The Unexpected Marriage of Gabriel Stone (Lords of Disgrace)

by Louise Allen

  ‘My father was subject to uncontrollable rages and the conviction that his word was law. He demanded perfection. That made him demanding and difficult to live with. You can no doubt understand that from your own experience. I did not want to remind you of what you had suffered, that is all.’ As though realising that his very rigidity betrayed his feelings Gabriel moved away from the door with his habitual relaxed prowl. Anyone who did not know him well—anyone who does not love him—would have seen nothing amiss.

  ‘My father is a deeply selfish man with a number of eccentricities who loses his temper when he is thwarted. He lashed out at me and that was very wrong of him.’ She paused while she got her breathing back under control. ‘But he had never done it before and, although I know he has chastised Lucas and Anthony, just as every schoolboy in the country must have been punished, it was never the kind of systematic whipping that produces scars like those. And you were the eldest. What on earth did he do to your three younger brothers?’ She thought of Ben, big and bluff, George, scholarly and ambitious, and Louis. Earnest, studious Louis.

  ‘Very little. He rarely found them at fault,’ Gabriel said with his mocking smile. ‘I was the flawed one, the wicked, provoking one.’ When she opened her mouth to protest he said, ‘You wanted to know where I was going? To Edenvale. You may come, too, if you wish, provided I am not subjected to any more maudlin tears about the past.’

  ‘You can be quite hateful when you choose, Gabriel Stone.’ And it was a deliberate choice to be so, she was certain of that. He wanted to push her away. Or perhaps the word was needed.

  ‘Are you only just discovering that, my dear?’ He paused at the door, as cool as she was heated. ‘You had best change if you are coming with me, I have hired a curricle.’

  * * *

  His mood was communicating itself to the hired pair who fidgeted and sidled as he kept them waiting for Caroline to emerge from the house. Gabriel forced himself to relax his hands, to speak to the horses until they calmed. He only wished he could exert the same soothing influence over his knotted guts. The memories of the past were bad enough. Not the pain, that he had learned to lock away, but the flashbacks to his father’s body at his feet, strangely pathetic in death, all that power and fury reduced to nothing but flesh and bone and expensive tailoring. He had been glad he had died, he had to bear the guilt of that as well.

  The images flooded in as he fought them. Louis, a white-faced child, mercifully unconscious; Ben and George, just boys themselves, stammering questions; and further back, his mother as white as the sheet she lay upon and the doctor sweeping a bottle into his case with one hasty brush of his hand. A tragic accident, he had said, and fourteen-year-old Gabriel, shivering with dread behind the curtains, had known with absolute certainty that he lied.

  But that was the past and he had learned to live with it, contain it. His marriage was the present and he had allowed the poison to leak from that sealed room in his mind to hurt Caroline. And what had he done this for, this marriage, if it were not to save her from hurt?

  She came down the steps using her parasol as a cane, her weight on her heel, waving away the footman. ‘Thank you, Robert. I can manage.’ But she let the man help her into the curricle and settled herself with perfect composure beside Gabriel.

  His wife was a lady through and through, he told himself as the pair moved sedately out into the traffic bordering the Steine. Whatever had passed between them, whatever hurts she had, mental or physical, she would not sulk and she would not show anything but a pleasant face in public. His mood softened, he felt himself grow calmer, just because she was beside him.

  ‘I had expected a high-perch curricle,’ she said as he gave a wide berth to the fishermen drying their nets on the end of the greensward nearest the beach and then turned eastwards along the seafront.

  Play the cards as they were dealt, he reminded himself. You didn’t win at cards by cursing every poor hand that came your way, but by working with what you had. And just now he had a wife who was apparently forgiving enough to drive out with him.

  ‘The roads around Edenvale are more lanes than anything. One needs a carriage built with substance rather than style. I had no wish to deposit you in a ditch when an axle broke.’

  ‘Then you had planned for us to make this expedition today?’ Unspoken was the question of why he had not mentioned it before.

