The Secret Love of a Gentleman (57 page)

“Except that working yourself up will change nothing. Come and sit down and tell me what you have been up to with the farms. I have heard good things. Are you turning a profit?”

“A slight profit, but I hope the autumn will bring much more.”

“Sit and speak to me.”

Rob did, but all the while guilt stabbed into his stomach. He should be with Caro, thinking of her, praying for her.

Perhaps he ought to go to the church, but that would feel too much as though he did not believe she would live. He had to believe.

It was two hours later when the housekeeper rushed into the room, her hair beneath her mob cap damp with sweat, and although she must have washed her forearms Rob could still the marks of blood. “You may come.”

Rob’s heart stopped.

“The child is here… and Caro, Mrs Marlow…” Rob was on his feet, though he’d not known he stood and was already walking.

“Weak, Mr Marlow.”

But alive. He’d never felt so hollow inside.

He ran up the stairs and along the hall to their room. The sheets had been changed, and Caro was in bed, and the bleeding must have stopped at least because there was no scarlet stain between her legs.

The emptiness inside him filled up with love. Caro wore a clean nightdress too, and it hung open as the small child sucked from her breast.

Caro looked up, her skin was grey beneath her eyes, and she looked like his phantom again, so pale. “Rob,” she said weakly. “She is here. You were right. It is a daughter. Sarah.”

Aunt Jane clasped his arm before he could move. “The doctor wishes to speak with you.”

He crossed the room in a trance, and then pressed a kiss on Caro’s crown, before pressing another on his child’s. Sarah was tiny, smaller than any child he’d known in his family. A vulnerable, fragile little thing, like Caro. “I will return in a moment. I need to settle things with the doctor.”

She nodded.

The doctor lifted a hand so Rob might walk from the room before him and then Rob led the man downstairs, but not into the drawing room where his uncle waited—into the dining room, where they might speak privately. This was not about payment.

“How is she?” Rob asked in a low voice.

“She has lost a lot of blood. She should drink pigs’ blood for a month, and eat liver daily. I would also seek a wet nurse. It will slow her recovery if she is feeding the child herself. I am able to recommend a woman who has a child a year old and would be willing. But there is another risk. Sometimes mothers who experience bleeding may die if the internal wound becomes infected. You should call me if there is any sign that she is developing a fever.

Rob nodded, although he knew there would be little the man could do. The wound was within her. There was no cleaning it. He thought of Kilbride, of Caro’s judgement that fate had been just. Fate would not be just if it took Caro.

Rob returned to sit with her, and she and the child rested against his chest and slept. He let the tears run quietly. He had a wife and a child, and they were already in danger.

When it came to morning, Caro fed the child and drank the blood he gave to her in a glass, with a face that told him he was mad and it tasted horrible, but she ate her fried liver too. Then he told her the doctor had found a woman from the village who would feed Sarah, to help Caro become well.

Caro expressed her hatred of the idea, but accepted it, and he did not tell her why every half an hour he lay his palm over her forehead as he leant and kissed her crown.

After luncheon, when both Caro and Sarah slept, Rob went down to the drawing room and opened the secretaire. He picked up a quill as the tears flowed, and took a sheet of paper from the drawer.

Papa, I need you here. Caro has had the child, we have a daughter, Sarah, as we hoped, and yet she is early and very small, and Caro bled profusely during the birth. She is very weak and pale.

Rob had held so much of himself back from his family over the years, out of the belief that the others might fight for attention, but he would not because he was stronger and did not need it. He’d always convinced himself he ought not need help. Caro had taught him how to accept help in the same moments that he’d helped her.

I am afraid.

The doctor has said Caro might still not survive.

I feel helpless and lost. I am doing all the doctor has said and yet I am terrified it will not be enough. Will you come? Please. I am not sure you will be able to do any more than I and yet you and Mama always seem to have an answer.

And even if they did not have an answer…

I would like you here. I need your help.

