The Secret Love of a Gentleman (47 page)

Rob was seated between his father and his uncle. He stood. She felt like running into his arms. “You look beautiful,” he said, as he walked towards her.

“So do you,” she breathed. Her longing for a kiss had become a pain hovering in her chest whenever he was close.

He gripped her hand and lifted it so he could kiss the back of her fingers. It was not the same.

He smiled at her. “You have not spoken to some of my cousins yet. Come, help me prove how equal I am.” It was a jest, but she was not in the mood for his teasing, or their belligerence. Whether it was right or wrong, she did not like more than half of them. Yet she did like his younger brother Harry. His hair was brown like Rob’s and his father’s and yet he had the same eyes as Mary and her mother, a very pale blue, and they sparkled with amusement constantly.

“George will be looking to play a game of tumble with his uncle Baba tomorrow morning,” Drew stated in a dry voice when he joined them.

Harry grinned.

Rob laughed. “Especially as I have been unable to play rough with him.”

“I shall step up to the mark,” Harry stated, winking at Caro.

The boy was brash and reckless, although he was hardly a boy any more. Like Rob he’d grown up in the last few years.

He lifted his glass to Rob, then to her. “I shall see you with George about my neck in the morning, because I have no desire to stay for this bloody ball. I and some of the others are off to find more preferable entertainment.”

“Women…” Rob whispered as Harry walked away. “Papa will kill him when he hears he’s gone.”

“We ought to go downstairs and form the receiving line.” John came over and touched Rob’s arm.

Rob looked back. “Yes, of course. We will come.”

He looked at Caro. “Are you prepared?”

She took a breath, her heart racing. “Not at all.”

“You will be fine, as long as Rob is beside you,” Drew stated. “I seem to recall you were fine the night of the assembly once you two had gone off outside alone in the dark.”

Caro poked her tongue out at Drew for his little jab, as Rob merely smiled and clasped her elbow, turning her away. The Duke was speaking with his mother and father, probably telling them to come down too.

“I wish we could slip away,” Caro stated as they left the room. The wave she’d been riding for weeks was breaking, and the roar of it was deafening as she was pulled beneath the foam. She was drowning.

He stopped and turned. No one else was in the hall.

His fingers gripped the back of her neck, his dark eyes gleaming, and then his lips pressed over hers briefly, and yet, just that slight moment filled up her soul, as though his love poured into it. “Only one more day,” he said over her lips before turning away as the sound of his parents and brother following came from the drawing room.

His limp had eased a little more in the days she’d been here, and his movement was not so awkward as he descended.

“I have asked the orchestra to play plenty of waltzes. I think my leg might survive those. I do not think it will survive a country dance.”

She squeezed his arm gently.

The Duke and Duchess were to stand at the head of the line, as most senior in rank and the hosts, and then his parents, and she was to stand on the end beside Rob. Vulnerability hovered in her nerves.

The rest of his family came down and began filling the ballroom. When the doors opened into the hall for the first time and a breeze swept in, with their first guests. The introductions began. She’d done this a hundred times before with Albert, yet this was so different. She was different. She had been broken and repaired, but she was still fragile.

She curtseyed and smiled through three dozen greetings.

“Rob.”

“Tarquin.” Rob shook a young man’s hand firmly. “Caro, this is one of my good friends. Tarquin Holland, meet my wife-to-be, Caroline.”

Heat crept into her skin and she curtseyed. She presumed Rob’s friend had no title, as Rob had not given him one. “Hello.”

The man’s gaze seemed to pass all over her face before he smiled. Then he nodded at Rob. “I approve.”

Rob laughed. Then he smiled at her. “Forgive him, Caro, he does not always realise what an idiot he is.”

Caro smiled.

“The others are in the hall stripping off coats, we walked, and it’s a bloody cold night.” He looked at Caro again suddenly. “Oh, forgive me, I am not used to the presence of women.”

“Hello, Rob!”

Caro looked to see another six young men, of Rob’s age, lined up to greet the Duke and Duchess and then his parents. One of them had lifted a hand to Rob.

