The Secret Love of a Gentleman

by Jane Lark

  Caro’s heart raced as she followed, but it was not with fear. She felt inexplicably excited. Why was she excited?

  “George!” she called, as he ran along the hall. He always looked like a little caricature of Drew when he ran. “George!” He did not stop. “George! Wait! Or I will tell your papa you misbehaved and you shall not see Uncle Robbie!” Her heart thumped harder as George neared the top of the narrow stairs leading down from the attic. “George, stop!” She clasped her skirt and held it high as she ran too, terrified he’d fall.

  The child was an absolute nightmare when he chose to be, but thank the Lord he stopped and turned back, waiting for her as he grasped a spindle of the banister.

  “Good boy, George, darling,” she praised breathlessly when she reached him, dropping to her haunches to hug him in relief. “Remember, you are not to run near the stairs, nor near horses or water, they are the three things you must never do.”

  He nodded, his face twisting in a look of concern over her distress.

  “Good boy,” she gave him another squeeze as love spilled from her heart into her blood. Drew’s children were her life. Without them she would have nothing to hold her together.

  When she rose she lifted him to her hip and kissed his cheek, then said near his ear, “Come along, then, let us find your Uncle Robbie.”

  She carried him down, with one hand sliding along the stair rail.

  “May I see Uncle Bobbie’s ho’ses?”

  “They will be in the stables. You may see them another day.”

  “Will Papa let me ‘ide them?”

  “One day, yes, I’m sure he will.”

  George’s short-sentenced conversation continued down the stairs. He so rarely ran out of enthusiasm or energy.

  When they reached the first floor, Caro heard loud, masculine voices echoing along the landing. Robbie was already upstairs and he and Drew were heading towards the drawing room. She stopped on the stairs, looking down through the stairwell and saw the servants carrying in Robbie’s luggage on the ground floor.

  She’d hoped for a moment more of obscurity, but her hopes wilted as George shouted loudly, “Uncle Bobbie!” and then he fought for freedom. She finished her descent and set him down. He charged off in the direction of the voices.

  Caro did not follow. Her excitement ebbed as she saw them.

  “Uncle Bobbie!”

  They looked back.

  Foreboding crept over Caro and then the familiar discomfort—panic. Her lungs emptied of breath. Rob was looking at her not George, his gaze briefly skimmed the length of her body, then lifted back to her face. She felt hot as well as uncomfortable. The recollection of his touch now gave her a sense of self-consciousness. Her discomfort with other people had been her companion for too many years.

  “Oh!” The cry came from George. He’d caught his toe on a wrinkle in the carpet and he tumbled forward, still gripping his wooden horse.

  Caro lifted the hem of her dress and ran as the poor child’s head hit the floor with a bump. Thank the Lord it was wood and not stone.

  Drew reached him first, but George was now howling, the broken wooden horse still grasped in his hand. It had lost a leg, but it was also covered in the child’s blood.

  “What has he done?” she asked, stopping before them, breathing hard.

  Drew wiped his thumb across his son’s swollen lower lip as Robbie held out a handkerchief.

  “He bit his lip when he fell. No real harm, Caro,” Drew answered.

  Caro’s fingers pressed against her chest, then reached to brush through George’s hair. He was crying still. She sensed Robbie watching her, but she did not care. George was everything to her. “Poppet,” she whispered, “did you break your horse?”

  “Grandpa will buy you another,” Robbie said, his fingers brushing across George’s brow. They touched Caro’s. She pulled her hand away as she met Robbie’s dark gaze.

  Her heart raced into a gallop, calling her to flee.

  But if Robbie was to be here for the whole summer she must force herself to feel easier with him. “I brought him down because he wished to see you.”

  George’s wails had turned to quieter sobs and sniffs. Robbie held his hands out and George reached for him in return. He set his arms about Robbie’s neck as Robbie took him.

  Robbie’s ease with George moved something within Caro. If she had given Albert a son he would not have held the child, he would have probably looked into the nursery for a few moments each day and no more. It was more evidence that Robbie’s actions towards her had been nothing more than kindness. He was simply a good-natured young man.

