The Secret Love of a Gentleman

by Jane Lark

  Mary rose and took the fresh pot of coffee from a footman. She poured a cup for Rob. “I am putting sugar in it. It will help your headache.”

  Rob glanced at her. “Thank you and forgive me if I am poor company today.”

  Drew laughed, with no deference for Rob’s request for silence.

  “I’m glad you find my suffering amusing.”

  “It is only the start of what is to come, little brother,” Drew answered. “You need to improve your stamina if you intend running with the London set for a few years before you settle. If you get drunk too easily you’ll lose a fortune playing cards.”

  “Then I shall continue to pass, both on the liquor and the cards.”

  Drew looked back at his paper with a smirk.

  Rob’s gaze turned to Caro, and his eyebrows lifted, the look saying, am I forgiven?

  Yes, of course he was. For a moment their gazes held, as his blue-grey eyes shone in the morning light. Then he looked down as a full plate was set before him.

  “Oh.” Drew cleared his throat suddenly as he sat more upright in his chair.

  Caro looked over. He was looking at her with concern and compassion.

  A frown pulled at her brow.

  “Caro,” he said with an ominous pitch. “There is something here that I do not know if you will wish to see, but as it is here I have to point it out to you.”

  “What?” What on earth could be in the paper that would interest her?

  “Do you wish to see?”

  No. Yes. “Drew, just tell me.” She rose, to look for herself.

  “Here.” He pointed to a small announcement.

  The Marquis of Kilbride is pleased to announce the birth of his son, William Edward Albert.

  Albert had remarried over a year ago. Of course she had known his wife would bear him children. She had known this would come.

  Drew looked up at her.

  She shook her head, trying to appear as though pain had not lanced through her breast. It should not hurt. But it did.

  She retook her seat, choosing not to run and hide and she ignored the fact that they all watched her. “May I have another cup of chocolate?”

  Valour was the better course. Albert had moved on, and she must too.

  Looking first at Drew, she smiled, then passed her smile to Rob and Mary, making nothing of what was ripping her apart internally.

  She reached for the fresh cup of chocolate and sipped from it.

  “What was it?” Rob asked her.

  “Nothing,” she answered, in a voice that urged him not to ask again.

  He looked at Drew. But Drew just shook his head, respecting her choice, and then he turned the page and commented on a horse-racing article.

  Caro turned to Mary and returned to the conversation they had been sharing on current fashions before Rob had walked in, trying to hide the emotion screaming inside her, but it was too hard.

  As soon as she finished her chocolate she rose, “Forgive me.” She turned and left the table as tears gathered in a lump in her throat.

  ~

  When Caro walked from the room, Rob’s gaze followed her. She’d neither said nor done anything obvious to imply that what Drew had shown her had upset her, and yet he knew it had. He knew her too well. His gaze turned to Drew, his thumping headache forgotten, and he looked the question without speaking.

  Drew folded the paper and passed it over. “Announcements.”

  Rob opened it up and looked through the pages, while Mary rose and walked about the table to look over his shoulder.

  He found the page and scanned it. Kilbride’s name jumped out. “An heir,” Rob said aloud.

  Mary, who had leant forward, straightened and looked at Drew. “Should I find her and sit with her this morning?”

  Drew shook his head. “Let her do as she wishes. She will come to terms with it.”

  But Rob did not think she would want to be alone. He stood. She had been lonely. “I’ll ask her if she wishes to go for a walk with George, or ride.”

  “Leave her, Rob, there is no need.” Drew said.

  “It is kind of you to offer, Rob, but Andrew knows her best,” Mary added.

  But Drew did not. Caro had told Rob things Drew did not know. No matter how much Rob regretted what had happened last night, or how much he’d sworn to himself while he’d drunk himself stupid that he would stay out of her way in future, he could not let her endure this alone.

  “I shall go back upstairs and lie down, then.”

  They gave him sympathetic looks.

