by Rose Gordon
That few minutes was actually ten, and those ten minutes felt like ten years. She’d not been locked up in a dark, cramped space like that since she was seven; and after tonight, she’d never willingly enter one again. Even if it meant she and Alex were caught completely naked walking back to their room, the hidden servants’ hallway was not a consideration for future use.
“Could you light the lanterns, please,” she asked as soon as they were securely back in the room they’d been sharing.
“Of course.” He lit the lanterns and she continued to disrobe. With all the fastenings gone there was no need for assistance. “Go ahead and go to sleep. I’ll see you in the morning,” he told her after she’d changed and climbed in bed to wait for him to join her.
Hurt pierced her heart. He would see her in the morning? Why? Why not now? Why was she good enough for him an hour ago, but now she wasn’t? “Did I do something wrong?”
“Not at all. I just want some time alone.”
She nodded. Very well. He could be alone for a spell. He needed to grieve. She understood that. And while he sat in an empty library, she’d lie in their bed and dream about how to capture him, heart and soul.
“Good night, sweet Caro,” he whispered, kissing her forehead before leaving the room.
Chapter 22
The next three weeks seemed the equivalent of one long continuous day for Alex. The morning following his father’s death, Edwina arrived. After a bit of searching, he located the letter for her he’d misplaced, then held her while she cried.
Mother had also been in need of consoling. He hadn’t realized how true his father’s words were about everyone depending on him until, one by one, the family and staff turned to him looking for advice, directives, or just a beam of support. Everyone but Caroline. With her, it had been the other way around.
She gave him time alone to adjust to life without his father, but when he sought her out, she always accepted him with open arms and a warm heart. She held him in her arms and made no demands. She listened to his past stories and his current struggles. Never pointing out the mistakes he’d made or condemning him for his choices.
At night, he enjoyed the solitude of the library before going upstairs where she had a warm bath waiting. Even for as tired as she had to be, she sat by his tub and talked to him or rub his shoulders, many times going so far as to surprise him by grabbing the soap and bringing him to completion, never expecting anything in return. Not that he could have given anything. Stress and exhaustion had taken everything from him. He felt like a shadow of the man he’d been before, just passing through the day without much emotion, only with the knowledge that when the day was done and the sun set, he’d be in the safest haven imaginable: Caroline’s arms.
Not only had Caroline become the rock he leaned on at night, she’d stepped up to help the rest of his family, too. She’d spent hours crying with Edwina over the loss of a close parent, something Caroline had experienced personally. She’d taken his mother’s place giving directions to the housekeeper and staff, which actually was now her responsibility as Lady Watson.
Caroline had also volunteered to represent the family on another front when nobody else could handle the task. She’d gone to Rockhurst to help Brooke deliver another baby boy (which, he had it on best authority, was not named Benjamin). She hadn’t so much as uttered a word of complaint for having to do any of these new duties that had suddenly befallen her.
When she wasn’t doing her duty to him or his family, she occupied her time doing little things that she may not think were even noticeable. But he’d noticed. He noticed that she’d been keeping up with the documentation of his four current experiments. He noticed she’d taken his giant stack of science notes and organized them by putting a larger sheet of paper between the bundles to separate the different experiments. On the larger sheet she wrote what he’d studied and the dates. She also ordered a maid to bring him a tray of fresh tea and biscuits every hour. There were other things, too. Things that to most would seem insignificant, and yet, not to him. To him, everything she did had only made him love her more.
He sighed and folded his hands across his stomach. Today was the first day he’d been in this room without feeling his father was about to walk through the door. For the first two weeks, he wouldn’t so much as glance at the door to his father’s study. But then he had to go in. There was correspondence to attend. Tenants with problems to be solved. Accounts to be balanced. Now he was Lord Watson, and it was his responsibility to take care of it all. His father had survived the loss of his own father and still managed to run the barony, and so could Alex.