  “Mama,” George cried, pressing his face into Robbie’s neckcloth, probably getting blood all over it.

  “Your mama is asleep,” Drew ruffled George’s hair. “Iris woke her in the night and she needed to rest. She will be down in a little while.”

  Robbie’s gaze lifted to Drew then passed to Caro, and he smiled. It shone in his eyes, not simply parted his lips. He was as open in nature as his sister.

  The rhythm of Caro’s heartbeat was painful. Something solid tightened in her chest. He’d smiled at her last night, across the room, and anger and discomfort had taken up their swords and begun a war inside her. That was her irrational madness. But when he’d touched her arm, his fingers had gripped her gently.

  “Are you going to join us for tea, Caro? You could act as hostess…” Drew lifted an eyebrow at her. It was a challenge.

  Forcing a smile, she looked from Drew to Robbie, fighting the urge to run. Yet, bizarrely, as much as she wished to run, she felt pulled towards Robbie when he smiled again. His smile tried to reassure and pleaded with her to stay.

  Her skin burned as she blushed, but she nodded, then turned to lead the way towards the drawing room. A maid was already there, laying out the tea tray. Drew must have ordered it when Robbie arrived.

  Caro breathed slowly, trying not to show how hard it was to draw the air past the panic in her chest.

  A plate of almond biscuits stood beside the teapot, and as the men came into the room, George released a deep whimper of longing.

  Caro picked up the plate and held it out for George, who was still balanced in Robbie’s arms. George took a biscuit and sucked it. Tears stained his cheeks.

  Caro’s gaze lifted. Robbie had been watching her again.

  “Your neckcloth is ruined,” she said to him.

  Drew was watching her too.

  Robbie’s hand lifted and he took a biscuit. He had long, slender fingers and beautifully proportioned hands. They looked as gentle as they’d felt.

  Albert’s hands had been broad and brutal.

  A spasm caught in Caro’s stomach, as though her womb ached.

  It is because he’s holding the child.

  Her gaze met Robbie’s again as he bit into the biscuit. She looked at Drew and held out the plate.

  ~

  Rob watched Caroline as they ate breakfast the day after his arrival. He’d experienced a strange sense of recognition, déjà vu, when she’d offered him the plate of biscuits as George had held his neck.

  Something had passed between them, her eyes had said something he did not understand. Yet after serving their tea she’d disappeared into hiding, leaving Drew to take George to see his mother and Rob to unpack.

  She had not come down to dinner.

  But this morning she’d risked Rob’s company again. He’d entered the morning room after her and seated himself opposite her. She’d mumbled good morning as he sat, but she had not looked at him.

  Rob was unable not to look at her. The more he watched her, the more he became fascinated.

  Mary spoke to Caroline about a book she’d read, probably trying to ease Caroline’s discomfort through conversation. Flashes of expressions passed across Caroline’s face, but they never fully formed. She hid her thoughts and emotions as she hid herself. Her smile was tempered and frowns fleeting, and he’d not once in all the years he’d known her, heard h
er laugh.

  Her gaze lifted and the morning sunlight spilling through the windows caught her eyes. It turned them from the hazel with a look of amber to a remarkable gold.

  He wished he could make her see he was no risk, that at least with him she might be free of fear.

  She looked at Drew.

  What would she look like if she were to laugh, while her eyes, cast in gold, sparkled? Rob wished to see her laughing.

  I will have her laughing and dancing by the end of the summer. He smiled as a sound of humour slipped from his throat. It was his idealism speaking. He wished everything ordered as it should be, and no one should feel as restrained as Caroline did. That was why he saw himself in government, because he cared about the people who desperately needed help.

  Yet while he worked out how to win himself an elected seat and change the world for them, the aim of bringing Caro out of her shell would give him a purpose he could fulfil more quickly.

  Caroline had looked back at him when he’d made a sound, as had Mary. He did not explain it, but looked at Drew. “Is there any interesting news?”

