The Unexpected Marriage of Gabriel Stone (Lords of Disgrace) (3 page)

‘Will Lord Woodruffe be at Lady Ancaster’s supper dance this evening, Papa?’ She infused as much interest into her voice as possible.

‘Doubt it.’ He did not glance up from his papers. ‘He’s still in the country as far as I know.’

A small mercy
, she thought as she let herself out of the study. If only Lord Edenbridge was at the dance, too, then she had some hope of settling Anthony’s future and with that done, and her promise to Mama fulfilled, then perhaps she could find some way out of the mire for herself.

* * *

‘You look very well, Caroline.’ Aunt Gertrude, the Dowager Countess of Whitely, was normally sparing in her praise, but tonight, perhaps prompted by the news that Caroline was to receive an eligible offer, she was positively gracious.

‘Thank you, I was rather pleased with this gown, I must confess.’ It was an amber silk with an overskirt of a paler yellow and she was wearing it with brown kid slippers and her mother’s set of amber jewellery.

‘The neckline, however, is verging on the unacceptable.’ Her chaperon leaned forward in the carriage, the better to glare at Caroline’s bosom.

‘I believe it is well within the current mode, Aunt.’

‘Humph. And you are somewhat pale.’

It was a miracle that she was not white as a sheet with tension, Caroline thought as she set her lips in a social smile and prepared to follow her aunt out of the carriage and into the Ancasters’ Berkeley Square house. At least the necessity to act in a certain way prevented her from simply sitting down and having a fit of the vapours. She’d had to dress, have her hair styled, talk to her maid, choose her jewels, pay attention to Aunt Gertrude and now enter the Ancasters’ ballroom looking as though she had nothing on her mind except pleasure.

‘Good evening, Lady Farnsworth... Yes, Lord Hitchcombe, the floral decorations are charming... No, Aunt, I will be certain not to accept more than one dance from Mr Pitkin... Thank you, Mr Walsh, a glass of champagne would be delightful.’ She smiled and prattled on, just like every other young lady in the crowded, hot room, while all the time she expected to open her mouth and find herself announcing, ‘I have offered my virginity to Lord Edenbridge. I am deceiving my father. I am plotting to...’
To what? Ruin myself, most likely.

And there, strolling along on the other side of the room as the company began to take their places for the first dance of the evening, was a tall, black-haired figure.
Edenbridge.
He turned and went through a set of double doors that Caroline knew led to several sitting-out rooms and the ladies’ retiring room.

She murmured in her aunt’s ear.

‘Oh, for goodness sake, Caroline! Why on earth didn’t you visit the closet before we came out?’ Lady Whitely demanded in a penetrating whisper. ‘The first set is forming and you do not have a partner yet.’

‘I really must,’ Caroline whispered back. ‘The rhubarb posset...’ She escaped before her aunt could reply. With any luck she would attribute her niece’s haste to natural urgency, not the desire to go chasing after wicked bachelors.

She was moving so fast that she almost cannoned into Lord Edenbridge around the first corner of the corridor. He was standing with one evening shoe in his hand, prodding at the inside with a long finger and frowning.

‘Lord Edenbridge, I must speak with you. Where have you been? I have been looking for you for days...’

‘And good evening to you, Lady Caroline.’ He inclined his head in an ironical half-bow, shook the shoe and held up a small tack between finger and thumb. ‘I will have words with Hoby about this.’

‘Never mind your bootmaker, my lord, this is urgent.’ At any moment someone could come along the passageway and find them compromisingly tête-à-tête.

He winced. ‘You utter blasphemy.’ But he replaced his shoe and opened the door opposite them. ‘As I recall... Yes, excellent, and a key in the door. How accommodating of dear Hermione.’

He meant, she supposed, that this might be a refuge for lovers. There was certainly a
chaise longue
. Caroline pushed away speculation about how Lord Edenbridge knew this room was here and waited while he turned the key.

‘Now, Lady Caroline, how may I help you? I have been down in Devon,’ he added. For all his light tone and the smile, she detected a wariness about him. From her urgency he must think she was pursuing him, which was embarrassing, to put it mildly.

She sat down squarely in the middle of the
chaise
longue
, spread her skirts out on either side in a way that made it quite clear she was not expecting him to join her and almost smiled at the rueful twist of his lips. ‘Perhaps you have misjudged the situation, my lord?’

‘Perhaps I have.’ He lounged across and propped a shoulder against the mantel-shelf looking for all the world like a Romany who had, for reasons of his own, donned an evening suit and strolled into a
ton
ball. She half-expected to see a glint of gold in his earlobes. His eyes, she realised, were brown. ‘I do wish you would stop addressing me so formally. Call me Gabriel, Caroline.’