Just as he stood up to leave and find Caroline, a knock came at the door, followed by his two brothers barging in.
“Alex, we need to talk,” Henry blurted, unable to meet his eye. His face was bright red, his clothes were disheveled, and his hair was windblown; in short, he looked like he’d just run here from London. Right behind him, his twin was a mirror image, right down to the clenched fists hanging by his sides.
“What’s going on?” Alex fell down into his chair.
Neither spoke. They just stared at each other, communicating in “twin speak” as he’d always referred to it when they did this.
“Tell him, Elijah,” Henry prompted.
Elijah shook his head. “No. You.”
Henry crossed his arms. “I don’t think so. You’re the one who said he needed to know.”
“But you’re the one who said we were the ones who needed to tell him,” Elijah countered.
“I don’t give a damn whose it idea it was,” Alex burst out, mentally preparing himself for the worst. “Would one of you numskulls just tell me what the blazes is going on?”
“Well, Alex, it’s like this...” Henry started, shifting from foot to foot.
Elijah dropped his gaze to the floor. “We wanted to go see the conservatory and—”
“You? The conservatory?” Alex asked in awe. He’d always doubted if they even knew what was in a conservatory. Unease settled in his chest. What had they done in his conservatory? Was it still standing? Were his plants still alive? So many horrible possibilities passed through his head, he was unaware his brothers were still talking until the quill he was holding snapped followed immediately by Elijah blurting, “We left as soon as we saw her.”
Alex shook his head to clear his thoughts. “What?” he asked, staring at his red-faced brothers.
“Have you even been listening?” Henry countered.
“Of course I have,” he snapped. “You said you were in my conservatory. Then you said something about leaving.”
“Did you happen to hear anything else?” Elijah asked, crossing his arms.
Alex dropped the two pieces of his broken quill to his desk. “I don’t have to answer to you two. Now, just start from the top. You were in my conservatory...” He made a rolling gesture with his hand.
“We walked in and saw Caroline,” Henry answered quickly.
He blinked at them. “Well, she does live here. She has my permission to visit the conservatory.”
His brothers rolled their eyes at the same time. “Thank you for clarifying that, Alex,” Henry said sarcastically. “That wasn’t the point. I had stopped talking in hopes Elijah would deliver the next sentence.”
“Oh, sorry.” Elijah winked at Alex. “Our brains must be running independently today.”
Alex glared at the pair of them. “Remind me to send up a prayer of thanksgiving tonight that we were not triplets.”
“Just think,” Henry said excitedly, “if we were, then you’d already know what we wanted to tell you.”
Alex dropped his head into his hands and mumbled an incoherent sentence about being related to a bunch of bumbling idiots. He raised his head back up and looked up at the witling he called a brother. “Well, since I don’t know, half-wit, why don’t you tell me?” What was wrong with these two today?
Henry exchanged a look with Elijah that Alex didn’t even try
to understand. “All right,” Henry said, gulping. “When we walked into the conservatory we saw Caroline. She was digging in some flowers, wearing only her chemise.” His face flushed dark red, causing Alex to chuckle.
“What in tarnation is humorous about that?” Elijah snapped. “Aren’t you concerned someone might see her? Aren’t you concerned we saw her?”
Alex’s grin faded. “I’ll speak to her about it.”
“Good,” Elijah said, sitting in one of the chairs across form Alex’s desk. “I spent many long, arse-numbing hours in this chair.”
“Didn’t we all?” Alex remarked, thinking of a way to get rid of his brothers so he could go catch Caroline before she finished rinsing off in the creek. He missed spending time with her getting dirty in the conservatory followed by being dirty in the creek. A smile pulled on his lips.
“Look, Henry, there he goes again,” Elijah commented. “He’s probably picturing her digging up those plants in her chemise.”
Henry snorted and fell into the chair next to Elijah’s. “That must be a fantasy come true for Alex. A half naked lady alone in his conservatory.”
Alex scowled at them. “Put the image out of your minds before I put it out for you.”
