Page 21 of The Companion’s Secret

Uncle Finch favored him with a bitter stare that he managed, after a moment, to twist into a condescending smile. “If the shoe fits, Gabriel. Alas,” he said, crossing his hands over the knob of his walking stick, “the charges I have heard laid at your door are not quite so damning. Rumor has it you were vulgar enough to seek admittance to Lady Montlake’s ballroom without an invitation. And there are those who claim you intend to offer for some poor innocent girl, merely in hopes of depriving Julian of his rightful inheritance.” Between each accusation, his uncle paused to wheeze out one useless breath and replace it with another.

“Rightful—?” Fox sputtered. Gabriel gave an almost imperceptible shake of the head to silence him.

“It would seem the girl’s family has forgotten your…history.”

“Forgotten?” Gabriel brushed an imaginary speck of lint from his sleeve. Given the frequency with which his uncle had denounced him as a murderer over the last twenty years, the charge ought to have lost its sting. But it had not. “I very much doubt it can have escaped anyone’s recollection, given how you persist in bringing it up.”

His uncle shrugged. “Society has a regrettably short memory. Someone must refresh it from time to time. Although really,” he added, “all my efforts seem to have been perfectly unnecessary. You have always been determined to prove me right about you.”

Gabriel could feel his anger rising, and Fox must have sensed it. “Let’s go, Ash. I cannot think you will wish to be seen engaging in a family squabble in full view of every shop on Oxford Street.”

With a cold bow to his uncle, Gabriel agreed. “Yes. Unless you’ve something more original and interesting, Uncle Finch, I’ll be on my way.”

Before his uncle could gather the strength to rasp out a reply, Gabriel began to walk in the direction of St. James’s. Footsteps scuffed behind him—one set, and by the lightness of their tread, they belonged to Fox. Still, he did not slow his stride. In another moment, he would have done the thing he had been longing to do since he was ten years old: smash his fist into his uncle’s face.

When he reached his rooms, Gabriel opened the door himself, swinging it inward with such force that it struck the wall behind and shuddered almost closed again. Remington stopped its motion with one hand and studied the mark its handle had made on the wallpaper. “All right, then?”

“No.” His hat sliced through the air and landed on a nearby table. “I just had the dubious pleasure of an encounter with my Uncle Finch on Oxford Street. He’s up to something. See what you can find out. Anything…useful, you understand?”

Remy nodded once, not a hint of surprise in his face. In all his years with Gabriel, he had been asked to perform tasks far outside a manservant’s normal sphere of duty, many of them unsavory. And he had never blinked at any of them. On occasion, Gabriel wondered what it would take to shock him.

Without pausing to remove his greatcoat, he marched down the corridor to his study. Fox found him there a moment later. “Killing the king? You cannot seriously believe your uncle would make such an accusation,” he demanded, breathless from the pace Gabriel had set.

“God knows what he has up his sleeve.”

Gabriel had not realized he was pacing until Fox stepped into his path and brought him up short. “But you also cannot deny you have helped him blacken your reputation over the years. For the sake of your future, then, isn’t it time to move ahead with your plans to turn over a new leaf?”

Fox was right, of course. Whatever Gabriel’s desires where a certain lady’s companion was concerned, he must put them aside in favor of the only proper match he was ever likely to make—and with it, the hope of saving Stoke and its people from future devastation. Better his bollocks than his neck in a noose.

Without replying, Gabriel turned and strode back toward the window.

“I am fully prepared to stand before you at the altar, if you will have me, and celebrate the union of my oldest and dearest friend to a woman worthy of his regard,” Fox vowed, his solemnity entirely in keeping with his future as a clergyman. Gabriel did not doubt his sincerity.

But the earnest note in his voice—Gabriel might have been tempted to call it longing—forced Gabriel to meet his friend’s eyes. What he saw there sliced open his veins as neatly as the bloodletter’s lance. He thought of Fox walking with Felicity, talking with Felicity, dancing with Felicity. Oh, from a practical standpoint it was a perfectly ineligible match: a younger son could not afford to fall in love with a dowerless girl. But love was not a practical matter. Or so Gabriel had heard.

Fox was willing to give up a woman for whom he obviously was coming to care deeply. Give her up for Gabriel. For a man who did not deserve such a woman—or such a friend.

“From here on out, though, I expect you to be on your best behavior,” Fox concluded. “Felicity Trenton is a lady, Ash. So you must be a gentleman.”

“For once,” added Gabriel wryly. Compared to Fox’s sacrifice, it was a trivial request, really. It was only giving up a flirtation in which it was ridiculous to indulge.

It would go badly for him and rather worse for Miss Burke if he should offer anything more.

His feet once more began to wear a path across the rug. For the first time since he had rented these rooms, the moment he had been of age and legally entitled to do so, the flat felt like a prison to him.

Remington backed into the room carrying the breakfast tray. “When you have finished with the other matter,” Gabriel said to him, “see that the Grosvenor Square house is opened and prepare to move us there at the earliest opportunity.”

The tray clattered onto the desktop. “You—you mean to—to relocate to Finch House?” Remy stammered.

“Rented rooms are an appalling waste of money when a man owns several perfectly good homes,” he said, echoing the words his trustee had spoken to him on the morning of his twenty-first birthday, as he had handed over the last of Gabriel’s dreadful inheritance. Finch House was an elegant, luxurious townhouse nestled in the heart of the beau monde—entirely out of keeping with the life he lived. Gabriel had resolutely refused to occupy it.

But orchestrating a campaign to thumb his nose at his uncle and take his rightful place in society would benefit from a proper base of operations. The home of a gentleman. “And besides, I cannot very well bring my bride here.”

At that announcement, Remy positively goggled.

“That’s the spirit.” Fox clapped Gabriel on the back. “I shall rejoice to see you settled at last. And on the way to restoring the thing fate stole from you all those years ago.”

Gabriel hesitated. “And what would that be?”