The Player (Rockliffe Book 3) (18 page)

She accepted his hand, then waited while he
untethered his horse.
 
For a time, they
fell into step in silence until Caroline said abruptly, ‘Will you tell me
something, Lord Sarre?’

‘If I can.’

‘Have you ever been in love?’

Although he did not speak and his expression
remained unchanged, she felt the air about them grow colder and colder
still.
 
She let the painful silence
linger for as long as she could and then, just as she was about to withdraw the
question and apologise, he said frigidly, ‘Yes.
 
Once. She died.’

*
 
*
 
*

Caroline slipped back into the house unseen by
anyone but Rosie in the kitchen.
 
Once
inside her own room, she turned the key in the lock and sat down on the bed
without even bothering to remove her cloak.
 
She still couldn’t believe what had just happened.
 
Of all the unlikely occurrences in the world,
the Earl of Sarre had asked her to be his Countess. It didn’t seem
possible.
 
And her brain was still
reeling from the enormity of it.

He’d offered her marriage with his characteristic
lack of either warmth or emotion.
 
And it
was that, more than anything else, which told her he’d been honest.
 
As far as it went, anyway.
 
He didn’t want her money.
 
He just didn’t want Lord Sheringham to have
it either.
 
As for the rest, he’d told
her she might do whatever she wished to help Mama and the girls; he’d said she
wasn’t stupid and had character, and that he believed they might “deal
agreeably together”.
 
He was offering a
grander title than any she could have dared hope for and, it seemed, asking
only for an heir in return.
 
It was the
kind of thing that happened in novels and Caroline told herself she should be
dancing with joy.
 
But she wasn’t.
 
Far from it, in fact.

She actually felt as though a lead weight had
settled in her chest.
 
She didn’t dislike
Sarre – though she suspected one could spend a lifetime trying to find a way
through that chilly exterior only to find an equally chilly man within.
 
She had never heard him laugh; indeed, she’d
rarely seen him smile. But there was some kindness in him and that relentless
honesty of his was a virtue of sorts.
 
He
was even rather good-looking, if one liked the stern, forbidding type.
 
And of a certainty, he was no Lord Sheringham.
 
In short, he was exactly the kind of husband
Mama would have chosen and Grandpa had probably hoped for.
 
And what
that
meant was that, unless she did the sensible thing and accepted him, Mama must
never,
ever
know he’d offered – or
her life wouldn’t be worth living.

She wanted to be sensible.
 
She really did.
 
And if Claude Duvall hadn’t said those four
words last night … if he hadn’t asked her to meet him in secret this evening …
she was quite certain that she’d have managed it.
 
But he had.
 
And, because she’d fallen in love with him one night at a moonlit
roadside and wanted, more than she’d ever wanted anything, to know if he loved
her in return, doing the right thing was monumentally difficult.
 

She suddenly had the oddest feeling that, no matter
what she did, this would not end well for anyone. And that frightened her.

*
 
*
 
*

While he dressed for Claude Duvall’s rendezvous in
Kensington Gardens, Adrian reflected that the inflexible need to stay in
character had its pitfalls.
 
Caroline
plainly thought Sarre was a cold fish and so Sarre’s proposal had been about as
tempting as an invitation to dive into the Thames.
 
Equally, Duvall was a charming romantic of
the type to sweep her, quite literally, off her feet.
 
This, from Adrian’s perspective, was
decidedly awkward.
 
Sarre could marry her
in church in front of her family.
 
Duvall
couldn’t. He’d have to run off with her.
 
So it would obviously be best if the highwayman sacrificed his own
happiness for the lady’s good and retracted his impulsive near-proposal.
 
That, thought Adrian, should do the trick –
if only he didn’t get carried away with his own performance.

Having donned the gold-braided red coat, shoved
the black mask in his pocket and made sure he was wearing Caroline’s ruby,
Adrian avoided Bertrand’s questions and set off for Kensington Gardens a little
early in order to get there first.

The light was fading fast and the sunken garden
was deserted.
 
He put on the mask,
replaced his hat and waited.
 
Five
minutes later, he saw a hooded and cloaked figure moving quickly across the
grass towards him.
 

Curtain up
.

She moved towards him, smiling and with
outstretched hands.
 
Duvall took them and
raised each in turn to his lips.
 
He
said, ‘You came.
 
I feared you might
not.’

She shook her head.
 
‘I promised.’

He released her hands and stepped back, his
expression troubled.

‘Yes.
 
But I
was wrong to ask it of you.’

‘I’m glad you did.’
 
She wanted to ask him to remove his mask but
realised he was wearing it out of a sensible regard for his own safety.
 
‘Thank you for saving me last night.
 
But for you, I might have been in a truly
terrible situation by now.’

‘He has not tried to come near you again?’

‘No.
 
And
I’ll take care that he doesn’t have the chance.’

‘Good.
 
That
will … it will make me feel a little better knowing that.’

Caroline frowned slightly.
 
He seemed different somehow; ill at ease and
restless, as if something weighed heavily on his mind.
 
She said, ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing.’
 
Then, with an oddly helpless gesture, ‘Everything.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘No.
 
And
that is for the best, I think.’

Nothing about this meeting was as she had expected
it to be.
 
The obvious conclusion was
that he regretted what he’d said to her or perhaps had never meant to say it in
the first place and was looking for a way out.
 
If that was the case, she needed to make it easy for him.
 
Anything else was likely to result in her
humiliating herself.

