Now Caroline stood before the fire, staring into the flames, but very much focused on the fact that Antony was over her right shoulder in his bathtub. She couldn’t keep the grin off her face. The anxiety that had set her heart racing on the short journey in the sedan chair, when she had questioned her outrageous actions several times and had her long-suffering chairmen stop, change direction, stop, then take up the poles again and continue, had evaporated, but her heart still beat just as fast as ever. But it was not anxiousness that caused the thudding to reverberate in her ears. It was the wicked thrill of not only having made it all the way into Antony’s dressing room, but knowing that just feet away, he was naked in his tub.
In all the years she had known him, she had not so much as seen him without his cravat, and certainly never in his shirtsleeves. He was always dressed immaculately, regardless if he was playing royal tennis or rusticating in the country. In the country, even her illustrious brother cultivated a beard. Not Antony, who maintained the same sartorial standards no matter the setting. She wondered if he wore his wig while in his bath, and it was such a silly thought that it gave her the courage to turn about and face him; that and the fact her four-legged companion gave the hem of her cloak a tug with his little teeth.
She scooped up the puppy, again delaying the inevitable, but finally lifted her gaze to the bathtub. What she discovered made her blink, face devoid of her thoughts for enough seconds that the occupant of the bathtub wished he possessed gills so he could remain underwater indefinitely. Finally, when she hunched her shoulders and smiled, a fist to her mouth, as if to stop a fit of girlish giggles, owning gills was unimportant; drowning was the only option.
Bravely, Sir Antony remained upright, elbows resting either side of the bathtub, bare wide chest, wider shoulders, face unshaven, and head without covering, all on display for Lady Caroline’s gleeful inspection. It was only when her gaze remained riveted to his head of thick, short-cropped auburn hair, did he feel the heat intensify to a prickly heat, not in his face but across his scalp. His head actually tingled, as if each individual hair glowed with embarrassment. And when she gingerly approached the bathtub, head cocked to one side in silent contemplation, eyes never leaving his scalp, he swallowed hard and said, after clearing his throat,
“I hope you realize how damnably unfair this is, Caro! I wonder at your reaction, if the situation were reversed.”
“Your hair is the same color as Merry’s,” she remarked with surprise, ignoring his remark and his discomfort. “It would probably be just as wavy, too, if you let it grow…”
“Probably! Will you stop staring at my head as if it is malformed?!”
She smiled at his awkwardness.
“Silly. Of course I must stare at your head because I have never seen you—ever—without your wig.” She frowned. “Come to think on it, I have not seen any gentleman of my acquaintance who wears a wig without his wig—”
“I should hope not!”
“In any situation,” she added with a raise of her eyebrows, and when he looked away she knew he understood. She retreated to the stool at the end of the bathtub, the pug on her lap. “Not that there was ever a situation for Aldershot to remove his wig—”
“Caroline—”
“Please listen, Antony. I wasn’t sure how I was going to tell you about Aldershot and me, when the situation would be comfortable enough. I’ve been wretched all day since you kissed me. Not that the kiss was wretched,” she added hastily. “The kiss was perfectly wonderful, and that’s why I couldn’t sleep tonight, thinking about that kiss, and if, after telling you everything, you would ever want to kiss me again. So I thought why not just come and see you at once. Get the horrid confession over with. Sooner is better, isn’t it?” She smiled, suddenly shy. “That you are in your tub makes it that much easier for me to tell you.”
“Does it? Well, I don’t want you feeling wretched and sleepless,” he confessed, just as uncomfortable but somewhat placated at having his privacy violated by her admission that she had enjoyed their kiss in the anteroom as much as he had.
“Thank you. I knew you would understand.”
“You don’t have to tell me. I told you that earlier today. But if it will ease your mind…”
“Yes. I do know and yes, it will ease my mind.” She blushed. “That wasn’t the only reason I came here tonight…”
He smiled then sighed, as if disappointed, and shook his head.
