by Louise Allen
The collection of prints secreted at the bottom were certainly obscene. Gabriel was no prude, but he found he was handling these with the tips of his fingers as though the smut would rub off. Woodruffe had an unpleasant predilection for images of helpless women tied up, or in chains—and none of them appeared to be enjoying the experience. Certainly not the whips and canes the leering men in the prints were wielding.
He packed it all away, then took the lamp and searched the drawers in the dresser, the clothes press and finally, as Woodruffe snored on, the books on his bedside table.
Feeling he was in need of a bath, Gabriel eased his way out of the door and closed it silently behind him.
‘Did you find anything?’ Caroline whispered.
Too much. He studied her in the simple white nightgown that reached to her bare toes, her hair in a plait over one shoulder. She looked worryingly like the innocent victims in Woodruffe’s pornographic prints. The thought of the man laying his sweaty hands on her, let alone anything else, almost made Gabriel shudder.
‘Not here, back to your bedchamber.’
Once they were inside, the door locked, he picked up her robe from the foot of the bed and handed it to her. ‘Put that on.’
‘I am not cold. Tell me what you found.’
‘Put it on. Please.’ He sat down in one of the armchairs and studied the toe of his boot while he sought for some control.
‘Oh, very well.’ She shrugged into it and came to perch on the edge of the stool opposite. ‘What did you find?’
Gabriel resisted the urge to lean over to tighten the sash and pull the edges of her robe together. ‘Nothing actually illegal.’ He was certainly not going to describe those prints to her. He recrossed his legs and contemplated the other toe. ‘How eager is your father to get his hands on that land of Woodruffe’s? Is it valuable?’
‘No, just pasture. Not even good rich water meadow. I don’t think it is worth much.’
‘Woodruffe is in debt, by the look of it. You come with a good dowry, I assume? More than that land is worth on the open market?’
‘Goodness, yes. Father might regard daughters as an irrelevance in the greater scheme of things, but he would be mortified to have it known my dowry was anything but generous. The value of the land is irrelevant, it is the enlargement of the estate that matters to my father.’
‘Damn. I’d hoped that there might be a let-out there. In that case you need to know that the two of them must be quite determined on this match. Woodruffe has a special licence in his possession.’
‘A special licence? That means he can marry without delay, wherever he wants, doesn’t it?’
‘It does.’
‘I can keep saying no.’ A thread of uncertainty ran through the statement.
Gabriel looked up, then leaned forward and caught her hand, pushed back the sleeve. The bruises had quite gone now. ‘They have a clean slate to begin again. If your father hit you once, he will do it again if you anger him. And Woodruffe...’ How the devil did one explain such tendencies to an innocent? ‘Woodruffe is aroused by violence. Your resistance will only encourage him.’
Caroline met his eyes and shuddered. ‘I don’t think I want to know what you mean by that or how you discovered it.’ She squared her shoulders and pulled her hand free from his lax grip. ‘I will have to run away then. I’ve been hoping against hope that I wouldn’t have to, but at least Anthony is at school much of the time and old enough to go to friends in the holidays. He is in no danger of anything but neglect from our father.
‘I don’t suppose you are any good at safe breaking? Mama’s own jewellery is locked up in the study along with the things my godmother left me. I don’t want to sell it, but I will need to part with some of it to live on until I find work.’
‘I can pick a lock. Some locks,’ Gabriel qualified. He hadn’t needed to since his childhood. ‘It all depends on how good it is.’
‘You really are unscrupulous, aren’t you?’ Caroline’s expression had turned from anxious but determined to something close to judgemental. ‘Not that I am criticising, you understand.’
It sounded like that to him and, amazingly, her words hurt. ‘You are not?’ he enquired, unable to prevent the hint of ice in the question. What the devil was the matter with him if one young woman’s opinion had the power to pierce his armour and wound? He was becoming vulnerable and he had never felt so before. Not mentally, at least.
‘I know you are only trying to help me and I am very grateful, but subterfuge over who you are in order to become the hermit, searching Woodruffe’s things with a view to blackmail and now lock-picking...’
She was right, this was over the thin line and into illegality, even if the jewellery was Caroline’s. He should walk away. Now.
Chapter Eight
Walk away, for her own good. For mine. I have never become emotionally involved with a woman before and that is what this is.
Women wanted a man’s thoughts, his secrets, his soul. His mother had uncovered her husband’s soul and what she found had blighted her entire marriage, had driven her to the drug bottle and to her death. Gabriel had done what he had promised her, but taking responsibility for another person was like a heavy chain around the neck. His brothers had needed his protection and he had given them that at the cost of pain and loneliness and, almost, his freedom, if not his life. But a woman would want emotion.
Emotion is dangerous. Someone is going to get hurt. Stop now before this has gone beyond the point of no return and find some other way to help her. Gabriel found it was easier to decide to walk away than to do it. He sighed inwardly at his own unfamiliar indecision and tried to work things through logically.
Caroline was learning caution fast, it seemed. At first, seized with the desperate need to retrieve those deeds, she had almost innocently offered herself in order to save her brother’s land and future. Now she was regarding the man who had been a stranger, perhaps almost an unreal figure, with speculation. There were questions in the clear blue gaze, questions and doubts that had not been there before he had kissed her.
