The Unexpected Marriage of Gabriel Stone (Lords of Disgrace)

by Louise Allen

  Gabriel had not treated her as another man last night. He must have seen the kindling light of indignation in her eyes because he threw up his hands, palm out in the fencer’s sign of surrender. ‘Wash and eat your breakfast while I write the letter outside where I can keep an eye on things, then back up the chimney with you and I’ll go to the village.’

  Irritation with the entire male sex got her through bacon and eggs. Caroline cleaned the plate and mug in the bucket of warm water by the fire and put them away, leaving the remains of Gabriel’s own breakfast where they lay. He could do his own washing up and besides, it emphasised to anyone who looked in that there was only one person there.

  She scrambled up the chimney by herself, still determined to show him that she was not some weak and clinging female, subject to weeping. Show him that those moments in his bed had meant nothing. It was only as she rolled herself into the blanket and tried to catch up on her sleep that she realised he had probably been deliberately provoking her into just this spirit of militant determination. ‘Wretch,’ she muttered, despite the tinge of admiration for his tactics.

  * * *

  The day passed somehow. She slept, woke to find Gabriel had returned from the village and came down to eat, then retreated back to her cave. Life was beginning to take on an unreal, dreamlike quality. Perhaps she would spend for ever in this safe, smoky little chamber, venturing out at night like some woodland creature. Behind the unreality was the awareness that Gabriel was there, standing between her and whatever lurked in the darkness beyond the fire.

  She worried about Anthony and how she would be able to write to him now. Would she find some way to see him when he was at school? How would she know if he was ill or unhappy? She had done the best she could for him, but she fretted that it was not enough. Her only consolation was that if she was married to Woodruffe she would not be with her brother either.

  There was another visitation, this time by some of the guests, although they did not enter the chapel. The lurch of fear at the sound of their shouts shattered her dreaming state and she lay, gripping the edge of the blanket, as tense as a leveret hearing the fox stalking towards it through the grass.

  When they had gone Gabriel stayed outside and she supposed he was presenting an innocent face to anyone who might be secretly observing. Eventually, stupefied by a mixture of boredom and anxiety, Caroline slept again.

  * * *

  She woke at the sound of someone inside the chimney, grabbed the water jug and raised it to throw as the pale oval of a face, eerily lit, rose above the edge of the opening.

  ‘It’s me,’ Gabriel said, sharply.

  ‘You frightened the life out of me. What happened to your beard?’

  ‘Shaved it off. The relief is immense.’ He boosted himself into the tiny room and pulled a candle and flint from his pocket. When he struck a light she could see that he was in breeches and shirtsleeves, his hair tied back.

  ‘Oh.’ Caroline grounded the jug and sat down again in her nest of blankets. ‘But if anyone sees you they will guess something is wrong.’

  ‘Petrus the Hermit has evaporated. We are about to leave.’

  ‘Already?’

  ‘It is almost dawn. The letter will have reached London by the evening post and one of my friends will be on his way with some sort of vehicle by now. I wrote to the two of them who are in London at the moment.’

  ‘You are sure someone will come? What if they were engaged yesterday evening?’

  ‘The letter had my seal with a certain mark we all use beside it. Our servants know to deliver messages immediately if they see that. Cris de Feaux once left a royal levée to bail Alex out of gaol when his footman smuggled that in to him.’

  ‘The Marquess of Avenmore? But no one leaves a levée before the king. What did he do?’

  ‘Fainted dramatically. Full length—which you have to agree is considerable—in front of the princesses. They had a lovely time fussing over him.’

  ‘I have never spoken to him, but the Marquess of Avenmore looks so chilly and correct. I can’t believe he would do such a thing.’

  ‘Neither did anyone else. Therefore it could only have been genuine, so he got away with it. Cris has got away with a lot behind that façade of perfection.’

  ‘And he would drive through the night for me?’

