The Secret Love of a Gentleman (55 page)

“I had not expected the furniture to look this fine. I think your housekeeper has done a remarkable job of freeing everything from its covers and sprucing it up.”

A knock struck the door. Another maid stood there with a tray bearing lemonade and biscuits. Jenny… Caro must learn their names.

“Where do you wish to sit?”

“In that chair before the window. Oh, look at the view! You can see some sort of ruins beyond the trees.”

“It was an ancient abbey. The ruins are right on the border of my uncle’s land.”

“This is so perfect, Rob, I had not imagined it would be beautiful. We will be so happy here.”

“Yes, we will.”

He sat next to her and looked out through the window, as the maid poured their lemonade. Then she left them, closing the door. He was so strikingly handsome. Her husband would be her favourite view.

Yes, she would be happy.

Once he’d finished her lemonade and eaten three of the mouth-watering biscuits, she said quietly. “Tell the servants we will have a late supper and then let us lie down for a while.” She was still hungry. She was craving. They had merely kissed ever since their wedding night and nothing more, because they’d been wary of the child, but she had not bled for almost a week.

He crossed the room and did not ring the bell but went downstairs.

Caro stood and looked from the window down onto flowerbeds full of shooting bulbs. It was spring, and her life felt like it had a new spring season too.

She walked to the edge of the bed and sat down, then released the first few buttons of her bodice.

Rob came back into the room and shut the door. “I have said we will eat at nine, but informally here. What are you doing? You should not be upright.”

“I have only walked a few paces.”

“It was only a few paces along the aisle.”

“Will you help me undress, so I might be more comfortable?”

“Yes.” He gave her a twisted smile.

“And will you lie down with me?”

“If you wish me to.”

“I wish it.” Her voice was breathless as his fingers released more of the buttons over her breasts, then slipped her bodice from her shoulders.

She lifted her bottom, and let him slide her dress down her body. Then she let her shoes fall off her feet before lying down.

He slipped off his shoes and removed his morning coat, then lay down beside her, one elbow bent as his palm supported his head.

He smiled at her as his hand ran over the rapidly increasing bulge of her stomach to caress Sarah. “Your figure is beautiful like this.” He looked down as Caro felt a jolt. “She kicked.”

“Her movements are becoming stronger.”

Rob leant and kissed Caro. Then he rolled backwards onto the bed with a sigh, his palm resting behind his head as his other hand settled on his flat stomach.

She turned to her side and looked at him in profile. The determination, strength and independence he so prized were evident in his features, and yet when he looked at her, he was all gentleness and warmth. Her fingertips ran down his chest to his stomach, over his waistcoat and the front of his trousers, then back up. She ran them down and up again.

He smiled at her. The sunlight poured into the room, illuminating him, like some Greek god. Her fingertips played over the material of his trousers, touching him, as he stirred within.

She held his gaze. He said nothing. Nor did she.

Her fingers traced the path of his arousal as it grew, up and down, just gently running over the cloth which covered it. He must ache for this. He’d said he could wait, and yet it was only natural for a man to ache for a physical bond.

She ached too. The need was a pain in her palms and a dense desire between her legs.

Her fingers lifted and began freeing the buttons of his waistcoat.

His hand gripped hers, stopping her, “Caro… think of—”

“That is not what I intend. We need not have intercourse. Trust me and relax.”

He shook his head, but let her hand go. She undid the buttons of his waistcoat then urged him to take it off.

When he lay back down she pulled his shirt free from his trousers and undid the buttons of his flap as they kissed.

His desire aimed like a spear; desperate to be known again. They had not touched each other like this since the end of September.

His hand gripped in her hair as his tongue pressed into her mouth with a growing hunger.

Of course he ached for this. She ran the heel of her palm down his length, pressing against the firm skin. She loved him.

He rolled over her a little so she lay on her back, and then one of his hands gripped her breast over the cloth of her chemise. It was fuller, already preparing to feed their child and it hurt as he gripped it, but in a delicious way.

