The Secret Love of a Gentleman

by Jane Lark

  Rob nodded, “Thank you. I value your advice.” It was a long time since he’d accepted anything from his father.

  “We all reach a point when we need to express our independence and stop feeling reliant on our family. I can understand how you have felt. But equally, as your father, I will always wish to give you what support I can, humour me in future, and your mother. Please. I did not have my father and mother at your age, they had already passed away. I would have given anything to have their help. You have mine, Rob, whenever you need it. It hurts me here,” he patted his chest over his heart. “that you have not spoken to me before about your political desires.”

  “I’m sorry.” Rob answered. “I should have done.” But the moment to speak had never been there. “Yet, I do not want your help with Kilbride. Promise me you will do nothing and say nothing to my uncles. Leave that to me.”

  His father sighed. “If that is what you wish.”

  Rob nodded, smiling as his father did.

  His father gripped his shoulder briefly, then turned and left.

  Rob’s gaze turned to Mary’s letters, and with his left hand he picked up the first. It had been sent two days after he’d been attacked. He used his splinted right hand to hold the letter steady as he broke the seal.

  Rob

  We are so sorry we rushed off and missed you, I wanted to say goodbye, and George was intensely angry that he could not. He threw a tantrum in the carriage half the way home. Andrew said that you would understand, but I feared you would think us awful, and Caro too, especially when you two have been so close.

  I am sorry we missed you, but you will write to me, won’t you? We will probably not come to town again until next spring, so you must not be a stranger, you must come and visit us.

  Your loving sister,

  Mary

  He lifted the second letter and opened that, leaving the first on the sheet covering his thighs.

  I wish I had heard from you, I am chastising you constantly for not replying, and yet Andrew keeps telling me you must be busy doing what young men do in town, and I am not to nag you. So do not tell him that I have.

  Caro is much changed since we returned. Quiet again, although she does everything she did before we went to town. She visits her friends, in her own little trap with her pony, and she has taken to visiting the local poor. But Andrew is worried about her because she rarely dines with us. Still Andrew and I are seeking to include her when we can, as we have always done.

  Write and tell me how you are? What you are up to? It will cheer Caro too, I am sure. And send some word for George, so that he may cease asking me when he will see his Uncle Bobbie next.

  The children are well. Iris has discovered how to clap and giggles at us when she does it. It is very sweet. It melts my heart when she does so and Andrew laughs along with her with a twinkle in his eye. You can imagine just how much he is charmed by it. I think she does it so much simply to please him.

  Write back to me soon.

  Your loving, impatient sister,

  Mary

  He would not write back. He could not bring himself to do it yet. Perhaps when the wounds Caro had cut were less raw. But not now. He would do as his father had said, and call on her when he was well. He would not know what to say in a letter to Mary. If he implied all was well, Caro would think he did not care, and yet he could not write to Mary and speak of his pain because then he would look weak to Caro. Better to say nothing.

  Chapter 32

  “Is there still nothing from Rob,” Mary stated as Drew sorted through the morning’s letters.

  He looked up at her, “No, my dear.”

  “It has been four weeks.”

  “It is not long for a young man in town, who has himself to think of before his sister.”

  Mary sighed. “Yet it is not like him. I am worried, Andrew.”

  Every time Mary spoke of it, a heavy pain settled in Caro’s chest. She’d truly hurt him if he’d cut his sister so Caro might hear nothing of him. She was worried too.

  “You should go to town and visit him,” Mary told Drew, “at least then I would know he is well.”

  “He is well. Your father has written and told you so. They have seen him. Leave Rob alone, he will not appreciate you fussing over him.”

  Caro folded her napkin and lay it on her half-full plate. She was not hungry. Her stomach had been nauseous for the weeks since they’d left London. “I am going to retire to the nursery and spend an hour with the children. Then I will call on Isabella and Pauline. I plan to spend the day there.”

  Drew looked at her and gave her a sympathetic smile. He knew she was the wedge between Mary and her brother, and yet he said nothing.

  She nodded. Drew did not know what an awful mess she had made, though.

  When she walked upstairs, her hand rested over her stomach and thoughts whispered through her head, words for the child she believed to be within her. She’d had her courses before she’d left for London, but had not had them since, and it must now be six weeks or more since they’d come.

  She was not afraid, nor worried, nor panicked, not even concerned. She could not carry a child full term. There was no need to speak of it to anyone. There was no need to worry Rob.

  Yet to believe there was a child within her filled the vacant hole in her heart. She’d always longed for a child of her own, and now she would have a child again, if only for a few months. Even though she would never see it in the flesh. It was her child.

  In the nursery she sat with Iris on her knee. Iris clapped as George ordered her to. Iris had become another toy to him.

  Images of Rob filled Caro’s head, as they did frequently. She hoped he was well. She hoped he did not still hurt too much.

  His father had written of him and said that he was well. She wondered if he was happy without her. She was not happy without him.