“We meant nothing by it. We were merely surprised she was out there mucking around in her chemise like that and thought you might like to know before someone else finds out,” Elijah explained.
“Thank you. However, I already knew,” Alex told them.
“So then it is your fantasy,” Henry mused, propping his feet up on the edge of Alex’s desk.
The measuring stick Father used to bang on the corner of his desk during a lecture to make sure his sons were still paying attention rested against the side of the desk. Alex grabbed it and used the end to push his brother’s feet off his desk. “That’s enough. I’m the one who told her she could do that. At the time I saw nothing wrong with it. It was just the two of us replanting some flowers, and I didn’t want her to ruin her gown. Now that you two have taken up residence for the foreseeable future, I’ll advise her to keep her gown on from now on.”
“It must be nice to have someone who loves you so much,” Elijah marveled, not a hint of sarcasm in his voice.
Alex’s heart squeezed. “Do you really think she loves me?” He tried to keep his face neutral so they wouldn’t know just how much their answer meant to him.
“She must.” Elijah propped his right ankle on his left knee. “If she didn’t, she wouldn’t be out there digging around your conservatory in her chemise right now.”
Alex was too pleased with the overall meaning of their words to care Elijah had just mentioned Caroline’s current state of undress again. “I suppose my unusual personality must put a lot of people off,” he conceded.
Two snorts rang out. “That’s the least of it, brother,” Henry said, shifting in his chair.
“What’s that to mean?” Alex’s personality and fascination with scientific interests might be a bit discouraging, but there was nothing wrong with his looks, or family connections, or manners, or anything else for that matter.
“You’re an ass,” Elijah said simply.
“A big one, at that,” Henry put in helpfully. “She already knew you were a bore before she married you.”
“Excuse me?” Alex asked.
Henry sighed. “See, we knew she liked you well enough because she married you. Which at the time, she only knew you were a bore—”
“She said that?” Alex interrupted.
“No.” Henry shook his head. “She never said it. But with a nickname like Arid Alex, she had to have known.” He snorted. “Anyway, even if you planned your courtship to the letter, there still had to be a few moments where you had to carry your end of the conversation—which is likely when she realized you really are a bore. None of that really matters so much because she married you despite your being a dullard. But she stayed after she’d discovered you were an ass.”
Unease took hold of Alex’s stomach and crept over the rest of his body. He didn’t care they thought him a bore. Everyone did. That didn’t bother him one whit. He was more interested in how they knew he’d planned his entire courtship out and how they knew she thought him an ass. “Go on,” he encouraged, his voice rough.
“There’s nothing more to say,” Elijah said with a shrug. “She must love you if she stayed here and didn’t run back to her family after being so thoroughly humiliated.”
Panic settled in his chest and his hands clenched into two tight fists. She knew. She’d seen that stupid bundle of papers. He’d thought it odd Mother had been the one with Edwina’s letter and none of the servants had given him the things from his pockets like they normally did when they took his clothes to be laundered.
“How do you know?” he asked, swallowing convulsively. Had she been so hurt and he so distant that she’d had to confide in someone else and seek solace from another when it should have been him? He should have been the one to offer her comfort and beg forgiveness for his stupidity. But he’d been so caught up in his own pain, he hadn’t taken time to notice hers. And he’d have had to notice. She wouldn’t have come out and told him. Before their wedding, Marcus had told him as much. Caroline never confided her problems in anyone. That gave him pause. “How do you know?” he barked again, pinning both of them with his gaze.
Less than a minute later the tale was out.
“That’s why you two were out in the hall disrespecting Father by laughing like jackals while he was dying?”
“Pardon me, brother,” Elijah shot back angrily. “But if there was any disrespecting going on that night, it was done by you. And the wronged party was not Father, but Caroline. If I know Father, and I think I do, he probably asked you to open the door so he could find out what was so damned amusing. He always did hate to be left out of a joke.”