When they reached him, there was more vigorous hand-shaking, and Rob’s shoulder was slapped a couple of times. Then he introduced them all at once. “Meet my friends, Caro, Thomas Grey, Christopher Michaels, Roger Price, Patrick Ellis, Stephan Dalton and Arthur Wilson.” They walked past her in a line, taking her hand and kissing her fingers and passing her hand onto the next one.

They were nice, and so young, and these were his friends. But they were sensible young men, all of them. She could not imagine any of them sneaking off to a brothel. They were like Rob. Yet he was not like them. They probably spent half their lives at their leisure. He was to be a father in a few months. Now she understood why Drew had been concerned. Yes, she had stolen Rob from another life. It did not make her feel good.

“Might I dance with you? Obviously not the first, that will be Rob’s, but another?” Arthur asked.

She nodded. “Of course.”

“I think they are all now under your spell,” Rob whispered to her as they walked away.

Her smile fell. Seeing his friends had stirred up her fear again. What if he came to regret it all? What if his love died?

The arrival of guests began to thin and the orchestra started playing.

“Go,” his mother said to Rob and Caro, “You must dance the first together. We will come and watch you in a moment.”

Rob leant to Caro’s ear as they broke from the line. “I have not tested out my theory that I am able to dance, so this may end up with the two of us in a heap on the floor.”

She laughed and looked up at him as they walked into the middle of the room. “I love you.” It was said with a clinging tone she did not like, but her fear had made her speak.

“I love you also.” His hand took hers and his other settled at her back.

“You had better keep looking at me and nowhere else because I have never felt more vulnerable in my life.”

His lips lifted into a warm smile. “Nor I. Half these people will not have even known who the hell I am until tonight. I preferred it that way, but I suppose I cannot remain inconspicuous if I wish to make the allies I will need in Parliament.” He started the first turn, and it was slow, and his movement a little awkward, but he succeeded.

The music swelled, growing in tempo. She glanced about the room as he continued turning her with measured careful steps. His parents were smiling and looking pleased. She still feared they would be angry once they knew of the child. Guilt pierced her chest as she looked back at Rob, but then over his shoulder she saw his friends watching too, talking to one another, and laughing.

“Yorkshire is a long way from town, will your friends still come there to support you when you begin to campaign?”

“They will come to Yorkshire. I will tempt them with tales of all the ruins to explore. They are not really town people; they would far rather head up to the Lake District and discover the wilderness.”

She nodded, but it was more awkward than his movement.

“You are nervous?”

“Far too nervous. So nervous I wish my old fear would return so I had an excuse to run.”

“You do not wish that. I’m sorry if this is too much, but it will be over the day after tomorrow, and then we may run together. I know I could have made this easy for you, Caro, had I acquired a special licence, but Mama did not see Mary or John married. I wished to give her this, and I wished to give it to you too. It is right that we begin our marriage with a statement we and others will remember.”

He was as always trying to do what was right. “You are man of morals… and I am honoured.”

He laughed. “I preferred it when you simply said I love you.”

At last others began to dance about them and the floor filled.

She spent most of the evening dancing. Rob’s friends took up half the evening, but then she danced with Rob’s father and Drew, and then John. She was exhausted as they ate supper and glad that they’d decided not to hold the ball the day before the wedding. She would have been too tired and her feet too tender to walk up the aisle.

“I call for speeches!” Rob’s father stood and shouted suddenly.

“I agree!” John shouted, as he walked behind their seat, and then leant to whisper something to Rob.

Rob’s uncle, Robert, stood and began telling the room in a loud voice how he’d been smitten by his little nephew, when Rob was a child… and he poured out anecdotes of Rob’s childhood.

Heat touched Caro’s cheeks as Rob’s skin held a high colour too. He’d not known they’d do this. He looked uncomfortable as John’s hand slipped from his shoulder and John moved to sit down.

The speech was ended with glasses being raised and then a gift was brought over from his uncle and aunt. Rob had been given a diamond pin for his cravat and Caro was given a silver comb for her hair.

It was the first of several gifts from his family, as they all wished them well. Caro’s gifts were mostly ornaments for her to wear for the wedding.

