“Do you like me still?” he whispered.
“Justin,” she whispered back, “I love you.”
He raised up on his knees and kissed her, his mouth moving softly, sweetly against hers. Then she wrapped her arms around him, and he pressed closer, his lips parting to meet hers.
Eventually he drew back, his eyes heavy with desire as he looked at her. Both of them were gasping for breath, and Caroline slid off the settee to sit on the floor beside him. He rested his head in her lap, clutching at her skirts as if he feared she might escape him.
“Oh, Caroline,” he murmured. “Why could I not have met you years ago?”
Caroline stroked the hair back from his brow and laughed softly. “You would have had to come to Devonshire. Were you ever in Devonshire?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Well, that is where I was.”
“But if I had met you then, I would never have gone to India. You never would have married Larry. We could have sixteen children by now.”
“I do not think it works that way. We were not the same people then that we are now. I was very young and silly when I married Lawrence. I did not make a good wife.”
“Will you tell me about it?”
Caroline let her head fall back against the edge of the settee, reluctantly remembering. “My family was a good one, an old one, but they had little in the way of ... of material comfort. We lived quite shabbily in the country, and I knew that my parents expected that I would improve their fortunes with a good marriage. They were trying to scrape together enough money for my Season.”
“But you wed Larry instead.”
“His family, whose estate was very near ours, was much in the same situation as ours. They had a good name, but little money. Lawrence’s father had problems with gaming, and I think his mother did, too. They wanted, needed, an heiress for their son. But we were in love. Or thought we were. We often met in secret. It felt very thrilling.”
“And what happened?”
“We eloped, of course. Made a dash for Gretna Green. When we came back, our parents were furious. All their plans were ruined, and not even my mother, who really was fond of me in her own way, could help. They disowned us, so we went to London. Lawrence had some vague idea of getting work of some sort.”
“How long was it before you realized Larry had the same ... the same problem as his parents?”
“Gaming, you mean? Not very long. He would often go out at night, leaving me alone in our shabby little lodgings. I suppose he was with you and his other friends.”
Justin winced against her skirt. “He said his wife did not mind that he was out so late.”
“I did mind, but I did not say anything. I was still silly and in love.”
“When did things change?”
“We had been married a little over a year. I was enceinte, and Lawrence was drinking heavily. Losing money heavily, too. I had to hide coins from him so I could buy food and coal. Then, one night, he found out what I was doing. We quarreled, shouted. Lawrence was never physically violent with me, but that night he had been drinking. He broke a vase, and I fell. I cut my ankle open on the shards, and I-I lost the baby.”
She closed her eyes tightly. It still hurt, the memory of that long-ago night.
Justin reached out and touched her ankle, laying his palm flat against the raised scar beneath the silk stocking.
“I am so sorry,” he said simply.
“It was for the best, really. That was no life for a child. And certainly the Golden Feather would not have been!”
“Did you hate the place so very much?”
Caroline thought about this question carefully, her mind winding around the past. “I hated men trying to grab my backside as I walked past them, and drunken people getting loud and angry when they lost. But I did not hate the place itself. It meant independence and the possibility of a future for Phoebe and myself. It was Lawrence’s last, best gift to me. No, I did not hate it.”
As she suddenly realized that truth, she felt freer and lighter than she had in years. She could acknowledge the past, and let it go. Lawrence, the lost baby, the Golden Feather—it all flew away.
She looked down at Justin, lying in her lap.
“The Golden Feather brought me you,” she said lightly. “How can I hate it?”
He turned his face up to her and kissed her quickly on the chin. “I think you are the bravest person I have ever met.”
Caroline felt herself turning pink. “Brave? Certainly not. I only did what I had to in order to survive. You were brave to go to India and face tigers and snakes. I never could have done that, not even for Phoebe.”
He laughed ruefully. “I went to India because my father sent me there after I fought three duels.”
“You fought three duels? Never! I can’t believe it.”
“Oh, believe it. I was quite the young hellion. I put Harry to shame. My father didn’t know what else to do with me, so off I went.” He fell silent for a moment, stroking a bit of her soft muslin skirt between his fingers. “I hated India at first, and I hated my father for sending me there. But now I am deeply grateful to him. It made me stronger, more independent. It made me see what is truly important in life.”
“And what is that?”
“Family. And true honor. And love.” He reached up and drew her head down to his for another long, lingering kiss. “Especially love.”
“Umm, yes,” Caroline murmured with a smile. “I do see what you mean.”
“So I suppose it was a good thing we did not meet years ago.”
“No. We would have been too careless to see what we had.”
“And now that we are older, our marriage will be stronger.”
Caroline, who had been leaning down for another kiss, froze. “Marriage?”
Justin laughed. “Of course marriage! You did not think I was offering you carte blanche, did you? After all the groveling and apologizing I have done?”
“No. I did not think that.” Caroline carefully moved him aside and got up to sit back down on the settee. “But I did not think of marriage, either. Not seriously, anyway. To be your countess ...”