He signed the letter,
Rob,
and within an hour it was folded and sealed and in the hands of a groom, who was to take it to catch the mail coach.

When he returned to the bedchamber Caro was sleeping, but Sarah was lying in her crib silently studying the world with eyes that were a very dark grey. He hoped desperately they would become the colour of gold.

Epilogue

“George! Hold out your hands and cup them. Like this.” Mary called out to her son. George looked at her with a face that said,
do not tell me, I know how to catch
.

Caro smiled at her nephew’s frustration. The men, Kate, Mary and her sisters Helen and Jenny were playing a ball game with all the children who were able to walk. They threw a small ball at someone and if they dropped it they were out, and if they caught it they had to race around the outside of the ring and whoever returned to their place first was the winner and the other person was out.

Poor George had dropped the ball twice, only to be allowed to stay in the game as those times suddenly became practices. But his uncle Harry was very carefully aiming for George’s cupped palms.

He hit them, and George’s hands closed about the ball.

”Run!” everybody yelled.

Caro laughed as Harry set off at a charge, and George’s short little legs raced, his feet pounding across the ground.

Sarah woke and gripped the sleeve of Caro’s dress. Caro held her more upright so she could watch the game. She loved to watch everything—she was an inquisitive little girl. Caro wondered if she would have George’s energy.

Harry raced up to him, but instead of running on he picked George up by the waist and ran with him.

“Uncle BaBa!” George cried in complaint. “Put me down, Uncle BaBa!”

Harry didn’t obey, he ran on and set George in his spot. George squealed.

“We are playing together now, George.”

Harry had been nicknamed the black sheep of Rob’s family and yet, at heart, he was as good as his older brother.

“’ook.” Iris called and began crawling off the blanket. Look was Iris’s newly discovered word, and crawling her newly mastered activity. Caro looked to one of the nursemaids to pick Iris up and bring her back.

Caro was still supposed to take things gently, and she’d been told strictly not to lift. Yet she was very tired of playing the invalid. The game looked so much fun.

Rob threw the ball to Mary. She caught it, hitched up her skirt and petticoats then raced off about the circle as he did too. She won, but Caro had a feeling he’d let her win.

He gripped his side as if he had stitch, then lifted his hand in defeat.

“They played endless games such as this as children.” Rob’s mother stated. She was sitting beside Caro.

Caro smiled at her. She could imagine it.

Mary threw the ball at Drew. He caught it and began running before she had even had a chance to react, “Papa! Mama!” George shouted, unsure who to cheer for. His father won and Mary dropped out of the game. Drew winked at Mary as Rob dropped down on the blanket beside Caro, breathing heavily.

“Good day, Mr Marlow…” she whispered in a teasing voice, “You can fool them all but you cannot fool me… pretending you had a stitch so it did not look too bad losing to Mary… Have you lost all your morals now?”

He looked at her and smiled. “I did not lie to explain my losing to Mary, I used the ruse to run slowly so I could drop out and sit with you and Sarah.”

He leant forward and lifted Sarah from her arms. “Hello, my precious angel. Have you been looking after your mama?”

“She has done a very thorough job of it too. It seems as though she sees everything,” his father stated behind them. Caro looked back and smiled.

Rob’s parents had come the week after Sarah had been born. They had stayed at Rob’s uncle’s, but they had spent most days with Caro and Rob. His father had helped Rob learn how to manage the farms, and his mother had helped Caro with Sarah when Caro had still been bed- ridden in the beginning. This was the last few days they were staying. They were going back to their own home once the family party had come to its conclusion.

Sarah whimpered a little. She was not hungry; she had only recently been fed. She simply wished to be active. “Here, may I hold her?” Rob’s father held out his hands. “We are only here for a few more days, I must get my fill of hugs.”

Rob laughed, but handed her up, and then his father walked away with her, bouncing her a little as he walked, holding her so she might see the game still, as she looked over his arm. Rob’s mother rose and followed.

Rob’s hand took Caro’s, and they sat together watching the game. His fingers wove between hers.