She was truly touched.

Drew made a speech last, he spoke about Rob’s and Caro’s relationship in the summer, and said, “Only a man with Rob’s humility could have found the path to Caro’s heart. To their happiness!”

Another toast was drunk and then Drew and Mary came over. “Here.” Mary gave a gift to Rob. It was a pocket watch. “So you might always find the time to come and visit us.”

Caro smiled as she freed the ribbon about the box Drew had given her. It was a gold necklace, a narrow chain with a small heart-shaped pendant decorated with three small rubies. She looked up at him. “It’s lovely.”

“It is to replace another. You have a heart and you deserve to be loved.”

Caro fought to form a smile as tears gathered in her eyes. She understood his intent; to tell her to forget the love they’d lacked as children and the love she had lacked in her marriage. He was saying that it was not because of anything to do with her.

The tears ran. He gave her a handkerchief, as he’d done a dozen times before when she’d been married to Albert and cried on his shoulder over her misery.

Happiness was within reach, and yet she was terrified of it breaking.

Rob’s arm came about her and he kissed her temple.

“May I dance the next with you?” she looked at Rob as she dabbed her tears away.

He nodded.

“I did not expect your uncles and aunts to be so nice,” she said when the music began and he led her to the floor.

He laughed at that. “You have been a part of my family for a long time. Have you never really looked at us?”

She shook her head. “No, I suppose I was too busy hiding.” Ignoring their audience entirely, she slipped her arms about his neck and hugged him briefly before letting go and forming the correct hold for the dance.

“My family are an interfering bunch, but you have to love them regardless, niceness, and caring exuberantly, are their best and their worst qualities,” he jested.

She longed for the wedding to be over and to have him to herself.

Rob said goodnight to her in the hall, when everyone else had walked upstairs, while his uncle waited outside in the carriage. But there were servants about them, tidying up.

“I want to kiss you,” he said before smiling.

“I have wanted to kiss you for days.”

“I am tempted to do it even though the servants are here.”

She laughed. “Do not ruin my reputation a day before the wedding.”

“It is just a day more…”

“Yes, just a day. You had best leave or your uncle and aunt will become impatient.”

“Life is cruel, a day is too long. Why did I not make the date for tomorrow, our banns are read.”

“Then you have created your own torture.”

He laughed and tapped her beneath the chin. “You survived tonight beautifully. I love you. I will see you at the church. Goodnight.” He lifted off his hat again for a moment and leant to press a very brief kiss on her lips before he turned to the door. A footman opened it.

He looked back again and smiled before he left.

She would not to see him tomorrow—today—it was four in the morning. The next time she saw him would be on their wedding day as he stood at the altar and she walked up the aisle.

As she walked up the stairs, her hand rested against her stomach. She had not felt the child move for days, and yet she’d been so busy she’d probably not noticed it. She would sing to it tonight.

~

Pain burnt through Rob’s side as he turned away from Caro. His leg was aching like the devil. He’d been standing on it half the night, but it was not from that. It felt as though Caro was torn from him. He would rather not leave; he’d rather stay. But all the arrangements had been made.

The cold night air swept at him as he walked out the door. He wished away the day they had left. He wished they stood at the church and he might whisk her off in a carriage.

Rob looked both ways up the street. It was too dark to see far, the light from gas lamps outside John’s bleached out the moonlight. But, even so, he knew he was being watched. He felt it.

The footman before him turned to open the door of his uncle’s carriage. Rob had not been fool enough to walk anywhere at night, not since the announcement.

“Come along, Rob, get in, it is chilly sitting here,” Aunt Jane complained. He smiled at her and climbed in, putting his weight through his right leg and gripping the handle with his right hand. His right hand was only a vague, whispering pain, his right leg a low grumble, but there was no sharp sudden cry of pain that said “don’t stand on me”. He was healing.

As he seated himself next to his uncle, Rob’s hands curled into fists, the words John had whispered in his ear over supper echoed in his head.
“So that you know, the Marquis of Kilbride has just tried to get himself in.”