The Lady Gambles

by Carole Mortimer

  Her chin lifted disdainfully. ‘I have witnessed a man being…felled before my eyes.’ Caro gathered her courage after that slight falter as she talked of the attack on Dominic, determined to show this man no weakness whatsoever. ‘I have suffered being covered in a rough and smelly blanket, abducted in a coach, and held a prisoner in this bedchamber for some time. Yes, Mr Brown, I am perfectly comfortable, thank you.’

  Grudging admiration entered that calculating brown gaze. ‘I understand now why Blackstone became so besotted with you,’ he murmured.

  It was an admiration Caro did not value in the slightest. Any more than she believed Dominic had ever been besotted with her. But the thought of it was enough to give her the courage to continue in the same vein. ‘Unfortunately I consider you so far beneath contempt that you do not even have the right to breathe Lord Vaughn’s name.’

  A tightness appeared around those brown eyes as his gaze narrowed. ‘We will see how wonderful you still consider him to be when he fails to rescue you in time from my “contemptuous” clutches.’

  The only part of that statement that mattered to Caro was the indication it gave that Dominic was still alive! She sagged inside. If that could only be true, if Dominic could still but live, then whether or not he succeeded in rescuing her did not matter; Caro just wanted him to be safe.

  She raised scornful brows. ‘Dominic is worth a hundred—no, a thousand!—of you.’

  Brown scowled darkly. ‘Perhaps you should wait to make comparisons as to who is the better man until after I have bedded you?’

  Caro’s eyes had widened before she had a chance to control her reaction to this shocking statement. ‘You will not find me a willing bed partner, Mr Brown,’ she assured cuttingly, her chin still raised defiantly high.

  His mouth twisted derisively. ‘I am counting on it, Mrs Morton,’ he drawled mockingly. ‘Blackstone took my prized possession from me and now I am very much enjoying the anticipation of availing myself of his,’ he jeered before stepping out of the room, and relocking the door behind him.

  Caro sank weakly down on to the bed, wondering how she could ever have been deceived into thinking Nicholas Brown was anything other than what he was: a low, despicable man, with no honour, or, indeed, any virtues to recommend him.

  She could only hope that, if Dominic truly were still alive, he would look for her—as he surely must?—and find her, before Brown decided to carry out his threat.

  ‘Everyone is in position, my lord.’ Drew Butler spoke softly at Dominic’s side as the two men stood hidden in a doorway further down the road from the house in Cheapside belonging to Nicholas Brown.

  The house where Dominic hoped and prayed that he would find Caro. Alive. And unharmed. Anything else was unacceptable to him.

  What he would say and do to Caro once he had delivered her safely back at Brockle House, Dominic had not dared think of as yet. He had still not got over the shock of regaining consciousness earlier only to find Caro was nowhere to be found.

  ‘Are you sure you are up to this, my lord?’ Drew voiced his concern. ‘The blow to your head was severe, and—’

  ‘Let’s get this over with, Drew,’ he said grimly as he raised the two pistols in his hands ready for breaching Brown’s front door. ‘There will be time enough to worry about the blow I received to my head once we have found Caro and I am assured she has come to no harm at Brown’s hands.’ The expression on his face was enough to show what would happen to said man if Caro had been harmed in any way…

  Dominic had downed a single glass of brandy earlier in order to put him back into his right senses, after which he had sent for Drew Butler, and then taken him and the men who had formerly been under his command into the study at Brockle House, in order that they might devise a plan to effect a rescue without injury to Caro.

  Spending over two hours observing the comings and goings of Brown’s men to his house in Cheapside, so that they might count the number of adversaries they would have to deal with once they were inside, had stretched Dominic’s patience to breaking point. Enough so that now he could not wait to get inside the house and have this thing between himself and Brown over and done with once and for all.

  And, far more importantly, to know that Caro was indeed safe and unharmed…

  Caro felt both thirsty and hungry as she lay upon the bed, several more hours having passed without anyone offering her refreshment of any kind. Something she did not feel inclined to bring to anyone’s attention when she had not seen Nicholas Brown again for that same length of time.

