The sight of him made her want to weep.
So she turned from him and looked once more into the fire. The sound of the crackling fire still reached her ears, but it no longer soothed her. The pain of his nearness was like a knife in her lungs, draining her breath. When she cleared her throat, she still could not speak.
Anthony closed the door quietly. He came to sit beside her on the delicate settee.
“I am glad you are safe.”
“I left you,” she said in almost the same instant.
She looked up and met his eyes, but she had to look away. His beauty hurt her too much.
Anthony reached out and gently took her hand, as if it were made of spun glass and might break at his touch. She looked down at her small hand in his large one, feeling the heat of his body warm her.
He had come to her, just as her mother said he would. He had come, and he had not cursed her. For the first time in over a week, she felt a little hope. It was like dawn breaking after a long winter night, a night that lasted so long it seemed light would never come again.
“I left you,” she said again to test the light she saw in his eyes.
He did not look away from her. He did not try to evade the question she would not ask. He simply held her hand, and she could feel his weariness in his touch. She wondered how long it had been since he last slept.
“I have found you again.”
She knew the words she was supposed to say. She knew she was to beg his forgiveness, to ask him to relent, to tell him she had been a fool and worse. She was supposed to say if he took her back she would obey him without question for the rest of her life. Now that the moment had come, Caroline saw his beauty and the warm light of affection for her in his eyes. She knew she could not abase herself then or ever, not even for him.
“I love you,” she said. “I will love you all my life. But I cannot love you if you also love her.”
Anthony smiled, and at first she thought he was mocking her. Caroline stood, her cashmere lap robe falling to the carpet. She shook with fury, even after a week of misery, a week of pain and remorse that should have killed her anger and buried it forever. Now her temper rose, and she wanted to strike the mockery from his face.
His smile died when he saw her anger. Anthony caught her hand in his, so she could not leave him. Still he did not speak. Instead, he pressed his head against her hand, laying his forehead in her palm.
“She is gone,” he said. “I do not love her. I never loved her. I have not touched her since you and I first met.”
Caroline stood staring at him, at war with herself. Hope danced in her heart like a child, shrieking for her to relent, telling her she had been a fool, that he had loved her always, that he belonged to her and to no other. Caroline listened to this hope, but she did not heed it. Not yet.
“You gave her the same pearl you gave me,” she said. “How can I believe you?”
He reached into the bag at his belt and drew out the black pearl. Caroline flinched to see it, but he pressed it into her hand. “She gave it back.”
“Why?” Tears burned in Caroline’s eyes. Her remembered humiliation threatened to undo her, to close her heart.
Then her husband spoke once more, and at last, she heeded him. “Once she knew I did not love her, she would not keep it. But it would not have mattered if she had wanted it, if she had wanted me. You are the only woman I want.”
“What about Victor?” she asked. “He never touched me.”
“I know that well. I saw you draw your blade on him.”
“Have you forgiven me then?”
Her husband looked into her eyes. “I should have told you who he was to me, all of it, as soon as we met him in Pembroke’s house. I will not lie to you by omission again. Our lives are too short to let the likes of Carlyle stand between us.”
Caroline sat down heavily on her mother’s settee, letting the black pearl fall from her grasp and roll away. Anthony picked it up again, and her with it, raising her up as if she weighed nothing.
“You will take me home?”
“I will take you home, if you will have me.”
He had not said he loved her. Caroline longed for those simple words the way a starving man longs for bread. But she would not pine for them. She would take what he offered and be grateful for it. She loved him enough for both of them.
She kissed him. His skin was salty-sweet under her lips. She licked at his throat, and she heard him groan.
Caroline laughed then and bit his throat gently, like a kitten. Anthony made no sound then, but he did not let her go. Instead, he set her down and held her tight against him with one arm as he opened the door to the hallway with the other.
Caroline thought he would simply take her hand as he led her upstairs to her bedroom, but he did not. He slipped his arm behind her knees again, cradled her close, and carried her up the grand staircase to her room, heedless of the housemaids and the footmen standing by.
She clung to him. She pressed her lips to his throat and then his jaw, to see if he might lose his step, but he never faltered. She pressed her breasts against him, where the fullness of pregnancy had made them softer and more sensitive. She moaned a little then, but Anthony did not hesitate. Caroline wondered for a moment if he did not notice her desire, but when her bedroom door was closed behind them, he set her on her feet and devoured her lips with his.
“Never leave me again,” he said, his voice hoarse with longing, his lips like firebrands on the delicate skin of her throat. He had not spoken of love, but Caroline was sure she felt it in the desperation of his touch, that she heard it in the longing of his voice.
“I will never leave you again,” she said.
“Swear it.”
“I swear.”
He ripped her gown then, not bothering with the hooks and ties that bound her bodice. Her stays came off next, falling away easily in his hands, for they were not tightly laced. Her shift was next. Its soft lawn gave him purchase against her heated flesh. He did not rip that layer away, but lingered over the curves of her body beneath its softness. After his hands ran over her breasts, cupping one in each palm, weighing them, he drew the shift off and over her head in one smooth motion.