“Oh dear, and now you’ve seen me sans wig, you’ve had second thoughts. Damn.”
There was silence and then they both laughed at the same time. The moment served to make them more at ease in themselves and yet suddenly awkward in each other’s company.
“Quite to the contrary,” Caroline confessed quietly. “The wig gives you presence, but without it you are an extraordinarily beautiful man—”
“Caro! That’s—”
“—a compliment, so accept it,” she said, finishing the sentence for him, adding quickly before he could interrupt again, “Now let me tell you how I came to be married to Stephen Aldershot.”
“Very well. I shall listen without comment,” he replied, and reclined his shoulders against the tub, warm under his blanket of bubbles.
Caroline took a mental deep breath and said matter-of-factly,
“I did something very shocking at a masquerade ball… I was more than flustered. I was drunk.” She stopped and took another deep breath and continued, hand stroking the pug puppy, which had the effect of calming her. She bravely looked into Antony’s blue eyes and said bluntly, “I was so angry with you, with what you had said and done at the recital. I was past caring. I just wanted my innocence to be over with. I let myself be seduced. I gave my-my virginity away cheaply. At the time, I was not at all remorseful. It was not an unpleasant experience, what I can remember of it. It wouldn’t have mattered had it been ghastly. I just wanted to-to—hurt you. Fool that I was, I didn’t see that the only person I was hurting was myself!”
“Caro… Darling…”
“Please… Allow me to finish. Aldershot witnessed the entire episode. Ferret. He used it to persuade me to marry him. He agreed not to speak of what I had done to anyone, in exchange that I become his wife and provide a home for him and his sister. If I refused…” She shrugged. “He threatened to tell Salt everything. I didn’t care for me. I was beyond caring. I had deliberately ruined myself and you had been sent off to ’Petersburg, forever, as far as I knew. But I did care what my ruin would do to Salt, and to Jane. I also knew that if Salt discovered who had ruined me, he would insist I marry that man, not Aldershot. Marriage to my seducer would not have been a bad match. He is due to inherit a title and is an MP my brother respects, but as a husband?” She shuddered. “Never! His morals are questionable at best, whatever his talents as a lover. So my choices were to marry a conscienceless rake, or a blackmailing fortune hunter who was not the least interested in being a man—polar opposites, in fact. God! What a muddle.”
She stopped and sighed deeply, unaware she had done so. Antony’s gaze never left her face.
“I could not bear the thought of Salt discovering the truth. If he had known I was drunk beyond reason and allowed myself to be seduced… If he knew the identity of the man who had taken advantage of me… Regardless of their connections and good opinion of one another, my poor brother would have been duty-bound to defend my honor and challenge my seducer to a duel. He may well have forced him to marry me! That I could not allow…”
“So you chose the lesser of two evils?”
“Yes. Yes, I suppose I did. We, Aldershot and I, let Salt believe we had been so overcome in the moment that we cast aside all propriety. Remarkably, Salt believed us, even if later he was to wonder if Aldershot was capable of being a husband in any sense, not least in the bedchamber! He really was little more than a silly boy…”
“So you married Aldershot.”
“Yes. I married him.” She swallowed. “But not for the reason you think. N
ot because I gave into his threats. Of course, that was part of the reason but… I married him because he was dying.”
“Another ploy?”
“No! He had consumption. He was quite ill. He told me, not to elicit sympathy but to convince me to marry him. He said the marriage wouldn’t last many years. I would then be free to marry again. He wanted his sister—Kitty—to have a home. He wanted his debts paid. He wanted the years he had left to him to be spent carefree without the worry of his sister or ending his days in debtors’ prison. I could provide all that for him, and he would provide me with respectability, and if I happened to have fallen pregnant by my seducer, then the child would be born in wedlock. Of course, I hated myself twice, because had he not been dying, I may well have called his bluff with my harebrained solution…”
When Antony did not ask the obvious question, a silence stretched between them. The only sounds were the tick tock of the clock on the mantel and the crack and spit of the fire in the grate. Finally, Caroline found the courage to continue her confession.
