The Secret Love of a Gentleman

by Jane Lark

  “Ow, George, be gentle with me.” He held out his hand for the soldiers as George climbed up onto his good leg.

  “Uncle Bobbie had a big tumble, George, he hurt himself very badly, so you must be careful.”

  George nodded, looking at Rob. “Where does it hurt?”

  “On this leg here, and this hand.” Rob lifted his right hand. George gripped it and kissed it.

  “There, it’s all better now.”

  “Thank you.” The words slipped from Rob’s lips on a whisper while something shot straight through his heart, like a bullet. Damn, he would have his own son or daughter.

  He looked up at Caro, but his gaze paused on her stomach before lifting to her face.

  They would have a son or daughter.

  Her eyes glittered with moisture before she turned away. “I shall pour.” She would be doing that in his home, as his wife.

  He looked at George’s soldiers. “They are rather smart. Their scarlet jackets are very grand.”

  “Papa bought them.”

  Rob looked up at Drew. “Good old Papa.”

  “They are firing their guns,” George said.

  “Yes.”

  “Robbie!” Mary swept into the room as excited as her son, “and Caro, and you came together, how wonderful.”

  “They have some news,” Drew stated.

  “We do,” Rob answered, and he would have stood, but he had George on his lap. “We are engaged.”

  Mary looked at Caro, her mouth open. She’d truly not seen that this was likely. “You are happy?”

  There was a pause before Caro answered, and she looked as though she thought about the answer, then she breathed, “Yes.” It was as though she had just discovered it.

  Rob laughed. “I hope you are. If you are not, I will be sad.”

  Caro looked at him. “I am.”

  “And you, Rob?”

  “More than happy.” His lips parted, with a smile. He was, truly—just a little in shock. “We are to be married in four weeks.” He looked at Caro. “I asked Drew to bring you back to town in a fortnight. You may stay at John’s and I will stay at my uncle’s. My rooms will have been let. Then you will have chance to purchase a dress and other things for the wedding and some clothes and things for our journey north.”

  She shook her head as though she would spend nothing.

  “Caro, I have plenty of money, you will purchase what you wish.” He looked at Mary. “Ensure she has everything she needs.”

  Mary nodded, beaming. She was not worried about his age at least.

  “Will you stay for luncheon? We have not eaten yet.”

  “Yes, if you are happy to, Caro?”

  She nodded. “May I take Iris?”

  “Of course.” Mary passed her over, then turned to the footman hovering near the door. “Would you tell cook we have two guests?”

  After they’d eaten, Rob and Caro dressed for the cold again, and he held her hand as she climbed up into the curricle. Then they waved their goodbye, with arrangements made for Drew to collect Caro in ten days.

  When they arrived in Maidstone, Caro directed him to the inn where he could leave his curricle, and then they walked from there.

  She gripped his arm and it made movement more difficult, but he ignored that, the feel of her fingers was a balm that outweighed it.

  He’d not realised how small her cottage was. It was no more than a hall and room wide, and two rooms in depth. It was a terrace and whitewashed on the outside, while inside it was dark and full of shadows cast by the limited light that came from small squat, square windows.

  He took off his hat and ducked beneath the lintel, and then apologised to her housekeeper for keeping Caro in town and frightening the poor women when Caro had not returned.

  What surprised him most, though, was Caro’s ease in the place. As soon as she walked through the door she seemed brighter and lighter in spirit. “Will you have more tea with me, do you think you can stomach it?”

  He laughed, “I will have tea with you, whether I am able to drink it or not, solely for the luxury of sitting with you to do so in your own home.”

  She looked at her housekeeper. “Tea, then, Beth.”

  “May I take Beth to Yorkshire with us? We have become close. I would like her about me.”

  “If she is up to managing a small household of servants rather than a cottage, she may have the post of housekeeper there. I have not appointed one.”

  “I will ask her when you have gone.”

  Caro sat down on the edge of the chair opposite his, looking eager.

  “You have been happy here, haven’t you?”

  “I feel free here. I am not at all dependent on Drew; my income is from the jewellery I brought from my marriage.”

  Inferior. When she’d said it of him, she’d said it of herself too. Why had he not remembered that?

  He’d thought she’d rejected him for his inferiority, but that was ridiculous. She was happy in a tiny working man’s cottage.

  He’d been an ass. Why had he not seen through what she was really afraid of? His youth represented insecurity. She had been unsure of his constancy. She’d said Kilbride had adored her and then his love had died. The evidence from her life was a good reason for her to be wary.

  “I’m glad for you.”

  “I knew you would be.” She was smiling broadly. “The day I moved in I longed to be able to tell you because I felt proud, and I knew you would understand and be proud of me.”

  “I am. But will you regret having to leave?”

  Her hand touched her stomach. “No. I would rather be with you. This was only a place for me to live until… I hoped you would come back to me.”

  “You need never have hoped for it. I did not wish to leave you.”

  “I’ll chase up our tea,” she stood, but he caught her wrist as she walked past.

  “Caro.”

