The Unexpected Marriage of Gabriel Stone (Lords of Disgrace) (11 page)

‘Grant Rivers, Earl of Allundale. He and his wife Kate live up in Northumberland with their two children. I wish they would come down to London for a while, but Kate is shy of society. So, you have five of us on hand to help, although if you need to flee the area, I am sure Grant and Kate would give you sanctuary.’

‘I can’t just run away and hide for ever. I do not have any money, just a little jewellery, so I must earn my living somehow. I suppose I could become a nursery governess, or a companion to a reclusive old lady, if you wouldn’t mind providing me with references? I am very reliable, despite appearances.’

And horribly afraid, and ridiculously homesick, despite everything.
And Anthony. Could I have looked after him any better by staying?

‘It would not be as bad as marriage to the Egregious Edgar, but a pretty grim existence nevertheless,’ Tess said. ‘I almost ended up like that, only in my case it was that or become a nun.’

A nun?
‘I can see that marriage to Lord Weybourn was preferable,’ Caroline said, finding her spirits rising as she finished her second cup of tea. She still could see no easy way out of her problems, but at least she felt confident her new friends would not desert her. She need not feel afraid now and married to Woodruffe she would have been just as cut off from Anthony.

There was a tap on the door and a maid came in. ‘The bath is ready, my lady. And Miss Perkins is brushing and pressing your gowns, ma’am,’ she added with a bob of a curtsy to Caroline.

‘A bath would be heaven,’ Caroline said as the door closed behind the maid. ‘I have spent a day and a night up a chimney.’

‘I would have thought that Gabriel would look after a lady better than that,’ Tamsyn said with a chuckle. ‘On the other hand, he is the only man I know who would think of hiding someone in such a place, so, on balance, it was probably for the best.’

* * *

‘Are you ready to get out now, ma’am? Or should I top up the hot water?’

‘Oh, top it up, please. I’ll lie here for a while longer.’ Caroline slid under the scented water once more, rubbing at her scalp until she was convinced that every last piece of grit, soot and dead spider was out of it.

‘I’ll be back in a while then, ma’am.’ The maid heaped towels on a chair and went out.

After ten minutes the water began to cool and there was no sign of the maid. Or of a bell pull. Caroline climbed out and wrapped herself in a large bath sheet, towelled her hair and began to explore. She tried one door and found herself in a large bedchamber, the dressing table littered with perfume sprays, hair brushes and ribbons. She rather suspected that this was Tess’s own room.

She could hardly rummage in the clothes presses for a robe. Caroline tied her damp hair up into a turban with a small towel and cracked open the door on to the corridor. Still no sign of the maid, so she ventured out, her bare toes curling into the deep pile of the carpet runner over the polished boards. What had happened to the girl?

The door opposite her opened, she took a hasty step backwards, trod on the trailing edge of the towel and sat down with a thud as one of the Roman emperors appeared on the threshold.

‘Caroline? What the devil are you doing?’ Not a Roman emperor, just Gabriel, swathed as she was in linen.

‘Looking for the maid.’ She scrabbled at the fabric, too embarrassed to look down and see just how much of her wet body was exposed. Even if there was no bare flesh, then damp linen was surely clinging to every curve. She tried to hold Gabriel’s gaze to stop it moving down below her face. ‘She vanished and I’ve no robe.’

‘Nor have I and Alex’s valet is nowhere to be seen.’ He grinned, but behind the amusement was something she had never seen in his face before, the thing that had been piquing her feminine pride ever since her first reckless proposal to him. There was heat in his eyes, and awareness, and he was not the rake who had made the agreement, not the man who had kissed her at the soirée. And he was most certainly not the hermit who had been focused on knight-errantry and rescuing her from her father’s ploys.

This Gabriel was looking at her as a man looks at a woman he wants, with all his attention, and she had no idea whether she was terrified or thrilled. It had meant something to him, after all.
He is remembering what nearly happened in the chapel, he desires me.
The blood was singing in her veins and her breath was coming in short gasps and the sight of his naked shoulders and arms was enough to make her want to drag him back into the dressing room and— He stepped back and closed the door sharply just before she, too, heard the hurrying footsteps.

‘Oh, miss, I’m ever so sorry, I was bringing your robe from the laundry and then Prue knocked a pile of my lady’s lace on to the floor, so I bent to pick it up before it got soiled and tripped up his lordship’s valet who was bringing Lord Edenbridge’s robe and...’

‘Not a problem. Just shut the door.’ Caroline got to her feet, careless of dignity. Those eyes, dark and intense and locked with hers. She looked down at herself and was faintly surprised not to see steam rising.