  Cowardice was probably the correct answer, but he left that unspoken also. ‘Yes. It is less than an hour’s drive.’ Which was no answer at all.

  Caroline maintained a flow of intelligent conversation as they drove, commenting on the landscape, the boats to be seen along the coast, the state of the tide, the occasional picturesque cottage or view. None of it was taxing, none required an answer beyond the occasional monosyllable. Gabriel decided he was probably being managed and that he deserved it. That he welcomed it. He did not want to be at odds with his wife.

  He turned inland when they reached Saltdene, wending his way through narrow lanes up on to the rolling downland. ‘Access is better from the north, but this is a more attractive route,’ he added as he made the sharp turn into the park through the gate to the Home Farm.

  She was silent as they drove across the parkland, past the famous herd of fallow deer, past the lake and the great stable block and, finally, to the front of the house.

  ‘Queen Anne,’ Gabriel offered when she was still silent. ‘Not over-large and the rose-red brickwork is considered rather fine.’

  ‘It is beautiful and seems very well kept up.’

  ‘I have excellent staff here.’

  As he spoke the front doors were opened. Two footmen appeared and a groom came running from the stables. Gabriel helped Caroline down and offered his arm as she limped across to the steps. ‘Does it pain you very much?’

  ‘Just the bruising coming out. If I did not have to wear a shoe it would be trivial.’

  ‘My lord.’ Hoskins, the butler, stood waiting, permitting himself one of his rare smiles. ‘Welcome home, my lord. And, my lady?’

  ‘Indeed yes. My dear, this is Hoskins, who has been with me for ten years. Hoskins, Lady Edenbridge, your new mistress.’

  Caroline smiled warmly at the man and then looked around the great double-height hall. ‘I see you manage the house in fine style, Hoskins. What a magnificent staircase!’

  ‘It is one of the showpieces of the house, my lady. That double sweep, the ornately carved newel posts, the painted ceiling—students of architecture frequently call just to admire it.’

  She stood at the foot where the two arms of the stairs came together on the pure white stone and Gabriel could see, beneath her feet, the pool of crimson slowly spreading, spreading... Then he blinked and all was clean marble again.

  ‘Refreshments for her ladyship in the Chinese Drawing Room, Hoskins. And no doubt Mrs Hoskins will make certain the countess’s suite is in readiness should she wish to rest.’

  ‘Thank you, but I feel the need for tea more than anything else.’

  ‘You have the butler charmed, which is a good start,’ Gabriel observed as they seated themselves in the drawing room. It was in good order, but then it should be: he had written before they had set off to Brighton to tell Hoskins that he would be opening up the house again.

  ‘A good start for when you leave me here by myself, you mean?’

  ‘There is little to entertain you in London just now, I would have thought. Naturally you will want to return when the Season starts, but in the meantime I assumed you would want to order this place as you see fit.’

  ‘While you will have plenty to entertain you in London?’

  ‘Probably. My clubs... It is pretty much a bachelor society at this time of year. And then when hunting starts I expect to receive invitations to various people’s boxes in the shires.’ The clubs, the hells, the safe, solitary evenings. The l
oneliness that had seemed like peace before he had become used to Caroline’s presence.

  ‘I see. You no longer require my company?’ Caroline’s colour was up. ‘Or my presence in your—’ She broke off as a footman came in with a tea tray and thanked him as he set it at her side. ‘Bed,’ she finished when the door closed again. ‘I cannot say you did not warn me. But I also warned you, Gabriel, that I take marriage vows seriously. I am not prepared to simply acquiesce to this. I will not nag, I will do everything in my power not to mention it again, but I will not be closeted in the depths of the country while you commit adultery all over London.’

  ‘Adultery?’ It took him so much aback that he stared at her. ‘Who said anything about adultery?’

  ‘You did. Before we were married. You said you would not keep your vows, you as good as instructed me to take a lover once I had provided you with the requisite number of sons. Well, Gabriel Stone, I am not prepared to be stabled down here in the country like a brood mare awaiting the attentions of the stallion. I will be faithful to you because I take vows seriously, but I will live in London or here or visit friends as I wish.’