  Rob wondered how much Drew’s influence had hindered Caro and not helped her. The way Drew sought to help her was to disregard her anxiety, yet although Rob thought that she must disregard it to recover, he did not condone leaving her to simply endure it, as Drew did.

  Rob did not go to his room. He left the house. He knew where she would be. In the gardens.

  She was sitting on the lip of the pond, one hand gripping the stone, while the other played in the water making patterns with the ripples. When he walked closer she looked up at the sky. It was another intensely hot day, but the air felt fresher because it had rained during the night.

  “Caro?”

  She jumped and then stood up.

  “Rob.” Her voice sounded calm, but there were tear stains on her cheeks.

  She wiped them away with her sleeve.

  “I’m sorry about last night. It was wrong of me—” he began, but she interrupted.

  “You have nothing to apologise for. It was wrong of me to come down in my nightdress, and you asked me to leave…” Her chin lifted as if in denial of any censure.

  Caro had pride in reams as well as courage, and that was why she was afraid of rejection, because she had once been a marchioness.

  If she deserved nothing else, she deserved honesty from him. “I should not lie. I am not wholly sorry. I’d been sitting there longing to do those things with you. I’ve thought you beautiful for weeks, then last night you shone, and I’d had too much to drink. My resolve broke. It does not normally. That is what I am sorry for.”

  The depth in her eyes grew with a bewildered expression as her eyes turned gold in the morning sunshine. “I cannot accept your apology.” She shook her head. The heat of a blush rose in his cheeks as she continued. “It was my fault. I was emotional, I’d enjoyed the evening, and I presented myself in a state that must have… Well, Albert told me about men’s instincts. That you cannot control—”

  A deep splinter of a laugh erupted from Rob’s throat, hurting his head.

  She hit his arm. “Do not laugh at me.”

  “I am not laughing at you, I am laughing at him. Your husband was an ass. A man may control himself. Did I not say stop last night? I have never had a problem saying an emphatic no before that. The problem last night was that I did not wish to and I’m sorry because it was neither right, nor fair of me to take advantage of our friendship, and I was not rejecting you, if you still think that. I do not even particularly regret what we did, and yet I know it was wrong, and so I apologise.”

  The depth in her eyes changed again as she stepped closer to him while a wood pigeon called from the corner of the garden. “Then I still do not accept your apology. I do not regret it, either.” Her hands lifted and braced his head, her fingers slipping into his hair. Then her fingers urged him to bend. He complied, still intoxicated from last night. It felt like a dream as she rose to her toes.

  “Let me be sorry for this,” she said against his lips.

  Her lips pressed against his.

  Ah damn. He was not sorry at all. His tongue pushed into her mouth as she gripped his nape and his shoulder.

  His hands held her bottom, but after a few moments he broke the kiss. This was not the time, nor the place. But he said over her lips. “You are forgiven.”

  “So are you,” she answered, holding his gaze.

  His forehead fell against hers. “Caro, I know, Drew showed me the paper.”

  A flush
coloured her skin. He’d found her crying, and she’d said once that she’d loved Kilbride. Was she embarrassed that he knew? Or embarrassed by her emotions?

  “It does not matter.” She turned away, letting him go as he let her go. She walked to the flower border.

  “Does it not?”

  “No.” She admired an ornamental daisy as though it were the crown jewels, then walked on along the border with her back to him.

  He followed. “Was it a blow? I know you were crying here.”

  “No.”

  “Caro,” he caught hold of her elbow to stop her walking, but she did not turn back “I know it has upset you, so why lie? This is me. You may speak.”

  She still did not turn.

  He stepped forward and wrapped his arms around her waist from behind, holding her still and offering the comfort she claimed she did not need, yet she leaned back against him.

  “Tell me. How does it feel? Do you hurt?”

  Her hands settled over his. “Yes. But I should not, should I? Envy is a destructive feeling. But I wanted a child. He divorced me because I could not give him one. That was the reason his anger began.”

