The Secret Love of a Gentleman (20 page)

“Caro’s horse panicked when a bolt struck overhead and mine shied. But we headed into the wood and dismounted, we are both unharmed.”

She thanked God for Rob’s choice of words. He did not think himself harmed by her selfishness then.

“And you have returned whole.”

But that she was not, she had left a little piece of herself back in that hut, and another piece of her was held by Rob, and it would leave tomorrow. She walked past Drew and turned towards the next flight of stairs.

“I’ll come and say goodnight to George, too.”

Caro glanced down as Rob looked up, and he smiled at her. It turned her stomach to aspic.

Rob looked at Drew as Rob began ascending. “After all, it is the last night that I can.”

Rob’s words pressed like a little knife into her chest.

Chapter 17

Caro watched Rob throughout dinner and during the quiet evening in the drawing room that followed. They did not play cards, it was his last evening, and so Drew and Mary talked to him about his plans, and about their family, while Caro sat in silence.

She longed for a moment to speak to him privately as all the feelings that he’d engendered in the day still played through her nerves and ran in her blood. They shared a secret and occasionally he would glance at her and she would see their secret in his eyes.

Mary made him promise to look after himself, then suggested they retire as he was to leave early. They all stood.

Yet Caro did not want the evening to end. Tomorrow he was going. She wished today could last forever.

Her heart pounded as they walked from the room, and it felt as heavy as lead as she walked upstairs to her bedchamber while Mary and Drew said goodnight to Rob on the first floor landing where their rooms were.

Caro let the maid undress her and brush out her hair, then crawled into bed and lay on her side. Memories, images and feelings played through her head, as though he was with her and touched her now.

She had never expected to feel those things again, and this summer she’d laughed with him, danced with him and then lain with him. He would go, but he would leave behind a woman whom he’d helped to find herself again.

Her heart ached. It would break tomorrow. But he’d taught her that she could choose how to respond, she could mourn and shut herself away, or she could keep living as though nothing had changed. She would keep living because she’d promised him that doing what they’d done would not affect their future.

But she hadn’t lost him yet. He was still in a room downstairs.

She sat up and threw the sheets back. They still had tonight. Why was she lying here in sorrow when she could be with him?

Her footfalls were soft as she walked over the floorboards, gripping her cotton nightgown and lifting the hem. It was dark, but she knew the house well enough to find her way.

The stairs creaked when she walked down them, her hand on the rail, but no one would hear. Drew’s and Mary’s rooms were at the farthest end of the first-floor landing.

Her hand followed the rail of the staircase. Then her fingertips trailed along the wall as she walked in the dark, trying to find the bedchambers.

The room Rob had been staying in was the first door on the opposite side to Mary’s and Drew’s.

She felt the doorframe and her hand fell to touch the brass doorknob.

Her heart skipped in a rhythm akin to the steps of a vigorous country dance when she knocked gently.

It must be barely half an hour since they’d retired. She hoped he was still awake.

~

A slight rap on wood pulled Rob into consciousness. He’d been thinking about Caro and drifting into sleep. The enormity of his day was a weight on his chest. But there was a tight pain in his groin too, as memories had played through his head.

The sound came again. Someone was knocking on his bedroom door.

He sat up, the sheet covering him slid to his waist. The air was not as warm since the storm had passed, but he had still come to bed naked—it was too hot for clothing.

The knock struck a little harder. “Rob.” His name was whispered through the wood.

Caro.

“Come in,” he called back.

The door creaked as it opened. He turned in the bed, rubbing his forehead as he tried to wake up. The room was pitch black, the night was cloudy and there was no light from the moon.

“Where are you?”

“Here, Caro.”

Her soft footsteps and the sound of shifting cotton came towards him.

He ought to get up and cover himself, but he would be scrabbling about in the dark.

“I could not sleep,” she whispered. “Do you mind?”