  He could not deny what he had said, fool that he was. ‘I have no desire to be with another woman.’ When had that happened? ‘Nor would I force myself on you. If you allow me to your bed then I would be...honoured. There will be no other women in my life.’

  ‘Then why do you want me away from you?’ Caroline attempted to pour tea, sloshed it into the saucer, said a word he had no idea she knew and banged the teapot back down again.

  ‘Because I thought you would want your freedom to do the things that interest you. I want... I am not used to this intimacy, of living with someone, sharing thoughts.’

  ‘The day you share a thought with me, an intimate, important thought, without it being forced from you, will be a first, Gabriel.’ Caroline lifted the teapot again and this time managed to pour two cups. ‘I do not want to pry, I do not expect you to share every passing thought, every private contemplation with me. I do not want to force your secrets out of you. But I do not want to spend the rest of my life alone and I find it hard that you seem to want loneliness. Aloneness.’

  ‘Everyone is different,’ Gabriel said harshly.

  ‘Your brothers love you. Your friends and their wives love you. What are you afraid of, Gabriel? That I might love you, too?’

  ‘You love far too many people for your own safety, Caroline. That is your nature and I cannot prevent you including me in the band that you take to your so-loyal heart. But to fall in love with me? You have far more sense than that. It would be a tragedy, would it not?’

  He could accept love now, he was learning that. The changes in the lives of his three closest friends had made those friendships richer. His brothers, rallying round at the wedding, welcoming Caroline without hesitation, had stirred something deep inside him. He was their older brother and it had always been his duty to protect them as well as he could, and, at the end, he had so nearly failed. Caroline was a woman who had turned to him for help and it was his duty to give that, whatever it took.

  But he had always known there was something lacking in him, some spark that some other men seemed to have, the willingness to expose himself to the risk of pain that love, accepted and returned, brought. Had brought. He would not think of his mother. ‘I fear hurting you,’ he said now, as gently as he knew.

  ‘Deliberately?’ she asked, watching him with a frown line between her brows as though he was a puzzle to be solved.

  ‘No. Never that.’

  ‘Then do not shut me away. This is a lovely house and I would like to spend time here with you. But not now. We will go back to Brighton, finish our honeymoon, learn to co-exist a little better, if you can bear that. Then we will decide what each of us does next and discuss it.’

  Caroline was making plans. He was beginning to recognise that when she was under pressure she felt better for having a strategy. ‘Very well. Shall I show you around now we are here?’ He could manage that, surely? He had the courage to face a duel, wade into a street fight. Take a beating. He could summon up the guts to show his wife around a house.

  * * *

  They drove back to Brighton in a state of wary truce. Something had gone very wrong in that house, Caroline knew that for a certainty, and she felt as certain that Gabriel had built high walls around the memories. But the poison was seeping out like the miasma from a vault. She shivered convulsively, appalled at the ghoulish image that conjured up. She was becoming emotional lately and every little feeling seemed heightened.

  ‘Are you cold?’

  ‘No. Just a goose walking over my grave.’ Stop thinking about graves.

  ‘I have upset you. I am sorry for my temper and my secrets. I want whatever compromise is best for the both of us, whatever will work for us.’

  ‘Compromise is a word that does not come often to your lips, I think.’ She ventured a teasing note and, glancing up, was rewarded with a smile.

  ‘Not often enough, I am sure.’

  Reassured by the smile, Caroline tucked her gloved hand under Gabriel’s elbow and was not repulsed. We must look the perfect just-married couple, she thought as they reached the Parade and passed the grassy length of Marine Square, its new houses sparkling white in the sunshine. ‘There is Lady Carmichael. She was so pleasant when I spoke to her in Donaldson’s the other day.’ Caroline waved. ‘Oh! Gabriel, she cut me.’

  ‘You are imagining things. She must not have seen who we were.’

