The Unexpected Marriage of Gabriel Stone (Lords of Disgrace) (18 page)

‘But we are only about twenty miles from Brighton, surely?’

‘Yes, but that is another two hours and there will be all the business of arriving at a hired house which is never straightforward, however early one sends down the staff. We could rest and then have dinner and go to bed early.’ His eyes had the heavy-lidded look she had seen before, the one that sent an answering
frisson
of desire through her.

‘
Rest
, my lord?’ Caroline pushed away the niggling little doubt that it was talking about his former lovers that had made Gabriel think about bed now.

‘A convenient euphemism I have learned from my married friends. It is amazing how weary marriage makes some couples. It is, after all, our wedding night.’

‘Then, yes, let us take a bedchamber. You have warned me, after all, not to overestimate your stamina.’ She widened her eyes at him in mock-innocence and felt a certain return of confidence when he got immediately to his feet and strode from the room.

* * *

There
was
a chamber, charming and old-fashioned with a great oaken four-poster bed, a thick Turkey carpet on the uneven floor and a ceiling that bulged and dipped so that Gabriel banged his head as he straightened up after dragging the curtains part-way across the window. Caroline bit her lip with sympathetic amusement, then felt the laughter die as she saw his face, recognised the heat and the desire. He wanted her and she wanted him, wanted him with a fever that had consumed her for days, ever since he had shown her what they could be together.

‘No, leave it all,’ he said as she lifted her hands to open the catch on her necklace, a fine double string of pearls left to her by her mother. They lay warm and comforting against her skin, now she arched her neck so he could lift her hair away from the nape and manipulate the delicate fastening.

Gabriel seemed in no hurry. His fingers played along her hairline, making the fine hairs stand up in response to his touch, then he bent and kissed her nape, his lips slightly open so she felt the heat of his breath, the tiny touches of his tongue.

The pearls curled on to the dressing table, then he unhooked her earrings, kissing behind each ear. Caroline leant into the delicious, teasing caress as he nibbled his way down the tendon at the side of her neck and gasped as he closed his teeth over it and bit down gently.

‘Mine,’ Gabriel murmured, his voice possessive. ‘My bride to unwrap like a particularly delicious parcel.’

She had changed into a walking dress of deep sapphire, worn under a pelisse of paler blue that she had removed when they sat down to tea. Now Gabriel had unobstructed access to the row of tiny enamelled buttons down the back, which had taken Harriet her maid minutes to fasten, but which seemed to evaporate under his touch. The gown vanished, so did her petticoats, chemise and shoes, which left her in a corset, stockings and garters.

Gabriel stepped back from the bed and surveyed the result, like some pasha viewing the latest slave girl brought from his harem, she thought with mingled excitement and indignation.

She reached for her garters and he growled, ‘Leave them.’

‘But this feels more indecent than when I was wearing nothing,’ she protested, flustered.

‘I know.’ The growl became the purr of a large cat. ‘That’s because it is. Very arousing. Look.’ He tipped the glass on the dressing-table mirror so she could see herself sprawled on the pale-rose coverlet, her breasts pushed up by the tight lacing, her legs looking longer with the white stockings and the blue of the garters drawing the eye...

Caroline closed her legs abruptly and curled up against the headboard. ‘You are still wearing all your clothes.’

Gabriel sat down, hauled off his boots and stockings together, shed his coat, waistcoat and neckcloth, unbuttoned his shirt and then his falls. The breeches slid down his long flanks, taking his smallclothes with them. ‘Better?’

His shirt, open for the first ten inches, showed a tantalising amount of chest and hid a tantalising amount of everything else. Without troubling to remove it he sat on the edge of the bed and pulled her towards him.

She wanted to say,
No, take it off, let me look at you in daylight,
but the words stuck to the roof of her very dry mouth and then Gabriel was running his finger along the top edge of the corset, teasing her nipples in their tight confinement. He pushed at the edge until they were free, then bent to blow gently on the tips.

‘Like cherries on a plate being offered up for me to nibble,’ he said, and did.

The corset was tight, the pressure seeming to tip both her pelvis and her breasts towards Gabriel, into his clever hands and wicked mouth. She was breathless, racked with tension and delicious, terrifying sensation, desperate to touch him, to have his skin against hers. She tugged at the hem of his shirt, but it was crushed between them, then her hands found the neck opening and she jerked the sides apart, heard the fabric rip, then burrowed down to fasten with lips and teeth on to his right nipple.

