The Unexpected Marriage of Gabriel Stone (Lords of Disgrace) (14 page)

Chapter Fourteen

H
er father strode into the room, brushing past her as she froze, her back to the door. ‘I thought you were too meek when I told you about this place so I decided I had better check that you hadn’t sneaked off here. What in Hades do you think you’re doing? And who the devil are you?’ He moved closer to Gabriel, who stood up with leisurely, dangerous grace. Caroline edged her chair backwards. A few more inches and she could slide from her seat and tiptoe out.

She stood, turned, and came face to face with Lucas.

‘Caroline!’

‘What?’ Her father swung round his face choleric with a mixture of surprise, temper and triumph. ‘You are both here? You plotted the whole thing, you disobedient little slut. What is Edenbridge going to do when he finds the pair of you skulking here?’

Gabriel moved to stand between him and Caroline. ‘If you use language of that kind to Lady Caroline again I’ll floor you, Knighton, even if you are old enough to be my father.’

‘Edenbridge.’ Her father finally recognised who was standing in front of him. ‘What the blazes do you think you are playing at?’ His gaze swung back and forth between the three of them and then fixed back on Gabriel with dawning recognition. ‘
You
. You’re the hermit. Lucas, tell me I’m right. It’s that cursed Welsh hermit.’

Lucas pushed past Caroline to stand at his father’s shoulder. ‘Yes, you are right. Take away that beard and change the voice and it’s the same man. But what is going on?’

It was a nightmare, and when Gabriel swung round and cursed Anthony, it seemed to Caroline simply part of it.

‘You stupid brat, coming here with your idiotic pleas for her to go home. You led them here.’ He grabbed Anthony by the neckcloth and began to shake him, his face pressed close to the boy’s.

Suddenly Anthony began to fight back. ‘I knew I had to when I found her here! It isn’t right, what you are doing, of course she should come home with me.’

Gabriel made a sound of disgust and pushed him into his father’s arms. ‘Have the little prig. He turns up here whining that he wants just one more look at the place, finds us and reads us a fine sermon.’

‘You were trying to make her come back?’ Her father held Anthony away from him so he could look into his face.

‘Yes, sir. Of course. I was upset about the estate, and I shouldn’t have come here, but Caroline and that man...’

He really can act
, she thought.
And Gabriel has saved him from total disgrace with my father and a beating, thank Heavens. But what am I going to do?
Lucas had moved to block the door and it was too far to reach the window and scramble through, even if Gabriel held back her father and brother. They were two to his one and if they attacked him she knew she could never leave him and run. He might overcome them—he was strong and courageous—but her father always carried a knife in his boot and she knew he’d use it without scruple.

‘Good boy,’ he said now, pushing Anthony towards Lucas. ‘And as for you, my girl, I’ll have to sweeten the pot now to get Woodruffe to take you, damn it. Used goods.’

‘I will not warn you again, Knighton,’ Gabriel said. ‘I am marrying Lady Caroline and no one threatens or abuses my fiancée.’

‘Marry her? You? Her reputation will be in the dirt after this.’

Marry me?

‘Mine is not that wonderful,’ Gabriel said with a smile that was guaranteed to infuriate. ‘But as I will procure a special licence from my cousin, the Archbishop of Canterbury, that should help. Even better if he’ll marry us. I believe he’s at Lambeth Palace at the moment, which is convenient.’

Her father expressed an opinion on what the archbishop could do with his crozier. ‘I refuse my consent.’

‘Lady Caroline is of age,’ Gabriel pointed out. He seemed perfectly calm, contemptuous even, her father’s rage breaking against him like a wave against a rock, with as much effect.

‘You’ll not see a penny piece of dowry from me.’ Her father was puce with frustrated rage now.

‘I do not need your money, Knighton, although that reminds me, you owe me a week’s wages for my stint as your hermit.’

‘Under false pretences! You inveigle your way into my home, you seduce my daughter—’

Caroline finally found her voice. ‘Lord Edenbridge came to help because you were forcing me to marry Lord Woodruffe.’

‘Woodruffe will call you out,’ her father threatened Gabriel.

‘That lump of perverted lard is welcome to do so. I would enjoy puncturing him.’

‘And you, Lucas. What kind of brother are you? Why aren’t
you
calling him out?’

