‘You remember?’ There had been a group of young officers with Carothers when they had discussed the coming assembly. He had been one of them.
He gave her a rather shamefaced grin. ‘I was rather taken with you myself. Not that you ever gave me a second glance. Carothers was older and far more charming. But I did go to the assembly that night in hopes of one dance with the pretty Miss Lennox. Not a great deal of hope. I hadn’t had my growth spurt and was half a head shorter than you. Why did your father forbid you to go?’
‘I had been rude to him earlier in the day. He said it was because I was overexcited about the dance and perhaps I wasn’t ready. He forbade Mother to bring me.’ She wiped away her tears. ‘I was so angry. And disappointed. And I felt like a fool, for I had told Carothers I would be there. I shouted at Father and he sent me to my room.’ She shook her head at the memory of her hot anger and wicked excitement as she had dressed herself in the dark. ‘I slipped out of my window and climbed down a tree.’ She’d felt so daring and clever.
‘All the old biddies were talking behind their fans about my lack of a chaperone, of course. But I didn’t care. Father was mortified when it got back to him the next day. I wasn’t permitted to leave my room for days. And then—’
‘And then Tommy.’
‘Yes.’ She hung her head. ‘Father threw me out. He was so ashamed that a daughter of his...’
‘I can imagine at least one of my sisters doing the same thing under the circumstances as you describe.’
‘You have sisters?’ She hadn’t known that about him. Indeed, come to think of it, she knew very little about him at all, except that he was Tonbridge’s very good friend and that he had been instrumental in helping Merry when her cousin had tried to kill her. He had also been Carothers’s friend. And while she’d been warned about his rakish ways, just like when she was a girl, the warnings had done her not one bit of good. His kindness to Tommy, and to her, had sent her wits begging. Again.
‘I have three half-sisters. All younger.’ A strange expression passed across his face. Regret? ‘I have barely seen them since Waterloo.’
Where he had lost his hand. She shivered.
He rose. ‘Come, sit by the fire where it is warmer.’
She let him lead her to the sofa. He sat down beside her, a large warm bulwark against the world, and stared into the flames. ‘How on earth did you manage without ending up in a workhouse or...?’ He grimaced. ‘Or worse?’
The night she had been thrown out of the house was so vivid in her mind it might have been yesterday. So terrifying, she still had nightmares. ‘Mother came after me. Catching me up on the road without my father’s knowledge. In his rage, he refused me anything but the clothes on my back. Mother brought a small bag with clothes and some money she had somehow tucked away. She directed me to a woman in Worthing who helps...’ Her voice caught. ‘Girls like me get rid of an unwanted child.’ She shuddered. ‘I couldn’t do it. She was dirty and mean and...’ She shuddered. ‘I used the money to live on until I found work.’
She lifted her head. ‘I swore if I ever got the chance I would help other women in my situation. Merry gave me that chance. But I never told her about Carothers. I told her I was a soldier’s widow. I lied to her. I was too ashamed to tell her the truth after she was so kind to me.’ The tears let go and she buried her face in her hands.
He put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her close. ‘It is all right, Caro.’ The hook on his left hand lay just above her breast, glinting evilly in the firelight.
Somehow it made her feel safe. And treasured.
Chapter Twelve
The desire to murder a dead man, while irrational, was satisfying to imagine. God, she wasn’t the one who should be ashamed. The blame belonged to Carothers. She’d been an innocent whereas he had been a man of the world. He’d also been a bit of a bully. Blade had more than once suffered the lash of his wicked tongue and his fists, until he’d grown large enough to defend himself.
No wonder she had seemed so blatantly innocent. And so wonderfully enthusiastic when she realised the pleasures there were to be had of a partner in bed. It had just never occurred to him that such a prim and proper woman with a child had never been married.
Yet all the signs had been there. The maidenly blushes. The modesty. The anxiety. He’d not seen them because he hadn’t wanted to see them. He’d wanted her to be like his usual fare. A widow happy to enjoy a bit of pleasure with no expectations of or desire for anything lasting.
A ripple of disgust wormed its way through him.
Disgust at his behaviour, not just with Caro but with the other women who had come his way, even if they hadn’t seemed to mind.
And there was another recollection about Carothers teasing the back of his mind. Gossip when he’d last been in town on furlough. Something about him having had a fiancée before he died. Though why anyone had cared, he couldn’t imagine, unless it was because the title was headed for escheat when the current earl cocked up his toes. No doubt the Crown was rubbing its hands together at the thought of the Thorntons’ estates dropping into its greedy fist. What an irony that both sons had died without issue and yet the youngest was a father. A fate that would have any noble family sweating in regard to the succession.
He drew her closer, felt a slight resistance and was about to let go, when, to his inordinate relief, she relaxed.
She turned her head to look up at him, her eyes inexpressibly sad. Indecision rampaged across her face. ‘I want what is best for Tommy.’
Unlike his mother, who had merely discarded him like last year’s fashion in slippers when his presence had become an inconvenience.
Caro was different. She’d stuck by her son when it must have been extraordinarily difficult. The thought of this separation was clearly nigh on killing her. ‘Perhaps at the least, you can come to some sort of understanding with them. Annual visits, letters once a month, anything so he knows you care.’ He hesitated. ‘Butterworth said they were expecting you.’