‘And risk letting it slip out should we meet in company?’
Gabriel.
She liked the sound of the name and she liked her own name on his lips even better. Perhaps not such a gypsy after all, she thought, watching him from beneath her lashes. His hair had recently been cut, although it was still on the long side, he had shaved to perfection and it was only the carelessness with which he wore his expensive clothes and the feline ease with which he lounged that spoiled the picture of the fashionable aristocrat.

‘Your chaperon would run me through with a hatpin before I got within conversational range of you, Caroline, so I think we are safe. Now, having established that you do not desire me to deflower you in a retiring room at HermioneAncaster’s dance, which I agree would be unwise, however informal she insists the occasion is—’

‘Oh, do not make me laugh! Not that there is anything to laugh about. I must be hysterical.’

‘Just very anxious, I think. Ask me what it is you want to know.’ He sounded not bored, precisely, but certainly reassuringly unexcited by being dragged off for an intimate chat. The coolness was bracing. Then she met his gaze and saw heat and a raw masculine awareness of her as a woman. No, he wasn’t cool at all, simply controlled and that very control was almost as arousing as the heat.

She could be controlled, too. She must be or he would read the utterly immodest carnal desire that was making it so hard to breathe.
Inhale.
‘How burdened are you with the management of your own estates, Lord Edenbridge?’

He straightened up, hooked an upright chair away from the wall and sat down. ‘I am not easily surprised, Caroline, but I must admit that our meetings are presenting me with one novel situation after another. Would you care to explain why you wish to discuss estate management?’

‘I have realised that securing the deeds to Springbourne for Anthony is useless unless there is some way we can run the estate. I cannot do it. As an unmarried woman I will never be able to open a bank account without my father’s permission and Anthony is under age.’

‘That is so. I have to admit, this had not occurred to me when I gave you the deeds back.’

‘If I hand them back to you, will you manage the estate for Anthony until he is twenty-one?’

The silence seemed to go on for a very long time. Then Lord Edenbridge said, ‘No.’

Chapter Three

‘N
aturally we could not allow you to be out of pocket, Lord Edenbridge. Perhaps your man of business could find a suitable manager and the estate would meet all the costs. It is perfectly solvent, I believe.’ Caroline kept her tone as brisk and efficient as she could in the face of his frowning refusal.

‘Money is not the point, Caroline. It is irrelevant.’

It is? How nice that would be, for money to be irrelevant.

‘I employ perfectly competent people to run my own estates and my business matters. My own involvement will become even less as soon as my brother Louis leaves university. I can certainly add your brother’s property to the portfolio and extricate it again when he reaches his majority, but you are asking me to assume a position of trust, to be responsible for another man’s estate and income. That is a considerable responsibility. Who is going to audit the revenues and financial transactions?’

‘Why, no one. I trust you. You are a gentleman.’

He ran both hands through his hair, turning it into something disordered and wild, then leaned forward to emphasise the words that emerged through what sounded like clenched teeth. ‘Then you are an idiot, Caroline, and I had thought you innocent and trusting, but not empty-headed. You do not know me. I gamble and that in itself should raise warning flags. What if I suffer a big loss and see an easy way to
borrow
some funds?’

‘I am not completely air-headed, Gabriel,’ she retorted. The name was out before she realised what she was saying. He lifted his head, looked at her and the tight jaw relaxed as he smiled. Nettled by that little sign of male smugness, she pressed on firmly. ‘I am a good judge of character. I told you I have heard the talk about you and no one accuses you of deceit or dishonourable behaviour, even the people who have no cause to love you. I was reckless going to your house the other day, proposing what I did. You could have taken advantage of me then and you did not.’

‘You should not confuse financial probity with an unwillingness to pounce on young ladies when I am half-asleep and three-parts drunk.’ His smile deepened, suggested that now he was not tired or drunk he might reconsider pouncing.

‘Were you really? Goodness, I would never have guessed.’

‘You thought I look like that stone-cold sober and after a good night’s sleep, a bath and a shave? I am wounded, Caroline.’

‘No, you are not, you are teasing me. And, yes, I do understand that I am asking you to shoulder a significant responsibility, even if it makes little actual work for you personally and involves no financial loss. How can I recompense you?’

The amusement faded out of the deep-brown eyes and they became harder than she could ever have imagined. ‘I already hold one too many of your IOUs, Caroline. I will undertake this for you because you asked and because you are doing it for your brother, not because you have got yourself into this ridiculous mess.’

The smile edged back, curving the corners of his mouth, but not warming his eyes as he moved to stand beside the
chaise
. ‘I have spent my youth and my adult life being disgraceful. A gambler, a hedonist. Being responsible is a bore. And yet now I find myself having to be the sensible one. This summer I have been attempting to talk a close friend out of a totally unsuitable marriage and now I am resisting the urge to take you up on your reckless offer. I do not know what is coming over me. Old age, possibly.’