  “Why he hit you?” God, the man was not an ass, he was a bastard.

  She nodded, looking up at the sky, not him. He kissed her temple.

  “I left him because of the violence, yet he divorced me so he might find a wife who would give him an heir. He has his son now and what do I have? I can never have a child.”

  His arms tightened a little as he held her, but he did not know what to say to offer comfort. Platitudes would be pointless, so he simply kept holding her and offered physical comfort kissing her temple again.

  She turned in his arms and her hands clung at his waist. Then she lifted to her toes. “I will say sorry now,” she whispered before she kissed him.

  Last night he’d been gripped by lust in the darkness and the candlelight, with liquor flowing in his veins, but in the daylight it had become a gentle pull. There was no urgency. He merely wished to give her comfort and indulge in these new sensations. He was not sorry they had taken this turn in their friendship.

  But it was still neither the time nor the place. He broke the kiss and held her head, looking into her eyes. She was so delicate. “You are forgiven.”

  She smiled.

  “Would you like to go up to the nursery? Perhaps we could play with George. You are not without a family, Caro, and George and Iris may ease the ache.”

  Her forehead pressed into the crook of his neck. “I cannot believe you even understand that there is an ache… Thank you.” Her words seeped through his neckcloth as warmth.

  “Shall we go up to the nursery?” he repeated.

  “Yes,” she pulled away from him. “I would like to see George. Perhaps we could bring him down to the drawing room to play, and I would like to hold Iris.”

  “Come, then.” He took her hand and turned, then pulled her back across the lawn.

  It was entirely foolish to become attached to her, and yet if all they did was kiss, and if all he did was offer comfort, what harm was there?

  When the house came into view he dropped her hand.

  They walked in, talking jovially of the assembly the night before, and climbed the stairs to the nursery. When they reached it, Drew and Mary were there also, and George was in the process of using his papa as a climbing frame, full of energy, but when he saw Rob he ran over so he might be lifted up and tumbled.

  Mary came over to Caro and set Iris into Caro’s arms. That was the comfort that Caro needed most, simply to hold a child. What Rob had told her outside was true, she did have a family. Drew had given her this. But Rob could understand her need for something of her own, it was why he was here, because he was tired of being dependent on his family and looking to create an independent life. He knew Caro would have her own life, too, if she could. Perhaps she would have smashed her glass prison cell years ago if she’d had money to help her step out of it.

  He had the money to begin to build his own life if he wished to use it. John had given him that, but the whole idea of using his family to fulfil his great plan made his skin crawl with discomfort.

  Chapter 13

  Rob lifted his arm, offering it Caro. “Will you walk in the garden with me?”

  Caro lay her hand on the sleeve of his evening coat. The evening was warm and yet it was not the cooler air that beckoned but the privacy of the gardens.

  She looked up and caught the smile that hovered in his eyes.

  The summer heat had built for two days and become endless. Caro had spent those days inside, out of the sun, with the children, in the nursery, with the windows wide open to bring in the breeze as she’d tried to soothe the pain inside her.

  She’d played with George and read to him to help him sleep, and sat in the chair rocking Iris while both the children slept. If Mary, Drew or Rob took George from the nursery, then she sat alone singing to Iris.

  But in the evenings…

  Her evenings were her time with Rob. He only had a few days left, and she wished to capture as many of these precious last moments as she could.

  Yet every time she looked at him, her chest tightened. What would she do when he’d gone?

  The thought kept whispering through her head. She refused to fret, though. She would worry once he’d gone, not when he was here. Fretting would spoil the time they had left and she was enjoying his company too much for that.

  Her fingers gripped his arm gently as they walked out through the French doors.

  They found a moment of privacy to kiss at least once an evening: in the hours of dusk, when Mary and Drew were saying goodnight to the children, or as now in the moments after dinner, when Drew and Mary checked that George had gone to sleep.