Caro stared at her hands, wiped them down her skirts, her gaze far away. ‘If I don’t go after Tommy, will he think I don’t love him?’
Love. Was there really such a thing? ‘Possibly. I was ten when my father took me from my mother at her request.’ He spoke calmly, but his voice was thicker than usual. He cleared his throat and blinked to clear the sting caused by smoke from the fire. He’d felt so out of place in his father’s house, where there were legitimate sons and daughters not much younger than he was, who stared at him in puzzlement, and a woman who asked him to call her Mother, but who had looked at him with a dreadful sadness in her eyes. For days, he had stood by the front door, expecting his mother to come for him. He’d refused to believe what she’d said when she forced him to leave with his father. Can you not see? You are in the way here.
‘He might feel abandoned,’ he said, recalling that dreadful sensation in the pit of his stomach when he realised she’d disappeared from London without leaving an address. ‘Perhaps if you explain your reasons... I don’t know. It might help.’
She nodded slowly. ‘I will think about it some more.’
He cupped her cheek in his hand and kissed her, feather light, on the lips. A fleetingly gentle kiss, when what he wanted to do was ravage her mouth. But he was not what she needed right now. ‘Think and get some rest, for tomorrow will be another long and trying day, whatever you decide.’
He helped her rise and escorted her to the door leading to her chamber. And against all his baser urges, all his desires, he let her in and shut the door, from the outside.
* * *
Once the maid had helped her with the tapes of her gown and stays, Caro smiled at her. ‘I can manage the rest, thank you.’ Growing up, she and her sister and her mother had helped each other with laces and ties and hair. Since coming to live with Merry and more
recently at the Haven, she’d missed the closeness such intimate assistance entailed. Talking over the day’s events, laughing at silly things. But as one must, she’d adapted to being helped by a stranger.
She eyed the steaming bath that Blade had ordered. The man was unbelievably thoughtful. And kind.
She touched her fingertips to her lips. Though his kiss as they parted had been so brief as to be chaste, it left her in a state of longing. Which was not kind of him. Nor was it sensible of her to feel so needful. The man enjoyed seduction, but was not, as Merry had carefully explained and he—equally as carefully—had confirmed, the marrying sort. But then, neither was she. Not because of inclination, but because honour would have required her to admit to any man willing to marry her that she had been living a lie and never been married. Inevitably, Tommy would have learned of it, too. Her biggest fear was that her son would turn from her in disgust when he knew the truth of her fall from grace. When he realised what he had lost because of her recklessness. The world was not kind to those born out of wedlock.
Blade had been surprisingly accepting of her situation. Or perhaps it wasn’t so surprising, given his own illegitimacy.
She stepped into the tub and sank down into the water, not too hot, but warm enough to feel thoroughly luxurious. Her body relaxed in physical contentment, but her mind kept going back to their conversation. His concern that Tommy not feel abandoned. Her worry that she, in her own selfish need to keep him close, had ruined his chances at a decent life. The thought made her feel chilled inside and out.
She washed, got out of the tub, put on her nightdress and robe, then rang the bell for them to take the tub away. After the footmen left, she climbed into bed.
Go back to Skepton or go on to Lincolnshire and insist on being part of Tommy’s life? Those were her choices.
She punched at her pillow. She had already decided it was better for Tommy to know his grandparents, so why make herself suffer more than she already was by having their door slammed in her face? They had made their position perfectly clear, both when she’d gone to tell them she was expecting a child and in the letter they had written, when their son and heir was dying.
She flopped onto her back. Then there was Blade. What would he think of her if she turned her back on her son, the way his mother had turned her back on him? He’d been so insistent she try to come to some sort of agreement with the Thorntons. As if it mattered deeply.
Why would he have revealed his story unless he’d been hurt by his mother’s actions? She’d been so wrapped up in her own agonising decision, she hadn’t realised that beneath the matter-of-fact telling he was also in pain. The hurt of wondering what he had done wrong to make his mother send him away.
Her heart ached for the confused little boy he must have been.
Blast it all. She was going to continue on to Thornton Manor and get her son back. Somehow. Blade needed to know this. He needed to know it, because right now he must be thinking she was as heartless as he thought his mother. While he hadn’t said it in so many words, she had heard it in his voice. She didn’t want him to think she could be so cruel.
She got up, put on her robe and crossed through the parlour to the door on his side. Heart racing, she hesitated.
Never once in her life had she visited a man in his room. Only once had a man ever visited her in hers. Him. Blade. She took a deep breath and tapped, barely making a sound. No answer. No sounds in the room beyond the door. If he was sleeping she had no wish to disturb him. He, too, had dealt with a long and trying day.
Oh, and wasn’t she a coward?
Breath held, she tried the handle. The door opened and she peeked inside. He was sitting in a chair, in a silken robe, a drink in his hand, staring into the dying fire. It and three candles beside the bed across the other side of the room were the only source of light. Not wishing to interrupt, she backed away. The door squeaked. He looked up and their gazes locked.