“No.” He’d spent the entire evening sensing her watching him, aware they only had hours left. “I’m glad.” He was, he refused to heed the guilt that lanced through his chest.

“But you were sleeping.”

“Only lightly. I was tired.”

“Do you wish me to go?”

“No,” he stood up as he heard her before him, the sheet slipping over his skin, and he reached out, blindly.

He touched her shoulder.

“Rob.” She took another step and came into his arms.

His fingers ran over her hair, it was loose, flowing down her back.

Her hair brushed against his chest as his head lowered and his lips found hers.

All evening his conscience had been challenging him, condemning him, and yet here he was again, looking into the eyes of lust, faced with a trial. Lust won. He did not care for morals and idealism with Caro. He wished for another moment of bliss.

He gripped her nightgown and lifted it off over her head.

This time they were both entirely naked and yet it was too dark to see.

“Lay on the bed,” he urged, his hand slipping over her naked hip. She moved beneath his touch, and his hand followed as they guided each other in the dark.

She smelt of lavender and the perfume lingered in the air as she moved.

He touched her leg to get his bearings and found the soft flesh of her inner thigh.

He sighed when her legs moved, opening for him. Then he knelt on the bed. The mattress dipped, rocking her leg and he imagined the sway of her breasts.

The memories from their moments in the cramped bed in that shabby hut flooded him in waves. His erection brushed her hip as he leant to kiss her and gripped one of her breasts. There was something very different about learning her body in the dark. It made his senses more alive. He let his fingertips run over every curve, gently tracing her body, drawing it in his memory and holding it firm. He wished to remember every detail of her when he’d gone.

In the early summer he’d watched her and seen something within her he didn’t think others saw. Now he knew everything that no one else saw.

He’d always felt thirst with her, but now he felt hunger. His stomach was empty. His body had become a vacuum that wished to devour her. He wanted her with a lust that was all- consuming.

“I love you,” he said the words over her mouth before pressing a kiss against her jaw. He was still unsure of the words, and yet they were the words on his tongue. They wished to be said.

“And I love you.” Her echo of them lifted into the air above his head, with a depth of emotion that implied utter truth. They stirred like a spoon in his soul.

His kisses followed the path of his fingers, learning her body with his lips and his tongue. Then he said against her breast. “I shall not apologise, not now or after, this is what we both wish for.”

“Yes.”

When his kisses ran across her stomach, he swept his tongue into her navel.

She sighed as he kissed below it, then trailed his tongue over the line of her hip bone, where it pushed against her soft skin.

His fingers skimmed over the skin of her thighs and he lowered his head and kissed the tender flesh there.

When he licked the velvety skin between her legs, she gripped his hair and arched up with a breathless sound of agreement.

His fingers ran down her leg to her heel, then he lifted her foot. Her foot pulled loose from his hand and her leg rested on his shoulder.

He was learning from her again.

“Rob.” Her hands clutched his hair tighter and she rocked up against his tongue as it dipped within her and drew out, while his hand ran up the back of her raised thigh. Then he slid his fingers into her and used them as he had done at the hut, only when they withdrew he licked them and licked her.

“Rob.” Her hips rocked against him in the rhythm of intercourse, as her fingers clung in his hair.

The tip of his tongue teased the little bead at the head of her flesh, which she’d touched in the hut.

A choked sound escaped her mouth, then a little groan as he did it again. His lips closed about it, and he kissed it, as his fingers worked. The sounds from her mouth slipped to the shallow pants of breath she had succumbed to at the end of their time in the hut. She was close to the little death.

“Will you suck me there?”

If she could see him in the daylight she might have seen him blush, to be told how to do this, and yet she had been married, she knew more than him, and if he was to learn, let him learn from her. But God, it cut to think of her with someone else. He would not.

His lips closed about her and he sucked as he’d sucked her nipple.

“Ah.” Her cry was harsh and long, as she broke onto his fingers, throbbing on the tip of his tongue.

