The Secret Love of a Gentleman (36 page)

“Rob.” His uncle leant forward, his fingers slipping into the open palm of Rob’s right hand, as his thumb gently touched the back. Even with the lightness of his touch, Rob flinched. His hand was bruised too. “I have sent for a surgeon. You’ve been badly beaten. But your mother will never speak to me again if I do not tell her that her son has been hurt. They need to know. You will not be healed for weeks.”

“Then tell them, but they must tell no one else.”

“Rob…” Jane breathed in complaint.

“No one else.”

“Your brother—” his uncle began.

“No one,” Rob cried on a note of pain, leaning upward.

His aunt pressed her hand to his arm. “Lie back, Robert will do as you wish.”

He let go of Rob’s hand. “I will go to John’s myself and ensure the news is not shared.”

Uncle Robert was Rob’s favourite uncle. When the old Duke had been alive, before John had inherited, Rob’s family had stayed here when his parents came to town, when Rob had been a child. Rob had always felt less out of place here. Uncle Robert’s heir, Henry, was younger than Rob, and unrelated to Rob’s Pembroke cousins on his mother’s side.

As his uncle walked away, his aunt pressed a hand on his arm. “Drink some of this laudanum. It will ease the pain until the surgeon comes, and it will make it easier when he sets your hand and leg.”

Sets…

Heaviness and burning resonated from one side.

“Let me lift your head a little.” Her palm settled beneath his head.

He flinched as her fingers touched a wound.

“Sorry, can you open your lips a little more?”

His jaw was stiff and his lips felt triple the size, but he did so. Jane tipped a spoonful of the bitter medicine onto his tongue. He swallowed.

“All will be well,” Jane said quietly. “Lie back and rest. Your mama and papa will be here soon.” She sounded bewildered by his desire to be here and not at John’s. She could not understand. But then, Rob did not wish her to.

He shut his eyes. In moments the darkness and the drowsiness from the medicine claimed him.

~

“Son…”

Rob opened his eyes and moved. In one eye his vision was clearer, yet the other was still swollen shut.

“No do not try to sit up, Rob.” His father was sitting beside the bed.

“What happened?”

Rob tried to shrug, but instead he flinched with pain.

“Never mind,” his father said quietly. “Your eyes are black. You look like hell. Do you want me to get a mirror and show you?”

“How awful I look… No.” His throat was dry and his voice rasping.

“The doctor thinks they cracked four of your ribs, and he has splinted your hand and your thigh. Both are badly broken.”

And Rob had not even woken… Jane must have given him a large dose of laudanum.

“You will not be exploring your future for a while,” his father said in dry, bitter humour.

Rob lowered his head in a slight nod.

“Your mother and I will stay here with you.”

A laboured breath drew past Rob’s lips as he tried to shake his head.

His father’s hand lay on his shoulder. “Your uncle told me you do not want the others to know, yet your mother took one look at you and has gone outside to weep rather than cry before you. She will not leave your side once she has recovered from her tears.”

He did not wish his mother upset, not due to him.

The door opened. Rob looked across the room. It was her. She held a handkerchief and her eyes glistened with tears as she sniffed.

He moved to rise again, but his father pressed his shoulder, urging him to stay still.

She cried, a sob escaping her lips, as his father rose from the chair and let her sit.

“I do not know what to say to you,” she said quietly. “We should not have let you come to London alone.”

“He is one and twenty. The lad has a life to begin. You cannot keep him on a leading rein all his life, Ellen. This could have happened at any time. It is nought to do with his age.”

Rob shut his eyes.

“Your mother will worry; it is what mother’s do, and I will worry, but I will aim to ensure that neither of us smothers you.”

Rob looked at them again, his father’s hand was on his mother’s shoulder.

Rob coughed painfully. His father lifted Rob’s head as Jane had done and held his handkerchief to Rob’s lips. When he took it away there was blood upon it.

His father looked at it, then crushed it in his hand.

His mother reached for a glass, which stood on the side. “Here.” She held it to his lips, as his father lifted his head once more. The water was cool and refreshing. It washed the bitter taste from his mouth.

