My Darling Caroline

by Adele Ashworth

  The coldness and bluntness of his words startled her. “You dismissed her? Why?”

  “I’ve offered to give her an exemplary reference and I believe Lord Hestershire’s wife is in need of a lady’s maid.”

  Caroline’s heart began to pound. “What’s wrong?” she gravely questioned, gripping the arm of the settee for comfort.

  “I’ve made some provisions for you, Caroline,” he simply replied, reaching for his pen and sitting comfortably in the large leather chair at his desk. “I’ve spent the morning with my solicitors discussing money and certain arrangements that need to be addressed before you leave.”

  She blinked. “What the devil are you talking about? I’m not going anywhere.”

  “Divorce is out of the question,” he proceeded mildly, without raising his eyes or head. “Nobody in my family has ever divorced, and I see no reason to do so now as long as we have a satisfying agreement between us.”

  He paused for a moment as he began writing on the paper in front of him, and that was when she felt the first spark of trepidation hitting her so quickly and effectively that her hands and legs began to shake, and she could no longer stand.

  Sitting on the settee once more, she looked at him through wide, shocked eyes. With a hesitant breath, she tried to gain some rationality. “I demand you explain yourself, Brent, because your words and abrasive attitude are beginning to scare me.”

  Slowly he raised his head. She expected to see fire or coldness, some degree of misplaced anger or hurt, even disgust, but the look in his eyes frightened her more than she’d ever felt in her life. For the first time since she’d known him, she witnessed no feeling of any kind, saw absolutely nothing.

  “I found your letter from Professor Jenson, Caroline. I now understand how our marriage has been a sham for you, an entanglement which, as it appears, everyone at Columbia University knows about as well. You obviously need your freedom, your…dirt and plants, more than you need me, Rosalyn, or Miramont, and quite frankly I don’t want you living here as my wife anymore.”

  He dropped his gaze back to his desk, and as the meaning of his words began to penetrate her mind, as awareness grew within to overtake and alarm her, she suddenly felt gut-punched and couldn’t breathe.

  “I’ve booked and paid for your passage on a ship to America, the same ship on which Charlotte and Carl will sail in three weeks’ time,” he continued brusquely. “You may stay here until then, since I will be riding into the city late this afternoon to attend to lingering government business. Rosalyn will be joining me, and we’ll likely be gone until the day you sail, so there will be no conflict where the three of us are concerned.”

  “I—You don’t understand, Brent.”

  “That’s probably the most honest thing you’ve ever said to me,” he retorted, with a tinge of sarcasm dripping through his words. “I don’t understand how you could have possibly thought you’d be welcome at a scholastic institution once they realized you’d lied about being a man. You’re a bit too curvy to hide it.”

  “If you’ll just let me explain—”

  “Now, before you leave I need to know if you’ve any idea if you’re carrying my child. Have you any symptoms of pregnancy?”

  If it weren’t for the fact that she felt so terribly frightened, the absurdity of him posing such a question would likely make her laugh. But his straight-faced bluntness and the reality of what was happening instead filled her suddenly with the oddest combination of fear and boiling rage—hot, intense, and seeping from every pore in her skin.

  “How dare you,” she spat as she slowly stood. “How dare you carry on as if I don’t exist, as if my future means nothing and I’ve been nothing more to you than…breeding stock for convenient use. I should at least be given an opportunity to explain my position.”

  He drew a deep breath as he sat back hard in his chair, looking directly at her with a face entirely void of expression. “To start with, Caroline, you made your position perfectly clear when you married me planning an annulment. Secondly, you mean absolutely nothing to me because our relationship was founded on lies; therefore, it does not exist and what happened between us during the last five months has been invalidated. And finally, Lady Caroline, your future no longer concerns me. You’ve made your bed and you may lie in it.” His eyes narrowed as he dropped his voice to a gruff whisper. “Now, do you have any idea if you are pregnant with my child?”