“I had this harebrained notion that if I wrote to you, told you of my dilemma, you would rescue me. All my troubles would magically disappear. You would come home, vanquish my seducer, drop money in Aldershot’s lap to make him go away, and you would marry me, even if I were pregnant by another. The spoiled child so wanted to believe that fairytale could come true, and I did, for all of one day. Then, when all my tears had dried up, and I stopped feeling supremely sorry for myself, I conveniently blamed my predicament on you. If only you had remained in England. If only you had not been drunk that night of the recital. If only! If only! If only! I so hated you!”
“You had good reason to hate me…”
Caroline shook her head.
“Not for what occurred at the masquerade. Not for the consequences of my actions that night, or for Aldershot, or for my life being one big muddle, and all within six months of my eighteenth birthday! All of that had nothing to do with you. I was not your responsibility; I was mine…”
“I wish you had written to me. I would have come home.”
Caroline blinked at him and her shoulders slumped. She stared not at him, but at the pug puppy in her lap, curled in the folds of the red wool cloak, asleep, and then the tears came, big droplets splashing onto the puppy’s fawn fur. She nodded, and said after a shattering sob and dashing her eyes dry,
“Yes. Yes, I know that now… But I did not know that then. I had no notion of what you thought of me after our quarrel at the recital. You said I was a spoiled child, that I had a lot of growing up to do before you would even contemplate marrying me…”
“Caro, I threw a lot of idiotic statements at your head that I now regret…”
“But about that you were right! You know you were. I was spoiled and childish. I goaded you terribly by flirting with other, lesser men, all to get your attention. Worse! I tried to make you jealous. That was an utterly childish action because all it did was push you away.
“I know what it is like to be around a childish, thoughtless, self-absorbed being. Stephen Aldershot was such a being and his behavior exhausted me. He knew I did not care a jot for him, and he certainly had no interest in being a proper husband. Yet, he constantly demanded my attention, as a spoiled child demands of its overindulgent parents. He loathed my menagerie. He could not bear to have any of my pets near him. He was jealous of the time I spent with them and he even threatened to have them destroyed, but as we were living under my brother’s roof, it was an idle threat. Still, it did not stop his nastiness and petty jealousy.”
Her green eyes opened wide with incomprehension. It still baffled her.
“Can you imagine being jealous of poor old Penny Pug or Peter Macaw or Spaniel Daniel?”
He smiled knowingly.
“No. I cannot. They are as much a part of the family as your brother, Jane and the children.”
“Precisely! That’s what I tried to explain to him, but he never listened. He was just as jealous of the time I spent with others as he was of my animal family. Even Kitty, his younger sister, was not saved from his tantrums. She is such a kind soul and loves animals almost as much as I do, and is so opposite to her brother in every way, you would not know them for brother and sister. In much the same way as you and Diana are as different as sweet is from sour. Oh! I beg your pardon. That was impolite, but you know I have never taken to your sister.”
“You were saying about Aldershot’s tantrums…?”