Everything happened very quickly then. Gabriel was inside her and her body remembered him, responded without her having to think or do more than cling to him as he swept her up into the storm of his own powerful urgency. Her fingers knotted into the shirt over his shoulders, her heels locked into the small of his back, she heard her own voice gasping his name, heard the sound of their bodies meeting in hot, wet, desperation and then he reared up on his knees, lifting her with him so that he sank impossibly deep and she buried her face against his neck as the pleasure exploded, spinning her into fragments and she was lost in him.

Chapter Eighteen

G
abriel woke her by trailing deliberately sloppy kisses and licks around her right ear.

‘Beast!’ Caroline sat up, batting him off.

‘It was the only bit of you I could get at,’ he grumbled, falling back on to the pillows. ‘You were curled up like a hedgehog.’

He was still wearing the ripped shirt and nothing else. When she leaned over and ran her fingers into the dark curls on his chest he caught her hand and pressed it flat until she could feel the beat of his heart under her palm. ‘Caroline.’ She looked up to meet his gaze and saw he was suddenly serious. ‘Did I hurt you? I was too rough, I forgot that this is still new for you.’

‘No, you didn’t hurt me, although, frankly I doubt I would have noticed. And I was rough, too, I ripped your shirt.’

‘That was exciting, my little hellcat. No one has ever done that to me before.’

She turned her fingers into claws beneath his hand and raked gently down his chest, following the trail of silky hair. When his eyes narrowed she whispered, ‘Do you know what I want to do now?’

Gabriel shook his head, his gaze as intent as a hawk watching a vole.

‘Get out of these stays and have a bath. Oh, no—we haven’t any luggage!’

‘Yes, we have. Look.’ In the corner were three valises and her dressing case. ‘I thought it was unwise to send everything ahead of us.’

‘Yes, but it has only just occurred to me, Harriet and your valet will be wondering what has become of us. They will be so worried.’

‘I expect they will guess we have been held up on the road.’ He was looking so innocent as he straightened up from the bags with their robes in his hands that Caroline was immediately suspicious.

‘You planned this, didn’t you? You told them we wouldn’t be in Brighton tonight.’

‘I thought you might like something more spontaneous, more like a scandalous elopement,’ Gabriel said as he shrugged on a heavy amber silk banyan over the tattered shirt. ‘Let me untie that tight lacing before we ring for baths.’

‘Why, I do declare you are a romantic, Gabriel Stone,’ she said on a sigh of relief as her stays tumbled to the floor.

He held the peignoir for her. ‘No, I am not, merely a rake. That’s why we are so dangerous to innocents.’

Caroline blinked hard as he crossed the room to tug on the bell pull.
That’s what you get for being romantic yourself, you fool. He doesn’t love you, he is merely displaying his usual repertoire of seduction and lovemaking. And he is very good at it. The benefit of experience as he says.

Caroline had her smile stitched firmly in place as her husband turned back. He had spoken in jest with no intention of hurting her, she was certain, for he would have to know that she loved him for that comment to have been meant to wound. She’d had no illusions about who and what she was marrying and she was not going to start their life together with tears and reproaches.

The cheerful expression was still intact as the maid came in and Gabriel gave orders for baths, shaving water, dinner.
The years of practice hiding my feelings from my father are bearing fruit now,
she thought and then had to turn away abruptly as the tears slid down her cheeks. Of all the bitter ironies, to have to use the deceit learned in her early life in order to hide her true feelings from the man who had rescued her from it.

* * *

‘I am so enjoying Brighton.’ Caroline tightened her grip on Gabriel’s arm for a second and he glanced down at her, his expression amused.

‘You haven’t exhausted all the entertainments in a week?’

‘Of course not. After all, this is the first time we have been swimming.’ She gave him a sidelong look from under her lashes. ‘It is the first morning I have been able to drag you out of bed in time.’

‘You were not so unwilling to stay there,’ he murmured, lowering his voice because Harriet and Corbridge were walking behind them, the valet carrying towels and the maid with Caroline’s swimming outfit and hairbrushes.

It was true that she was easily persuaded to stay in bed for just one more kiss, which usually led to more than kissing. On the other hand Gabriel appeared to consider any time of the day or night suitable for lovemaking, so getting up on such a glorious morning as this would hardly deprive either of them.