‘You think I should not do these things and ignore a lady in distress in order to preserve my own moral purity?’ he asked when she did not speak. And when did you ever have morals, let alone pure ones? Get down off your high horse, Edenbridge. ‘And now we are in deep you wonder just who you are involved with? You knew I was a sinner, not a saint, when you first came to me. I might break the law here and there, but are you telling me that your father and Woodruffe do not deserve to be thwarted?’
‘No. No, of course not.’ He could see the thoughts chasing each other, the anxiety and the doubt, the desire to snatch at help and the growing awareness that she was getting into very dangerous waters with a man she did not know. ‘And I was the one who suggested you pick the lock,’ Caroline added, obviously striving to be fair.
‘Look, you can stay here, pretend none of this ever happened, marry Woodruffe.’ Her shudder was an adequate answer to that suggestion. ‘Or you can stay here, but refuse to marry him.’ She shook her head. And he did not miss the betraying way one hand went to her cheek, cradling it. So the swine had hit her in the face as well as bruising her arms. Gabriel thought longingly of having Knighton at his mercy at the card tables again, a sure and legal way to ruin the man. But hell, the thought of killing him was tempting. Far more tempting. Murder solves nothing, he reminded himself. But it was so easy to do, the human frame was so vulnerable. He saw his father’s broken body at his feet, all that power and vigour rendered impotent in a moment.
Gabriel clenched his fists until the nails bit into his palms and breathed deeply until the swirling memories were back under control. ‘Or you can flee, with my help or without it. I assume as you have put it off this long that there is no one you can run to?’
How had he got himself into this?
One step at a time, of course. He had let himself care, allowed himself to feel responsible for someone for the first time since his father’s death, and now he had no more choice but to help Caroline than if he had found her drowning.
‘There is no one.’ Gabriel saw the conscious effort she was making to gather her courage and cope. ‘I can go without your help, or with it, as you say. I had thought to find some cheap lodgings while I looked for work, but I really have no idea how to go about that. The risks to me are far greater if I try it alone—’ She caught the involuntary twist of his lips and smiled, although it was not with much warmth. ‘I have realised that you have no desire to take me up on my foolish IOU, so that makes me feel even safer.’
‘I kissed you. Twice.’ Where was this scrupulous urge to point out all the facts coming from? And he wanted to do far more than kiss her. He forced himself to plan how he was going to get her away, what he was going to do when he had.
Caroline shrugged. ‘Men do tend to try to kiss women, I have observed. It doesn’t mean anything.’
So his kisses were to be dismissed, were they? Gabriel got a grip on what remained of his sense of humour after this evening’s events and waited for her to work her way through to a decision before he told her the results of his rapid planning.
‘I will be safer with you, whether or not we can retrieve my jewels. But,’ she added as he drew breath to suggest that, if she had made up her mind, they should get on with things, ‘it has decided disadvantages for you.’
‘It has?’ Perhaps she was not so innocent after all.
‘I am asking you to commit a criminal act, even if they are my own jewels, because the safe is not mine. And I will be putting you to considerable inconvenience and, I rather fear, expense. At least until I can sell or pawn some jewellery and pay you back.’
‘This much entertainment is cheap at the price,’ he drawled, hoping to lighten her mood, or at least make her cross enough to carry her through the night. Cost, if she only realised it, was the least of their problems.
‘We will get to London and I will take you to one of the wives of my best friends. They are all married to women of...’ he groped for the words to encompass the three and compromised with ‘...independent thought. It will not disconcert them in the slightest to harbour a runaway and we can rely absolutely on their discretion. Pack what you will need for about four days in your smallest valise. Then we will take the jewellery and be on our way. The fewer trips back and forth inside this house tonight, the better.’
‘Oh, yes, thank you, that would be wonderful. The thought of some female support is, I must confess, very welcome.’
Gabriel braced himself for a long wait and then a tussle over a bulging valise and a hatbox or two. Caroline surprised him by removing a few items from drawers and bringing an oilskin bag and a hairbrush from her dressing room. Finally she lifted the lid of the window seat, rummaged inside and produced a large purse that clinked. ‘I have been hoarding my pin money,’ she explained when she saw his attention on the bag.
It all fitted into a small case. She scooped up the trinkets from the dressing table and swept them in on top, then draped a woollen pelisse over her arm. ‘That is all I need.’
‘You would make a good wife for a soldier,’ Gabriel commented.
‘I have been planning this for days,’ Caroline countered. ‘I hoped I would not have to do it, but now I do not think I have a choice.’ He saw her cast a lingering look around her bedchamber which probably represented sanctuary and privacy, certainly comfort, but she did not hesitate. His respect for her increased another notch.
* * *
The night had begun to feel like a dream. Her surroundings were familiar, yet her behaviour was not. Things that she took for granted suddenly loomed terrifying and strange—the grotesque carvings on the newel posts, the suits of armour in the Long Gallery, the grinding sound the long-case clock in the hallway made as it readied itself to strike, all were exaggerated.