  She glared at him furiously. “I most certainly am not pregnant with your child, Lord Weymerth, and right this very moment I’ve never been more grateful for anything.”

  Without reaction of any kind, he slowly placed the pen back into the inkwell, turned the papers around to face her, then pushed both in her direction.

  “I’ve made arrangements for an allowance to be sent to you on a monthly basis—”

  “—You’re only doing this to hurt me—”

  “—in an amount I believe is fair,” he persisted swiftly. “I’ve also agreed to allow you to take lovers at your leisure, as will I; however, this is the tricky part.”

  “This isn’t tricky, it’s completely unbelievable,” she countered in exasperation.

  He ignored her words, leaning forward to rest his elbows on the desktop. “Since I bedded you for less than a month, the chances are slim that you are pregnant. Be that as it may, any child you deliver during the next eight to ten months I will consider mine and will raise accordingly. Any child you deliver after the said ten-month period will be your responsibility entirely. Do you understand these provisions?”

  Caroline couldn’t find her voice as she stared at him in disgust, in bafflement, and in escalating fear and desperation of what she witnessed both in words and bearing from a man who only three days ago professed to care for her deeply.

  Slowly he stood. “Since you’re evidently having trouble comprehending my question, let me elaborate. In graciously allowing you to study in America as you’ve apparently wanted to do for some time, in ‘funding your interests’ as my solicitor aptly put it, in not causing scandal to your family or mine with a nasty divorce which would no doubt be costly and difficult, I have only two requests.”

  He leaned over, placing his fists, knuckles down, on top of the hard oak surface, looking blankly once more into her eyes. “The first is that you are never to contact me for more money. What I will send you is more than adequate for a woman who married under false pretenses. The second request, and the most critical to our arrangement, Caroline, is that if you are carrying, you will return my legitimate child to me within six months of his or her birth. I will raise him accordingly, and you will no longer be a consideration or a person of any importance in his life.”

  “This is insane,” she murmured, clutching at her gown.

  He tapped a finger on one of the pieces of paper. “I’ve spent the entire morning having these provisions outlined here. You must sign them both, one for you and one for me.” Leaning toward her and lowering his voice to a husky challenge, he added, “If you don’t sign them, Caroline, you get nothing. You have the choice of going to America as you’d planned the day we wed, with the stipulation that you stay out of my life and give me my child unconditionally if you carry him, or you may go to America with nothing to support you except your smarts and magnificent body. Is this all becoming clear at last?”

  Caroline gaped at him, at the man only five feet away who so callously dismissed her as if she’d never meant anything to him at all. Rage filled and exploded from every fiber of her being, her pulse raced with disbelief and shock, and yet with a control she didn’t know she possessed, she sauntered up to the desk, eyes locked with his.

  “This cannot be legal,” she seethed. Leaning toward him, she whispered, “I won’t sign anything.”

  He shook his head and gazed down to her face. “This is not for me, Caroline, it’s for you. I don’t owe you anything, but if you want to be able to live with some shred of dignity in a foreign country, you’d better give this agreemen
t serious consideration.”

  He placed his palms flat on the desk, leaning so close to her that she could feel the warmth of his skin.

  “I want nothing to do with you from this moment forward, but because you will still legally be my wife, supporting you carries some responsibility—”

  “I’m not your property to dispose of at your convenience!” she flung at him in a shout of fury.

  His cheek twitched but he didn’t move. “According to the law, you are my property.”

  Caroline knew she needed to remain calm. If he would give her an opportunity to explain, she could make him see reason.

  Boldly she stood upright and affirmed, “I want to stay with you—”

  “That was the greatest lie, Caroline. You never wanted me.”

  For the first time since he’d entered the room, she noticed a trace of emotion escape him with those words, spoken bitterly and almost sadly.

  She softened her voice to a gentle plea. “It’s true I didn’t want you when we married, but you’re my husband now, Brent, in every way. I don’t want to leave you. I need you and Rosalyn.”