He shut his eyes when his father lowered his head. Caro’s image hovered in his mind’s eye, but not the Caro of recent weeks: Caro in the summer, when they had taken the woodland walk with George.

~

Over the next days, whenever Rob woke, someone was there to help him drink or eat, or with whatever else he needed.

Then, as the days progressed, his mother or his aunt would sit and read to him if they were beside him, or his father and uncle would talk, while he drifted in and out of sleep, still sore and bruised and riding on the dizzying relief of laudanum.

Yet the hours he lay sleeping were spent with Caro. In his dreams they were together as they had been in the summer, and as they had been in his rooms.

But after three weeks, he was tired of sleeping and spending the days unaware. He wished to be able to think clearly. He could not lie here forever looking back at what was not to be. When Jane opened the bottle of laudanum on the side, he gripped her wrist to stop her. “No more.”

“But you must still be in pain.”

“I shall live with it.” His face was no longer swollen, though it probably still had dark- purple and yellow stains from the bruising. He’d seen the bruises on his arms and on his sides, and legs, and so he could imagine his face.

In the hours that followed, the pain was overwhelming. Even his blood ached, as he shivered. His mother sat beside him, replacing the damp cloth on his forehead.

“The doctor said you ought to reduce the laudanum slowly,” she murmured, for about the sixth time.

He did not care, the drug made him feel half dead. He did not like it. He wished for his awareness back: at least let his mind be free of the splints, even if his body could not be free yet.

His father sat up with him through the night as Rob continued to shiver and drift into sleep, then woke with gruesome visions in his head. And then the visions were not dreams any more but bizarre illusions that he saw when dawn broke. At one point his bed became a carriage, and the horses had been spooked, and it was racing out of control. Then he saw and heard a thunderstorm in the room, and people were gathered in a ballroom whispering in a corner.

It was late, dark, when the visions ceased. It must have been two days since he’d refused the drug. He lay, still staring at the shadows the moonlight cast across the ceiling.

His mother sat in a chair beside his bed, her hand holding his, but she was asleep. He did not move, he did not wish to wake her; so he lay silent, wondering how his life had come to this. He’d walked a steady road forever, never really stumbling, and then he’d stayed with Mary and become someone he did not know. A man, he supposed. What had happened between him and Caro had changed him, and what had happened to him in that dark street had changed him. He saw things through different eyes now.

He slept when dawn broke through the curtains, without dreams, even though there was a constant hum of pain.

When he woke, the clock on the mantel across the room chimed midday and his mother brought him chicken broth to try and eat. He insisted then that she, and Aunt Jane, help him sit up. He had them place pillows behind him and tried to feed himself. He was tired of being an invalid.

His mother set the bowl on a tray on his lap and gave him the spoon. He was right-handed, but his right hand had been broken, and so with a shaky left hand he fed himself. He spilt it a couple of times, but he did not care. He wished to become independent again. His father sat with him in the afternoon, and Rob slept once more. Then his uncle came too, and the two of them talked while Rob lay with his eyes closed and let the sound fill his soul. His father’s voice was a part of home.

When he woke the next morning he felt stronger, and his mother brought buttered toast with honey, which had been his favourite as a child. It made him laugh, but laughing hurt his ribs and made him cough.

She pressed a hand over his shoulder as she stood beside him, her eyes telling him he ought to take some laudanum to relieve the pain. He did not. He was glad to be free of the drug and its numbness. He was not comfortable with hiding in oblivion. He would face this and he would survive and heal—
and have revenge.

When his father arrived with his uncle later, Rob was still sitting up, leaning back on the pillows. “Your mother says you are feeling a little better.”

Rob nodded and smiled. “Yes, a little.”

“Your friends were asking after you. They caught us as I walked out of White’s. I was not sure what to say.”

Rob had not even thought of them, of how they would take his disappearance.

“They are concerned about you,” his uncle said. “I had not realised what a sound group of young men you have as friends.”