  ‘No, for me. Although that’s not to say he wouldn’t rescue you if he knew you needed it. It might be Cris who comes or it might be Alex Tempest, who is Viscount Weybourn. The third of my closest friends, Grant Rivers, the Earl of Allundale, is at home in Northumberland. Come to think of it, Cris is probably still engrossed with the smuggler’s widow, his new wife, so my money would be on Alex.’

  Smuggler’s widow? No, do not ask, just be thankful for rescue, although it was a shock to discover that three noblemen whom she had always assumed were upstanding members of society were, apparently, as ramshackle as Gabriel.

  ‘There’s hot water below and tea. You come down and get ready, I’ll keep watch.’ Gabriel vanished down the chimney, then called up, ‘Hand down the valises first.’

  An all-over wash in a bucket in front of the embers of the fire was bliss. Caroline had not realised how sticky and sooty she had become until she was clean again. She put on the fresh underwear she had packed, braided her hair tightly out of the way and found Gabriel outside checking over the clearing in the gathering light.

  ‘Just making certain it all looks normal out here. I’ll build the fire up, so there will be smoke from the chimney for a time, and we’ll leave the interior as though I was coming back. It might just win us an advantage if they come by and assume I’m down at the lake or communing with nature in the woods.’

  ‘Do you often commune with nature?’ Caroline found she was feeling a trifle tipsy. The sense of unreality had returned.

  Gabriel gave a snort of amusement. ‘I wouldn’t know how.’

  No, she supposed he spent far too much time in smoky gaming hells. When he isn’t entertaining ladies in their luxurious silk-hung bedchambers. ‘This Spartan life must have been uncomfortable for you, in that case.’ It came out more tartly than she had intended and she saw the sidelong look he sent her.

  ‘I am capable of roughing it,’ Gabriel said mildly. ‘I do occasionally set foot outside, you know, but I am not used to spending so much time simply existing in one spot in the countryside.’ He slung a leather satchel over his shoulder and picked up the valises. ‘It is curiously restful. At least, it might be if I wasn’t trying to remember my Welsh accent and using far too much energy keeping my temper with your father. Ready?’

  ‘Ready.’ She managed a smile as she fell into step beside him. What on earth was she doing? She was running away from home with a man she barely knew other than as a hardened gambler and a skilful deceiver. Just by leaving Knighton Park she had compromised herself and, after just one night alone with a man, had almost ruined herself. Not that Gabriel appeared to have been very affected by those hectic moments on his bed, Caroline thought ruefully, all too aware of the rangy body moving easily beside her, the wicked gypsy-dark looks of the man she was trusting with her life.

  I might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb. If I am ruined it is a pity not to do it properly, not that he shows any interest in actually making love to me. He must be right and it was simply reaction, heat of the moment.

  She stumbled over a tree root and Gabriel caught her arm, steadied her and then walked on, apparently as untroubled by the contact as he had been untouched by nearly making love to her last night.

  Caroline resisted the urge to rub her arm where those long fingers had curled and held her, tried to ignore the shiver of heat that ran to her fingertips. He doesn’t want me. He touched her with a careless efficiency that somehow underlined how unimportant those moments of contact were to him and was now acting like a totally i
mpersonal escort through the woods.

  She would do better to stop entertaining immodest thoughts about the Earl of Edenbridge and think instead about what she was going to do when she reached London. She had no money, no references and no skills to market. She doubted whether she’d even make a halfway competent housemaid. It was one thing knowing how a household should be run, another to have the knack of polishing metalwork, getting stains out of carpets or black-leading grates. She could speak French competently, Italian a little, play the piano and add up accounts, so she supposed she might be employable as a governess in a not-very-demanding household. But who would entrust their children to an unknown young woman with no recommendations?

  Perhaps Gabriel was a forger as well as a lock-picking, play-acting, potential blackmailer... Her thoughts came to a crashing stop as she walked into his exceedingly solid back. ‘Ough!’

  He had stopped behind a large oak by the opening into the lane that led to the turnpike road. ‘All clear.’ He turned towards the highway.

  ‘The village is that way.’ Caroline pointed to the footpath that led away across the meadows.