‘I imagine Lord Whiston has more common sense than to make the situation worse than it already is. Besides, I am not prepared to meet the man who is about to become my brother-in-law.’

‘Father, it has gone too far to stop. He’s an earl, he’s perfectly eligible, and she’s of age.’ Lucas stood his ground, perhaps given strength by the appeal to his reasonableness. ‘He’s an earl, a better match than Woodruffe, after all.’

‘Not for the family, he isn’t. He won’t bring me land.’ He switched his attention back to Gabriel. ‘What about settlements?’

‘I will settle property and investments on Lady Caroline in consultation with lawyers of her choice. It is, Knighton, no longer your affair.’

‘You’ll be sorry, Edenbridge. And as for you, my girl, you’ve made your bed, you may lie in it. Don’t expect to come crawling home when you discover what kind of man you’ve married. A Captain Sharp, a charlatan, that is what he is and I will make certain the whole world knows it.’ He snapped his fingers at his sons. ‘Come on, both of you.’

Anthony trailed behind, rather white around the mouth, but he turned at the last minute to wink at Caroline. She managed a quick smile for him, then turned all her focus on Gabriel as he stood at the window watching the carriage drive away.

‘They’ve gone,’ he said finally.

Caroline sat down with a bump in the nearest chair and said the first thing that came into her head. ‘Are you really the Archbishop of Canterbury’s cousin?’

‘Third, once removed. I won’t have any difficulty getting a licence, but I don’t think I will ask him to marry us.’ He turned and, for the first time in what seemed like a hundred years, smiled. ‘Unless you have set your heart on it?’

‘Don’t jest about this, Gabriel. You do not want to marry me, I know that perfectly well. And I will not marry you.’

‘You will not? I am deeply wounded, my lady.’ The smile had become thinner.

‘Of course I will not. What kind of marriage would it be? You have been put in a position where you have had to do the honourable thing, but I have no wish to take a martyr for a husband.’

Gabriel shrugged, that mocking smile stillin place. ‘I am an earl, I need a wife, as my so-sensible youngest brother informs me. You are the daughter of an earl and perfectly eligible. There may be a scandal, but I do not care about that.’

‘I do.’ As soon as the words were out she knew she meant them. The talk, the turned shoulders, the whispers, the cuts... She had seen it happen to other people, now she would be responsible for putting them both in that position. If they had a chance of making a happy marriage she would be very tempted to wed this man. But like this?
Never.

‘Is this the woman who came and offered me her virginity? Who plotted to shock her husband on her wedding night? Is this the woman who broke into her father’s safe to purloin her own jewels and ran away from home with a man of dubious reputation? And
now
you quibble about scandal?’

‘It is not a quibble and everything has changed. I would have done whatever it took to get this estate back for Anthony—except something that put you in such an invidious position. And I was naive before to think I could escape that marriage by shocking my suitors.

‘This is my responsibility to resolve. I will ask Tessa and Tamsyn for references. Perhaps your friends in Northumberland know of someone who needs a housekeeper.’
I do not want to be married to you with a cauldron of anger seething just below that smile that isn’t a smile. I do not want to be responsible for you losing your good name because, rogue you may be, you are received everywhere. Now.

‘You would rather be a domestic servant than my countess? What did I do that made you dislike me so much?’

‘Nothing.’ She found she was wringing her hands and stilled them.
I like you too well, that is the problem.
‘You have done nothing except treat me better than I deserve, be concerned about me, rescue me. You do not have to do this, Gabriel. Let me be and I will vanish.’

‘Leaving me with the reputation of a seducer, a man who abducts an earl’s daughter and then abandons her? Or worse. If you disappear I have no doubt your father will put it about that I’ve disposed of you. Once the story of my hermit imposture gets around this will all seem a very dubious plot indeed. Now that really would be a scandal.’

‘So I must marry you for the sake of
your
reputation?’ He was right, of course, her father’s spite would whip up a storm of vicious talk.

‘Ironic, isn’t it? I cannot force you, Caroline. I may be a scoundrel, but I do draw the line at that. I just want you to see that it is no help at all, you being noble and refusing me.’

‘But you hope my sense of honour is at least as well developed as yours.’ She rather feared it was.