“May we do this every summer, do you think? Invite everyone here.”

“It would be nice.”

Mary and Drew and even John and Kate had come up for their parents’ last week here. They were staying with Caro and Rob, and Rob kept teasing his ducal brother that he was slumming it in their lowly mansion. John did not seem to mind, and the evenings they’d spent together as a six had been very pleasant, and Rob had spent hours sharing his political views with John and Drew to win their support.

Yet when his parents came over, as they’d done today, with Rob’s brothers and sisters, then it became a wonderful family event, but not as overwhelming as the large affairs with the extended family, which she’d watched from her glass gaol cell at Pembroke Place

Rob lifted her hand and kissed the back of it. “I love you.”

“I love you also.”

He looked at her, “Harry has brought us up a gift.” The words were spoken in a low, husky voice.

“Has he…”

A gift from Harry might be anything.

“I will show you later.”

~

Rob looked at Harry’s gift as Caro slipped beneath the covers. He was not sure about this. It did not look particularly comfortable, and yet if it protected Caro then it was worth any discomfort to him.

He slipped beneath the covers beside her, naked. Then held up the limp tube of membrane to show Caro. “This is our gift from my brother.”

Caro looked at it, a frown forming a crease between her eyebrows. “What is it?”

“It is a thing that will protect you from falling with child again.”

Her eyes said it all. They were dark amber in the candlelight, and they said to him that she did not wish to avoid children.

“Caro, I did not speak to you of it through your term because I did not wish to make you afraid any more than you already were, but I was told by the doctor in London that throughout your pregnancy you were at risk of bleeding to death, or picking up an infection and dying from that outcome—“

“Rob.” Her eyes said that she was about to protest. He covered her lips with his fingers.

“Listen. The doctor has told me that unless I had put you in that ice bath you would have died that day, and there has still been a risk in the three months since because there may still have been infection, or a haemorrhage. But now you are safe and I will not risk losing you.” The dryness in his throat, even at the thought, made his voice crack a little.

“The doctor in London told me that what occurred maybe due to your history, the number of times you have carried or perhaps Kilbride’s brutality. I would not risk it happening again. We have Sarah. Sarah will be enough.”

A tear crept from one corner of Caro’s eye and ran onto her cheek.

He wiped it away with his thumb. “I was more scared the day you gave birth than I was the day I faced Kilbride as he aimed a pistol at my head, and I had been terrified for you for months. I cannot endure that again.”

“And you took it all upon yourself.” Caro’s cool palm embraced his cheek, then slid up and ran over his hair. “I wish you were not quite as independent as you are. You need not have carried that alone.”

“I would not have burdened you with it. It would have scared you when you were only thinking of Sarah and that was right, but that is why my parents came after the birth, because I was too tired to continue worrying by myself.”

“I would love to have a large family, like your parents and your aunts and uncles, but I know it will not be so for me—”

“Us, Caro, this is our family.”

“It will not be so for us.” Her hand touched his cheek again and her thumb brushed his lower lip. “But I never expected to carry even one child full-term and yet I have Sarah. If you wish to take precautions then I will be content with Sarah. I will protect myself for you, and for Sarah. I wish us to grow old together and see her grow up more than I would fight for another child who may never come.”

“Thank you. I feared you would disagree.” Rob leant and pressed a kiss on her lips. Then said over them, “The doctor has said to me we may safely have intercourse again…”

“And so Harry’s present.”

“And so Harry’s present,” Robert repeated with a low laugh over her lips. He need not fear losing her now, and he would not think of it again.

His hand slid to her hip and began drawing up her nightgown. “May we remove this barrier?”

She sat up and laughed.

She was allowed to move more now too. He was looking forward to walking together. Last summer they’d walked together playing with George. In future summers it would be Sarah between them holding their hands.

He pulled the cloth over Caro’s head and tossed it to the floor.

“We have had months of foreplay, will you forgive me now if I am too eager?” His fingers squeezed her breast gently.