  It was—

  Caro sat up abruptly as she heard the sound of several unnaturally loud bangs, taking several seconds—and a few more of those loud bangs—before she realised that what she was hearing was gunfire.

  Dominic!

  She rose hastily from the bed to run across to the locked door, pressing her ear against it to see if she could hear anything of what was taking place on the other side. Men shouting. Feet running. More shots. And then an unnatural and eerie silence…

  Caro stepped back from the door, unsure as to whether Dominic and the men who had accompanied him were the victors of the battle or whether it was the despicable Nicholas Brown and his men. If it was the latter—

  The key was being turned in the lock!

  The handle was turning.

  The door being pushed open—

  ‘Dominic!’ Caro cried gladly as he stood so tall and in command in the doorway, that gladness turning to horror, and her face paling, as Caro saw the blood staining the front of his jacket and shirt. She ran across the room. ‘You are hurt!’

  ‘It is not my blood, Caro,’ he had time to reassure her before his arms wrapped about her and he held her tightly against his chest.

  She leant back slightly to look up at him with wide, haunted eyes. ‘Is it Nicholas Brown’s?’

  Dominic’s jaw tightened. ‘We struggled, and the gun between us went off. He is dead, Caro,’ he added hoarsely.

  ‘I am glad!’ she assured him fiercely. ‘He meant to—he threatened to—’

  ‘Do not think of it again, my dear.’ Dominic could not bear just now to know what Brown had threatened to do to Caro if she had not been rescued. Any more than he wanted to think of the battle, the deaths, that had just occurred.

  All talk, explanations, could come later. It was enough for now that he held her safely in his arms…

  ‘The physician would not approve of you imbibing brandy so soon after receiving that severe blow to your head!’ Caro stood in the doorway of the study at Brockle House as she glowered at Dominic disapprovingly.

  In truth, his head was pounding worse than it had this morning. But whether the physician who had been called would have approved of his actions or not, Dominic knew that a glass of best brandy, his first since returning Caro back to Brockle House two hours earlier, was necessary if he was to get through the necessary conversation with her. Indeed, that he might need more of it before the evening was through…

  It had been a difficult afternoon for all of them—explanations to be made to the representatives of the law, arrangements made for the removal of Brown’s body and those of his men.

  With so many witnesses to what had taken place, and Caro’s own testimony of her abduction and Brown’s intentions towards her, it had not been too difficult to persuade the authorities that Brown and his men were the guilty parties, and Dominic and his men merely effecting a rescue. In truth, he had a suspicion that certain members of the law were pleased to be relieved of the presence of the troublesome Nicholas Brown, once and for all.

  Caro, as Dominic might have expected, had stood up wonderfully well under all the strain!

  ‘Come in and close the door, Caro,’ Dominic re quested softly now as he leant back against the front of the leather-topped desk.

  She stepped lightly into the study and closed the door behind her, disturbed by how ill Dominic now looked; there was a grey cast to his skin, his eyes sunken in the dark shadows abov
e the high blades of his cheekbones. His mouth was a grimly thinned line and his jaw was clenched tensely.

  ‘Did…the events of this afternoon disgust you?’ he asked huskily.

  She raised startled eyes to look at him searchingly, but was unable to read anything of his mood from his expression. ‘How could I possibly feel disgust when I know that if you had not succeeded in killing Brown then it would be you and I who now lay dead?’

  His mouth quirked. ‘There have been several occasions when you have given me the impression you would not consider my own death to be such a bad thing.’

  ‘I was young and silly—’

  ‘And now you are mature and so much wiser?’ he teased.

  Caro felt the warmth of the colour that entered her cheeks. ‘I feel…older than I was this morning, certainly.’

  Dominic’s frown was pained. ‘I am sorry for that.’