Old age? Nonsense. Surely he cannot be above twenty-eight or nine?
‘You still have my promise.’ Somehow their fingers met, brushed, then hers curled into his. Not quite a hand-clasp, not quite a caress. She looked up and met Gabriel’s unreadable gaze as his fingers tightened. ‘And Papa tells me he has given Lord Woodruffe permission to court me.’

‘Edgar Parfit?’
Her hand was her own again and Gabriel was three angry strides away. ‘That per— Is your father insane?’

She had often wondered what would be the verdict on her father’s behaviour if he had been simply plain Mr Henry Holm, a shoemaker, perhaps. What in an earl was eccentricity would, surely, be treated rather differently in other circumstances. The obsessions, the mood swings, the recklessness and the utter disregard for other people were not normal, she knew. But to say the words was a step too far.

‘No one has ever suggested my father is not legally competent,’ she said carefully. ‘Many in society would say Lord Woodruffe is an eligible match...’

‘Well, quite obviously you cannot marry him. Besides his unpleasant preferences, he is probably diseased—’

What does he mean, diseased?
Horrible suspicions presented themselves and she pushed them away, knowing they would come back to haunt her dreams. The atmosphere of closeness, of something trembling on the edge of desire, vanished in the cold chill of reality.

‘What do you mean,
preferences
?’

He shook his head.

‘Tell me! Preserving my innocence until I am actually married to the man is not going to help.’

‘Some men enjoy pain as part of sex. Some want to receive it, be beaten.’ His face tightened as though at some unpleasant memory. ‘Others enjoy inflicting it. Woodruffe has a reputation for the latter.’

‘Oh.’ She felt sick as she recalled Miranda, Woodruffe’s first wife. The bruises because she was
so careless
. The days when she did not leave her room because her health was
fragile.
Bullying her into riding despite her fear of horses had been the least of it.

But what could she do? ‘Lord Edenbridge, listen to me. Your friend who is contemplating an unsuitable marriage is, I assume, male. He can choose. He is independent, free. I cannot choose and I am not free. Not legally, not financially and not emotionally. I have a family and I promised Mama I would somehow look after them.’
My brothers at least. Heavens knows if anything can be done for Papa.
She found she was on her feet. ‘I will send back the deeds and I am truly grateful for your help. Please will you open the door now?’

‘Caroline, this is the year 1820. Your father cannot force you to the altar.’ Gabriel stood, unlocked the door, but kept his hand on the handle.

‘Not physically, no,’ she agreed, even as she wondered what bullying and bread and water might reduce her to if she defied Papa. Somehow she was going to have to persuade him because the alternatives, marriage to Woodruffe or fleeing her home and leaving Anthony, were too horrible to contemplate.

She reached the door handle and he caught her fingers in his, pulled her close until her skirts brushed his legs and she could smell him—clean, warm man, starched linen, brandy, a careless splash of some citrus scent, that hint of musk again.

‘Infuriating, stubborn woman. I do not know whether to shake you or kiss you,’ he said, his tone suggesting that neither was very desirable.

‘Kiss me then, for courage,’ she said, seized with recklessness and something that must be desire: a hot, shaky feeling, a low, intimate ache, a light-headed urge to toss common sense out of the window. No other attractive man was ever going to kiss her, it seemed. She must seize the opportunity while she had it.

Gabriel lifted one hand, cupped her jaw, stroked his thumb across her lips and the breath was sucked out of her lungs. ‘Have you ever been kissed before?’

She shook her head and he bent to touch his lips to hers, caught her around the waist with his free hand and pulled her, unresisting, against him. His mouth was warm, mobile, firm. He pressed a little, shifted position, his hand came up from her cheek to cradle her head and he made a sound of satisfaction when he had her as he wanted. Then she felt his tongue and the heat of his open mouth and opened her own in response as he slid in, exploring and stroking.

It was incredible and strange. It should be disgusting and wet, but she found the taste of him exciting, the heat inflammatory. She sensed his restraint, that he was holding back, toying gently with her, and she stepped forward until their bodies were tight together, wanting more of this strange new intimacy.

His body was hard against her curves and there was the urge to rub against him, as a cat might burrow into a caress. But he was still and perhaps he would not like it if she did that...

Far too soon Gabriel ended the kiss, took his hands from her body, stepped back. ‘Enough. Enough for your safety and more than enough for my comfort,’ he added mysteriously, as he pulled open the door and looked out. ‘Quickly, while there is no one about. Turn down Woodruffe, Caroline. Send me those deeds, then stay away from me.’ He almost pushed her out into the corridor. ‘Now go while I can still listen to what passes as my conscience.’