  What would he think if he knew they had created a child? She imagined a look of wonder and awe in his eyes. Love. She knew how he looked at George and Iris. Yet there was no point in speaking of it to him. It would only make his heart hurt even more when she lost the child.

  ~

  Caro stood by the window in the nursery looking out onto the gardens where she and Rob had frequently played with George in the summer. It had been six weeks since they’d left town and still Caro’s courses had not come, and still Rob had not written to Mary.

  Caro was in no doubt she was with child. Her hand constantly hovered near her stomach as she longed to hold it. She had a child. She loved it with all her heart, and at night when she lay in bed she stroked her stomach even though it was still flat, and she sang to the child within it. She wished for it to be happy and know her as much as it might for the months it was alive within her womb. She wished the child to feel her love.

  “Caro…”

  Caro looked at Mary, who was kneeling on the floor playing spillikins with George.

  “We are dining out tomorrow evening. Will you come with us? Andrew would like you to. You should socialise with us, as you did. I am sure it will make you feel better…and there is a dinner dance next week at the Martins’.”

  “I see my friends, and I see others when I visit those in need.”

  “You need more company than conversation. You enjoyed dancing at the last assembly, and in town. Come with us, to the dinner dance if not to dine tomorrow.”

  The dinner dance would probably be no more than a dozen couples. But she felt no desire to go. It was not that she chose to avoid it through fear, merely that she felt no pleasure at the prospect of going, her heart was too wounded to laugh and dance. “I would rather stay here, because that is what I wish, not because I am hiding, Mary.”

  Here… Caro had almost said, home, but she had more and more become aware that this was not her home, it was Drew’s. She longed to be self-reliant as much as Rob had. She longed for somewhere she could make her own. Memories stirred. She had known one place, although then she had been too wounded to appreciat
e it.

  “Very well, but between you and Rob I am worried sick.” Mary looked away, her concentration returning to her game with George.

  “You need not worry over me.”

  Mary glanced back up. “But you do not look happy.”

  “I am content, though, and it is enough, and a beginning.”

  George broke into giggles when the pile of sticks collapsed, which made his sister clap in her crib.

  Caro’s fingers brushed her stomach. If she were to leave Drew’s home, now would be the time. In a few weeks she would need a maid to let out her clothes, if the child lived that long.

  The opportunity to speak to Drew did not come until the next day. She did not go down to breakfast because she was feeling nauseous and the smells of the foods turned her stomach, but after Mary and Drew had eaten she asked one of the footmen where to find him.

  “In the library, my lady.”

  She knocked on the door gently. It was where he studied the estate books and read his letters. It meant he was working—and alone.

  “Come in.”

  She opened the door and slipped around it. He sat at a desk that looked out through the window onto the gardens. She smiled. He loved what he’d achieved, his home, his property, but, most importantly, his wife and his family. He deserved to live here with them and not to have a sister hanging about his neck and sucking the life from him.

  He stood up swiftly. “How may I help you, Caro?”

  When she walked over to him, he gripped both her hands, the gesture saying that he knew why she spent her days so quietly—because of Rob.

  “Do you think Rob is truly well,” she asked first.

  “His father says so. He would have no need to lie to Mary.”

  “Yet Rob has not written, and we know he is capable of acting before his family.”

  “His father would see it. I believe he is well, but obviously he prefers to distance himself from the situation and from us now. I understand. It is what I did when Mary left me, if you remember.”

  “Yes, but you were a fool, and Rob is not.”

  He laughed. “No, he is the most sensible man I know.”

  The words shivered through Caro. He was. Rob was wonderful. Her palm lay over her stomach. “Drew, I wish to ask for something.”

  “Ask.”

  “Do you still own the cottage in Maidstone? Is it empty?”

  He looked struck. “Why?”

  “I wish to move there. I would not feel so reliant upon you there, if I might have an allowance. Perhaps you would sell the jewellery that I brought with me when I left Albert. You have never let me touch it, but if you invested the money on my behalf I could live on an income from it. I would not need much, and yet it would allow me to live as I wished, quietly, but independently.”

  “Where has this come from?”

  “Since we went to London I have discovered myself again and I have never liked the person who’s lived here. I would rather be my own woman.” There she could let her child grow within her too, without fear of others noticing or questioning it. If she was lucky, she had another six to eight weeks to know her child.

  “If it will make you happier…”

  “It will.”

  “I own the property, but there are tenants there. I will need to give them four weeks’ notice.”

  Caro nodded. She longed for that dark little cottage suddenly. Perhaps it would hurt to leave George and Iris here, and yet once her child had passed, she would visit them often.

  Chapter 33

  Rob’s mother helped him into a dressing gown, so that Rob could move from the bed to a chair. He was to spend his afternoon there. They had positioned it by the window, with a high stool to put his splinted leg up on. It was the first time he’d been allowed to rise.

  She slid the silk carefully over his splinted hand and then pulled it up his arm. The doctor had said the splints could be removed from his hand in two weeks.

  “Your father said you asked Caroline to marry you…”

  Lord. Rob laughed, on a choke, and coughed as his good hand pressed against his painful ribs. “He said he would not tell you.”

