The Companion's Secret. Susanna Craig

not to display disappointment that his lot had fallen to the companion. As a means of assessing a man’s character, it was not much to go on, but Cami decided in his favor nonetheless.

      Before she could speak again, however, her thoughts were interrupted by a snippet of the others’ conversation.

      “Lady Montlake’s ball?” Her cousin sounded as if the event was quite unfamiliar to her, although Cami recalled having received the card a week or more ago. “I don’t know….”

      “Oh? I understood from your father that you planned to attend.”

      The merest hint of reproach edged Lord Ashborough’s velvety baritone. Lady Merrick spoke sharply, with a scowl for her daughter. “Of course we do. We will account it a pleasure to see you there, my lord.”

      “Ah, wonderful. Then I insist on being allowed to claim a set, Lady Felicity.” Lord Ashborough’s voice dropped lower still, the tone of a lover coaxing a promise.

      Felicity swallowed visibly, as if words of refusal had risen in her throat but dared not be spoken. Poor girl. “I—I would be honored, your lordship,” she forced herself to say.

      The contrarian in Cami wondered why beggars must be expected to forgo the dignity of choice. And why women were so often required to beg.

      “A beautiful day, is it not?” Mr. Fox ventured.

      Realizing she had been caught eavesdropping, Cami turned squarely toward him. She had been dragged here for her conversation, so converse she would. And if Aunt Merrick did not like the tenor of her questions, so be it. Someone had to ask them.

      “How long have you known Lord Ashborough, Mr. Fox?” She felt uncomfortably aware of the man of whom she spoke, although he had not looked in her direction since she had sat down.

      Mr. Fox warmed immediately to her choice of subject. “Oh, always, it seems. We met at school.” The wistful note in his voice called up an image of a boy beloved by all, bestowing the favor of his friendship on the less fortunate. But his next words whisked Cami’s mental picture away. “Ash was so terribly alone. So terribly miserable.” He gave a slow shake of his head. “I had my elder brothers to look after me, and so I—well, I took it upon myself to look after Ash.”

      Even with the imagination of an artist, Cami was unequal to the task of envisioning a young Lord Ashborough shunned by his peers and a boyish Mr. Fox as his champion. “Have you sisters too, Mr. Fox?” she managed to ask. “Or only a surfeit of brothers?”

      A wrinkle of uncertainty creased his brow at her turn of phrase, but his gray eyes sparked with good humor. “One sister, Miss Burke. Two brothers. All older than I, all married—and all quite eager to offer their opinions as a consequence. Especially the eldest,” he added, “although my sister Victoria gives him a run for it. And you?”

      “Three sisters, Mr. Fox, and two brothers. All younger. And I am quite sure, were they here, they would tell you I am the very model of a managing, opinionated eldest sister,” she added, nudging her spectacles up to the bridge of her nose to underscore the point.

      Mr. Fox smiled and glanced toward her cousin. “You are fortunate in Lady Felicity’s company, then, or else you would miss them more than you already must. Are they all still in—in Ireland, then?”

      She nodded. Despite her aunt’s repeated…recommendation, she’d made no effort to disguise the telling lilt in her voice. “In Dublin, yes. My father is a solicitor there.” Another detail Lady Merrick would have preferred her to hide; the notion of having a brother-in-law who worked for his living seemed to distress her.

      Mr. Fox nodded sagely, no hint of the familiar disdain in his expression. “I think sometimes that my father might have preferred I take up the law. It seems a surer route to public distinction.”

      She found herself softening toward the man. She had not fully considered that even an earl’s son might have to train to some profession, if he had not the good fortune to be the eldest. “My brother seems to imagine it has a bit of glamor in it,” she acknowledged with a wry smile. And if it did not, then Paris—who was both too handsome and too clever for his own good—was determined to supply some.

      “More so than the Church, certainly.”

      The Church? “An honorable profession—provided one has a vocation,” she managed to say, struggling to imagine the circumstances under which this warmhearted, would-be clergyman willingly spent time with the kind of man who imagined a bride could be bought like a side of beef.

      “Oh, indeed. I would not enter orders lightly, ma’am. I assure you, I understand the duties of a clergyman. I don’t mind the thought of getting my hands dirty to save a few souls.” Whether consciously or unconsciously, his eyes darted toward his friend. Did that explain the connection between them? Did he imagine Lord Ash had a soul worth saving?

      Despite her hesitation about his choice of friends, she believed he was sincere in his calling. “But you are not yet ordained.” One glance at his clothing revealed as much. Not the somber, dark garb of a clergyman, though more subdued than Lord Ash’s expensively embroidered waistcoat.

      “No. I have as yet had no cause. I have the promise of my family’s living, of course. But—”

      “The incumbent is proving regrettably long lived?” she supplied wryly.

      This time, Mr. Fox laughed out loud, undeniably amused by her frank way of speaking. “I suppose one might put it that way, Miss Burke.”

      Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Lord Ashborough turn toward the sounds of their merriment. “I feel I must warn you, Miss Burke. Fox is unused to such attention. You will have him in love with you before you know it.”

      Something unfamiliar and unsettling gleamed in the marquess’ eyes as he leveled his gaze on his friend. Jealousy. He was patently unaccustomed to being anything other than the center of attention.

      “I say, Ash, that’s not—” blustered Mr. Fox. His slight frown of disappointment made Cami think of her youngest brother’s expression whenever the older boys had refused to play by the rules of whatever game had been chosen.

      But Lord Ashborough ignored him and shifted his attention to her. “Are you enjoying your time in London, Miss Burke?”

      He spoke as if she were here on holiday, and although it was not quite as irritating as the strangers who admonished her to be grateful to her aunt for her generosity, she bristled nonetheless.

      “But of course she is,” her aunt assured him before Cami could tame her tongue into a suitable reply. “Who in her position would not? She might still be in Ireland!”

      Memories flashed across Cami’s mind like tiny, devastating lightning strikes: The letter from Mama’s brother relating the grim news of their father’s death. Papa shooing the younger children from the room. Mama’s angry, tearless sobs. The new Lord Merrick’s hope that the past could now be put behind them. And an unexpected olive branch: a place for one of his nieces should she be willing to come to England.

      Impatient to be where literary fame was made and broken, Cami had been quick to accept the offer.

      Perhaps too quick.

      “Och, aye,” she tossed back in the closest thing to a brogue her furious tongue could manage. “’Tis certain I’d never be after meetin’ an English lord on Grafton Street.”

      At the sight of her mother’s disapproving frown, Felicity swallowed her hiccup of laughter. Mr. Fox developed a sudden interest in the pattern of the Turkish carpet beneath his feet.

      Only Lord Ashborough met Cami’s gaze. She caught flickers of gold and green in his dark eyes. Hazel. Not brown. And sleepy though they might seem, those eyes missed nothing. His languid smile and penetrating gaze sent a strange little pulse of uncertainty through her chest.

      She felt uncomfortably transparent, as if that one glance had uncovered all her secrets.

      Not