Gabriel had kissed her and now he did not want her.
Of course not, no doubt I was clumsy in my inexperience.
So what was that caress for if he did not desire her? There was something that had driven him to kiss her, something that had made that relaxed body tense.
I want him, perhaps he could come to want me? Madness.

‘Well, if you do not want me I shall not burden you any longer, Lord Edenbridge.’ She made to sweep past him, annoyed that he could make her feel so much and yet obviously feel nothing himself.

There was a flurry of skirts, the muffled sound of a collision and a feminine voice said, ‘I do beg your pardon, sir.’

Gabriel half-turned to confront the speaker and Caroline caught a glimpse of a tall young lady dressed in an exquisite sea-foam-green gown.

‘Oh. Lord Edenbridge.’ The stranger did not seem overjoyed to see him and he did not even respond to her.

Caroline stepped away, her hand to her mouth, not certain whether she was stifling a sob or trying to hide her face.

‘Come back!’

She stopped, looked back.

‘Don’t be a fool,’ Gabriel said. ‘You do not have to marry him and you do not have to... Damn it, I’ve burned the thing.’

He had only been teasing her then, demanding that IOU that day at his home. She had gone through a maelstrom of emotions, through shame and fear and excitement and triumph that she had somehow rescued Springbourne for Anthony in return for that pledge, and all the time Edenbridge had never intended to take her up on it.

‘A promise is a promise,’ she said, chin up. ‘But if you do not want me—’ She shrugged, turned and walked away, gathering the rags of her dignity around her.

* * *

Gabriel swore silently, then turned to confront the other female bedevilling his life, the widowed Mrs Tamsyn Perowne, who was tying his friend Cris de Feaux, Marquess of Avenmore, in knots.

‘What in Hades are you doing here?’ he demanded ‘Does Cris know?’

‘Certainly not. I do not need Lord Avenmore’s permission to visit a relative.’ The wretched female looked down her sun-browned nose at him.

‘Come with me.’ He took her arm and swept her back into the main reception room. There, thank goodness, were Alex, Viscount Weybourn, and his wife, Tess. They could help him deal with Mrs Perowne.

Goodness knew who or what was going to help him with Lady Caroline because that clumsy kiss had made him realise that he could not cynically despoil an innocent, nor was it fair to tease her. And yet she had somehow got under his skin.
Damn it, she is not my responsibility.
Knighton could never force her to marry Woodruffe if she refused.
Could he?

* * *

The deeds came back to him three days later with a brief, rather hurried-looking note.

I am about to leave for the country. I doubt very much if I will be able to receive or send any correspondence from there as I have grievously annoyed my father, but I know I can rely on you to look after my brother’s interests in the estate.

Thank you, you cannot know how much it means to me to have Anthony’s future safeguarded.

So Caroline had refused Lord Woodruffe. That could be the only explanation for her
‘grievously’
annoying Knighton.
Good for you, my girl,
Gabriel thought. He pulled paper and pen towards him and began to draft instructions for his man of business and solicitor to set in motion all the things that must be done to manage the estate and preserve the income for the young man.

None of it was very taxing, it merely required logical thought and meticulous attention to detail. His solicitor might well advise setting up a trust to safeguard both parties, but that was straightforward enough. Yet there was something niggling at the back of his mind, some sense that everything was not as it should be. Whatever it was, it was more than the memory of that innocent first kiss he had claimed, which was now wreaking havoc with his sleep. He reached for the brandy.

* * *

He had still been brooding when he fell asleep that night and he woke with a crashing headache and a feeling of unease. Corbridge, his much-tried valet, came in on silent feet and left a glass with something sinister and brown beside the bed, then wisely left without speaking.

Gabriel hauled himself up in bed, swigged back the potion without letting himself smell it, fought with his stomach for a moment, then lay back with a groan. His life was changing. Two of his closest friends were married now, Cris soon would be. Where there had been four, now there would be seven. He liked Tess and Kate. He would probably like Tamsyn when he got to know her. But the change to that close foursome only made his dissatisfaction with life worse.

He had been aware of being unsettled for months. He was bored with his life, no longer content with an existence in which winning was all that counted. Jaded, that was the word. He had a title, lands, money far beyond his needs or wants. What was he doing it for? Damn it, he had toyed with the idea of ruining a respectable young lady just for the novelty. He didn’t much like the man who could do that. Perhaps it was time to change. But if he didn’t spend his time gambling, socialising, drinking, what was the point to his life?

His three friends had been closer than his family, closer than he had ever dared allow his brothers to be. Cris, Alex and Grant had come into his life when he had been at his most desperate and vulnerable, at a time when they all needed the help that only others who had been wounded could understand. They knew his secrets, all but one of them—he could not burden them with the lies he had told the day his father died. That burden was his to carry, ever since he had made a promise to his mother, a woman so desperately unhappy she had taken her own life.