  She leaned down and kissed his lips, perhaps understanding the longing that must have shown in his eyes. He turned in the seat and gripped the back of her head, holding her mouth to his for a moment more, then let her go.

  She smiled, then turned away.

  Chapter 41

  Mister Robert Marlow, the Grandson of the 8th Duke of Pembroke and the 10th Earl of Barrington, announces his engagement to Lady Caroline Framlington.

  Rob sat in his club reading the announcement and hoped Kilbride had read it.

  He’d seen nothing of Kilbride since rising from his sick bed, but this felt like revenge, and if the man crawled out from the woodwork now Rob was not going to back away or hide.

  It should not bother him, but the fact that Caro had a history of years with Kilbride itched beneath Rob’s skin. He wished he could erase that part of her life. It rankled.

  Yet we have a child.

  Every time he thought of the child, his heart missed a beat.

  “Rob!” Tarquin called him.

  Rob looked up to see his most foolish friend pulling up an imaginary noose at the side of his neck.

  Rob laughed. “You will be jealous.”

  “I am jealous.” He stated, “I have heard a dozen more rumours about the quality of her beauty, and the perfection of her skin.”

  “I do not wish you to admire it.”

  Tarquin laughed.

  “The deed is done, then,” Roger sat down next to Rob.

  “It is.” There was no going back and he did not wish to.

  ~

  When his father’s hand settled on his shoulder, Rob looked up. “They’ve arrived.”

  Rob’s thoughts had been drifting—he’d not heard them. He rose, his heart racing with excitement. He smiled. He’d longed to see her. If he could bloody run down the stairs he would, instead he gripped the banister and limped heavily down them, but a little faster than he’d walked down them a week ago. Every week he made small progressions in his health.

  John was already in the hall, as were Kate and his mother, and behind him he heard his sister
s coming down.

  He wished none of them to see or touch Caro before he did. So here was another of the emotions that Caro engendered in him with a strength that was irrational—possessiveness.

  Rob’s father had always been like a dark, guardian angel at their shoulders. Perhaps Rob would be like that over his children. Or perhaps he would be like George with a bloody new toy and become obsessed with it. He laughed out loud as he mocked himself and tried to hurry his leg.

  Caro walked through the door into the hall with Mary. She was wrapped up in the same cloak and bonnet she’d worn when she’d come to him.

  Her gaze passed quickly over those in the hall then lifted, looking for him. She smiled broadly when she saw him coming downstairs. He grinned at her. If he’d been fit and healthy he would have run and lifted her off her feet when he reached the hall.

  Instead she walked towards him as he descended the last few steps. In his mind he greeted her with a kiss. But he could not do it in reality before his family. Her eyes were gilded by the light in John’s hall, and they soaked up his features with a visible thirst.

  Forgetting everyone about him, he pulled the ribbons of her bonnet loose and lifted it from her head. “Was your journey good?”

  She nodded, but her smile fell, leaving only a slight lilt at the edges of her mouth. She was nervous.

  “Let me take your cloak too.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Have you a list of all you need to buy in town?”

  “I do not wish to spend your money.”

  “It will be your money too once we are wed. What is mine will be yours, and I have enough. I neither gamble nor drink heavily, as you know, and as I have not really wished to be supported by John, I have a sum saved. I also do not even feel guilty spending it anymore, because, as my father pointed out, John’s money was my grandfather’s and therefore should I not deserve a share as I was equally his grandson?”

  Caro’s smile lifted again. “You are a little different from what you used to be. You seem more confident.” The words were whispered, as the rest of his family fussed over Mary and Drew and the children.

  “Perhaps. I have travelled a little bit of a journey since I fell from my curricle. I was forced to become dependent on my family, and learned to know myself a little better as I lay in bed reflecting on our conversations in the summer and the autumn. Like you, I suppose, I found my freedom to become myself.”

  She smiled more truly then, with no nervousness in her eyes.

  “Caroline, how lovely to see you again.” His mother came to welcome her.

  He gave Caro’s cloak and bonnet to a footman, then turned as his family fussed over her. His mother hugged her. “We are very happy for you both, Caroline.”

  His father stepped forward and did the same, pressing a parental kiss on Caro’s cheek.

  John greeted her then, and she dropped a shallow curtsey. “None of that. You will be my sister, so we must be informal. Katherine and I are also very glad for you, and you are very welcome here. We shall take good care of you until the wedding. Katherine has been eagerly looking forward to taking you shopping.”

  Kate hugged her too.

  “We may exhaust you, though, I’m afraid,” his mother said, “We have arranged all sorts of visits with trades people to obtain everything we will need. We have so little time, and Rob is insisting we do everything properly.”

  Caro glanced at him.

  His extravagance was for both of them. He wished Caro to have a day to remember, but he wished it for his mother too.

  But when his mother would have led Caro upstairs he caught Caro’s arm. “Wait.” He let his family walk on ahead, then took Caro’s hand and walked with her, at his slower pace. “The announcement has appeared in the paper.”

  “I know. Drew showed me.”

  “Are you still happy with the idea?” he asked as he took the steps. He did not use the banister, but clasped her hand tighter when he put his weight on his weaker leg. It held.

