The Secret Love of a Gentleman

by Jane Lark

  The street was busy, a throng of people flowed past, even though it was still relatively early. She hoped the crowded pavement would help her.

  The footman bowed low over her hand, then let it go and turned to force her a path through the people.

  The broad bow window of the shop displayed fabrics and fashions. The footman opened the door and held it open as the bell above jangled.

  She walked in. He followed.

  How long would it be before he guessed something was amiss once she’d gone?

  Half a dozen customers touched fabrics and accessories, which had been put out on the counters for them to consider.

  Caro’s eyes scanned the occupants through the fine net of the veil she’d worn to cover the bruising on her face, and her identity. Her heart hammered against her ribs. She knew no one, and she hoped no one, bar the modiste, would know her. She did not want to be stopped by anyone.

  She held her heavy reticule carefully as she crossed the room, so it appeared light, hiding the weight of the jewellery within it. She’d taken nothing that belonged to Albert, only what he had given to her as gifts in their first year—the year she’d believed he’d loved her.

  It was what she hoped to live on. She did not wish to be entirely dependent on Drew nor to become a burden. She would live quietly and spend little.

  “May I see some fabrics for a new ballgown?” Caro pointed out some bolts. The modiste’s assistant took them down and lifted a pattern book out from beneath the counter.

  Caro touched each fabric as the assistant unravelled lengths. This would be the last time she would have the chance to look at such fine things. She picked a very delicate pale pink, then thumbed through the fashion book. Her heart racing, she stopped suddenly and left it on an open page as she leant across the counter to ask the assistant discreetly, “May I use your convenience, please?” Her voice had trembled. She coughed as if clearing her throat.

  When Albert’s footman attempted to follow them through a door at the back of the shop, the assistant shooed him away.

  Caro was led through a workroom and then out to a cold, short corridor. The closet was at the end of that. Caro had used it before, and she knew how it was situated, next to the rear entrance into the yard behind the shop.

  “I will find my own way back,” she said to the girl when she went into the closet. Caro shut the door for a moment. But she did not make use of the chamber pot, which had been left in the room. Her fingers gripped at her waist while she listened to the assistant walk away. Caro came out and turned to the door, her heart thumping against her ribs. She opened it and shut it quietly.

  Drew was there.

  “Caro,” he whispered as he took her hand. “Come.” He led her out of the shop yard. “Did they query your exit?”

  “No, I asked the modiste if I might use her closet, but there is a footman waiting for me in the shop.”

  “Then we had best hurry.”

  His grip on her hand pulled her into a run along the narrow cobbled alley at the back of the row of shops.

  “There is a hired carriage at the end of the alley. I ordered it in a false name. We will change carriages once we are out of London and go the opposite way, and then change again. No one will be able to trace you. Where was Kilbride when you left?”

  “I waited until he’d left for the House of Lords. He will be there hours before he knows I am gone. He cannot abide being interrupted while he is in the House.”

  When they reached the end of the alley, the door of the waiting carriage was ajar. Drew pulled it wider and handed her up, then climbed in behind her.

  “Go!” He called up to the driver, before shutting the door. He pulled down the blinds to hide them from view.

  Caro’s hands shook as she opened her reticule. “I have brought something to help. I cannot allow you to support me entirely, Drew.” Gold and jewels glinted in the low light of the carriage as she opened the handkerchief she’d hidden them in. “They are all gifts he has given me, they were mine to take, earbobs, hair slides, bracelets and necklaces.”

  Drew smiled awkwardly.

  He’d expected nothing and yet he was not a wealthy man. He needed the dowry he’d received from his wife to find his own happiness, not hers.

  He said nothing, turning away to lift the edge of the blind and peer around it as they passed the front of the shop, and Albert’s carriage.

  Drew looked back at her. “They do not appear to have noticed your absence yet.”

  When they did discover her gone there would be bedlam. They would fear Albert’s response. She would always be terrified of her husband’s influence.