“He would fly into a rage if I dared to have a conversation with a gentleman in any social setting, but he rarely showed his true nature to Salt. He behaved and cowered in my brother’s company. I had the most unchristian thoughts while married to that fiendish boy! It was only the fact he was indeed dying of consumption and was sometimes too weak to get out of bed that stopped me pushing him out a window! It’s true!” she stressed with a watery smile when Antony chuckled. “And then, to make matters a hundred times worse, the morning of the day he died, we had a ferocious argument. He had discovered that I-I had been—unfaithful. But how can one be unfaithful in a marriage that was never a marriage in the true sense? And so I told him. But what set off one of his temper tantrums and sent him into an apoplexy was the identity of my-my lover…”
She looked away, unable to hold Antony’s steady gaze, a gaze that gave no indication of his thoughts. He was so still in the warm water of his bath under the layer of bubbles that he looked to have been cemented in place. Yet his blue eyes did not leave her face for a moment. She sensed them on her, and she blushed, wondering what he truly thought of her after such a shocking disclosure. She took another deep breath, relieved she had finally told him, but knowing there was worse to come, though she could not bring herself to mention Dacre Wraxton by name. Just wanting to get the rest of the confession over with, she said flatly,
“I can hardly believe I chose to have a very brief affair with the very man I should have abhorred above all others. But he pursued me, wooed me, and it—happened. There is no excuse for what I did, but I was lonely and miserable and he was there. Twice, it was only twice, well, three times if you count the masquerade ball, and part of me is not sorry that it did happen because he gave me the satisfaction of knowing I was desirable. And then Aldershot, the idiot, goes out riding, when he could barely make it up the stairs without falling into a coughing fit, and gets killed when his mount shies from a dry rock wall and he falls and hits his head! My reaction to the tragic news was one of huge relief and my immediate thought was that I was free to marry you when you returned from ’Petersburg! Am I not the most unchristian, the most selfish female you have ever encountered? Are you not hugely relieved you went off to ’Petersburg when you did? Now do you see why I had to run away from your marriage proposal?”
Antony came to the side of the bathtub and held out a hand to her. Caroline set the drowsy pug puppy to the floor and willingly knelt beside the tub. He put a hand to her copper curls and searched her tearstained face with a soft smile.
“It is time for you, my dearest darling girl, to stop blaming yourself, for Aldershot’s puerile conduct, and most certainly for the deplorable behavior of the blackguard who seduced you. Having had one too many drinks is cause to protect a young girl from lechery and vice, not see it as an opportunity to take advantage of her. I don’t give tuppence if you let him kiss you, or if, indeed, you enjoyed the kiss. He had no right to take from you what you would not have given him willingly had you been clear-headed.”
“I was not drunk on the other two occasions,” she naïvely countered in a small guilty voice. “I knew what I was doing then.”
“And if he had been a gentleman he would have shown restraint and not allowed it to happen. It was grossly immoral of him to pursue you. He knew you were vulnerable and he used that vulnerability to his advantage. He possibly persuaded you that you’d been more than willing that first time, so what was the harm in allowing him to bed you a second time, and then a third…”
W
hen her green eyes went wide, he had his answer. He cupped her hot face and gently kissed her forehead, his understanding smile masking the impotent rage that seethed within him to do harm to the unnamed seducer. The lothario may have escaped the point of Salt’s sword, but give him a name, and he would find any excuse to force a duel and draw blood for what had been done to his sweet girl. Undoubtedly, Caroline wasn’t the only innocent the scoundrel had preyed on and he needed to be stopped, Caroline’s honor avenged. What she confessed next truly surprised him.
“He has asked me to marry him. Twice. I could not, and never would. But perhaps that makes him less of a-a seducer…?”
Antony did not know why, but this sliver of information only intensified his contempt for her blackguard and it was with great effort that he bottled his rage. He touched his head to hers, saying with a soft smile,
“He and Aldershot were both contemptible opportunists; neither deserved you.”
“And I don’t deserve you,” she said with a teary smile, a hand to his stubbled cheek. “I have yet to meet a more perfect man…”
Antony blushed at her fierce sincerity, saying with a laugh to hide his deep embarrassment,
“Salt would have something to say to that—”
“Salt? Pshaw! He’s my brother! I love him to pieces but he is pompous and far from perfect, whatever Jane thinks to the contrary!”
He grinned and brushed a strawberry curl from her flushed cheek.
“You should reserve judgment until after I have laid bare my soul. In fact, I predict you may wonder if by marrying me it is you who is entering into an ill-judged bargain. Believe me, my condition requires far more forbearance on your part, should you decide to become my wife, than my ready acceptance of what you have just confided in me. Now, please, return my dignity by allowing me to leave this tub and put on my robe.”
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