Justin sat up, a fierce, puzzled frown on his face. “Then what exactly were you thinking?”
That was a very good question, and it was not one that Caroline had an answer for. Truly, she had not been thinking at all. She loved Justin, longed for him, but she had thought that with her secret they could never wed. Now all was revealed, and he wanted to marry her anyway.
She looked at him and saw that he offered everything she had ever wanted. Love, family, a title, a home, respectability. He held it out to her on the palm of his hand, and all she had to do was reach out and pick it up.
She wanted, more than she had ever wanted anything, to be selfish, to reach out and take it, and damn the consequences.
But she loved him too much. Too much to marry him, to risk someone else finding out the truth, and spreading it far and wide that the Countess of Lyndon was once the owner of a gaming hell. The Sewards were an old and proud family. She would not destroy them, or the man she loved.
A sharp pain clawed at her belly as she thought of the life, the children they could have had. But looking after others before herself was too deeply ingrained.
She closed her eyes and shook her head. “I cannot marry you.”
“What!” He leaped to his feet. “Then what is this all about? I love you, Caroline. I thought you loved me.”
“I do love you!” she cried. “That is why I cannot marry you.”
“I do not understand.”
“What if someone discovered the truth? The scandal would be a hundred times worse if I were the Countess of Lyndon than if I were just plain Mrs. Aldritch. Don’t you see?”
A pulse ticked in Justin’s jaw. He was obviously furious, more furious than Caroline had ever seen him. “No, I do not see.”
“I will not be the cause of scandal for your family. I care about all of you
too much.”
“You are being ridiculous,” Justin said tightly. “No one knows of this but you, me, and your maid and sister. I hardly think they will go gossiping about it.”
“You found out! Someone else could as well.”
“I only found out because I saw your scar. Did you go about flashing it at everyone?”
“Of course not!”
“Of course not. And not even Harry, who met you on several occasions as Mrs. Archer, has recognized you.”
“I cannot take that chance.”
Justin looked as if he would very much like to say something else. His mouth opened and closed again.
Finally, he said, “All right, then, Caroline. Be all self-sacrificing if you want to. But this is not the end. I will come back, again and again, until you agree to marry me.”
Then he turned on his heel and left. The front door closed with a loud snap behind him, and Caroline was all alone in the echoing silence.
“I am not self-sacrificing,” she muttered, hitting at a cushion with her fist. “I am sensible.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
“It was awful!” Phoebe whispered to Sarah and Harry. The three of them were huddled together on the last row of chairs at Mrs. Stone’s musicale, whispering and murmuring beneath the loud screech of Miss Stone’s violin solo. “I was just going up the walkway to our front door when Lord Lyndon came bursting out. His face was all red, and he was muttering to himself. He walked right past me without saying a word. I would vow he did not even see me.”
Harry squirmed uncomfortably in his seat, but Sarah’s brown eyes were wide with interest. “What did you find when you went inside?” she asked.
“My sister was in the drawing room, just sitting there all quiet. But I could see she had been crying.” Phoebe sighed. “I thought I was helping by going to speak to Lord Lyndon. It seems I have only made things worse. Something tragic has happened to separate them!” She shot a sharp glance at Harry. “If only someone had not lost his temper and started a fight. I know I was getting through to Lord Lyndon, given just a bit more time.”
“Me!” cried Harry. Several people looked over at them, and he quickly lowered his voice. “Me? I was only coming to your rescue.”
“I did not need to be rescued. I was just starting to make some progress.” Phoebe turned her gaze to where Caroline sat, ostensibly listening to the music. She never moved her eyes from Miss Stone and her violin. Then Phoebe looked at Lord Lyndon, sitting with his mother and Lady Bellweather on the opposite side of the room from Caroline. He, too, pretended great interest in the terrible music, but he kept darting little looks at Caroline.
“Now it is all ruined,” Phoebe continued. “Caro gave up the scheme of leaving Wycombe the very next day, but she says we will go at the end of the week.” Phoebe did not want to leave, or at least she did not want to go back to Devonshire as Caroline was talking of doing. She wanted to go to Brighton with Sarah, or maybe to London.
And she wanted her sister to be happy. It hurt her heart every time she saw Caroline drifting about the house, pale and sad. She wasn’t certain what had happened between Caroline and Lord Lyndon three days ago, but she was sure there must be something she could do to make things right. The two of them so obviously cared for each other. It was ridiculous and tragic for them to be apart, just like in Lady Lucinda’s Passion.
“Did your brother say anything to you about what happened?” she asked Harry.
“Not a word,” he answered. “But Justin has been an absolute bear ever since. I spilled some tea at breakfast, and you would have thought I burned down the house from the way he shouted!” Harry sighed. “I vow I will be glad to rusticate at Seward Park after this.”
Phoebe tapped her finger thoughtfully on her chin. “There must be something we can do to help, since they are too bacon brained to do it themselves. Come, help me devise a scheme.”
The three of them bent their heads together.
Harry and Phoebe and Sarah were up to something, Justin could tell.