  ‘I said in the note to meet us at the junction where the gibbet is. With any luck no one will see the carriage and they certainly would if it were to drive into the village to collect us. If we keep to the wheel ruts we will avoid leaving tracks in the dewy grass.’

  Caroline hitched up her skirts, jumped the shallow ditch and followed. ‘They gibbeted Black Sam Baggins the highwayman there last year and they haven’t taken the remains down yet. It’s disgusting.’

  ‘All the more reason for no one to suspect you’d be hanging around there—if you’ll pardon the expression—waiting for a passing vehicle.’

  * * *

  When they reached the sinister black gallows with the dangling iron cage Gabriel contemplated the revolting object while Caroline studiously counted how many varieties of wild flower she could see in the opposite hedge.

  ‘There’s not a lot left of him,’ Gabriel remarked.

  ‘Some of the local people stole his clothes very early on, before he began to...you know. And now the superstitious ones have been taking bits as they drop off—finger and toe bones and so forth. They grind them up and put them in medicines. Apparently fragments of highwaymen aren’t as efficacious as murderers, but we haven’t had any of those for many years, thank goodness.’

  ‘What on earth are deceased highwayman’s toes supposed to cure?’ Gabriel sounded more intrigued than disgusted. ‘There’s a fallen tree over there you can sit on while we wait. It looks dry, it is shielded from the road and you won’t have to contemplate the remains of Black Sam.’

  Caroline sat down. ‘I think the bones are a cure for toothache and sore throats.’

  ‘I’d rather have the sore throat. You stay here.’ Gabriel melted away into the undergrowth.

  By straining her eyes she could just make him out, still and watchful, his attention on the road. For a man who said he spent little time communing with nature, he certainly knew how to take advantage of it when he needed to. His russet greatcoat with its modest double cape and the conker-brown leather of his boots merged into the mottled foliage of the hedgerow and his dark head was hidden in the shade as the sun at last began to penetrate the trees.

  As she stared she was able to make out one ungloved hand resting on the low bough of a young oak, then the sunlight sparked a glint of light off something metallic and she realised he was holding a pistol. If her father came, or Lucas, would he fire? Would she want him to? Of course not. But he wouldn’t, she told herself. He would threaten, that was all. Gabriel wasn’t reckless, nor really a criminal. He simply had a rather broader view of acceptable behaviour for an earl than she was used to.

  There was the thud of hooves, felt through the soles of her boots before she heard it, then the jingle of a harness and an elegant carriage, glossy black and driven by a team of fine bays, appeared around the corner and drew up opposite her. The horses sidled and snorted, sensing perhaps the horrid thing hanging from the gibbet, and the coachman soothed them with a murmured word.

  They stilled and for a moment nothing moved. Then Gabriel stepped out into the road, the hand that had held the pistol empty at his side. ‘Good morning to you, Thomas.’

  The coachman touched the brim of his hat. ‘Good morning, my lord.’

  The door on the far side from Caroline swung open and a man got out. ‘This is a damnably early hour for anything but a duel, Gabe,’ he remarked, his voice a pleasant drawl. ‘Have you any idea what time I had to get out of my bed?’

  ‘Did you bother to go to it?’ Gabriel enquired. Caroline caught a glimpse of him across the backs of the horses as he strode forward and took the other man by the shoulders in a brief, fierce embrace.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ his friend said with a chuckle as he returned the gesture with a buffet to Gabriel’s arm. ‘My lady wife expects me to act in a husbandly manner these days.’ Despite the laughter in his voice it was obvious to Caroline that this was one husband who was not bored with his marital bed.

  ‘And how is Lady Weybourn?’ Gabriel led his friend around the carriage.

  ‘Blooming, now the queasiness has left her. But why the devil am I summoned to this particularly gruesome spot at the crack of dawn?’

  ‘To rescue a lady in distress. Caroline, come and meet Alex Tempest.’

  She emerged from her hiding place and walked towards them, smiling slightly at the contrast between Gabriel’s wild looks and the careless way he wore his plain and practical clothing and the elegant gentleman with the quizzical brows and the fashionable crop.