  “Not really,” Drew folded the paper and threw it across to Rob. “It’s all gossip and insinuation. What are we doing today? Riding out? I could show you all of the estate. You’ve never ridden the boundary.”

  “Your son has a prior claim on me. I promised to teach him how to bat alone, and you will need to help me with that.”

  Drew smiled. “Then I’ll defer to my son. We can ride out tomorrow and I’ll take George with us on my saddle. He’ll—”

  “Not be going,” Mary interrupted, “That is too much for him.”

  “Nonsense, he loves riding up with me, he likes watching everything and he loves the horses.” Drew gave Mary a smile that said do not challenge me. “He is my son, he has backbone.”

  “He is a two-year-old child—”

  “Who has a healthy interest in the world.”

  Rob looked from Drew to Mary. “I did not come here to cause a rift between you, but I’m sure George will cope. He will have the two of us to entertain him, and he will be unhappy if we leave him behind.”

  Mary glared at Rob and rose from the table. “We will see. I am going to the nursery.” She turned, her skirt swaying with the movement, speaking her annoyance without words. Then she walked away.

  Drew laughed for an instant, but then he rose. “Mary…”

  She did not look back.

  Drew’s hand touched Rob’s shoulder and he leaned down. “Do me a favour, in future do not side with me. You are her brother. She’ll hold it against me.” Laughing again, then, he walked on, while Mary made a disgruntled noise as she left the room.

  Drew’s lack of respect for her irritation would rile her further and she’d be angry for a while. Poor George would have to wait for his lesson until Drew had finished patching things up.

  Rob looked back at Caroline, expecting her to rise immediately and leave. Instead her gaze met his.

  “I’m sorry,” she breathed in a quiet, blunt voice. “If I have made you feel uncomfortable. I will try to accept your presence here. But it is not easy for me, Mr Marlow, and I wish you would not stare at me as you have been.”

  “Caroline…”

  She rose, leaving her napkin on the table and her meal half-eaten.

  But Rob carried on quickly, before she could walk away. “…I will be no threat to you. I am staying here only because I love my sister and I love the children. I have no desire to discompose you. I hope you will come to feel at ease in my company as you do in Mary’s.”

  She nodded, slightly, but then she turned.

  “Good day!” he called in her wake, feeling as though he’d taken a step towards dancing with her. It was the first time she’d voluntarily spoken to anyone in his family beyond his mother and Mary, as far as Rob knew.

  ~

  Love. The word echoed in Caro’s thoughts like a bell that kept tolling, as she crossed the hall, then climbed the stairs. Because I love my sister and I love the children.

  Love. The word had seemed odd on Robbie’s lips. Yet she heard Drew say it often, and she saw love everywhere in Mary’s extended family. But for a young man like Robbie to use the word so freely about his sister and his niece and nephew.

  Even in the first year of their marriage, when she’d thought herself loved, Albert had never used that word. But nor had she spoken it to him. It was a word that had never been spoken in her childhood. She had never dared to risk the mention of it to Albert in case it had broken some spell—the spell had broken anyway.

  She walked past the stairs to the nursery. Drew and Mary would be up there, either continuing their disagreement or ending it.

  Caro went to her rooms and collected her bonnet, so she might walk outside. The sunshine and the sounds of nature would calm the turmoil inside her.

  When she came down she used the servants’ stairs to avoid the possibility of another encounter with Robbie.

  The servants’ hall brought her out into the walled garden. It was full of vegetables waiting to be harvested for the table, and rows of flowers to be cut to fill the vases in the house. The scent of herbs caught on the breeze as her skirt brushed the leaves of the thyme, mint and rosemary.

  A flock of sparrows chirped riotously, chasing each other through tall beanstalks, seeking insects.

  Caro walked on, smiling at the gardeners, who lifted their caps, as she had smiled at the servants who’d curtsied and bowed within the house.

  She felt no unease with them.

  But they bore no comparison to the life she’d left—she had no need to feel judged by them.