In between stealing glances at Caroline, he watched them. They had been whispering, thick as thieves, at the back of the room ever since the music (if one could call it that) began. After the smugglers’ treasure contretemps and all the little mischiefs since, Justin did not trust them one whit.
But he did wish he still had some of their aptitude for scheming. If he did, he could come up with a plan to get Caroline to marry him.
Not that he had even tried. In the three days since the scene in her drawing room, he had lain awake every night, devising wild and unlikely plans to win her. In the clear light of day, they all looked extremely ridiculous. Caroline’s mind was made up; she was obviously doing what she felt was right, and all the letters and bouquets he sent would not move her.
If only he could make her see that nothing mattered, nothing but her! No one would ever find out about Mrs. Archer, and even if they did it would not matter. He would just take her and all their family to stay at Waring Castle, and the scandal would die the natural death of a nine days’ wonder.
What he needed was a really good plan, something romantic, something that would prove to her his sincerity....
His gaze snapped back to the whispering young trio.
As the violin piece ended and relieved applause broke out, Justin rose from his chair and went to the back row where the three of them were sitting.
Their alarmed glances and sudden silence proved to him that he had indeed been the subject of their conversation.
“Harry, ladies,” he said, sitting down beside them, “I wonder if I might beg your assistance. . . .”
Oh, Lord, would this evening never end?
Caroline sat very still, her hands folded in her lap, her eyes aimed forward to the young lady and her violin, a polite mask on her face. But she was all too aware of Justin watching her, trying to catch her attention, and her mind was racing wildly from one thought to another.
She longed to go home, to shut herself away in her room, alone. Maybe there, in the quiet, she could sort out her thoughts.
Then again, maybe not.
She had been trying to sort them for three days, three days of steadfastly avoiding Justin, and they had insisted on remaining in chaos.
She told herself over and over that she was doing the right thing. If she gave in to her selfish desires and agreed to marry Justin, they would be happy for a while. But eventually he would come to resent her past, especially if it caused a scandal. He would become cold, would turn to other women, maybe to drink as Lawrence had. She had seen such things over and over among the tonnish patrons of the Golden Feather. Men who gambled until the wee hours to avoid going home, masked women with wedding bands on their fingers who drank and laughed with forced gaiety.
A life of that sort would kill her. It would be more painful to have a life with Justin and lose it than any pain she was going through now could be.
At least that was what she told herself. Repeatedly.
If only he would cease sending her flowers and notes, reminding her of his presence! If only he would accept that what she was doing was for his benefit, and go away to his castle.
A burst of applause broke out around her, and she realized with a start that the music was over. She looked about, and saw that Justin was gone from his seat.
Caroline rose to her feet, relieved, and was about to go seek some refreshments when she saw her sister and Sarah Bellweather coming toward her. Phoebe had one gloved hand pressed dramatically to her brow.
“Oh, Caro!” she cried. “May we please go home now? I have such a dreadful headache.”
“A headache?” Caroline said in alarm. Phoebe was never ill; she was always far too busy for fits of the megrims. She took off one glove and laid her fingers against Phoebe’s forehead. “You are rather warm, and your cheeks are flushed.”
“It came upon her very suddenly,” Sarah offered. “She could hardly rise from her seat.”
“Miss Stone’s viol
in and this heat are enough to give anyone a headache,” Caroline said. She even felt one throbbing at the back of her own head now. “Let us just say good-bye to our hostess; then we can be off. Mary will know of a posset for you.”
“And can Sarah come, too?” Phoebe said, leaning weakly against Caroline’s arm.
“It is quite all right with my mother,” Sarah said. “We already asked her.”
Caroline peered at Phoebe closely. “You felt well enough to walk across the room and speak to Lady Bellweather before coming back here to me?”
Phoebe gave a pitiable little smile. “It would make me feel ever so much better to have Sarah with me.”
Caroline was too tired to argue. “Oh, very well, then. Come along, girls.”
Phoebe’s chamber, unlike Caroline’s, had a window that faced the street. When Caroline and Sarah went to tuck her up in her bed, she insisted that the curtains be left open.
“But you will be disturbed by the noise from the street,” Caroline protested. “That is not good for a headache.”
“I-I like the light,” Phoebe said, leaning back against her pillows.
“All right, then.” Caroline, who had been in the process of closing the satin curtains, reopened them, and went to give her sister a kiss. “I will leave you and Sarah to retire, then.”
Phoebe’s gaze darted past her, toward the small clock hung above her fireplace mantel. “Oh, no!”
Caroline drew back to look at her. “What do you mean no? Phoebe, you are acting very oddly.” She was surely up to something, Caroline could tell. Her cheeks were red with a hectic flush, and Sarah Bellweather’s brown eyes were far too wide and innocent.
They were most assuredly up to some mischief.
“I, well, I just mean don’t go yet,” Phoebe said with a little laugh. “I would like some . . . some warm milk. To help me sleep.”
“I will ring for Mary, then,” Caroline said, reaching for the embroidered bellpull.
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