Caroline was left in her stockings and shoes. Anthony drew a second pearl from his pocket, this one alabaster. The gold chain had been mended, and he clasped it around her neck, smoothing the gold until the pearl lay warm between her breasts.
Anthony picked her up again, as if he was afraid she might escape his grasp, as if he let go of her even for a moment, she might melt away into the shadows of the late afternoon. The fire burned in the grate in her bedroom, casting warmth that did not quite reach the folds of her bed. Anthony laid her down across her dark green coverlet, pressing her into the feather mattress until all she could feel was softness at her back and the hard, unyielding pressure of his body on hers.
She tasted the desperation in his kisses as Anthony pressed his lips again and again against hers. He plundered the recesses of her mouth, caressing her with his tongue, biting her lower lip gently when she tried to pull away.
He came up for breath, and Caroline said, “I love you.”
Anthony did not rise to draw off his clothes but freed his erection from the tight trousers he wore. He drove himself into her, and she gasped, crying out from the suddenness of the pleasure. She had feared she might never feel his touch again. Caroline reveled in him as Anthony drew her legs up to circle his waist. He drove into her again and again until he was sated.
Her own pleasure passed, and Caroline trembled beneath him, clinging to her husband as if he was her last link to life on earth. “I love you, Anthony,” she said again. She did not expect him to respond. He had just told her he loved her with his desperation, with the way he clutched her body close as if he would never let her go.
So Caroline was shocked to the core of her soul when Anthony spoke as if murmuring a prayer, his voice so soft she almost could not hear him. “I love
you, Caroline. I have always loved you. I will always love you. I can never lose you again.”
Tears formed in her eyes, and for once in her life she did not blink them away. Caroline smiled as tears of joy slid down her temples and into her hair.
“You did not lose me, Anthony. And you never will.”
***
Lady Montague told her husband that night at dinner that Lord Ravensbrook was exhausted from his long journey and Caroline attended him in their room. It was just as well the baroness agreed to this fiction, for once the doors were closed behind them, Anthony did not let his wife out of bed again, claiming the cold creeping along the floor would chill her bare feet. When she offered to put on slippers, he set them out of her reach, along with her dressing gown, so she had to stay in bed with only the sable he had brought to keep her warm.
“You left this behind at Carlton House,” was all he said as he wrapped the fur around her naked body.
“I am sorry, Anthony. I was in a hurry.”
He took her hand in his and pressed his lips to her palm. “We will never speak of it again.”
He brought candles close to the bed so the room was brightened by their light and that of the fire. He warmed spiced wine for her and fed her bits of bread and mutton and cheese until she was too full to move. She lay back on the pillows, exhausted from lovemaking and from the delicious food from her mother’s kitchen.
“I am homesick, my lord. When will you take me back to Shropshire?”
“We will be in London for Easter. Your mother and father are coming with us. We’ll go home after that.”
“I want to go to St. Paul’s again, before I get too fat.”
Anthony laughed and pressed his lips to her still-flat belly. “You don’t eat enough to worry about getting fat, Caroline.”
She smiled at him and saw he still had not guessed her secret. And she was glad, for until that moment, she had wondered if her mother had told him the news. Part of her heart had feared the child was the real reason he had taken her back. Now as he lay against her body, drowsing with his head in her lap, his breathing low and even, she saw he loved her for herself alone, and would, all the days of his life.
“Husband, I have something more to tell you.”
“Can it wait until morning, my love? I rode three days to get here and then rode you for two hours after. I have told you, I am an old man, and I need my rest.”
“I have waited too long already.”
Caroline felt him come fully awake beside her, his body tensing as if waiting for a blow. She knew he thought she meant to speak of his mistress, or of Viscount Carlyle. But she would never mention that woman or that villain ever again.
“We’re going to have a baby,” she said.
At first she thought he had not heard her, for he did not move. He lay tense beside her, the lines of his beautiful body drawn up as if in pain.
But after a long moment, Anthony sat up slowly and drew her carefully toward him, pushing her long golden hair back from her face.
“You bear my child.”
“The doctor says he’s due in about seven months.”
Anthony did not speak but looked at her, his chestnut eyes staring into hers as if he were looking for her soul. Whatever he sought, he found, for he sank down against her, his lips on hers. He did not make love to her again that night but held her close to his heart and did not release her until morning.
Caroline spent a sleepless night tucked in her husband’s arms. Sleep eluded her this time because she was so happy. She lay beside her husband, watching as the fire died down, listening to his deep, even breaths. Even after her mother’s servants had come into the room to stoke the fire in the morning and to set out a pot of tea, Anthony clutched her close in his sleep behind the warm, bright curtains of their bed.
Act IV
“I will give thee a kiss. Now pray thee, love, stay.”
