The Secret Love of a Gentleman (41 page)

A footman came to the hall.

“Where is Lord Framlington, Pip?”

“In the garden, my lady.”

“Oh, then would you fetch him? Tell him my brother Rob is here.”

The footman disappeared as Rob gripped the banister with his good hand and used his stick to support his other leg, then began climbing the stairs, one slow step at a time.

“We could have taken tea in the library,” Mary apologised.

“No, I must not avoid activity. If I am to get back to normal, I must keep my leg moving.”

He wished to ask about Caro, and yet he did not want to appear over-eager. But Mary and Drew had travelled their journey with them in the summer, in a way she would expect him to ask. “Where is Caro? Is she in the nursery with George and Iris?”

“Oh, no, you do not know. Of course you do not. Have you even noticed that I have stopped writing because you never reply?”

He shook his head, focusing on the steps, as she walked beside him.

“Well, I did stop writing, and so you cannot know. Caro has left us. She has moved into the cottage Andrew originally bought for her. Yet she came back to spend Christmas with us, and she seems very happy there.”

She had been happy. Not missing him, then. Nor regretting her choice.

“Sit down,” Mary said, when they reached the drawing room. “I will ring for tea and biscuits. I am sure you must need something to warm you, and I have not even offered to take your coat.”

He let her slip it off, then sat in a chair near the fire. The cold had made his leg ache more. “Where is Caro’s cottage?” he asked, as Mary pulled the rope to ring for a maid.

“Maidstone. It is about half an hour from here. Oh, George is going to be so happy to see you, and you will not believe it but Iris can already stand, she grips Andrew’s fingers and bobs up and down, bending her knees. But George keeps trying to do it with her, and then forgets she cannot stand unless he lets her hold on.”

Rob laughed. Yes, he could image George’s attention being drawn by something else and him simply letting go.

Rob heard footsteps in the hall. Drew. He would have stood if it were not for his leg.

“Look what the winter breeze has blown in,” Mary stated. “The little brother I had thought lost.”

Drew smiled broadly as he walked across the room. “Rob.” He held out a hand for Rob to take, and when Rob accepted it, Drew held Rob’s hand with both of his. “I am glad to see you.” Rob winced as Drew jarred his right hand.

“You have a stick…” Drew stated with a frown, when he let go.

“I have explained it to Mary. She will tell you.”

A maid arrived. “Tea, please, and cake and biscuits.”

Drew went up to the nursery to fetch George then, while Mary filled Rob in on all the news she had not included in her letters, including the fact that Phillip had been calling on Caro.

Rob’s heart tumbled through his chest and fell to the soles of his boots, and the breath froze within his lungs. Caro had forgotten him.

Foolishness grasped his shoulders and shook him. He’d travelled here to repeat his offer while she’d been allowing Phillip to court her. Rob was no longer hungry, no matter how sweet the smell of the fresh biscuits.

When George arrived he squealed at the sight of his favourite uncle and ran across the room, then set his hand on Rob’s broken leg and climbed up. Rob gritted his teeth, preventing himself from shouting as he moved George to his good leg. “Be careful, George.”

Drew and Mary looked at him with concern. He’d not left enough time to come here. He could not hide the severity of his wounds. He had not accounted for the children. George begged for Rob to play tumble.

“I cannot, George, I’m sorry. See I have a stick to walk with for a while.” He held it up. Of course George did not understand.

“Would you go up to the nursery and fetch some of Master George’s wooden animals so he might play with those with his uncle,” Mary asked the maid who had brought the tea. She bobbed a curtsey and left them.

“Here.” Mary stood and crossed the room to pick up two biscuits. She gave one to George to avoid a tantrum. Then she gave one to Iris, who was sitting on Drew’s lap.

“You must see her stand,” Drew stated, putting her down on her feet. With one hand gripping his, the other holding the biscuit, she balanced on unsteady legs.

“That is very clever, Iris.” Rob smiled, despite the turmoil inside him. How could he not love his niece and nephew?

He squeezed George. “Perhaps next time I see you I will be well enough to tumble you.”

George nodded as he took another bite from his biscuit.