  ‘Oh, well done, Gabe,’ Viscount Weybourn said as she emerged. ‘And about time, too.’

  Chapter Ten

  ‘No,’ Gabriel said. ‘No, no, and absolutely no. You have the wrong end of the stick, Alex.’ Caroline was staring at him as though he was talking complete nonsense. Alex was within a whisker of a smirk. And of receiving a right hook to the chin.

  ‘Lady Caroline, may I present Alex Tempest, Viscount Weybourn. Alex, Lady Caroline Holm, the daughter of Lord Knighton. Lady Caroline finds it necessary to leave her home clandestinely. Alone.’

  ‘Alone?’ Alex’s infuriatingly expressive eyebrows rose. ‘Then this is not an elo—’

  ‘Absolutely not.’ Caroline, thankfully, was still looking mystified. Gabriel contemplated kicking Alex on the ankle, then settled for saying, ‘I am merely helping Lady Caroline remove herself from her father’s house.’

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘London to start with. What happens after that is still to be decided.’

  ‘Urgent, I gather?’ Alex offered Caroline his arm and began to walk back to the carriage. ‘I believe we have danced together at Almack’s before now, Lady Caroline.’

  ‘Just Caroline, please. And, yes, I recall that with pleasure, Lord Weybourn.’

  ‘Before we begin a delightful reminiscence of every time the pair of you have met socially, could we get on our way, do you think?’ Gabriel retrieved the bags and handed them up to the coachman. ‘There is a certain urgency.’

  ‘Why? An infuriated father with a shotgun on your trail?’ Alex helped Caroline into a forward-facing seat and sat down beside her, leaving Gabriel to sit with his back to the horses. He lounged back into a corner and propped his boots up on the other end of the bench, enjoying Alex’s wince at the insult to the plush upholstery.

  ‘That and the prospect of a trip to the altar with Woodruffe.’

  ‘Lord Woodruffe? Edgar Parfit?’ Alex’s eyes narrowed. ‘No, really, Caroline, you don’t want to go marrying him. A sad dog, that one.’

  ‘No, of course I don’t, which is why I am leaving home and Lord Edenbridge is helping me.’

  ‘Your father is not open to reason on the subject?’

 
‘No.’

  There was a tremor in her voice and Gabriel glared at Alex, even as he saw the other man’s face harden as he heard it, too. He knew about Woodruffe’s proclivities, too, it appeared.

  ‘Nothing for it but to take a bolt to town, I see,’ Alex said easily. ‘You’ve nothing to worry about now. Gabe’s a scape-gallows, but I am thoroughly reliable and exceedingly respectable.’

  ‘If you are respectable it is only because of Tess’s influence.’

  ‘The love of a good woman,’ Alex said smugly.

  Was that why Alex was so eager to assume this was an elopement—he was in love and therefore Gabriel’s actions must stem from the same source? He liked Caroline. Very much, he realised as he watched her making the effort to be calm and pleasant with Alex. He admired her. He desired her physically, which was hardly a surprise to him. And he would fight anyone who tried to hurt her. But then any gentleman with a shred of honour was duty-bound to protect a lady. The uncomfortable feeling of possessiveness was simply because this was the lady whose safety had fallen to him to defend.

  ‘Now, are you hungry, Caroline?’ Alex said. ‘We have a breakfast hamper under Gabriel’s seat. Dig it out, there’s a good fellow.’

  ‘Food that someone else has cooked?’ Gabriel swung his feet down and bent to explore the wicker basket. He was hungry. That was probably why he was brooding on his emotional state, of all things. ‘Heaven.’

  ‘Do I deduce that you have been fending for yourself?’ Alex caught the packet of bacon-filled rolls that Gabriel tossed at him. ‘That I should like to see.’

  ‘Lord Edenbridge has been acting as a hermit, part of my father’s landscaped park.’ Caroline took the roll Alex passed to her and a napkin that Gabriel unearthed from the hamper. ‘The kitchen sent him down supplies, but he has been cooking for himself in the hermitage.’