  “I am, but I am terrified too. The future still scares me.”

  “The future will not be terrifying. It will be as it was in the summer.”

  She glanced at him. “You have always known what to say to me.”

  There was that swelling in his chest. Love. To help her like this and have her so close were things his body had craved. That thirsty feeling of the summer was now something deeper, something within his gut and his chest rather than his throat.

  “I have been terrified of facing your parents again too. They have not shown it, but I am sure they must not approve.”

  “They would rather I was older, but they understand that love cannot be chosen. They know we did not plan for this to happen, and they already think of you as a member of the family.” His beast of possessiveness quietened as her fingers gripped his more firmly, but perhaps he was holding hers too hard due to the pain from his leg.

  “This is the first time I have walked upstairs without using the banister. If I am bruising your hand you must tell me,” he whispered, as his family turned towards the drawing room.

  “I would not tell you even if you were, because I am glad to help you, but you are not anyway.”

  ~

  Rob caught hold of Drew’s elbow as they rose from the dinner table. “Might I speak with you?”

  Drew looked back and smiled at him. “Of course.”

  “I mean privately, before we join the women. We can go down to the library.”

  Drew nodded.

  The dining room was full. His wider family had come to John’s to take dinner in an informal celebration of Rob’s engagement. He’d had his shoulder slapped a dozen or more times, and received various inappropriate comments from his cousins. He’d wished to throw a punch at them on three occasions, but he knew his cousins well enough to realise that if he responded, the teasing would become worse, so he’d left them to their foolishness.

  But as he’d eaten he’d been watching Drew and the words Drew had spoken to Caro in the autumn had been stewing in Rob’s head.

  They descended the stairs in silence. The lower floor was full of shadows as the candles burned on the upper floor only. There were none lit in the library, but the window shutters were turned back and the room was full of moonlight. It reached across the floor in wide strips.

  “What is it, little brother?”

  It was a name Drew had used for Rob for a long time, ever since he’d married Mary, yet tonight it kicked. “I wish to tell you that you had no right to tell Caro what to do in the autumn. The things you said about me were wrong. You should have let her do as she wished and left us alone. We would have been engaged that week, and she need not have endured worry.”

  Drew lifted his hands, palm outward. “I meant no offence. I was merely thinking of what was best for you both.”

  “She had complete faith in me until then, and now she is not certain. She fears that I will have a change of heart, and that is only because you put that in her mind.”

  Drew’s hands fell and his gaze met Rob’s. He was a dark shadow, with the moonlight behind him. “Then I am sorry. That was not my intent.”

  “But you’re intent was to meddle, and it was not for good, Drew. You ought to have spoken with me if you were concerned, not to Caro. Fortunately things between us have been resolved regardless. But I wish you to know, in future do not doubt me, and do not stir up emotions that will make Caro afraid. She has endured enough fear, she needs to be able to feel confident.”

  “I know.” A repentant pitch hung in Drew’s voice. “I did not say to her what I did from an ill intent.”

  “I know.”

  Drew laughed. “Well, then, you have truly grown up, and now I am reprimanded by my sister’s future husband.”

  Rob did not think Caro’s sadness or fear amusing.

  “Come,” Drew clasped Rob’s shoulder, “let us join the women. I shall not misjudge you again. You are truly ready to be old.”

  Rob let Drew le
ad him from the room, but he was not sure the statement was a compliment. “I may be engaged to your sister, but I am not old, and nor is she. She may be older than me, but she is still young.”

  “And obviously very charming, to have won such a level-headed man. I am glad for Caro, and I am glad for you, if you are truly content with it, Rob.”

  Rob stopped walking and Drew’s arm slipped from his shoulder. “There is still doubt, if, such words will hover in Caro’s mind. You know how she is. There is no if. This is what I want. To be with Caro and to build a home for us, a place she can be certain of. You have no more faith in me than she does.”

  “I do, it is just our history is different to yours. Doubt, a lack of belief in people, has been bred into us. It is only proof of the opposite that takes it out.”

  “You will have proof.”

  “It is Caro who needs it, not I.” Drew smiled, and turned to begin climbing the stairs.

  Chapter 42

  It was almost as if the peace of the past few weeks in Caro’s cottage had never existed. The pace of life in town was sweeping those weeks away. It was so much faster, overwhelming.

  Mary took Caro shopping for clothes and encouraged her to buy far more than what she needed for the wedding. She said Caro should “buy anything bright and pretty that makes you feel happy, so you might walk into your marriage as though it is spring.”

  Caro had laughed at that, yet a new marriage, a new life, it was a new beginning for her.

  Rob’s mother had helped her write all the invitations and then choose flowers for her bouquet and flowers for the church and to adorn the hall for the wedding breakfast. Everything was to be evergreens, including holly, and her bouquet was to be daffodils and tulips.

  Then they had considered, with the Duchess of Pembroke’s chef, how they might have the bride-cake decorated.

  Mary had also convinced Caro that it would be cruel not to allow Rob’s younger sisters to act as bridesmaids, and so a colour was decided upon, and a modiste called to measure all of them and agree the style of their dresses.