  She walked from the walled garden through the narrow wooden door onto the lawn, which fronted the house and followed the path that would lead her about the hedge into the parterre gardens. New scents greeted her: lavender, roses and the sharp smell of the pelargoniums that grew in pots positioned along the path.

  ~

  Rob watched Caroline from the library window as she walked the path at the edge of the lawn, heading towards the parterre gardens.

  He’d not gone up to the nursery for fear he’d be intruding on Mary and Drew. He’d go up later, but that meant he was currently at a loose end.

  He freed the latch and opened the French door, then stepped out as Caroline disappeared behind the same tall hedge he’d seen her go behind the other day.

  When he walked across the lawn he realised he’d come outside hatless and gloveless, but his stay was informal.

  He turned the corner and saw her on the other side of the hedge.

  She stood at the edge of a flower border, reaching down and leaning forward, pulling a flower to her nose.

  His heart made an odd little stutter. If he could draw as well as John, it would have been a perfect pose to capture—the serenity of a summer morning.

  He walked closer, the grass silencing his footsteps. “Caroline.”

  She jumped half out of her skin, turning and stumbling.

  He was close enough to catch her arm and stop her falling. Her bosom lifted with a sharp breath, and her hazel eyes, in the shadow of her bonnet, burned like soft amber.

  “You frightened me.” When he let go of her, she stepped away.

  “I’m sorry. I did not intend to. I saw you come out, and I had nothing to do…”

  She looked into Rob’s eyes as though she saw a puzzle that confused her.

  It made him unsure what to say. I wish she would be braver, Drew had said the other day. We have male servants, after all. “Do you think it possible that by the end of the summer we may be friends?”

  Her bosom lifted with a breath. “That would b-be nice. But you will have to f-forgive me. I-I am not b-brave. I’m sorry.”

  She turned away and she would have left him again, but he gripped her arm. It would discompose her and yet, when the woman kept running, how else was he to keep her there long enough to speak?

  The muscles in her arm stiffened within his hold. “We m
ay progress at your pace. But I do not see why it is not possible. That is what I hope for.”

  She nodded.

  When he let her go she turned away and walked further into the garden; he presumed to find solitude and security.

  She must have endured much in her past. He knew Drew had helped her leave her violent husband, but her husband must have been very violent for her to still be affected by it after so many years.

  Pity clasped in his stomach. Perhaps it was that which had caught him in the gut the other day. She might suffer with fear, but he also thought she suffered with wounded pride, because she was embarrassed, by her husband perhaps…

  Chapter 7

  When Rob walked into the drawing room, in time for the dinner gong, he hoped Caroline would be there.

  She was not.

  He’d not seen her since they’d spoken in the garden and it would be hard to make a friend of her, to the point that he might make her laugh and dance, if she was never about.

  “You are late, Robbie. Did my son exhaust you?” Drew walked forward and grasped Rob’s arm, turning him around so they could go to the dining room, leaving Mary to walk behind them for a moment.

  Rob glanced back at Mary, wondering what Caroline did in the evening when she did not come down to dinner. “Did Drew tell you, your son is a natural with a bat. He quite surprised me. By the end of the afternoon I had him hitting nearly every ball Drew threw.”

  “When I am sure they were very carefully thrown to hit his bat.” Mary smiled at Drew.

  He let go of Rob’s arm, turned back and took her hand. “Perhaps.”

  The two of them walked beside Rob as they continued.

  Rob longed to ask Drew more about Caroline. He wished to understand her.

  “Caro. I did not think you were coming down.”

  Rob looked forward when Drew spoke. Caroline stood at the foot of the stairs to the second floor. Her fingers were clasped together at her waist. She had not been there when he’d come from his rooms a moment ago.

  She wore a shimmering amber silk dress. It drew out the variety of colours in her hazel eyes, and in her blonde hair too. Nothing about her was one shade. One lock of gold hair fell to her throat and a necklace with a single amber cross pendant lay in the cleft between her breasts.