  His eyes grew stormy, dark. “I am not a toy to be taken out and played with at your leisure, Caroline, and Rosalyn is my daughter and none of your concern. What you want is irrelevant now.”

  He stunned her more with his stilted attitude than he did with his words. She, however, was ready for a fight, absolutely refusing to simply give up as she attempted a different approach by appealing to his logic.

  “You seem to forget, my lord, that you wouldn’t have Miramont if it weren’t for me,” she reminded him firmly, smoothly. “You and my father had an agreement and you cannot force me to leave my home.”

  His brows furrowed for a second, then his eyes widened in clarity. “Is that what you thought? Miramont was always mine, Caroline. My cousin couldn’t sell it. I agreed to marry you and took you as loose baggage from your father for the privilege of buying and acquiring nine horses, darling, that’s all. Absurdly enough,” he disclosed, smiling cynically, “your father, the good Baron Sytheford, got the better end of the deal because he rid himself of you.”

  Dropping his gaze to the desk as if he hadn’t noticed her stricken look, he nonchalantly added, “As for being your home, Caroline, it never has been. It’s been nothing more than your place of residence while you awaited your chance to run from your unwanted entanglement. Now sign these and get out. I have work to do.”

  Suddenly, standing in front of the blazing fire, she was freezing, and although she tried to hold them in check, her eyes slowly filled with tears.

  “I cannot believe you’re doing this to us,” she said in a husky, desperate whisper, wrapping her arms around her waist for warmth and comfort.

  “There is no us, Caroline, there never has been.” He sat again casually and pulled his ledger forward, turning through the pages and effectively ignoring her.

  Rising panic overwhelmed her. “I’m not going anywhere or signing anything until you listen and allow me to explain. I’m hardly young and naïve, and I won’t stand for it, Brent. You cannot dismiss me as easily as you dismissed Charlotte. I am not a disobedient sister, I am your wife.”

  He looked up. “There’s a concept here you’re not grasping, Caroline. Charlotte left me, and I pushed her out of my mind. You never existed.”

  “What does that mean?” she fairly shouted. “I never existed in your mind? In your bed?” She swallowed to fight stinging tears but refused to look away. “What we shared was real, and you know it. You’ll never be able to convince me or yourself that what happened between us the night you made me your wife, or the beautiful intimacy we shared in the greenhouse three days ago, meant nothing. I remember everything I saw in your eyes and heard from your mouth quite vividly. It was very real, Brent, and it exists even now.”

  She sparked something inside of him with that. His lips thinned, his jaw tensed, and his soft silk shirt became tight across his chest as his muscles flexed. This reaction of building anger was certainly better than coldness, aloofness, and as instantaneous as the change in his demeanor occurred, she wanted everything laid bare.

  Calming, she bravely contended, “I admit to you now that when we married I wanted to leave you. I wanted an annulment. You didn’t want me either, so even if you don’t like the thought, you should at the very least understand it. Many married couples live separate lives or receive annulments, and I rationally believed we could be one of them.”

  Boldly she straightened, looking him dead in the eyes. “But our feelings for each other changed everything. I didn’t calculate love as being part of our relationship, but it happened, Brent, it’s there between us, most assuredly, and you know it—”

  He stood so quickly that his chair fell back hard against the floor, and for the first time since he’d entered the study, his features contorted in absolute fury.

  “Love?” he whispered in rage. “You think this is love? Love is never built on lies, Caroline, and that’s the only constant we’ve ever had between us.”

  Keeping her gaze locked with his, she said dauntlessly, defiantly, “Whatever you think about me, Brent, I swear I never lied to you—”

  “You lied to me when you took the goddamn vows!” he exploded, his eyes erupting in blazing fire as he towered over her. “From the moment we met you lied to me, used me, and I was the fool because it never occurred to me that any woman could be so deceitfully heartless!”

  She stared at him, wide-eyed and stunned at the strength of his outburst, the repulsion in his tone, no longer caring as water, hot and salty, slid freely down her cheeks.