Alex swallowed the bile in his throat. Elijah was right. Father had asked him to do that very thing. He’d wanted to know what was so amusing, and Alex had refused. And now more than ever, he was glad he had. She’d suffered enough humiliation by having his brothers and mother present. Anger built up inside him. “Why did you two have to do that? Why didn’t you stop after the first line? Or just after it, where I’d suggested Caroline as a potential bride. Why did you have to read it all?”
“Why did you write it?” Henry countered quietly.
“Out,” he roared.
Offering no further unsolicited advice, his brothers left the room, leaving him alone with his self-loathing thoughts.
He covered his eyes with his fingers and gave a sharp bark of laughter. He was no better than his fool of a friend Andrew. He may not have done the exact same things, but in essence the result was the same: he’d ruined Caroline.
The soft steps of a servant broke into Alex’s thoughts. “Go away,” he barked. He needed to be alone so he could think of what to do next, not drink more tea and eat biscuits.
“Will you be attending dinner, my lord?” Johnson called through the door.
Hell’s afire. It was dinnertime. He couldn’t face Caroline at dinner knowing he’d hurt her and couldn’t make it right. “No.”
He waited for the butler’s footsteps to fade down the hall before standing up. He should go up to their room and wait for her. She wasn’t one for lingering in a drawing room any longer than necessary after dinner. She’d be up in an hour, two at most. He’d use that time thinking of what to say and how to make things right.
“Pardon me, milord,” Annie said, passing him in the hall just outside his room.
He didn’t think he’d ever get used to being called that. He gave her a curt nod in return before stepping inside the room. He let his eyes travel over the furniture. Everything was covered. There wasn’t two inches of surface space that didn’t have a book, instrument, or half finished science project on it. Even the vanity was covered with clutter. Brushes, combs, shaving supplies, hand mirrors, all sorts of things. He sighed. The room was too small. She deserve
d bigger. Better.
The night of his wedding, his father had requested Alex and Caroline take the master suites and make them their own. He’d refused, of course. He wasn’t comfortable moving into his parents’ chambers while they were both clearly still alive. Now he was the baron, and she the baroness. Those rooms were rightfully theirs now, and Caroline deserved it. Her sitting room alone would be twice the size of this bedchamber.
He’d put it off long enough. Tonight would be the last night they’d sleep in here. By noon tomorrow, this room would just be a passing memory of where they’d slept the first five weeks of their marriage.
He walked to the wardrobe and swung open the door. It was a shame she’d never really gotten a chance to wear all those beautiful gowns Marcus had commissioned for her. She wore black now and would for a year. His eyes scanned the wardrobe. Several brown paper packages rested at the bottom, calling his attention. She was his wife; she had nothing to hide. They’d seen each other naked—and with any luck they’d get to again tonight—there wasn’t anything she’d have in there he couldn’t see. He grabbed the package and pulled off the twine. He turned the bundle over and pushed back the paper, exposing a little black square of neatly folded material.
He walked back to the bed, put the paper down, and unfolded the square. His excitement grew each time he undid another fold. When he was done, he held up the two straps that were about as wide as a quill tip. He did a slow perusal of the transparent garment, taking in the low bodice that formed a perfect V with red trim around the edges and the slits in the side that had to go up nearly to her waist. Desire fired through him. He may have seen her naked, and he might like to again later tonight, but first she could put this on. This he liked.
Tearing his eyes away, he looked to the wardrobe. She had another, one, two, three, no wait, four, identically wrapped packages. His mouth watered. He’d been too preoccupied lately to enjoy Caroline the way he ought. No more. Tonight he’d make love to her until the sun came up. He wouldn’t hold anything back and wouldn’t let her, either. She’d enjoyed it last time. He was certain she had. She might be insecure about letting her inhibitions go and vocalizing her enjoyment, but he’d have to be completely daft not to have realized she was enjoying it. A fool he may be, but daft he was not.
