My Darling Caroline
My Darling Caroline
Adele Ashworth
For all the wonderful readers
who kept their fingers crossed,
hoping for another printing…
Contents
Caroline Grayson gently reached in and, carefully avoiding thorns, snipped the…
Caroline’s wedding to the Earl of Weymerth, during one of…
Caroline sat at the kitchen table, a mug of strong…
He couldn’t believe he was actually going to do it.
Caroline dressed in a pale peach evening gown, tied her…
He would simply have to seduce her.
Caroline sat on the settee in her husband’s study, in…
For two weeks she worked diligently, only to find defeat…
The flowers bloomed brilliantly.
Sleep was impossible. Cold wind and rain had been building…
Brent had suggested they go for a walk, the two…
He preferred thick, strong coffee in the morning, but alas,…
On her twenty-sixth birthday, exactly eighty-six days after her arrival…
Caroline fairly ran to the stables, intensely angered, stopping for…
It took Caroline nearly thirty minutes to gather the strength…
The guests were beginning to arrive, taking sherry and hors…
Gwendolyn finally made her nightly departure, leaving Caroline alone at…
He watched her walk toward the door of the structure,…
Charlotte knew she was carrying. She’d probably conceived at Miramont,…
Instinct alone told her she’d made a devastating mistake the…
Caroline slowly opened her eyes to the light of morning,…
Jane held her gloved hand out to one of the…
Cursing was not in her nature, and neither were such…
Perhaps because it was still sprinkling, perhaps only by chance,…
Brent knocked twice, then walked into Baron Sytheford’s study, the same…
England, 1815
C
aroline Grayson gently reached in and, carefully avoiding thorns, snipped the stem from the rosebush, pulling the bud toward her with nimble fingers to have a closer look. She eyed it with the detachment of a scientist, the expertise of a scholarly botanist, turning the rose slowly in her hands, taking careful note of its structure, its delicate beauty.
It was magnificent, the loveliest and healthiest plant she’d bred so far. It would take time to find a name dignified and unique enough for such a creation, though. She needed something perfect for such a perfect rose.
The sudden rustle of skirts made her turn. Stephanie, her youngest sister, was all but running toward her through the garden, the early-morning sun playing shiny cords of light through the richness of her blond hair and off the blue silkiness of her gown.
“Come and look at this one, Stephanie,” she called out, smiling with complete satisfaction, her attention again focused on her rose.
“Caroline,” Stephanie said, gasping as she approached, “you’ll never guess—”
“Slow down,” Caroline admonished as her sister grabbed her sleeve.
Stephanie took two deep breaths and wiped stray hair from her cheeks, stained pink from the cool morning air, her eyes wide and glowing with apparently delicious news.
“The Earl of Weymerth”—she gulped for air—“is here, and Father wants you to meet him.”
Caroline, however, was much more concerned with the lovely creation resting firmly between her forefinger and thumb. “Do you like it?”
Stephanie dropped her gaze to the flower and gave a squeal of delight. “Oh, this one’s lovely! Two colors of purple.”
Caroline grinned pridefully, placing the rose in her sister’s outstretched hand. “More a lavender fading into purple, really. Now explain yourself. Who is here?”
Stephanie’s eyes danced in merriment. “The Earl of Weymerth,” she replied very slowly.
Caroline looked at her blankly, prompting Stephanie to sigh with exasperation. “Really, Caroline! Brent Ravenscroft, the Earl of Weymerth? Society’s talked about him for years—some sort of family scandal, I think, though nothing that really damaged him socially. For a time he was courting Pauline Sinclair. You know, of the Sinclairs of Harpers Row. Then she dumped him on his arse—”
“Stephanie!”
“—and everybody speculated that he was mean, or foul-tempered and ugly, and that’s why she didn’t want him.” She dropped her voice to a mischievous whisper. “But I just got an excellent look at him, and he’s not ugly at all.”
Caroline smiled lightly as she dropped her clippers to the soft earth, wiping her sleeve over her perspiring forehead. In many ways Stephanie, although only seventeen, was a total innocent, for she had always felt that any vice a man might have could be ignored if he were attractive. Evidently she thought Lord Weymerth now above reproach.
“I don’t think you should be taking such an interest, Steph,” she chided as she took the lavender rose out of her sister’s fingers, starting her way up the stone path toward the house. “You’re betrothed, if you’ll remember.”
Stephanie fell into step behind her. “I wasn’t considering him for me, Caroline. I was considering him for you.”
“That’s ridiculous,” she returned through a laugh.