In the summer Rob had come mostly to see the children. Perhaps he’d lost Caro, but he could not cut the children. He would come back sometime, in the future, when his emotional wounds were healed, but not soon. Now he wished to go to Yorkshire, to the property he’d rented, and get as far away from Caro and the fool she’d made of him as he could.

He played with George, for a while, and told Drew about the property he’d rented. He hoped Caro would hear of it. He wished her to believe he had not been pining for her. Then he said his goodbyes as soon as he was able.

“You will come back soon, won’t you, and write?” Mary said when he said his last goodbye in the downstairs hall.

He nodded, knowing he would not come back soon. He would not feel comfortable here, in case Caro called. “I will be up in Yorkshire for a while, getting the estate set up.”

She nodded, her eyes saying she was truly concerned for him. He brushed her cheek. “I shall be fine.”

She nodded again, tears glinting in her eyes. “I wish you had written and told me you’d been hurt,” she whispered. “At least then I might have understood your lack of contact.”

“I’m sorry if I scared you, but Papa told you I was well.”

“Yes, but now I know he was lying.”

Rob smiled gently, then turned to shake Drew’s hand. Iris was on his arm and George had wrapped his arms about his papa’s leg, bemoaning the fact his uncle must go.

“Caro would have wished to see you.”

Rob took a breath, but did not know what to say. If she was letting Phillip court her, then any desire she would have to see him could not be very strong, and he he’d no desire to see her if he’d already become nothing to her.

Mary hugged him one last time before he went back out into the cold.

He climbed up into his curricle, then slotted his stick beneath the seat and pretended it did not exist.

~

When Rob reached John’s, he left his curricle to John’s grooms and told Finch not to tell anyone he’d returned. Then he hobbled upstairs to his room.

It was dusk outside, and gloomy. Without candles the grey light suited his mood, so he left the room unlit.

He struggled to strip off his outer coat, and then his morning coat too, tossing both garments onto an empty chair. Then he sat in another, his elbows resting on his knees and his head bowed, pressing his hands to his face. He’d never felt so despondent in his life. If this was what loving someone did to a person, he wanted no part of it. He wished to forget.

God
, he wanted to weep, but it was not really in him to do so. He’d never been the sort for tears; he was the sort for solutions. Tears were tools his brothers and sisters had used to gain his parents’ attention, never him. Yet there was no solution to this. Nothing to be done. But live on.

He sat in the chair as the room became darker, dusk turning to night.

A light tap struck the door.

“Rob, I heard you return, it is nearly dinner. Will you come down or would you like to talk up here?”

Damn
. His father. “I do not really feel like talking, Papa, or eating. I am tired.” Rob’s voice was gravelly.

“May I come in, son, just for a moment?”

“If you wish.” Rob straightened in his seat, as the door opened. He did not rise. His leg was too painful.

“Shall I light a candle?”

“No.”

“Fancy getting foxed?” his father walked about the chair so Rob could see him and lifted the decanter he gripped by the neck in one hand, while his other held up two glasses.

Rob’s lips lifted in a weary smile. “Surely, if it is dinner time, you ought to be preparing.”

“I think your mother will excuse me, in the circumstances.”

His father set one glass down on the arm of Rob’s chair and filled it. Then he poured another for himself and sat down beside Rob.

“I got foxed the night your mother refused me. Very drunk,” he laughed at the memory. “Then she arrived in the early hours of the morning, when I was four sheets to the wind. She had changed her mind. She wanted me to run off with her and fetch John. I had not known I could sober up so fast.”

Rob smiled at him and sipped the liquor. It slid down his throat as heat, and culled some of the pain in his leg, but not the pain in his heart. “Is this supposed to do the trick, then? Is this supposed to conjure her up? It will not work for me. It is really over. Yet I suppose it is better. This way I can get on with my life as I intended, without distraction.”

His father’s dark eyebrows lifted. He was cast only in black and white as they sat in the moonlight. “I take it she refused you again?”

“I did not even ask. She is walking out with Phillip. Mary said Phillip has been calling on her and she has left Drew’s home and now lives alone, in a cottage in Maidstone. I have heard what I needed to hear. Her answer was truly no, and I am sitting here allowing my heart to break in peace. I did not wish to annoy you with it.”