‘Mrs Wilberforce is waving from her carriage,’ she said, drawing Gabriel’s attention to the passing matron and her daughters. He lifted his hat, Caroline exchanged slight bows with the other ladies and they walked on, passing several new acquaintances and others whom Caroline or Gabriel knew from London.

‘Everyone is so friendly,’ she said. ‘I did not expect it. We eloped, so I thought many of the matrons would poker up and that they would not welcome me associating with their daughters.’

‘I suspect our friends have been busy on our behalf, although I must admit to being pleasantly surprised. Probably your father’s eccentricities are so well known that no one blames you for escaping. And we did come to London and marry at once from a most respectable address. You are a countess now and although I have got a reputation, as you very well know, I have always been received.’ He doffed his hat to a handsome lady in an open carriage who dimpled back at him.

‘Stop flirting,’ Caroline said lightly. She might as well tell a cat to stop chasing mice. Gabriel noticed pretty women, looked at pretty women and smiled at them, too.
And
he had spent two evenings at the Castle Inn assembly rooms deep in card play. But there was no sign that he went any further than smiling and as for the cards, he kept an eye on her and tossed in his hand the moment he noticed her looking tired.

‘I am male, I have a pulse and I am under ninety and given that I caught you in Donaldson’s circulating library using the telescope to study the west beach, I have to tell you, my lady, that was a case of the pot calling the kettle black.’

‘I was not studying it! I only happened to swing the telescope in that direction. How was I to know it was the men’s bathing area?’
Or that they all bathe stark naked?
None of the Brighton machines had the all-enveloping hoods that she had read about. It made her blush all over again just thinking of it.

‘I will bespeak two bathing machines, mine at the eastern edge of the men’s beach and yours at the western edge of the ladies’ beach and then I can keep myself between you and any more assaults on your modesty.’

They were approaching the bathing house where those wishing to be ‘dipped’ booked their machine. Down on the beach the mules were trundling up and down the shingle, dragging the bathing machines and from the water came faint shrieks as ladies were ducked by the muscular female dippers.

‘I do not want to be dipped, Gabriel.’

‘A dipper is a fixture with the ladies’ machines, I’m afraid. Besides, if you haven’t been in the sea before then it is easy to be swept off your feet. I do not want you drowned, my dear. Just tell her you want to keep your head above water.’

He thinks I am nervous of being forced under the surface. I never told him I can swim,
she realised, almost blurting it out, then thinking again. It might be fun to surprise Gabriel if he really was going to be close enough to reach without the risk of encountering any of the other men. Her mother, hearing of a tragedy where an entire family had been drowned on a boating trip, had insisted that her daughter as well as her sons were taught to swim before they were allowed to row on the lake. Lucas had taught her, surprisingly patient as she doggy-paddled around in the shallows in a voluminous shift over a pair of his old breeches.

She was still smiling at the memory as Gabriel paid the one shilling and three pence for her and the one shilling for himself without a dipper.

‘There are two machines free now, just where I wanted them. Apparently the ladies prefer not to be so close to the men and the gentlemen are inhibited by the thought of appearing to spy on the ladies.’

Caroline went down the ladies’ steps to the beach with Harriet to be met by a woman with her sleeves rolled up over brawny arms. Her stout form was clad in a voluminous and soaking wet black-bombazine gown with numerous flannel petticoats dripping below the hem.

‘I am Mrs ’Uggins, marm, and I’ll be your dipper. No need for any alarm, marm, I’ve dipped them all from dairy maids to duchesses and never lost one yet. If you and your woman just step along and climb aboard, ’Uggins will take you down to the briny, smooth as silk.’

They clambered up the steps, through the door and into a narrow box with wooden benches on either side, a door at the far end and louvered slats letting in some light and the sound of the sea.

‘It is a good thing I spoke to Mrs Chamberlain’s maid yesterday and got some advice,’ Harriet said as she began to unfasten Caroline’s walking dress. ‘It would be far too difficult getting fully dressed and undressed in this, my lady.’

She had the simple gown and one petticoat off without any trouble and was just attacking the strings of the pair of short stays that was all the corsetry Caroline was wearing when the machine gave a lurch and began to move. Harriet sat down with a thump on one bench and Caroline on the other.