Stephanie groaned softly. “There are other things to consider in this great big world besides plants and…Sir Alfred Markham—”
“
Albert
Markham,” she corrected.
Stephanie said no more until they neared the house. Then smugly she disclosed, “I think Father is considering Lord Weymerth for you as well.”
Without pause, Caroline opened the kitchen door and walked into the house, placing her rose on the counter to free her hands for washing. The thought of her marrying anyone was just so incredibly unbelievable it wasn’t even worth discussing. “I don’t know where you get these ideas—”
“From Father’s mouth,” Stephanie cut in sarcastically. “I heard him say he’s giving you to the earl along with some things he’s selling him.”
Caroline reached for a towel, gazing at her sister speculatively, quick to note the cunning grin playing across her lips, the sparkle in her pale blue eyes. That disturbed her a little, as Stephanie was the only living soul who knew of her plans to leave England and study botany in America, and she had more than once expressed her desire to have her older sister remain close to home.
Still skeptical, Caroline brushed a stray curl from her cheek. “I’ll talk to him.”
“I’d bathe first,” Stephanie piped up in a melodious, mischief-filled voice.
Ignoring the comment, Caroline picked up her rosebud and headed toward the study. Brimming with confidence, she approached the closed door, but before she could knock she heard tense, male voices. Suddenly oblivious to her position, she instinctively leaned closer to listen to the argument between the two pompous oafs on the other side.
“I’ll pay you whatever you’re asking, but I refuse to marry for what rightfully belongs to me,” she heard a stranger’s voice say in a deep, husky timbre. “My property was sold unfairly, probably illegally.”
“Everything was purchased legally, Weymerth, and I can prove it.”
The voices lowered, and after a moment of listening to words too muffled to understand, she heard them again, this time louder in tone but softer in urgency as the man tried to reason with her father.
“This has nothing to do with you, Sytheford, but if I ever decide to marry, I’d rather she be someone of my choosing, not a daughter of yours I’ve never met.”
“Caroline will give you a smart, sturdy son—”
“That is not the issue here!”
“A man in your position—”
“Listen to me well,” she heard the earl quickly counter in a dangerously subdued voice. “I do not want to wed your daughter. I don’t care how many other worthy noblemen have asked for her hand. I don’t care that she is the loveliest creature this side of the Continent, that she has hair the color of sunshine or eyes the color of amethysts. I care only for my property, and by God, you’re going to return it to me fairly. This conversation is finished.”
A long, deadly silence ensued, then she heard her father’s deep growl fill the air. “Perhaps you should take a look at this.”
After precisely fifteen seconds the earl yelled, “Oh, Christ!” A fist slammed hard against the desk.
Her father said smugly, “It’s a bill of sale. Come Monday, they’re gone.”
“You can’t do this—”
“I will unless you marry my daughter.”
Then…nothing. Silence.
Caroline’s heart started pounding. For several seconds she couldn’t breathe as the realization hit her like a brick in the face.
This could not be happening. She had plans, she had dreams, she had…thought her father understood.
Horrified and disoriented, Caroline slumped her shoulders and dragged her body across the hall and into the morning room. Sunlight streamed in through beveled glass to create a peaceful feeling in the sparsely decorated room, but it did nothing for her ever-increasing sensation of panic. She sat heavily on the yellow sofa and stared into the cold fireplace, forcing herself to take deep breaths.
She felt shocked. Enraged. Even scared. She swallowed hard to fight back tears, for if nothing else, she needed to keep her wits intact and think things through before her father came out of his study to inform her that he’d chosen her a husband.
The thought made her shiver with revulsion. In her heart Caroline knew her father’s love for her was genuine, deeply felt, but she also knew that out of the five daughters he had sired, she was the disappointment.
She was the middle child and so very different from the others. Her sisters were, every one, blessed with long, graceful figures, light blond hair, light blue eyes that were so like her mother’s, lovely faces, and perfect marriages. Even Stephanie was just recently betrothed to the Viscount Jameson after only one season. To their credit, they made her father quite proud, as they all fit the image of gently bred women, settling down nicely in polite society.
But Caroline took after her father with her small form and dark brown hair and eyes. Plain and unbecoming, she had heard some say. Over the years, it had grown to matter less and less to her, though, because she had found her destiny. She knew what truly mattered in her life.
She was smart, exceedingly bright in the areas of mathematics and botany. At the age of four she could calculate numbers, multiplying them two, three, even four times simply with her head, baffling most everyone who knew her, especially because she was female. Females had no business understanding mathematics, even if it came to them naturally, or so she’d often been told.