His father smiled and leaned forward to grip Rob’s forearm for a moment. When his hand slid away he said, “What will you do?”

“What I have planned. But thank God Uncle Robert’s property is in Yorkshire; I wish to be as far away from here as it is possible to be. I wish to never see her again. I am only glad she was not there today. I have made myself her dupe.”

His father sighed, then sipped from his glass.

“I shall give myself a month to recover fully, and then I will leave for Yorkshire.” Rob took a mouthful of the brandy.

“Time,” his father stated.

“Time…” Rob questioned.

“Time heals everything. This feeling will pass.”

His father could be so bloody prophetic it was annoying. “Well, I wish it would hurry and go. I do not understand the poets who call love sublime, it is not sublime—it is agony.”

“Sometimes it is sublime. Sometimes it is agony. That is true, even when the love is for a child there can be periods of agony, such as when you find your son severely beaten.”

Rob had grown a hundred times closer to his father in the last months. Yet it was probably the first time in his life he’d spent so much time alone with him.

“Now finish your drink and I will pour you another; until time heals the pain, let the numbness of the brandy absorb it.”

They spoke of estate management as they drank, of the things Rob ought to be careful of, and look forward to. Then his father began sharing stories of his failures, and of funny anecdotes he’d heard told by his labourers.

It was two in the morning when his father left.

Rob fell onto the bed without undressing and let the intoxication claim him. He’d felt numb the night he’d walked out of the Newcombs’ ball, because losing Caro had felt like losing the middle of himself. It was that which had probably made him deaf to his attackers. He preferred the numbness of alcohol. Perhaps he would become a drinker after all.

Chapter 37

“Lady Caroline, Lord Framlington is here.”

Caro stood. “Tell him to come in. I did not hear him knock. Drew!” she shouted into the hall. His footsteps struck the stone tiles in the short hallway.

“Caro,” he stepped into the room, slightly hunched to avoid the low ceiling.

She went over to him as the housekeeper disappeared and enveloped him, her arms about his neck, then kissed his cheek. “I am pleased to see you.”

“I was here on business, so I thought I would call.”

“Well, you are very welcome. Sit down. You may tell me all the gossip. How is George? How is Iris? Beth, would you bring us tea? Will you stay for tea, Drew? I believe Beth has recently made some ginger cake, certainly the whole cottage smells of it.”

He smiled as he took a seat and removed his gloves. He must have left his hat in the hall, as he could not have entered wearing it. “George is his normal rascal self, and Iris is getting stronger on her legs. I am convinced she will walk when she will be barely one.”

“Well, she is your child. She must have acquired your determination.”

“Perhaps. You look well, Caro? Are you still happy here?”

“I am content, very content.”

“Then I am happy. Has Phillip called recently?”

“He has, he called on Sunday. He has called every Sunday since I have lived here.”

Drew laughed.

“It is nothing to laugh over, and do not give me that expectant look. I have told him not to come back. He believed by calling he would encourage me to think of him romantically. I had told him all I was able to offer was friendship.”

“Would a romantic attachment to Phillip be of any harm?”

She had been glad to see Drew, but his words suddenly pierced her, it seemed like betrayal to even think it. “Of course…” she answered breathlessly. “And now I have made it clear to him that it will never be so.”

Drew swallowed before he replied, “I did not simply call. There is something I wish to tell you. We had a visitor…”

“Who?”

“Rob.”

“Oh.” She nearly stood, and her hands clasped together. Rob had been here, a few miles away. “Was he well? Why has he not written?”

“He had an accident in his curricle, he—”

“He was hurt…”

“Yes, his leg seemed badly injured, though he did not tell us what was wrong, but when George wished to play with him, Rob was not capable of it.”

“Oh.” Her hands held each other more tightly. She did not wish to think of Rob being ill.

“Yet he seems to be recovering from whatever occurred.”

“Tea, ma’am.” Beth carried in a tray and set it on the table near Caro.

Caro looked up. “Would you pour?” Her hands would shake too much if she tried to.