  What if he found her?

  Drew’s hand held hers, offering comfort and reassurance.

  She was grateful and yet his own marriage was falling apart, his wife had left him.

  They were both flawed.

  They’d been scarred as children by their mother’s betrayal and their stepfather’s hatred. But on top of that Drew had the curse of male pride. He would not plead his case and try to persuade Mary to have him back.

  ~

  “We will leave the carriage here and walk,” Drew stated when it jolted to a halt. It was the last stage of their journey.

  He opened the door and took her hand. She climbed out, her eyes wide and heartbeat racing. He kept a hold of her, leading her out of the inn’s courtyard.

  They turned a corner and walked down another street. Then past a shallow ford across a river and a large, ornate building.

  Drew continued walking until they reached a row of terraced, whitewashed, thatched cottages. Most had gardens filled with vegetable plants, but the one in the middle was full of flowers in bloom. When they reached it Drew opened the gate in the stone wall that ran along the edge of the road.

  They walked up the path.

  The cottage door was small, but it was the entrance to her new life. In that context it was a giant step.

  Drew knocked and the door opened. A thin, middle-aged woman, dressed in unrelenting black, stood there. Drew hurried Caro in and shut the door. It was dark inside and the ceilings were low. It felt a little like a prison cell—gloomy, cold and desolate.

  She had come from affluence to this, tumbling down the stations of society, simply because she could not bear a child.

  Drew stayed with her for a while, as the housekeeper who had opened the door showed her about the small four-roomed cottage, and then he drank tea with Caro. But he could not stay forever.

  “Caro, you know I cannot return for a while. Kilbride will have people watching me for weeks. We both know it. Do not write either. It is not worth taking the risk. I will come as soon as I can, but in the meantime, simply live quietly here.”

  She nodded as he stood. She rose too. Then she lifted to her toes and hugged him, crying, clinging to him. The one person in her life who had proved themselves constant—who loved her truly.

  “You must be brave, Caro, stay calm and stay strong and sit it out here. He will not find you, I promise.”

  She’d nodded again, but Albert would never cease looking. She knew him better than Drew. Albert would take her flight as an insult. He’d wish for revenge. He would continue to live his life without her and yet ensure she never felt able to live hers without fear.

  Chapter 3

  The knocker struck on the cottage door with four firm raps.

  Caro rose from her chair, fear clasping in her chest as she walked into the hall.

  This was her haven—no one knocked on the door.

  Beth, the housekeeper, had come out from the kitchen. She wiped her hands on the skirt of her white apron.

  Caro had lived here alone for days, a prisoner in her new home, communicating with no one except Beth and no one else ought to be here. Drew had said he would not come.

  Caro could not look from the window without giving herself away. Instead she stared at the door, willing her eyes to see through wood.

  No word had come from town and she
had not asked Beth to purchase a paper for fear that local people would wonder why a woman of the class she was now supposed to be would wish to read. She was living humbly, trying not to rouse suspicion.

  “Madam, should I open the door?” Beth whispered as Caro merely stood there, her heart pulsing hard.

  Foolishly she longed for Albert, for someone to turn to and say, what should I do? She missed none of her finery but she missed her husband. She missed the man who had felt like her protector once, the man who had come to her at night and touched her as though he loved her. A part of her foolish heart longed to be found, but not by the man who beat her.

  “Ask who it is.” Caro whispered.

  “Who is there?” Beth called as they looked towards the door.

  “It is Lady Framlington. Your brother sent me, he could not come himself.” Mary’s soft voice penetrated the wood and pierced Caro’s heart. Drew’s wife should not be here if all was well.

  Caro looked at Beth. “Something is wrong. Why would my brother not come himself? They are estranged…” Of course, it was foolish asking her housekeeper. How was Beth to know? But the anxiety skittering through Caro’s nerves stopped her from thinking clearly.