‘Yes, miss. Sorry, miss.’

Caroline put on the robe and let the maid deal with her hair, then dressed, scolding herself all the while.

Focus. This is not about Gabriel. This is about making a new life for myself, about staying safe. About not ending up starving in the gutter or in some brothel. The man is a rake and whatever he wants, even if it is me again for five minutes, it will not last. So stop daydreaming. And anyway, he doesn’t really want
me
, he’s just a typical man. That night we were so wound up it is a miracle we didn’t combust from tension and just now I was sprawled at his feet, nearly naked. He would have reacted like that whoever it was.

‘Her ladyship says, she can send up luncheon on a tray, or you are very welcome to come down. Whatever you wish, miss.’

‘I’ll go down.’ Caroline put her shoulders back, her chin up and made for the stairs. This was the start of her new life as an independent woman and she was going to take control, with the help of her new friends and allies.

Chapter Eleven

‘W
hat is this? A Board of Inquiry, or a jury?’ Gabriel entered the drawing room to find a semicircle of his friends facing him. ‘I deny everything, on principle.’

The habit of self-protection, of hiding his feelings and his vulnerabilities, came back to help him. Then it had been a shelter from his father’s savage temper, the act that had allowed him to be strong enough to protect his brothers, the locked door behind which he could trap his own fear and vulnerability, his own guilt that somehow he could have prevented his mother’s suicide.

It had become his gambler’s mask and now he was using it to conceal emotions from his closest friends. He did not understand what he was feeling himself and, if he was not careful, he was going to entangle an innocent woman, a woman who had to be protected from all the darkness in his soul, just as she must be protected from Woodruffe’s cruelty.

‘We are concerned, that is all.’ Cris de Feaux sat back and crossed his legs, the gleam on his Hessians a reproach to every other pair of boots in the room.

‘For both of you,’ Tess said, a crease of worry between her finely drawn brown brows.

‘You must admit, this affair is not going to be easy to carry off without scandal,’ Alex said. ‘Sherry?’

‘Loathe the stuff. Scandal is out of the question. We need to get Caroline out of this with as little gossip as possible.’ He slouched in the one remaining armchair, the one facing the jury, and concentrated on keeping the tension out of his expression. ‘Woodruffe must not find out where she is, let alone her father. The man beat her.’

‘Bastard,’ Tamsyn said, with feeling. ‘Men like that need a good flogging themselves.’

Caroline’s slender shoulders as she sat there on the floor draped in that bath sheet, the pale, soft skin. The delicate bones under his hands on the narrow bed... He could not get the image out of his head. And that swine had struck her. He was going to pay for that.

‘But I do not see how we can avoid scandal,’ Tess said. ‘Caroline is of age, of course, and that helps. But you can’t marry her under a false name and even though you can obviously protect her physically, you can’t hide her. This is not a novel with secret wives hidden in some tower in the forest. Knighton and Woodruffe will raise every kind of storm. Lady Caroline will never be received at Court.’

‘Or, given your reputation already, Gabe, anywhere else,’ Alex commented.

‘Marriage?’ Gabriel stared at them, jolted right out of his normal control. ‘Are you mad? Whatever gave you the idea I want to
marry
the chit?’
Damnation, this was what came of brooding about
feelings
, I let my guard down and overreact.

‘The fact that you eloped with her?’ Cris said.

‘Lord Edenbridge did not elope with me. He helped me escape.’ The voice from the doorway was cool and polite and, Gabriel could tell after days spent in her company, the speaker was furious.

The other men got to their feet and Gabriel followed, more slowly. Caroline was standing behind him, her hair in ringlets on top of her head, her creased gown restored to order, her expression completely unreadable.

‘I have no intention of marrying Lord Edenbridge and he has no desire to marry me, which is an agreeable coincidence, is it not?’

She passed him, close enough to touch, close enough for him to have reached out and twitched a pin or two out of that provoking coiffure to see her hair tumble free. Gabriel kept his hands by his side and worked on restoring his expression to one of amused calm.

‘I am very grateful to you, my lord,’ she said earnestly, stopping just in front of him. ‘But if you call me a chit again I will have you kidnapped and force-fed sherry for a week.’

‘You were eavesdropping,’ he drawled, still fighting the tumbling curls fantasy. ‘No one ever hears good of themselves by listening at doors.’

‘A fortnight,’ Caroline amended with a sweet smile.

Cris gave a crack of laughter. ‘Please, take my chair, Lady Caroline.’

‘Thank you, Lord Avenmore.’