She was still giggling when she emerged through the door on to the steps into the sea to find Mrs Huggins at the foot of them, the waves rising and falling around her vast hips, her impressive bosom emerging like sea cliffs from the foam.

‘Down you come, marm. Lovely and warm it is. We’ll have you dipped three times before you can say Neptune!’

Caroline took advantage of the dipper’s bulk as a screen as she descended the steps, stifling a shriek as the water hit her stomach. Then she was in, her Bathing Preserver, as invented by the modiste Mrs Bell and widely advertised, shrouding her in its folds. The weighted hem kept it from billowing up and once she had arranged it evenly around her she felt quite decently covered and surprisingly unhampered.

‘I do not require dipping, Mrs Huggins. I can swim quite well.’ And in fact it was quite difficult to keep her feet on the bottom in the buoyant salty water.

‘It’s more healthful to be dipped,’ said the bathing woman doubtfully. ‘Not many ladies swim. Are you used to the waves, marm?’

‘I am perfectly confident, thank you. I can see my husband over there.’ And sure enough Gabriel’s dark head was visible as he swam powerfully out to sea from the next bathing machine. He dived under and re-emerged to swim back towards the hut and when he reached the steps he rolled on to his back and began to float.

Caroline struck out, put her head under, blinked at the salt, then, suddenly confident, dived and swam submerged towards him. Being beneath the sea was different from the still cloudiness of the lake and clouds of bubbles released by the breakers and the swirls of sand disorientated her for a moment. Then she saw Gabriel’s legs and surfaced close behind his back, ready to splash and startle him.

The sunshine was directly on him, gilding the water on his skin, emphasising the muscles, the beautiful masculine taper from shoulders to waist, the dip of his spine.
The scars
.

Gabriel turned at her gasp and his face, for once unguarded, was stark with shock and anger in equal parts. ‘Get back over there,’ he snarled. ‘Are you mad? If anyone saw you behaving like a hoyden the word would be around Brighton before you have dried your hair.’

Blindly she dived back under the water and came up within the shadow of her own hut. Mrs Huggins was calling across to one of the other dippers and seemed not to have seen her and she realised that the incident had been over in seconds. No one was looking across from the men’s swimming area, the ladies were too preoccupied with their own rigorous dippings to peer through saltwater-laden lashes in her direction and as far as she could see the few telescopes in evidence on the promenade were trained at the horizon.

She had not been seen, and if someone had spotted one head popping up too close to the invisible dividing line, then there was no reason to suppose she could have been recognised. And Gabriel knew that. His anger had been because of what she had seen, not what she had done.

Those scars. In the unforgiving light his back had been a tracery of thin silvery lines, dead straight, criss-crossing like intricate lace created by some demon. He had been whipped, often and often, and he had tried to hide the fact from her. When they made love the curtains were always at least partly drawn, or the candles away from the bedside. When he got out of bed he reached for his robe, or his shirt, before turning his back to her and always took his bath behind a screen. She had thought it simply a courtesy to preserve any modesty she might feel once the intimacy of lovemaking was over.

But he could not have thought he could hide them from her for ever, surely? As her confidence grew she felt an increasing desire to sometimes take the lead in bed, to explore Gabriel’s body, to push the robe from his shoulders or to see what erotic games might be played in a bath. And in the day-to-day intimacy of married life, surely he might expect her to walk in on him unclothed and unaware?

Unless he did not expect their intimacy to extend much beyond this honeymoon trip. Unless domestic closeness was the last thing he intended.

‘Marm, are you all right? You’ve gone all white-like. Knew you should have had a good dipping and then got out.’ Mrs Huggins surged towards her like some amiable sea monster. ‘Up you go now, your girl’s waiting for you with a nice big towel.’

Her legs were tired which must be why she was so clumsy. Stumbling up the rough wooden steps, she stubbed her big toe painfully enough to bring tears to her eyes. Harriet, anxiously fussed over the bruised toe, worrying as she swathed Caroline in towels and did her best to get her dressed in the gloom.

‘Oh, my lady, that must hurt so much. I can’t see if there are splinters. We must send for a doctor directly, you might have broken it, for you to cry so.’

‘I’m not...’
Yes, I am.
With an effort she pulled herself together, scrubbed at her eyes with the edge of the towel, and did her best to get her clothing in order over her damp skin. ‘It was the shock. You know how things always hurt more when you are cold? I’ll just slip my foot into the slipper and not fit it right on.’