  “Ma’am, I cannot say –”

  Panic gripped and solidified in Caro’s stomach, and froze her limbs as though ice crept across her skin. She imagined Drew beaten or dead. “Should I trust her, do you think?”

  “Ma’am.” The decision must be yours, Caro heard the words Beth did not utter.

  Drew’s wife was from a good family, a family renowned for its loyalty and high morals. Surely Mary had not come to entrap her.

  “Let her in,” Caro ordered in a broken whisper.

  “Very well, my lady?” Beth’s hands reached behind her back to untie her apron as she turned away and went to hang it up in the kitchen.

  When Beth returned, her black dress still dusty with flour, she freed the bolts that held the door.

  When the door opened, a silhouette of the young woman standing outside was framed by the daylight.

  Beth bobbed a curtsy. Mary looked at Caro, her gaze assessing the brown shawl Caro had wrapped around her shoulders to shelter from the chilly draughts in the cottage.

  Embarrassment lay over Caro and her skin heated, probably colouring. Where was Drew?

  Her fingers gripped her shawl tighter to hide the tremble in her hands.

  “May I come in? My brother is with me.”

  The Duke of Pembroke…

  The thought of a man, a stranger, within any distance of her sent terror racing through Caro. She’d become used to this little four-roomed prison cell—used to there being no risk. He had once been her elder sister’s lover, and then rumour had cast him as rakish and rebellious when he’d followed the route of the grand tour at the same time as Drew, but now the imposing duke was married, and all gossip and talk of him had died in town. He’d absorbed the morals of his family, people said, and Caro had heard his marriage discussed as a love match.

  Her gaze reached past Mary as the housekeeper stepped aside, and her heart hit against her ribs like the beat of hooves on hard ground in a canter.

  “I have this from Andrew, so you know that what I say is true.” Caro looked at the letter Mary held out. Then looked at her sister-in-law.

  Mary was dressed in the fashion of the capital. In the finery Caro had been accustomed to, until she’d fallen out of favour and been forced to run. She was no longer a Marchioness. She no longer had a right to such things.

  The letter trembled when Caro took it and unfolded it.

  Drew’s familiar bold, assertive letters stretched across the page. She spotted words. Kilbride. He has accused us. I have to go to London to face the charge. She stopped and read it in full, her heart pounding harder.

  When Caro looked up, Mary had turned to beckon her brother forward.

  “He has accused Drew of being my lover. Incest is a crime. I never thought… Oh God.” A dark cloud crowded Caro, and a heavy sensation pulled her down. She’d never imagined this.

  “This way Ma’am.” Beth directed them to the parlour.

  “Here” Mary held Caro’s arm as the Duke of Pembroke removed his hat to pass beneath the lintel.

  His presence robbed the dark cottage of even more light.

  Caro’s heart kicked against her ribs, like Albert’s boot had often done and she shivered.

  She’d grown too used to her own company, to the safety of her solitude. She wished to run, and yet Drew had been imprisoned. He’d asked her to go with these people.

  The letter trembled in Caro’s cold hand.

  “You must sit,” Mary said.

  They’d been accused of incest…

  Caro sat in an armchair and looked up. Drew’s letter crumpled in her fingers. Nausea twisted through her stomach. “Drew will regret helping me.”

  “He does not. The last thing he said to me was that he could not regret it.”

  The Duke, who could not stand straight beneath the low ceiling, took the other chair in the room. Now he was not looming over her, Caro remembered her manners. “Your Grace.” She moved to rise, but Mary pressed a hand on her shoulder to keep her seated.

  “Forgive me, I would stand myself but it is a little awkward,” the Duke said “and I would rather you felt able to be informal in my presence. Besides, it is far easier to converse with us both seated.”