The Taming of the Shrew
Act 5, Scene 1
Epilogue
St. Paul’s Cathedral, London
May 1818
Anthony Frederick Carrington slept in the arms of his nurse as the family stepped out of St. Paul’s Cathedral on the day of his christening. Caroline leaned over and kissed him. Anthony Frederick, called Freddie by his mother, woke and looked up at her with his deep blue eyes. He was nine months old, with more charm than was good for his mother’s heart.
It was too cool to have the baby out in the wind, so Caroline sent him home with his nurse, letting them take the carriage. John the coachman would come back for them in an hour.
She turned to Anthony, and he took her hand, sending the footmen back to his house with his son, save for two, whom he kept by them. They walked together, both wrapped in heavy cloaks, for May was cool on the sun-drenched banks of the River Thames. The sun was not warm in spite of its light, and Caroline wondered why her husband lingered there when they had a fire at home worth tending.
Anthony took her hand and led her carefully along the path to the riverbank. He led her onto the Ravensbrook docks, where a ship was moored, ready to sail with the tide.
Caroline stood looking at the great ship, wondering which port it would see next. The lost hunger of her youth returned to her in that moment. Though she was well loved at home, and well content with her husband and her son, a part of her longed to see the great, unknown world, cities and places beyond her province. She sighed, and Anthony chuckled to hear it.
“Do you see what she is named?”
She raised one gloved hand to shield her eyes from the glare, and then she saw it written in gilded script across the bow. A beautiful mermaid rode the prow of that ship, with maple brown eyes and long golden hair.
“The Lady Caroline,” she said.
Anthony took her hand in his and led her onto the deck, where the sailors worked overhead, preparing the ship to sail with the evening tide. Perched high, Caroline could see the great river stretch before her. She wanted to tell Anthony to cast off then, so they might go wherever the tide would take them. But she knew her duty, and she did not speak.
As if he read her thoughts, as if he knew her mind already, Anthony wrapped his arms around her and drew her back against his chest. They stood together looking out over the great seaway of London, of the Empire and the world. Anthony spoke softly, his lips close by her ear.
“One day, when Freddie is bigger, we will sail to all the cities you dream of, Caroline. We will go to Paris and to Rome, to Athens, even to Istanbul, if you desire it.”
“Won’t that be dangerous?” she asked, breathless with longing for a future she could almost see.
“Yes. But when have you ever been afraid of anything?”
Caroline said nothing else but turned in his arms and pressed her lips to his. Anthony kissed her, long and deep, but soon he drew back, for the eyes of all his crew were on them. When they returned to the quayside, John the coachman was waiting to take them home.
They went upstairs together, though her parents waited for them in the drawing room. Pembroke, their son’s godfather, was trying to entertain Lord and Lady Montague with his stories and was no doubt failing. Anthony and Caroline could not bear to return to their guests yet, and they went to change their clothes from the christening. As they climbed the staircase, Anthony took her by the hand and drew her to the third floor, and into the empty ballroom.
“Shall we dance, my lord? There is no music.”
Anthony laughed, pulling her close, resting his hands on her hips. “There is always music when you are with me, Caroline.”
He kissed her then, and she lost herself for one long, delicious moment. She was about to tell him to take her to their bedroom when he stepped back from her and led her by the hand deeper into the shadows of the grand room.
“Why are we here, my love? We have only a few hours before dinner.”
“I know that, Caroline. I have another surprise for you.”
“Two in one day? My lord, you are too generous. What
will this one be? An orchestra to play for us alone?”
“No, love. This.”
He brought her to stand before the sideboard, which was empty but for a large mahogany case. Caroline frowned, puzzled, until he opened the lid.
“Matching rapiers,” she said, her reverent words a breathless whisper.
“Dueling swords, my love. From Spain.”
She raised the smallest one with care, pleased to find the balance perfect. The suppleness of the blade cut the air, and the leather handle fit her palm as if it were meant to be there.
“I had them made for us. Since you are determined to continue your fencing practice, I would rather you practice with me.”
“The blades are blunted,” she said.
“As they should be, so we cannot draw blood, even by accident.”
She laid the sword carefully in its mahogany case, running her fingers lightly over the second blade, the one Anthony would wield.
“Have I tamed you then?” she asked, her voice rough with emotion she tried to disguise. She failed. Anthony drew her close.
“I suppose we will have to live with each other as we are, Caroline.”
“We will fight,” she said.
“We will spar,” he answered. “But I think, if we take care, we will never draw blood again.”
She pressed herself against him, and finally he led her to their bedroom, where she found one last surprise waiting for her.
On their bed lay a hundred pearls of every shape and size, every color of cream she could imagine, every shade of alabaster and white and taupe. Caroline stood over them, staring, and Anthony watched her face.
“A ship and pearls and a sword. Am I dreaming, Anthony?”
“If you are dreaming, love, then so am I. And I have no desire to wake.”
“Am I to choose from among them? They are so beautiful…”
How to Tame a Willful Wife Page 23