Caroline, however, without being formally taught, possessed such unspeakable knowledge. By age nine, she could calculate not only numbers, but the age and growth of each plant in her mother’s garden. She would spend hours with the flowers and greenery, estimating growth patterns, determining ages and variations of color and size with such precision that before she had even reached her twelfth birthday, most people, including her loved ones, assumed her to be the strangest girl in En gland.
At that age she didn’t care what others thought. Her family loved her despite their inability to understand her. Not even her father could keep up with her computations and explanations, and he was a man. But what infuriated her was the fact that had she been fortunate enough to be born a boy, she would have been called gifted and allowed to study in the finest institutions and with the finest instructors in the world. As a girl, she was termed odd and secluded in her home until her father, Charles Grayson, fifth Baron Sytheford, could do something with her, which for years had been a problem without an answer as she was now nearly twenty-six years of age.
For as long as she could remember, Caroline had wanted to study botanical science with Sir Albert Markham at Oxford University, but trying to gain acceptance as a scholar had been the most difficult thing she’d ever attempted in her life. She’d known from an early age that being female was a hindrance, but she’d never expected Sir Albert, the greatest man she had ever read, had ever studied, to deny her entrance to Oxford’s Society of Botany strictly because she was female. Only two years ago she’d sent him a comprehensive letter detailing her work, her complete analysis of breeding techniques to create the precious lavender rose, and still he’d rejected her, his condescending letter of response implying she should stay home, marry, and grow flowers for her husband and neighbors to admire.
But from that crushing blow she learned her greatest life lesson—being female got you nothing in the scientific world, but being male gave you a chance. And she would succeed as a scientist, at Columbia University in New York, because she’d been accepted to study there by one of the best, Professor Walter Jenson. She’d been accepted to study there because this time, when sending her scientific data, computations, and information regarding herself and her experience as a self-taught botanist, she’d wisely presented herself as a man, Mr. C. S. Grayson. Being a woman would never stop her again.
Or so it seemed until now.
Everyone expected her to die a spinster, and that was exactly how she wanted it. She didn’t have time for an overbearing husband. She had her work, her plants and flowers, her dreams of study. Now it appeared they would all be tossed aside, for her father had suddenly, without warning, found her a husband in the Earl of Weymerth. A husband to whom he could, and would, gladly bequeath his most unusual daughter.
Caroline slowly stood and walked with wooden legs to the window, crossing her arms over her chest as she stared at the garden where her dreams lay, her flowers bloomed into pinpoints of brightness and brilliant color in the cool, sunny morning. Until only fifteen minutes ago, her world had been joyous, her life rich with beauty. Now her choices, her desires, were melting away like the wax of a burning candle.
She had all but finalized her plans of travel to America, although she had yet to tell her father of them. She still wasn’t completely prepared, having notebooks and documents to update and organize, her emeralds to sell for money to book passage. Until today, her two biggest problems had been finding lodging once she arrived in New York, and persuading Professor Jenson to allow her to study with him and his colleagues when he discovered she was a woman. Because of these and other considerations, she hadn’t had the time or energy to deal with her father. Now she would have to deal with him on the issue of marriage, of all the blessed things.
Caroline knew she had to think quickly. Now more than ever she would need to call upon her superior intellect if she expected to get herself out of this mess, and if she considered her actions thoroughly, perhaps she could turn the situation around to her advantage.
First of all, Lord Weymerth was a gentleman. She could assume he would see logic since he, no doubt, didn’t want to marry her either. He had certainly said as much.
Second, it was already July. She wasn’t ready to pack her bags, in more ways than one, and she still lacked the courage to talk to her father, to sully his impeccable reputation by running off unwed and unchaperoned to study a man’s science in another country. She’d written Professor Jenson just last week to inform him she would be arriving no sooner than January, so she still had several months to plan, to think, to decide how to handle such a fragile situation.
She looked to the delicate rose still clasped in her hand, twirling it slowly between her finger and thumb. It was so awfully fine, so marvelously beautiful, soft and silky to the touch. What a joy it would be to create such flowers as these and be recognized for the talent, the skill.
She raised her eyes to look back out the window, sighing as she lowered her forehead to the glass.
Disgracing her father was truly what plagued her. She loved him deeply for the caring he’d always shown her and her sisters. Where any other father would have washed his hands of his girls and tossed them to servants and governesses to raise, hers was always there for them—listening, concerned, advising them and fulfilling their individual needs with great love—and he had taken every effort to indulge them with great affection, especially since they were motherless, as theirs had died of fever not twelve years before.