She sat with perfect decorum, while Gabriel’s memory provided a series of images of anything but ladylike behaviour—Caroline scrambling up the chimney, Caroline in a tangle of wet towels, Caroline standing on his hearth rug making him an outrageous proposition. Caroline under him in the split second before he got control of himself. He knew which version he preferred. He lowered his lids and sent her the smouldering look that was guaranteed to send innocent young debutantes fleeing to their mamas like a flock of panicking chickens. The one that should send her to safety from a man who was thoroughly unsuited for matrimony.

She looked down her nose at him, perfectly composed, then turned towards Tess. ‘I do not expect ever to regain the place in society I once had,’ she explained. ‘I am hoping for something respectable, but retired, like a companion’s post. I might pass muster as a nursery governess, I suppose. Or I could keep house, I have done that for my father for years.’

‘You would need references,’ Tamsyn pointed out. ‘Although we could supply those.’

‘You are ridiculously young to be a housekeeper,’ Gabriel said, sharply enough for the others to turn and look at him.

‘It is the most respectable option,’ Tamsyn pointed out with annoying reasonableness. ‘And the safest. Housekeepers have some status in the establishment so they are less at the mercy of predatory males in the household than governesses are and companions are very likely to become general dogsbodies.’

‘Even so.’ Gabriel waved a hand to encompass Caroline’s face, hairstyle, figure. ‘She looks far too young.’
And vulnerable. And tempting.
And she should be kept away from men like him. Men who had no model of a decent marriage, men whose very blood was tainted.
Blood.
The picture swirled back from behind the locked door. His father’s broken body, the blood on the marble. His father dead, the death itself the scandal of the area because Gabriel had failed in his duty to those who depended on him.

‘A cap, a pair of spectacles with plain glass and a severe manner,’ suggested Tess, her head on one side, eyes narrowed, as she studied Caroline. ‘Add a sensible wardrobe, a chatelaine... There is nothing like a bunch of keys rattling at the waist to give an impression of gravitas. I made Alex an admirable housekeeper.’

Her husband snorted. ‘I would be interested to see the slightest evidence of gravitas, my lady.’

‘I still do not like it,’ Gabriel said, attempting to ignore their exchange of adoring looks. What the devil was he doing? He had brought Caroline here so his friends could help her and they were. It was not as though he had any brilliant ideas himself. They would help protect her from Woodruffe and her father and they would protect her from him, the man who wanted to taste that innocence at the same time as he wanted to guard it.

All three women sent him exasperated looks, Alex regarded the ceiling and pursed his lips in a silent whistle and Cris observed, ‘If you do not marry Lady Caroline, her options are very limited.’

‘Lord Edenbridge’s wishes in the matter are irrelevant,’ Caroline said, very pink in the face. ‘I have no intention of marrying
him
. Grateful as I am to him for rescuing me, he is not, I am sure you would agree, suitable husband material.’

‘I never suggested that I was,’ Gabriel retorted.
But if I was, would I be courting you, Caroline? Would I want that smile and those lips, that loyalty and that passion, for myself? Oh, yes.

‘Luncheon is served, my lady.’

‘I’m sure we’ll all be in a much better frame of mind for planning when we have eaten,’ Tess said, getting to her feet and leading the way to the dining room.

* * *

‘How did you meet?’ Cris enquired once they were all seated with food in front of them.

‘My father lost an estate in Hertfordshire to Lord Edenbridge. It should have gone to my younger brother. I explained the situation and Lord Edenbridge kindly agreed to keep Springbourne in trust for Anthony until he is of age.’

The words
He did what?
hung unspoken
in the air.

‘Remarkably generous of you, Gabriel,’ Cris eventually remarked.

‘Remarkably unlike you,’ Alex added.

‘I am not in the business of robbing innocent striplings of their inheritance simply because their parent is a fool,’ Gabriel retorted. ‘I would never have accepted the stake if I had known. Lady Caroline saved me from an unwitting blunder.’

‘It was brave of you to approach someone with such a wild reputation as Gabriel, Caroline,’ Tamsyn said. ‘That would have been at Lady Ancaster’s soirée, I imagine.’

‘No, I went to his house before then,’ Caroline admitted calmly.

Surely she was not going to tell them about that outrageous offer? His conscience, unused to scrutiny in the harsh light of day, was still tender on that subject.

‘I explained the circumstances frankly and Lord Edenbridge was very...accommodating.’

‘I am still not clear when Gabriel realised you had a further problem, or quite what he was doing in Hertfordshire,’ Cris said as he buttered a roll. ‘From a fleeting allusion he made when he was down in Devon, I gather you had met some time in June, yet here we are in early August.’

