The Companion's Secret by Susanna Craig

Author:Susanna Craig
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Kensington
Published: 2017-12-08T22:02:36+00:00

Chapter 13

Cami awoke with a start. The carriage had stopped; the sky beyond its windows was growing dark. Beneath her cheek, her pillow rose and fell with even, rumbling breaths. Confused, she pushed herself upright to find she had been curled against Gabriel’s side like a child. For what must have been hours, through even the changing of horses. She had probably snored. Or worse, drooled.

How could she have let herself sleep so soundly? How could she have let herself—? She clutched automatically for her writing desk and found it missing.

By the light of the inn yard’s lanterns, she fumbled searchingly, silently through the carriage’s dim interior. Vaguely, she remembered him trying to take the desk from her. Her fingers passed lightly over Gabriel’s hard thigh and knee—he wasn’t holding it either. With her toes, she felt about the floor—no, it hadn’t slid off her lap while she slept. Reaching out, more than half-blind, she slid her hands over the opposite seat until they struck the box’s wooden edges. When she grabbed it to her, she heard something else, something light—her bonnet, perhaps—fall to the floor. Where were her spectacles?

Heart racing, she opened the carriage door. She needed more light. She needed air. She needed to come to her senses, to throw off the disorientation of sleep. Without really meaning to, she stepped out into the night, discovering as she did so that the carriage steps had not yet been put down.

A simple misjudgment of distance. If she had realized the situation, she could have jumped down with ease. But now her foot, expecting to meet a level surface some inches above the ground, must stretch out farther. The awkward weight of her lap desk pitched her forward. And before she could reach to catch herself, she was falling. Her desk flew from her hands to land with a crash on the cobblestones some feet away. Twisting and flailing, trying to keep herself from meeting a similar fate, Cami threw up her arms and gave a cry as the ground rushed up to meet her.

“You, boy. Over here with some light.” Gabriel’s voice was husky with sleep. She could hear the carriage creak as he eased himself through the door, felt his boots strike the ground as he stepped down carefully to avoid her prone form. “Camellia.” He knelt beside her head and brushed her hair away from her face with fingers that did not seem to be quite steady. “Can you hear me?”

“Yes,” Cami managed to whisper. All the breath seemed to have abandoned her lungs. Oddly, her pain gave her some consolation. She knew she could not be badly injured if she could still feel everything. Scraped palms. Bruised knees. And—oh! “My ankle,” she gasped. “I think I must have twisted it.”

“Lie still,” he ordered. She felt his hands rearranging her skirts to cover her bare legs before he turned her and lifted her with surprising ease, cradling her against his chest as he nodded silent commands to

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