  ‘Why should you be sorry?’ She looked at him quizzically. ‘It is Nicholas Brown who is responsible for my new maturity, Dominic, and not you. He—if you had not rescued me, he told me that he intended to—’

  Dominic stepped forwards and took her firmly into his arms. ‘I have already told you that it will do you no good to think of that any more,’ he urged. ‘Bad enough that I have to think of it, imagine it, without knowing it hurts you, too.’ His arms tightened almost painfully about her.

  Caro raised her head to once again look up at him. ‘Does the thought of it hurt you so badly, Dominic?’

  His eyes glittered a pale silver. ‘Almost as much as the knowledge that you were leaving me.’

  ‘I was not leaving you, Dominic.’ She sighed. ‘I merely thought it best that I return home—’

  ‘Without so much as a goodbye? Giving me no idea how I would ever find you again?’ His expression had become fierce, those silver eyes glowing with repressed emotion as he looked down at her.

  Caro swept the tip of her tongue lightly over the dryness of her lips, a hope, a dream, starting to build and grow inside her. ‘Would you ever have wanted to find me again?’

  ‘How can you even ask me that?’ Dominic shook her slightly in exasperation. ‘Do you not know—have you not guessed yet how much I love you?’

  ‘What did you say?’ Caro hardly dared to believe the emotions she could now read in those glowing silver eyes. Warmth. Admiration. Love!

  ‘I love you, Caro,’ he repeated huskily. ‘Do you think, after all that has happened, that if I were to get down on my knees and beg, you might one day be able to love me in return and consider becoming my wife?’

  Her cheeks warmed as she remembered the occasion upon which she had said those words to him. ‘As I recall, you had just finished telling me that our lovemaking was a mistake—’

  ‘Then it was a most wonderful, glorious mistake!’ he assured her fiercely as he cupped the sides of her face between gentle hands. ‘I have been a fool, Caro. An arrogant fool. My only excuse—if there can ever be one!—is that I have never met a woman like you before. Never known any woman with your courage, your generosity of spirit, your honesty. I love you truly, Caro, and if you could one day learn to love me in return, I promise you I will love you for the rest of our lives together. Will you, Caro? Will you give me the chance to show you how much I love you? A chance to persuade you into learning to love me?’ he added less certainly.

  It was that uncharacteristic uncertainty that convinced Caro she could not be dreaming, after all; even in a dream she would not have bestowed uncertainty upon a man she knew to be always confident and sure, of both his own emotions and those around him!

  And yet Dominic was not sure of her and seemed to have no idea that she had fallen in love with him, too. ‘My dear…’ her voice was gentle, tentative ‘…I am already in love with you—’

  ‘My darling girl!’ Dominic swept her ecstatically up into his arms before claiming her mouth with his.

  Caro was still so overwhelmed by his declaration of love and his proposal of marriage, that for several long and pleasurable minutes all she could do was return the passion of his kisses.

  It was some time later before her sanity returned. ‘I realise that the Earl of Blackstone could not possibly marry a woman such as Caro Morton—’

  ‘I can marry whom I damned well please,’ he told her with a return of his usual arrogance. ‘And I choose to marry you, if you will have me,’ he added determinedly. ‘I do not care who or what you are, Caro. Or what you are running away from. I love you. And it is my dearest wish—my only wish—to make you my wife.’

  This, more than anything else, finally convinced Caro of the depth of Dominic’s love for her. He was a lord, an Earl, and yet he was proposing marriage to a woman he had only known as a singer in a gambling club. A woman he had already made love to. Twice!

  She chewed briefly on her bottom lip. ‘I should tell you that my mother ran away with her lover when I was a child, and was later shot and killed by him when he caught her in the arms of yet another lover.’

  Dominic’s thumb moved lightly across her bottom lip, his eyes ablaze with the love he claimed to feel for her. ‘I have said I do not care about your past, my love, and I truly do not,’ he vowed. ‘Besides, you are not responsible for your mother’s actions.’

  ‘Any more than you are to blame for the death of your own mother.’

  Dominic released his breath in a deep sigh. ‘I have always felt responsible…’

  Caro gently touched his cheek with her fingertips. ‘Tell me what really happened.’