‘We had some limited correspondence about the estate,’ Gabriel said, choosing his words with care. ‘I suspected something was wrong and when I discovered that Lord Knighton was looking for a hermit for his park I thought it would be amusing to see if I could fool him and check on Lady Caroline’s well-being at the same time.’

‘A hermit?’ For once he had the satisfaction of seeing Cris’s jaw drop. He made a quick recovery. ‘Hence the appalling length of your hair, I assume,’ he drawled.

‘It went beautifully with the beard,’ Caroline remarked demurely. ‘Lord Edenbridge grewa most impressive one and spoke with a Welsh accent.’

‘Yes, and please do not do it again.’ Alex gave an exaggerated shudder. ‘My dear fellow, one must make every effort to assist a lady, but really, there are limits.’

‘I doubt you could produce a beard that would cover your features in under a month, Tempest,’ Gabriel retorted.

‘I’d advise a severe and fashionable crop as well,’ Cris said. ‘Just in case Knighton comes storming up to town and recognises his missing hermit. I’ll get my valet to cut it for you.’

‘The things I do for you, Lady Caroline,’ Gabriel said, trying to recall the last time he had had a haircut that might have been thought
severe and fashionable
.

‘I am exceedingly grateful, my lord.’ She dimpled prettily at him across the table, looking so much like some air-headed miss, and so unlike the young woman he had come to know, that he almost choked on his ale.

‘I have an idea,’ Tess said suddenly. ‘We’ll go down and talk to Mrs Sanders, our housekeeper. She’ll soon transform you into a convincing candidate.’

‘She transforms me into a nervous jelly,’ Alex admitted. ‘Fearsome woman.’

‘And Tamsyn and I will write you references, and I’ll get in touch with Kate in Northumberland and ask her for one as well, and then you’ll be ready to approach the domestic agencies. Unless we can come up with someone who needs a housekeeper before then.’

Needs a housekeeper...
Really, his brain must have been atrophied by the country air. Why on earth had he not thought of it before? ‘There is no need for references, although the training might be a good thing.’ Gabriel put down his knife and fork and swept a glance around the table. ‘May I present to you the new housekeeper of Springbourne?’

‘Oh, how clever of you, Gabriel!’ Caroline beamed at him across the table, all dignity forgotten, and he caught the swift exchange of glances between the other women at her use of his name. ‘Why didn’t I think of that? I’ll be safe there until Anthony comes of age in five years’ time. Father thinks it is yours, so he will have no reason to go anywhere near it. Then, when Anthony can legally control it, I can continue living with him.’

‘Are there staff there now?’ Tess asked.

‘Just a few, I think, more for security than anything else,’ she said, suddenly serious. ‘They certainly do not know me by sight.’

‘I sent my man of business down to report,’ Gabriel said. ‘He found a tenant at the Home Farm who had only been there a year and who seemed competent enough. The house is virtually shut up, as Caroline says, with an elderly housekeeper and a trio of indoor servants. He suggested I pension off the housekeeper, who is anxious to go and live with her sister in Worthing, and keep the other staff. I haven’t had time to reply to him yet.’

‘It is the perfect solution.’ Caroline was glowing at him again, which was good for his self-esteem, but fatal for his detachment. Gabriel thought about scratchy beards, porridge and Edgar Parfit and shifted in his seat when all of those failed to stop most of his blood supply heading southwards. It was lust, simply lust, that he felt and the sooner she was away, the better.

‘I will be working for my brother, so I can draw a wage and living expenses from the estate with a good conscience and I will make certain it is in perfect order for him when he can finally claim it.’

‘What will you tell him?’ Tamsyn asked. ‘Does he know your father has lost the estate?’

‘No. I thought it best not to say anything unless Father told Anthony, in case he reacted in a way that betrayed the secret. But I am sure my father has simply put it out of his mind. Water under the bridge.’ She bit her lip. ‘Anthony will be wondering why I haven’t written, I always do every week while he is at school. Normally he’d be home now, but he is staying with a friend in Buckinghamshire. I miss him.’ She smiled bleakly. ‘I wonder when I will see him again.’

‘We will discuss the details now if you have finished your luncheon.’ Gabriel stood. ‘I’ll find my notes. There is no need to trouble the rest of you. We can use your breakfast room, I suppose, Tess?’ There was a limit to how long he was prepared to stay the focus of his friends’ fascinated scrutiny, or to endure Caroline looking at him in public as though he was her hero again. The sooner they had this sorted out and she was in safe seclusion in the country, the better.