“I told them you are well and that you have been staying out of town, fulfilling some duty for me.”

“Thank you.”

“They asked if it was to do with the availability of a seat?” His father’s eyebrows lifted.

Rob did not comment.

“Mary keeps asking after you in her letters—”

“Do not tell her.” He gripped his father’s arm.

“I have not, Robbie, but she is worried by your silence too.”

The thought of Mary brought forth thoughts of Caro. Rob shut his eyes and shut his father and his uncle out, along with the pain and the past.

“I only wish Henry would choose his friends as wisely as you have, Robbie.” Robert was merely being kind.

A chair was moved closer to the bed and someone sat down. Rob opened his eyes to see his father sitting there. His uncle crossed the room and then leant against the windowsill.

Rob’s father held Rob’s left hand. “We have told the family that your mother and I are here to help Jane. They think she is unwell. We have told the children she is too unwell to cope with a houseful and your cousins are staying at John’s. So you may see what a web of lies you have had us spinning.”

“I’m sorry.” His father’s grip loosened and Rob pulled his hand free. “What of Drew and Mary?”
What of Caro?
He’d been dying to ask, but he’d not dared. He did not even know how to speak of her without feeling cut.

“Mary and Drew have gone home. They left the day we came here and John has not queried our tale, he is too busy.”

“I’m sorry I have taken you from the others.”

“Helen and Jenny are there to take care of the younger ones and we have called in on them frequently, twice a day, so they do not feel deserted and of course there is excitement over having their cousins there.”

“But, nevertheless, I’m sorry. I would not have taken all of your attention by choice.”

“Rob, you are entitled to it. You are my son too. It does not matter that you are grown. We will always be here when you need us.”

Rob shook his head a little. The younger ones needed them more. “Did Caro go with Mary and Drew?”
How is she?

His father’s eyebrows lifted as he nodded. “Anyway, I did not come to speak of your brothers and sisters. I came to speak of you. Your uncle and I have a proposal for you. Robert agrees with me about that property. It is the perfect option for you.”

Rob closed his eyes. Their conversation at Windsor seemed a lifetime ago. He’d been a different man then.

“Hear us out,” his father said.

“Do not think that I am offering you charity,” his uncle stated. “I am not. If you take the tenancy you will have to pay the rent from the income you earn from the farms, and keep the property in good condition. Think of it as a business venture. If you manage the estate well, you will be able to make a profit and give your brother back his allowance. I know that will interest you.”

It did. But. Rob opened his eyes and looked at his uncle. He had denied their help a hundred times, and yet for the past three weeks he’d been completely reliant upon his uncle’s hospitality and kindness. He should be honest and talk of his true plans. If they tried to interfere he would simply ask them not to.

Uncle Robert smiled.

“Although I cannot for the life of me understand why you are so bloody stubborn on that point,” Rob’s father said. “I cannot see why you must fight so hard to be equal to your brother and your cousins.”

“Because I am not equal,” Rob breathed in an impatient voice, looking at his father.
I am inferior
. But even though inferiority may have been the beginning it was not the end; it had sparked his idealistic notions, which he hoped one day would make a difference to many people in need of a way to change their lives for the better.

“No. You are a hundred times better than your cousins,” his uncle stated. “I wish Henry had a half of your self-possession and conscience. I have faith one day he will grow out of this wild stage, but you, Edward has never needed to hope because you are a man with morals.” His uncle laughed then, a deep sound from low in his throat. “Like your father.”

Rob’s father laughed too. “Well, equally, if Henry is like you, you shall be waiting until he is thirty for the moment that he learns the error of his ways.”

Uncle Robert smiled at Rob’s father. “I cannot see why you do not understand your son. I remember you bristling when I returned from the continent, so damned restless because I’d taken the responsibility away from you.” He looked at Rob. “He was not that much older than you, four and twenty and seething at the prospect of being left adrift with no responsibility unless he answered to me. So, you are not so different from your father. He ought to understand. Fortunately for me, he met your mother then and that was that. He had his own property and the arrival of your sister to occupy his mind.”