  He gave a pained wince. ‘I do not believe I could bear it if, once I have done so, you decided you did not love me, after all.’

  ‘It will not happen,’ she vowed with certainty. ‘Dominic, I know you to be a man who is honest and true. A man who cares deeply for others in spite of himself— Lord Thorne, Drew, Ben, myself, to name only four. I absolutely refuse to believe that you would ever have harmed your own mother.’

  ‘I hope you still think that once I have told you what happened.’ Dominic kissed her slowly and lingeringly before speaking again. ‘I went away to school when I was twelve years old. I was not a good pupil. I resented being sent away, and got into all manner of scrapes in an attempt to be sent home again. I do not even remember what the last one was.’ He grimaced. ‘Only that it resulted in my mother having to travel to the school shortly after the Christmas holidays in order to stop the headmaster from expelling me.’

  Caro could hear his heart beating rapidly in his chest, the harshness of his breathing as he was obviously beset by the memories that had haunted him into adulthood. ‘I love you, Dominic,’ she encouraged gently.

  His arms tightened about her as he continued. ‘Her coach slipped on the icy roads and into an even icier river. The doors became stuck fast and she could not get out as the water—’

  ‘Do not say any more!’ Caro sat up and placed her fingertips over his lips as she gazed down at him. ‘You were a child, Dominic. A child who felt hurt and rebellious because he felt he had been sent away from those he loved. You were no more responsible for the death of your mother or your father than—than I am.’

  Strangely, as Dominic looked up into Caro’s compassionate and love-filled eyes, all of the guilt, the feeling that he was unworthy of being loved, quietly and for ever slipped away.

  She shook her head. ‘It is sad that your father felt he could not go on living without her but—loving you as I do, I believe I know something of how he must have felt,’ she added shyly; if Dominic really had been killed earlier today, then Caro knew she would have found it difficult to go on living, too…

  He gave a choked groan as he pulled her tightly against him and buried his face in her hair. ‘How was I ever lucky enough to find you, Caro? How?’

  Caro did not want him to be sad any more; he had already suffered enough, believed himself unworthy of love for long enough. ‘But you do not know yet whom you have found,’ she reminded him teasingly.

  He raised his head to smile at her.
‘First tell me that you will marry me, whoever you are.’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘Caro…’ Dominic kissed her for several more love-filled minutes, the happiness on his face when he at last raised his head, making him look almost boyish as he grinned down at her.

  ‘But before that can happen,’ Caro murmured ruefully, ‘you will have to obtain the approval of my guardian.’

  Dominic’s smile faded slightly. ‘Your guardian?’

  ‘I am afraid so.’

  He frowned. ‘Tell me who this guardian is and I will go to him immediately, assure him that I am a reformed character since meeting you and solicit him for his permission to marry you.’

  ‘It is not necessary for you to go to him.’ Caro’s eyes glowed with laughter. ‘I believe that he is coming to you.’

  ‘To me?’ Dominic frowned his confusion. ‘But how—?’ His eyes widened as he became still. ‘Westbourne?’ he breathed in disbelief.

  ‘I am afraid so,’ Caro admitted.

  Dominic stared down at her, absolutely dumbstruck for several long seconds, and then he began to smile, and then finally to laugh. ‘Westbourne!’ He sobered suddenly. ‘It is because I had told you I was expecting him to arrive in England any day that you were leaving London so hurriedly earlier,’ he realised incredulously. ‘Yes.’

  ‘What I should have added is that Gabriel does not intend to remain in London, but travel almost immediately to Shoreley Hall.’

  ‘Oh dear!’ Caro cringed now at the thought of what her sister Diana would have to say to Dominic’s friend when he arrived.

  Dominic seemed to suffer no such worries as he chuckled, once more diverted by the thought that he had stolen a march on his friend and whipped one of his possible choices of bride out from under his nose. ‘And which Lady Copeland will I have the pleasure of making my wife?’