Mentally straightening her spine, she said, ‘Was
there something in particular you wanted to say to me?’

‘You know there was.
 
Also, you must know that I cannot say
it.
 
I should never … it was wrong of me
to think it, even for a moment.
 
I am a
man of no honour.’

Caroline tried to decide if this was promising or
not. Really, she supposed, it could be taken either way.

‘I don’t believe you have no honour.
 
If I thought that, I wouldn’t be here.’

He groaned.
 
‘But you
shouldn’t
be.
 
This is what I am saying.’

‘I understand that.
 
But … since I am?’

His face and voice became filled with regret and,
for a moment, he seemed almost beyond speech.
 
Then he said quietly, ‘You are right.
 
Since you have allowed me the very great privilege of this meeting, I
must speak truthfully.
 
But it is very
hard for me, you understand.
 
I do not at
all want to say what I must.’

Caroline had noticed before that, at certain
moments, his English noticeably deteriorated. That it should do so now didn’t
bode well. Folding her hands inside her cloak against a sudden feeling of
chill, she said nothing and waited for the blow to fall.

Duvall drew a long breath and looked her squarely
in the face.

‘Of what is in my heart,’ he said, ‘I will not
speak.
 
It is too painful.
 
But I cannot let you think I spoke idly or
untruthfully last night.
 
You should know
that I would marry you if it were at all possible – but it is not.
 
It is not and never can be and I was of an
unbelievable wickedness to say what I did.
 
I do not ask your forgiveness … but I am sorry.’

Her chill forgotten, a huge bubble of happiness
welled up in Caroline’s chest.
 
He had
meant it.
 
He wanted her.
 
He wanted
her
– Caroline Jane Maitland – and not because of money.
 
She said softly, ‘Why isn’t it possible?’

He heard the note of wistfulness in her voice and
wished he hadn’t.

‘I am not a gentleman.
 
I am a thief.
 
You know this.’

‘I’m not really a lady,’ came the candid reply.
‘And … and perhaps you could stop being a thief?’

‘I could, of course.
 
But it does not change that I have been
one.
 
It does not change that I cannot
give you the life you should have.’
 
He
sounded thoroughly miserable. ‘That one little thing does not make everything
right.
 
Nothing can do that.’

‘And if I said … if I told you that it didn’t
matter?’

Behind the mask of Claude Duvall, Adrian felt
himself one step away from disaster and yet still couldn’t help wondering if
she was actually thinking of turning down an Earl in favour of probably the
most wildly ineligible suitor in history.
 
If she was, it meant two things; that she was almost certainly unique … and
she was completely infatuated.
 
And if
the latter was true, there was no guarantee that – even if Duvall walked away
in the next two minutes – she’d see sense and take Sarre instead.
 

Adrian considered his options, none of which were
ideal.
 
He could put an end to the entire
situation by revealing his true identity; he could let her down lightly, as
originally intended, and hope she’d recognise on which side her bread was
buttered; or he could take the biggest gamble of all and play it to the end. If
he told the truth now and she took it badly, the game was over – the same being
true if he withheld a proposal and she didn’t turn to Sarre. As for letting her
think she was running off with the highwayman only to find herself marrying the
Earl … well, he imagined he could abandon any idea of cosy domesticity or getting
her into bed for quite some time.
 
If
he’d tried something like that with Angelique, he’d have been fending her off
with a chair.

And yet, even with the obvious drawbacks, every
instinct was saying,
Roll the dice and
see what comes of it.
 
If you don’t, you
risk losing her completely.

The mere fact that he was actually thinking this
was too worrying to bear close scrutiny so he concentrated on the satisfying
notion of giving Marcus Sheringham a taste of his own medicine and the fact
that, once she got used to the idea, Caroline would probably like being a
Countess.
 
Then again, second-best though
he undoubtedly was, Sarre was the closest she could get to what she
really
wanted.
 
Though the Earl lacked the highwayman’s easy
charm, at least the two of them
looked
alike – something that, amazingly enough, she didn’t appear to have noticed yet.
 
And if it became absolutely necessary, he
could always play Duvall in the bedroom.

His conscience, however, demanded that he make
further efforts to render Claude less attractive.
 
A slight smile curving his mouth, he said,
‘It matters to me,
ch
é
rie
.
 
And you should think for a moment. First, you
know nothing about me.
 
I have been many
things – more than you can imagine.
 
When
you learn the truth about me, there is every likelihood you will be
disappointed.’

‘The same could be said of me,’ argued
Caroline.
 
‘Isn’t that a risk everyone
takes?’

He shook his head.
 
‘Not quite.
 
For you, this risk is
greater.
 
I would be a very great villain
if I did not make you understand this.
 
For the rest,
if
I were to ask
and
if
you accepted … do you imagine
your family would permit this?
 
Will we
wed in church after these English banns of yours have been called the three
times?
 
No. You deserve a beautiful
wedding and this, with me, you cannot have.
 
With me, it must be an elopement – which I think is not respectable.
 
And afterwards?
 
There would be no balls, no parties and, for
who knows how long, no family for you.’
 
He shook his head.
 
‘You see what
you would sacrifice?
 
And truly,
mignonne
, I am not worth it.’

Caroline let his words sink in.
 
The balls and parties and the beautiful
wedding mattered not one whit.
 
Even a
temporary separation from her family was bearable because, though Mama would
never forgive her, she rather thought Grandpa might feel differently – as long
as he never found out about the highway robbery bit.
 
But the elopement … the mere thought of
running away with her love in secret made her blood sing.