  “He said you had not asked him not to speak, but that if he told me I must swear not to mention it to anyone, and he asked me not to mention it to you. But I would have known anyway. You spoke her name more than a dozen times in your sleep when you were taking laudanum.”

  He sighed as he lowered his arm. “And Papa must have told you that she refused me.”

  His mother gave him a close-lipped smile as she held the dressing gown so he could put his good arm into the other sleeve.

  “He said I should try again. What do you think?”

  Her smile parted her lips. “If you feel so much for her, why would you not? But I would counsel, as your father did, that you should not hurry it. Give yourself time. You are young.”

  He sighed. He did not feel so young any more. He did not feel young at all. He’d survived a physical and emotional trauma in the last few weeks.

  “I will fetch your uncle to help you stand. Papa is at John’s with the children.”

  “I can move without his help. Simply let me set my arm about you.”

  “Ever belligerent. You know you were not so until you went to school. Since then you have always fought so hard to be independent.”

  “Because it was easier than fighting to be noticed at home,” he winced as he slid across the bed, trying not to jolt his broken leg. “I left the attention-seeking to Harry. He always had a way for it, winding Papa up. I have never been interested in competing with him.”

  “So you decided to play holier than thou and gloat.”

  A smile pulled at his lips and a sound of amusement rumbled in his chest as she gripped his arm to help him stand.

  He pushed down on the mattress with his good hand and took his weight on his good leg, but what he had not accounted for was that after six weeks’ lying on a bed, his good leg was no longer strong enough to take his weight. He fell back and cried out from the pain which jarred his broken leg, his ribs, and his hand as he instinctively tried to grip the mattress.

  “I will fetch your uncle.”

  “Would you pass the water first?” He did not wish to admit to her that he felt shaky and dizzy. He did not wish to be told he ought to stay in bed.

  As she picked up the water he stared at the chair. It might as well be a bloody mile away.

  “You are so like your father,” she said as she handed him the water. “I should have known you would fall for a woman who needed a knight in shining armour.”

  His eyebrows lifted. “Was Papa that to you, then?” They never spoke of how they’d met.

  She smiled as he sipped more water. “He was, yes. I needed saving and he saved me. And yet it took me time to dare to trust that he could.”

  “Why did you need saving?”

  The look she gave him was cautious. “I was not in a good place. I do not like to discuss it, yet I mentioned it only because I understand Caroline far more than anyone else in the family.”

  “John’s father?” he asked.

  “No.” The sharp pitch of her voice told him not to ask any more. “I will fetch your uncle, and do not decide to make your way to the chair yourself.”

  He smiled. No, he would not. He was beginning to learn his boundaries.

  Uncle Robert returned with her and put his arm beneath Rob’s shoulder to help him rise, then let Rob lean heavily on him as he slowly hopped across the room. But each movement sent agony racing through his broken leg. He breathed heavily when he sat down. His uncle stared at him. “Do you wish me to stay?”

  “No, Mama may settle me in, and then I will watch the street and perhaps read.”

  His uncle smiled then left them, while his mother moved his broken leg carefully and set it more comfortably on the stool. Then she fetched a blanket.

  “It will take Caroline courage to trust you,” she said when she placed the blanket over his legs.
“She has experienced pain in her marriage and you are young. But that is no insult. I know you are wise for your age, and sensible. Even John would admit that you have a far more level head on your shoulders than he had at one and twenty. He fled the country to run wild for a few years. You have never been wild.”

  She stood before him, her hands gripping her waist. “You have always been the one who’s made me most proud and I am proud that you helped Caroline. You have made a difference to her life. Now I just wish you happy, and if you find happiness with Caroline I will be glad for both of you. I suppose some people might frown at the difference in your ages, but I do not think it matters. It has never mattered to your father that I am older.

  “Shall I fetch you tea? Would you like me to sit with you? I will read to you if you wish.”

  Rob shook his head. He wanted to sit and think.

  She leant and hugged him. Tears glittered in her eyes when she pulled away. “I love you. I pray that you know it.”

  He smiled, nodding slightly. “Of course I do, Mama.”

  “I wish this had not happened to you, but then again it has given your father and me some time to spend with you alone. Both John and Mary have told us that they felt a lack of love because there were too many of you, and since then we try hard to spend more time with each of the young ones alone, but that is too late for you.”

  “I have not felt a lack, Mama, only love. I have always known you and Papa are there if I have need of you.”

  “And yet until now you have cut your path of independence so you had no cause to need us.”

  He smiled, “But I need you now. I would like a cup of tea.”

  She laughed. “Very well, I shall fetch one.”

  He watched her turn. “I love you too, Mama.”

  She looked back and smiled.

  Strange sensations twisted in his chest. Hope. Love. Longing. They were spurs to act. He would accept Uncle Robert’s property and once he could walk he would go and visit Caro and speak to her. He no longer felt trampled and broken, or bitter. Instead a quiet patience breathed inside him. He had to get better and then he would begin his life.