The man beside her was a stranger, too. He was not the softly spoken Welsh hermit, nor the dishevelled rake she had caught on his way to bed that first morning. Neither was he the elegant, if careless, nobleman who occasionally spared social events an hour or two of his time. This man was a creature of the dark, moving through the shadows like a cat, prepared to break the law to help her and quite confident about his ability to do so. This was the man who had kissed her with careless expertise, leaving her wanting more, even as she shocked herself with that wanting.
What would his friends be like? At least they were all married, although the idea of the women of independent thought was rather more alarming than the prospect of meeting three more rakish gentlemen. What if the wives all despised or disliked her? Or worse, pitied her.
She was worrying so hard that she almost walked past the study. ‘In here,’ she breathed.
The door was unlocked and well oiled. Once inside Gabriel drew the curtains tightly closed before he turned up the wick of the lamp. ‘Where is the safe?’ With light on him she could see the tension in his body, the alertness. He looked ready to fight.
‘Here.’ She lifted down a landscape in a gilt frame to reveal a small door set flush into the wall.
‘I can force this easily enough.’
‘It is iron painted to look like wood,’ she warned.
‘Damn.’ Gabriel produced the two hairpins that she had seen him lift from her dressing table. ‘Hold the light to shine on the lock.’ He straightened the first pin, slid it into the keyhole and began to manipulate it.
Ten minutes passed. Caroline shifted the lamp to the other hand and propped her arm against the wall to ease the ache. Gabriel’s eyes were narrowed, his lips compressed. He had two pins, bent at odd angles, in the lock now.
‘It must be fifteen years since I tried this,’ he muttered.
‘If it is too difficult—’ she began. The clock made its grinding noise and they both froze, then relaxed as it chimed three.
Gabriel closed his eyes as something went click. ‘Got it.’
It was almost an anticlimax to have the door swing open to reveal nothing more than some folded documents, a bag of coin and a stack of jewellery boxes. In the almost Gothic atmosphere of flickering lamplight and tension the least the safe should have contained was a skull and a vial of poison. Caroline did not feel this was the moment to be sharing such fancies with Gabriel.
She sorted out her own jewels from the family gems, which were to be passed down to the eldest son for his wife, and nodded to Gabriel. He closed the door, manipulated the picks until, much faster this time, the lock clicked home, and then lifted the picture back into place.
‘What do we do now?’ she asked as she stuffed the valuables deep into her valise.
‘We go to the hermitage until I can make arrangements. Is it possible to get out of the house without leaving a trace? I’d like to delay pursuit as long as possible.’
‘The side entrance to the garden. There’s a trick to jiggling the lock.’
Gabriel cracked open the door. ‘Hell.’ He pushed her back into the study. ‘Someone is coming.’
‘There’s nothing beyond this room. It must be my father.’
Gabriel cast a swift look around, then fell to his knees, dragging her with him as he blew out the lamp. ‘Under the desk.’
It was a double-depth partners’ desk, designed for two men to face each other as they worked. The kneehole might give them both enough space to remain hidden, provided no one sat down and extended their legs. Crushed under there against Gabriel, the valise jammed under her raised knees, Caroline held her breath until coloured dots began to swirl in the blackness.
As the door opened she drew in a shallow breath. Surely her heartbeat must be audible? Beside her Gabriel was utterly still, then she felt his finger begin a slow movement against the back of her hand
. I am here, it seemed to say. Don’t be afraid.
She closed her fingers around his, holding on as the tension grew. Her father put down his lamp and began to sort through the papers on the desk above them, muttering irritably as if he could not locate what he wanted.
Her body was hot and cold. Cold with fear, hot where it touched Gabriel’s. Beneath the broadcloth she could feel his strength, the muscles tensed for action, the total control. His confidence seeped into her, allowing her to relax just a little, to breathe more easily, and as the panic ebbed something else flowed in to replace it, an aching physical awareness, the need for Gabriel’s arms around her, his mouth on hers. She lowered her head until her parted lips touched the back of his hand and then she stilled, breathing in the smell of his skin, letting the taste of him seep into her mouth. His fingers tensed in hers.
Finally her father gave a grunt of satisfaction and moved towards the door. The light vanished and the sound of his footsteps dwindled away. Gabriel backed out of the tight space, pulled out the valise and finally Caroline, unresisting and shivering, into his arms. His kiss was hard, almost angry, over in a second, a wordless acknowledgement of their narrow escape.
‘Hurry.’ He let her lead the way to the garden door and watched the passageway behind them as she lifted the handle, wiggled it up and down and then pressed on the door panels. The lock opened with a scrape, then, as she pulled it closed behind them, it dropped back into place.
The tall hedges that led from the house to the ha-ha made deep shadows and Gabriel set a fast pace, the sharp scent of the yew drifting back as he brushed the edges.
He vaulted down from the lawn into the ditch and she sat on the edge, then jumped into his upheld hands, gripping his shoulders to steady herself. His mouth sought hers again, with fierce and fleeting heat, then he set her on her feet and turned to climb the gentle slope of the other bank.