  He breathed heavily and fast, the muscles in his throat sticking out tautly against his collar. “I just don’t understand how someone with any brain at all could think to get away with this kind of complex prevarication. How did you think you were going to ask me for an annulment? Were you just going to come right out and say it, explain your thoroughly organized plans after you’d booked passage and had your notes compiled? Or perhaps you wanted to wait until I was most vulnerable because you simply enjoyed pulling me along on a string like a puppet.”

  “It—it was never like that—”

  “It was always like that, Caroline! You teased me with your body, proficiently exploited my feelings to your advantage, hurt me, then lied to me about never hurting me again. You tactfully implied that Rosalyn and I would manage without you, cleverly remained secretive with your thoughts. You skillfully avoided the marriage bed until you needed satisfaction yourself; then, while lying there naked, you casually wondered aloud if I’d let you leave me.”

  He raised his hands in absolute wonder. “Even Davis saw it coming and advised me about your scheming little mind months ago, but I refused to acknowledge it because to the depths of my soul I found it unthinkable, incomprehensible, that a wife would be so disloyal, so conniving, that she’d actually consider marrying her husband strictly because she assumed it would be easy to leave him.”

  Caroline, dazed, placed a shaky hand on the desk to keep from reeling. “It—it was never like that,” she whispered hoarsely once more. “Please—”

  “Please what?” He slammed his fists on the desk. “Please what? Forgive you? Forget about it? Please…let’s start over? Christ, you are pathetic, Caroline!”

  Her body sagged, and she dropped her head, no longer able to look at him, and uncaring as wetness freely dripped from her chin and jaw, staining the neckline of her dark-blue gown.

  “You wove your way into a new home, a new life,” he slowly, calmly articulated, “taking the precious innocence of a deaf child into your hands without considering the consequences of how your departure would shatter her.”

  Without warning, he reached across the desk, gripped her jaw tightly, and forced her head up.

  “Look at me,” he whispered.

  She opened wet lashes to a blurry vision of hard, cold eyes filled with complete intolerance and pity.

  “You don’t lov
e me or Rosalyn, you love yourself. You used and manipulated me when you moved into my home and my bed, lied to me when you spoke vows to honor me, planned to leave me from the moment we met, not considering for a second how I would feel to lose my wife, the woman I had vowed to protect and cherish for the rest of my life. You are the cruelest, most selfish person I have ever known, Caroline, and looking at you nauseates me even now.”

  He abruptly dropped his hand from her face, pushed the pen in her direction, then turned to lift his chair. “Sign these and take one with you if you don’t want to end up on the street, then get out. I never want to see you again.”

  Numbly she lowered her gaze once more, staring at the rugs beneath her feet, suddenly realizing that her choice, her destiny, regardless of where it was, had been made for her the minute she’d agreed to marry the earl under what he so appropriately called false pretenses.

  He was right. She had been dishonest and deceitful, and now he was giving her the opportunity to leave, the only thing she’d wanted from the beginning of their marriage. Except now she felt not elation or excitement; she instead felt as if she were drowning in a lonely sea of emptiness.

  Trembling, she took the pen in one hand, wiped her eyes with the fingers of the other, steadied herself the best she could, and signed her name at the appropriate lines on the two pages in front of her. Then, with finality and the oddest sense of detachment, she slowly stood upright, lifted one of the pieces of paper, turned, and walked on leaden legs to the grate.

  She stared into the fire, tears of pain and helplessness streaming down her cheeks, and quickly, without second thought, she tossed the paper into the flames.

  “I don’t need this kind of degradation from you, regardless of what I’ve done,” she said huskily. “Keep your money.”

  He had nothing to say to that as he once again sat casually at his desk, engrossed in his ledger.

  Smoothly she turned and walked to the door.

  “I hope you find fulfillment breeding roses, madam,” he stated formally, gruffly, never bothering to look up to her. “Your plants may require the attention and devotion we did, but they won’t give you anything in return, least of all companionship. Remember that in the lonely years to come.”