Her fingers caressed him, in an upward motion, then slid down. She repeated the movement continuously, while his tongue pressed in and withdrew from her mouth and his fingers kneaded her breast.

His breathing became faster, and the motion of her hand was not hers but his as his hips lifted, then pressed down into the mattress, so he ran himself through her fingers.

When he broke, a cry of triumph and gratitude escaped his throat as he spilled onto his shirt.

She smiled as he sighed out a, “thank you,” into the air.

“You may return the favour…” she whispered in a husky voice.

“How?”

“With your mouth, I do not think it would harm with your mouth.”

He gave her a devil’s grin that was unlike Rob. “Your wish is my command, Mrs Marlow.”

He rolled over, moved between her legs and stripped off her underwear. Then his hands gripped her thighs and pulled them wider.

He kissed her rounded stomach first, then kissed her inner thighs one at a time. Then his thumbs ran over her, one after the other, in a mesmerising rhythm, without trying to invade her. She would not wish him to take the risk and he did not.

She breathed hard, her arms reaching above her head and holding the pillow as his thumb began circling over her most sensitive spot, spreading moisture there. He kissed her lower lips, then his tongue tasted.

Her arms fell and she gripped his hair as his thumb continued to tease, and his tongue played the same game it had done in her mouth, simulating the action of sex, slipping a little within her and then slipping out.

Oh, she’d ached for this too, longed for it and she had not even known how much.

Her breaths released in short, little panting sounds, and her hips lifted to the rhythm of his tongue. She imagined the feel of him within her and longed for it, even though it could not happen, and yet even the thought made her break and shatter on his tongue. The release swept through her body and into her limbs as she cried out her relief just as he’d done.

He rose, wiped his mouth on his arm and came to lie beside her. “The next time we do this, I shall have to pleasure you first, because I wish for it again now.”

She laughed, “You may have it again and use my mouth if you wish, if I move down the bed so I need not bend.”

“Lord, Caro, how can a man refuse such an offer…?” Heat burned in his eyes.

“Kneel next to me, then.”

A groan slipped from his lips as he rose. His trousers were still hanging open and a new erection pointed at her. She gripped him in her hand and let her tongue trace his tip. It was salty with the taste of his earlier release. “Lean over me, and then you might press into my mouth.”

He gave her a look that said she was mad, desirable and beautiful.

One hand pressed into the mattress, holding his weight, while the other stroked through her hair as he pushed into her mouth, without trying to go too deep and choke her. She had never done it this way with Albert. It was new and just for Rob.

Each time Rob ran through her hand, sliding into her mouth, he sighed out a sound on his breath, as his fingers curled, combed and clasped in her hair, as though he felt guilt and wished to hold on to a non-sexual contact. Yet he could not have denied he was enjoying it because his body was engorged, hot and heavy in her hand, and pressing more and more firmly into her mouth.

When he reached his climax, she felt it shudder through every muscle of his body, and her free hand lifted to trace the back of his buttock to his thigh.

She swallowed as he rolled away.

“Caro,” he said into her mouth. It was a statement of love, as he leant over her. He spoke with a depth she had never heard in Albert’s voice, even when they had first married.

Yes, you do have me Mrs Marlow, and you must endure me at your side forever more, till death us do part… and that will likely be a very long time…
That was what he’d said the day they had married, and the more time she spent alone with him the more she believed it was true.

Chapter 51

Rob was sitting with Caro in the drawing room. They were eating breakfast on their laps, so Caro could remain on the sofa, with her legs up.

He was enjoying it—the day—his marriage—and Caro’s company. Yet he was eager to get out. That was why they had risen early. He was going to ride out and meet those who worked on the farms he now managed. His heart raced at the idea of responsibility and having something of meaning to do.

A noise breached the windows, an arrival, a lone horse-rider.

Rob stood as footsteps crunched on the gravel outside.

“I wish to speak with my nephew, Mr Marlow.” The words rang from the hall.

“Lord Barrington.”

“Uncle! In here!” Rob shouted.