Gabriel stopped prowling around the room, sat down on the other side of the table and rested his forearms on the cloth. It should have been better because he was no longer looming over her, but his focused, unsmiling gaze was no more comfortable. He looked weary, she thought, seeing the shadows under the dark eyes, the tightness of his mouth.

‘I hope that you will see that, unsatisfactory though this is, it is the only way for us both to deal with the situation,’ he said with the control of a man hanging on to his patience by a thread. When she did not reply he flung himself back in the chair. ‘Surely I have to be better than Woodruffe?’

‘Of course you are. But I do not want to be married to anyone. Not my father’s choice, not someone who has been trapped into it.’ It sounded mulish, but it was the truth. The thought of perhaps fifty years of marriage to a man who resented her, tolerated her, was repellent.

‘Waiting for hearts and flowers and a meeting of soulmates?’ Gabriel enquired perceptively. ‘You’ve more patience than I have and more romance in your soul than is good for you.’

Caroline gritted her teeth at the mockery. ‘Your three friends married for love, did they not? I heard how you tried to stop Tamsyn marrying the marquess because you thought she was unsuitable, but you have accepted it now, because they are made for each other and even you can see it. What are they going to say about you settling for
this
?’ She waved her hands to encompass the whole impossible situation.

‘You are neither the illegitimate offspring of a bigamous marriage, nor the mother of a child out of wedlock nor the widow of a man who was almost hanged as a smuggler, which between ourselves, describes the brides my friends have taken. You are an eminently suitable match, if one ignores your father, which I devoutly intend to do. My friends have no right to dictate my emotional life—’

‘Or lack of it,’ Caroline flung back. ‘What if we marry and then you fall in love with someone else? Or I do?’

‘We do what aristocrats down the ages have always done, we cope with it. An heir and spare is non-negotiable. After that, provided you don’t fall for a short redhead there is no problem.’

‘How can you be so cold-blooded? You wouldn’t be if the situation did arise—you would be shooting my lover at dawn.’

‘Why do you think my brother Louis is half a head shorter than his older brothers, has green eyes and sandy hair?’

‘No! Did your father know?’

‘Of course.’ Gabriel’s expression was bleak. Then he shrugged. ‘So does Louis. He took one look at Lord Belmond and announced it was a relief to finally know who his father was. No one in the family treats him any differently.’

‘Poor boy. As if I could do that to a child of mine. If I married you I would be faithful and I would expect you to be faithful, too.’

‘The rules require me to be discreet.’

‘The vows demand rather more,’ she snapped, more shaken by his cynicism than she would have thought possible.

Gabriel shrugged. ‘I am a sinner. You knew that from the very first.’ There was a knock at the door. ‘Come in, damn it!’

‘Mrs Crabtree, should we clear now, or bring tea, or what, ma’am?’ Jane hesitated on the threshold, the wooden tray clutched to her skinny chest like a shield.

‘Tea, in the drawing room please, Jane.’

Gabriel followed her through in silence that persisted while she poured and drank two cups of tea. That did something for the raging thirst that had suddenly gripped her, but not a great deal for the confused misery inside.

He left his own cup untouched, waiting with a controlled patience that frayed at her nerves more than ranting and temper would have done.
I suppose I am used to ranting,
she thought miserably.
No one is ever in any doubt about my father’s mood or desires. I cannot read Gabriel’s.

‘Is there no other way than marriage?’

‘No. Not to escape without a major scandal and ensure your future. It will be a nine-day wonder, but everyone knows how eccentric and difficult your father is, so there will be sympathy for your desire to flee his roof. And I may not be society’s darling, but there are not many who hold much of a brief for Woodruffe.’ He picked up the cup and drained the cold tea, then smiled at her. ‘Caroline, we get on well enough.’ He reached out, touched the back of his hand gently to her cheek. ‘We will be good in bed, I think, even if we have not had the best of beginnings in that respect. Now what are you blushing about?’

‘I am not used to such frankness.’

‘This from the woman who tried to barter her virginity for this estate? And I still have that IOU. Your marriage has been announced and I intend to call it in.’

Of course she expected that this would be a full marriage, a man in need of an heir did not propose a union in name only. But surely he did not mean... ‘You mean
before
we are married?’
I need time.
‘We have not fixed the date.’