  ‘But she did, I saw her recognise me and then she just went blank. Gabriel, slow down, there is Mrs Wilberforce, walking with her daughters.’ As the curricle drew level she smiled and waved. ‘Good afternoon, Mrs Wilberforce.’

  The matron who had beamed at her only that morning gathered her three girls closer as though to shield them from contagion and hurried on.

  ‘Stop!’ Caroline made a grab for the reins and when Gabriel brought the pair to a halt she half-scrambled, half-jumped down, gasping in pain as she jarred her sore toe. ‘Mrs Wilberforce, wait, please.’

  The older woman turned. ‘Lady Edenbridge, I will thank you not to accost me, or my daughters, again.’

  ‘Why not?’ Caroline demanded, keeping her voice moderate with an effort. Even so, heads were turning. ‘You acknowledged me this morning.’

  ‘I was prepared to make every allowance for you, given your blameless record since your come-out and the fact that, despite your shocking elopement, you married immediately and with such distinguished sponsors. But I am not prepared to give countenance to the wife of a murderer. A patricide.’ She turned on her heel. ‘Come, girls.’

  ‘No, you will not turn your back on me after making such an accusation.’ Caroline caught at her sleeve, jerking her to a stop. ‘Where did you hear such lies?’

  ‘Why, today’s Morning Post and a letter from London from my good friend the Duchess of Brancaster. Now, unhand me, Lady Edenbridge.’

  She marched away and Caroline turned, aghast. People were slowing, someone pointed and just in front of where Gabriel was backing the team, a couple crossed the road to the other side, heads averted.

  ‘What the devil?’ he demanded as the curricle drew level with her.

  ‘She said...she says the newspapers say...that you are a murderer.’

  Chapter Twenty

  ‘Get in.’ Gabriel held out a hand to help her. ‘Smile. Don’t cry.’

  ‘I am not crying,’ Caroline said between gritted teeth. ‘I am furious. How dare she? How dare the Morning Post? It is libel, you must sue them. Who are you supposed to have murdered, for goodness sake?’

  ‘My father, I assume,’ Gabriel said as he drew rein outside their rented house. ‘Can you manage to get down? Go straight inside and wait while I return this to the mews.’

  That was enoug
h to knock the anger clean out of her. Caroline limped up the steps, back straight, chin up, and the door swung open before she could knock. James, the footman, closed it, virtually on her heels.

  ‘My lady, the newspapers—is his lordship coming back soon?’

  ‘Yes.’ Ebbing fury left her sick and weak and it took a conscious effort to speak calmly. ‘Take the decanters to the drawing room. Is there any post?’

  ‘Yes, my lady.’ He hurried after her with half a dozen letters on a silver salver and three folded newspapers.

  Most of the letters were for Gabriel, but she recognised Tess’s neat black handwriting and broke the seal without sitting down.

  My dearest Caroline,

  I hope this reaches you before the news is abroad in Brighton, but I doubt it. Your father has descended on London telling all who will listen that he had the man who ‘abducted’ his daughter investigated and has found a witness who swears that Gabriel murdered his own father twelve years ago.

  Cris tells me that he knows about the accident and that it cannot have been anything else, and of course we, and all your friends, are countering the rumours wherever we hear them.

  Cris is writing and will do nothing more until he hears from Gabriel whether he wants him to secure the services of the best lawyers or whether he is coming back to London himself. He says to tell you, ‘Courage!’ and to do your best to stop Gabriel committing murder in reality.

  Tamsyn and I stand ready to come to you, if that would help, or to do whatever you ask.

  Your loving friend,

  Tess

  ‘It was my father,’ she said the moment Gabriel walked into the room. ‘He is telling everyone that he has a witness who says you murdered your father.’ She thrust the letters into his hands. ‘Cris has written and I think that one is from Alex.’ When he took them she went and poured brandy into two glasses and brought one to him. Then she sat and waited, fighting the churning panic. This was her father’s revenge, she had brought this down on the man she loved.