Caro moved to rise, but Rob pressed a hand on her shoulder. “You need not stand.”

“He sounded agitated.”

“He will still not expect you to stand.”

The door creaked as it swung back heavily and his uncle walked in with a purposeful stride. “I am sure you will not have seen the paper.” He did not say, “welcome”, or, “how was your journey?” but strode across the room, withdrawing a folded paper from within his riding coat. “So I have brought you a copy.”

He held it out to Rob.

Rob took it.

“Would you like coffee?” Caro offered, trying to play hostess, even though she could not rise.

“Thank you, Caroline, but I shall pour it, you need not move.” He poured as Rob opened the paper. “Look at the obituaries.”

Rob sat down and scanned the open pages.

“You have done it now,” his uncle stated, as he sat down facing them both. “But you are rid of him. Yet I do not know if you, with your high morals, can live with shooting a man and being the cause—“

“He is dead.” Shock washed through Rob, draining all the blood from his head.

“He is indeed.”

“Who is? Who did you shoot?” Caro sat more upright.

“She does not know?”

“She knows now,” Caro answered looking at Rob, distress bright in her eyes, when she was not supposed to worry.

“I’m sorry.”

“For what are you sorry?” she pleaded.

“He is gone.” Rob still held the paper. He could not believe it.

“Kilbride, your former husband. Rob shot him in the leg, replicating the wound he’d caused Rob in a duel Rob called on the morning of your wedding. Rob did not intend to kill him and yet Kilbride is dead.”

“How?” Rob looked at his uncle, shock swelling through his veins. He’d killed a man.

“I have heard from your father that it was blood poisoning. The wound became infected.”

“My God.”

“Will you cope with this?” his uncle asked. “You are the last man on earth I would have thought might kill a man.”

“I did not seek to.”

“But you will feel the burden of it regardless. I know because I killed a man once. A man who deserved to die too, and that was in self-defence, but I have never forgotten it.”

Rob looked at his uncle. “I do not regret what I did. I have morals, but I will not let a man threaten and hurt us. His fate is not my fault, it was fate that took him—”

“Then fate is just,” Caro whispered. “But a duel, Rob… and what wound did he cause you?”

“It was nothing.”

“Nothing… You have still not told your wife. One thing I learned early is you should be honest within a marriage. It looks as though I must leave you now I have set all your secrets in the air.” Uncle Robert drank down the rest of his coffee, then stood. “Harry said the only person who knows it was you who shot him was a groom. Apparently the authorities are asking questions, but the groom has not yet told anyone how Kilbride was shot. Let us hope he holds his silence and you get away with this.”

“The groom will not speak,” Caro answered. “Albert was violent to his lower servants too. They hated him.”

Rob stood. He did not want Caro concerned by this. “Thank you for the news. But I am not sure I wished to know it, and thank you also for sharing it with Caro when I was protecting her from this.”

Amusement twisted his uncle’s lips. “Well, if you have need of any more common-sense spoken to you, you will know where to come.”

“Good day, then, to you and your common-sense.”

Uncle Robert laughed. “Let me know if you need any advice on your farms.”

“I am riding out to look at the farms in a while. I intended to ride over to you afterwards and discuss what I learn.”

“Then I will be at home and await your visit.” Uncle Robert looked at Caro and bowed his head, “Good day.”

“Good day.”

He turned away and walked from the room.

Rob sat. Pushed down by thought. He’d killed Kilbride, not physically, but… if he had not shot him…

“And now you must explain before I allow you to go anywhere. What did you do? What wound did Albert cause you?”

“I did not call him to a duel on my own account. It was for you and Sarah. He did not simply call at John’s once, he was there for our ball too, and after he hurt you the day before the wedding he came to White’s and threatened me. I know what he is capable of. I merely meant to teach him a lesson. An eye for an eye.”

“What eye did he lance in you?”

Rob took a breath. He did not wish to tell her this.

“Rob…”

“Very well,” he leant his elbows onto his knees and looked at her. “I did not have a fall from my curricle.”