recoil.
“When did you cease to be afraid of dogs?” he asked.
“Who says I’m not?”
“Elf.” As if to lend support to his case, the dog, who would have sensed fear if there had been any, instead gave a blissful sigh.
Camellia reached out tentatively to touch one velvety ear. “I’m not over my fear, exactly. But when I told you the story of the dog in the park, I realized what I feared most was a memory. Not even my memory. One that had been created for me, built up over years and years, until I mistook it for my own.”
Gabriel weighed her words. Hadn’t he done the same? He had been hiding from his birthright, from his future, from love because he’d heard the story of his villainy so often, he’d come to believe it was true.
“I wonder what you would think of living at Stoke after we are married?” he asked after some time had passed.
Her hand reached up to cup his cheek. “I know now what that place is to you. Are you certain you want to do that?”
He met her steady, searching gaze, the eyes of the woman he loved. With Camellia at his side, he could take back his name, his life, his home. He recognized at last his father’s determination to protect his son’s inheritance. He understood at last the value of that gift.
But this decision was not only about him.
“It would be closer to your family,” he pointed out. “And if one is willing to side with Henry VIII, it’s where the Marquess—and Marchioness—of Ashborough belong. But most important, I can give you something there that I cannot give you here: a room of your own in which to write.”
She drew back in surprise, though he didn’t let her go far. “You want me to go on—?”
“Writing? Yes. If it makes you happy, yes.”
“But the household responsibilities… And—and—”
“Children? A distinct possibility,” he admitted, snugging their bodies closer together. When her lips pursed in a scolding frown, he kissed them. “I know you left Ireland in search of a quiet place to do your work,” he said, more seriously. “I also know something about the seclusion you believe you want. I’ve been alone—and lonely—all my life.”
A little knot of uncertainty formed between her brows, not quite hidden by her spectacles. Perhaps it was mirroring a similar expression on his own. Lifting her hand from his cheek, she smoothed her fingertips over his brow, just as she had done with Elf. He understood, suddenly, why the dog had groaned when she stopped.
“What you called independence, I thought of as isolation,” he explained. “But why must it be one or the other? Stoke Abbey’s an enormous place, my love. Surely we can create an island of peace for you amid the loving chaos of family.”
She gave him a rather skeptical look. But there was something else in her eyes, something he’d glimpsed there once before.
She was intrigued.
“We’ll create a private sanctuary, a writer’s retreat,” he promised. “Shall I write to Mr. Hawthorne and tell him he must give up my father’s study? It’s quite the nicest room in the house.”
Shifting slightly, she took his face between her hands and kissed him back. “Thank you,” she whispered. And went right on kissing him.
“Well,” Gabriel murmured teasingly against her lips, “you did seem to find the space…inspirational.”
A few moments later, with a rumbling canine sigh of resignation, Elf returned to the floor to finish off Remy’s shoe.
Author’s Note
The 1798 Rebellion in Ireland has been called “probably the most concentrated episode of violence in Irish history” (R.F. Foster, Modern Ireland: 1600–1972). Though most of the fighting was over in a matter of months, as many as 50,000 people are estimated to have died. At war with France, Britain was determined to prevent another uprising and brought Ireland more firmly under its control. The 1800 Act of Union abolished the Irish Parliament and created a new political entity: the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
In cartoons and elsewhere in the popular press, contemporaries caricatured the union as a “marriage.” Like most marriages of the time, it was an unequal match in terms of economics, rights, and power. Nevertheless, some writers saw potential in the metaphor, most notably Sydney Owenson (1781?–1859), the daughter of an Irish actor and an Englishwoman. Owenson saw herself as a cultural go-between, a hybrid of English and Irish identities; she even claimed to have been born while her mother was crossing the Irish Sea.
Owenson (after 1812, Lady Morgan) was a prolific writer and an outspoken advocate of many causes, but if she is known today, it is likely for The Wild Irish Girl: A National Tale, published in 1806. Owenson’s tale was so popular that in certain circles she was known by the name of its heroine, Glorvina. The book initiated an openly political subgenre of the novel of manners (a foremother of the modern romance novel). Typically in a “national tale,” an English hero travels through Ireland and learns to love the country and its people, as personified by the Irish heroine. It is to that little-known literary tradition that I pay homage with my creation of Camellia Burke and her novel, The Wild Irish Rose.
Keep reading for a sneak peek at
The Duke’s Suspicion
The next in the
Rogues & Rebels series
Coming soon from
Susanna Craig
and
Lyrical Press
Chapter 1
As dark clouds rolled over the Cumbrian sky and thunder rumbled in the distance, Erica Burke realized