When he rose up, over her, he felt like a king. There was no other feeling like this. Her hands gripped his shoulders as his hands pressed into the soft mattress either side of her.

He was baptised again when he sank into her, dipping his whole body beneath the water.

Caro made slight sounds as he moved, and her fractured breathing and shallow cries filled his room.

He moved swiftly and then slowly, pushing hard to a deep depth and then pressing in in shallow pulses, before rocking into her in a slow, long movement. He was learning—discovering every sense and sensation in the darkness—and all the time her hands ran over him and whimpers of breath left her lips as she broke beneath him and continued to pour fluid about him.

He was creating the foundation of their future. When she came to town in the autumn he hoped to have begun to fulfil his plan, and then he would make arrangements, even if it was to bind themselves with an engagement until he could offer her more. But until then they had this to hold on to.

Her thighs gripped at his hips and her bare feet brushed over the back of his legs as her body arched into another spasm of release.

His weight still in his palms, he leant and found her head was turned. He pressed a kiss on her cheek. She turned her mouth to him and said against his lips. “I love you so much.” The words seemed to echo through his soul, her voice was full of throaty emotion.

“I love you also.” His response was flatter, and yet, in that moment, he was certain the words were true.

He rose up and thrust more heavily into her, his pelvis striking hers. Then he withdrew fully and thrust hard again. Her breaths and shallow sounds became little cries each time he entered her as he felt the storm sweep in about him, gathering in heat and heaviness, and tension, clasping in every muscle. Three last hard thrusts and then he pulled out of her and broke onto her stomach, pushing himself against her and breathing hard. He felt as if he stood beneath a waterfall, only the waterfall ran inside him, pouring through him.

When he returned from heaven, he rested his forehead against hers, his breathing hard and fractured.

“I love you very much also.” It was true. He kissed her temple then tumbled to his back, his senses rioting and clamouring. He was utterly relaxed and sleep claimed him as Caro’s head made a pillow of his shoulder. Her arm came over his chest and her leg slipped over his thigh.

Chapter 18

Rob woke as the grey light of dawn leaked through the curtains. Caro lay in his bed. She lay half across him, her head resting against his neck.

He breathed in and smelled the lavender perfume in her hair. Her hair was a darker, duller blonde in the half-light. He soaked up the feel of her as the room lightened in slow degrees.

But she could not stay. The servants would be waking.

His fingers brushed across her cheek. “Caro.”

She didn’t wake. He leaned up a little and let her slide from his shoulder, then pressed a kiss on her lips. “Caro.”

Her eyelids flickered, then lifted.

His thumb brushed her cheek. “Good morning, sweetheart.”

Her eyes were pools of liquid and her fingers came up and touched his cheek. “You are so beautiful.”

“You are more so, especially half asleep.” His fingers brushed beneath her chin. She blushed. “I love your eyes, Caro, they turn gold in daylight, but in the candlelight they’re like amber.”

She smiled.

“You may not believe it but I saw this for us at John’s at the beginning of the summer. I saw you then and I saw a remarkable woman, a woman I wished to see laugh and dance, and now—”

“You will go to town and meet a hundred other women and forget me.”

“I will never forget you.” She’d said she did not want promises and he needed to begin to fulfil his plan and make a living for himself before he would make them. If he made promises now he would become dependent on his income from John. He wanted a place for himself in Parliament, to make his own name in the world. To have some influence for the good of society. He had nothing to give her but his body at this moment. He was a penniless, dependent, no one. He would not offer her that. He brushed a lock of hair back from her brow.

Her eyes softened and then her gaze fell to his lips in an invitation.

“Caro, you need to go back to your room, darling, the servants will be up.”

She sighed.

He laughed. “Much as I would love an encore too, you know it would be foolish. I know you do not want to be seen sneaking from my room.”

“No.” She began to rise, so he had to lift up, but he sensed sadness settle over her. He grasped her wrist. Stopping her.

Her pulse raced beneath his thumb.