He rose.
Seeing the surprise on his face, she felt utterly foolish. If it wasn’t for the memory of his tender kiss on her lips... ‘I have made up my mind.’
He blinked as if he was only now believing what he was seeing. ‘Come in. Sit down.’ He helped her to the chair where he’d been sitting and brought another from beside the bed and placed it on the other side of the hearth.
The warm glow from the fire softened his features, though his expression was haunted.
‘Tell me this decision that cannot wait until morning,’ he said, making an effort to smile.
He looked so careworn and dear her heart ached. She swallowed, clasping her hand in her lap so she wouldn’t reach out to him. That was not why she had come. ‘I thought about what you said.’ She stared at her hands instead of his handsome face. ‘I will not give up Tommy without a fight. At the very least, I want to be part of his life, those visits and so forth you spoke of. More if it can be arranged. I would be grateful if you would accompany me.’
She hadn’t planned that last sentence, but as she spoke she knew it was true. Without him at her side, without his support, she might lose her courage.
He nodded slowly. ‘It would be my very great honour to escort you.’ He took a deep breath. ‘I think I should write to Tonbridge, however.’
Her stomach gave an unpleasant lurch. ‘To tell him about me.’
‘To tell him I have escorted you to meet Tommy’s grandparents at your request and ask that he have his man of business to find someone to keep an eye on the Haven until we return.’
Beth was there. As was Cook. But they needed some sort of oversight. ‘Oh, dear. No doubt he will think me in dereliction of my duty.’
‘He will not,’ he said firmly. ‘It is my task to make proper arrangements in light of our absence.’
‘Tonbridge will not be pleased when he learns I left the Haven.’ Shocked by the reason. Merry would be upset by her dissembling, her lack of trust.
Blade shook his head. ‘You underestimate him. He would insist I not let you go alone.’
She got up and knelt before him, much as he had knelt before her earlier, and took his dear face in her hands. ‘You missed your mother when she gave you up, didn’t you?’
He drew her up and sat her on his lap, pressing her head to rest on his shoulder, nuzzling his lips against her temple, her cheek, her chin. A ploy so she would no longer see the pain in his eyes. She let him get away with it, because she understood the pain of one you trusted turning their back when you needed them the most. Now, because of him, she would not do the same to Tommy. She would argue her case until she had no breath left.
He breathed out a long sigh. ‘Yes, I missed her. I had always thought I was important to her, you see. She called me her “little man”. Her protector. It came as a shock when she’d handed me over so easily. My siblings were not exactly delighted by my arrival since I was now their elder. Nor was the countess thrilled with another child added unceremoniously to her brood. It was not a comfortable situation.’
At least Tommy would not have to suffer that indignity. There would be no sibling rivalry or hurt female feelings. ‘Did your mother ever explain?’
‘She said I’d become an inconvenience. A few days after my father took me, I ran away and went back to where we’d been living. She’d gone without leaving a forwarding address. Then I believed what she’d said.’
Her heart twisted painfully. He must have been so hurt. ‘Did you settle in with your father after that?’
‘I would like to say I did, but to be honest, I left at the earliest opportunity and joined the army. It was better for all concerned.’
‘And your mother? Did you ever try to find her?’
He kissed her lips.
And even as the passion of his kiss turned her mind to mush, she noticed that he hadn’t answered.
* * *
Bl
ade couldn’t believe what had fallen from his mouth. He had never hinted at his desperate hurt at his mother’s abandonment. Not to Charlie and certainly not to members of his father’s family. The only way to stop himself from rambling on was kiss her until he could no longer think, let alone talk. And besides, he liked kissing her and, thank all the stars in the heavens, she seemed to like kissing him back.
Her hands were roaming his back and shoulders, and her breasts, unfettered beneath her dark-blue robe, were pressed hard against his chest. He tangled his tongue with the silk of hers. She tasted of tooth powder and smelled of lavender. And, yes, he understood she’d come to him for comfort and support in her decision even if he wasn’t the sort of man she would want in her life on a permanent basis. Nor should she. But comfort and support he could provide. Temporarily.
Pride that she would trust him to offer her something she needed, for she did not trust easily or often, sat strangely warm in his chest.
He broke the kiss and teased the shell of her ear with his tongue and the lobe with his teeth.
She shivered with pleasure. His shaft throbbed in response.
He cupped her jaw, revelling in the softness of her skin against his palm as he tipped her face up so she would meet his gaze. Her eyes were wide and clear and her lips were smiling. A positive answer to his unspoken question. She wanted this. Him. At least, she did now.
He lifted her in his arms and carried her to the bed, where he laid her down in her prim and starchy dark-blue cotton robe that covered her from throat to foot. He unknotted the belt with only a slight fumble of shaking fingers and the untidiness of having only one hand. He loosened it enough to unravel the knot with a tug. She didn’t seem to notice his awkwardness; she simply lay looking up at him, the light from the branch of candles on the bedside table dancing in her eyes. He peeled back her robe to reveal a similarly prim and starchy white nightgown, this one embroidered with forget-me-nots. His shaft hardened to rock at the sight of her beaded nipples begging for attention beneath the fabric.
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