  Each kiss began with an apology and ended with forgiveness, perhaps because Rob knew as much as she did that they ought not to be kissing. Yet it was as if she was possessed by something, something that pulled her to him. She was constantly aware of him whenever they stood or sat in the same room.

  As they turned about the end of the first hedge of the parterre gardens, his arm dropped and instead he caught hold of her hand and pulled her into a run. She laughed as they raced deeper into the gardens.

  When he pulled her around the third hedge, into the garden with the pond where they had played with George’s boat, Caro was breathless.

  Rob’s fingers clasped her waist and pressed her back against the prickly clipped branches of the yew hedge. “I will say sorry now, Caro.”

  “You are forgiven,” she answered as her arms wrapped about his neck. Then they were kissing again, and she lost herself in the intoxication.

  One of his hands lifted and his fingers curled and trailed slowly down the column of her neck.

  Rob always touched her tenderly, but since the night in the library, he had not touched her intimately. She supposed that since he would leave soon it was sensible, and yet she longed to be irrational.

  He kissed her temple. She nipped at the skin of his jaw above his neck cloth.

  “Caro,” he said into the air, laughing. “Stop.”

  She did not, she sucked his neck just beneath his jaw as he looked up at the sky, but then his fingers gripped her chin and lifted her head so he could kiss her again. His warm lips pressed over hers and his tongue delved into her open mouth.

  Her fingers clasped his evening coat at his waist.

  “Caro! Rob!”

  Rob pulled away from her, red staining his cheeks.

  “Mary and I thought we would play cards! Where are you?” Drew’s voice resonated through the hedges.

  Rob cursed quietly.

  Caro’s heart raced, along with her breathing.

  “Caro! Rob!”

  “You go,” Rob whispered. “I have a small predicament. Tell him I went back to the house.”

  Caro laughed, doing what she had never done with him and running a fingertip up the line of his erection. “It is not small.” She
turned away and left him, sending him a smile across her shoulder.

  “Caro!”

  She ran about the hedge and discovered Drew in the next garden, only a few steps away from discovering them. “Oh, sorry,” she said trying to catch her breath and calm her heart. “I walked out as far as the woodland path, it’s such a beautiful night.”

  “Where is Rob?”

  “He went back.”

  Drew looked at her a little oddly, but she gripped his arm and turned him around, her mind still in Rob’s arms behind the hedge.

  ~

  As they played cards, Caro sat facing Rob, a smile on her lips. They were partnering each other and they’d won every hand. She only had to look at him and he seemed to know which suit he should lay. Humour danced in his dark eyes.

  Because it was hot and humid, Rob and Drew had stripped off their evening coats and rolled up their sleeves.

  Rob’s dark-brown fringe fell forward as he leaned to play a card. When he leant back he slid a little down in the chair, slouching slightly. The pose gave him an endearing quality. His dark eyelashes lowered, cloaking his gaze as he looked at his cards. Then his slender, long fingers pulled out a card and moved it to another place in his hand. The muscle in his forearm shifted beneath the dark hair covering his skin.

  “Caro, it is your turn.” Drew prompted.

  She leaned forward and laid the queen of hearts. “I claim the trick.”

  “Oh,” Mary huffed, throwing away the two of spades.

  Rob glanced up and laughed, his dark-blue eyes glinting as Caro gathered the cards to her.

  “How do you two do it?” Drew complained, “Have you established some code. I have been watching you and I can see none.”

  Heat flooded Caro’s skin. She hoped he had not noticed how much she’d been watching Rob.

  “You are getting to good at this,” Mary complained.

  Caro looked up and laid the five of spades. “Hearts are trumps again.” She knew neither Drew nor Mary had any.

  Drew and Mary sat in mirrored poses, both sitting upright and leaning towards the table, with their feet tucked beneath their chairs.

  Mary lay the seven of spades.

  Caro slid down a little and slipped her foot from her shoe then touched Rob’s leg with her toes.