  Caro’s fingers clung to Drew’s letter in her lap. She did not understand this. Drew had eloped with Mary and had made an enemy of the Duke. Why would he be here? Why was Mary here? She had been estranged from Drew… She’d left him…

  “I have promised to protect you,” The Duke continued, as Caro looked her bewilderment, she could take none of this in. “You will be safer at Pembroke Place. No one can get within miles of the house without being seen, and my wife, Katherine, and Mary and I will be there to keep you company. Of course the house and grounds will be at your disposal. You may mix with the family or avoid us entirely if you wish. But there is a music room and a library to entertain you. It need not be confinement as this must feel, and you need not live in fear, Lady Kilbride?”

  “Why would you help me?” Caro looked from the Duke to her sister-in-law.

  “Because you are my sister now.” Mary dropped to her haunches and gripped one of Caro’s hands.

  “You are together again?”

  “Yes.”

  “How?”

  “I thought he had been disloyal and betrayed me. He was seen with another woman in a draper’s and I was told and I heard him saying he was setting up a woman in a house. I thought he’d taken a mistress. I was mistaken. The woman he was taking care of was you. He has forgiven me my misjudgement.”

  Oh, Caro was glad for Drew. “He deserves to be happy. I knew you would make him so, you are good.” Yet he would not be happy because of Caro, he was in a true prison, locked away for helping her.

  “And Drew is a good man.”

  “Yes.” Caro’s vision clouded with tears. He was not known for his goodness, but he had always shown it to her. His love had been precious to her as a child, when he’d protected her from the cruel taunting of their siblings and tried to shelter her from their lack of parental love. He’d been her safe harbour when her marriage had turned sour. He deserved happiness. “I owe him much.”

  “The two of you are not alone any more. Will you come with us?” the Duke asked, his baritone cutting the stillness in the room and making her jump.

  When Caro looked at him a tingle like hackles lifting on her spine rippled across her skin, cat-like. His authority and arrogant stance reminded her of Albert. “I will come.” Because Drew asked it of me.

  “Then we should go directly.” Mary stood. “John can send a cart back for your possessions.”

  A new sensation, a sense of drowning, overwhelmed Caro, stealing her breath, as though the water about her was icy.

  To be outdoors again.

  To be amongst people again
.

  She took a deep breath, fighting against panic. Yet Drew would not have asked her to do this if he did not think it right. “I have barely anything… Lady Framlington, I left everything in town.”

  “You must call me Mary. You are my sister.”

  Yes, and that is what Caro must think. This was not accepting charity from strangers, and this was for Drew.

  Chapter 4

  “The magistrate wishes to speak with you, Lady Kilbride.”

  Was she to be charged now too? Caro’s fingers clasped together at her waist as the nervous discomfort that had claimed a hold over her ever since she’d left her cottage roared through her. Her heart pounded so loud in her ears it was deafening.

  The Duke of Arundel, Mary’s uncle, stood before her, in her private sitting room. He’d come to speak with her, in Mary’s company, while downstairs the magistrate who had the say over Drew’s situation waited in the formal drawing room.

  “If you wish to help your brother then you must speak. He has told us of the Marquis of Kilbride’s violence and sworn that is the only reason you accepted his protection, yet unless you confirm it I fear Kilbride’s word will be taken over Drew’s.”

  Then she must speak. She would not see her brother hang because of her.

  But to speak of such private things… Shame touched her skin with warmth. She had lived with the Duke of Pembroke for only two days and yet she had seen love as it ought to be returned here. He loved his wife and Mary loved Drew—Caro still loved Albert too, the Albert of her fairytales, the Albert who for a little while had seemed so similar to the Duke of Pembroke and how the Duke was towards his wife, Kate. Yet Albert had never looked at Caro quite as the Duke looked at Kate. Caro knew what she’d lacked. She had been right to run, but her heart still remembered all the emotions of her first year with Albert, and it clung to the only time she’d known such tenderness and admiration in her life, even if it had been a shallow image of it. It also clung to the moments Albert’s touch had been gentle and tender in her bed. Those had been the most precious moments of her life…