The Unexpected Marriage of Gabriel Stone (Lords of Disgrace) (23 page)

‘I do when they are to you. Yes, I promise.’ It felt very serious, very heavy, that promise, but her smile was suddenly light and gay.

He insisted on walking her upstairs. ‘Call Harriet, lie down and rest.’

‘I will.’ Caroline stood in the bedchamber, her hand on the edge of the half-open door. ‘I love you, Gabriel.’ Then, softly, she closed it, leaving him on the far side. Alone.

* * *

Half an hour later Gabriel was sitting in the drawing room nursing a glass of brandy he was not drinking and trying to remember what his life had been like on the first day of June at eleven in the morning. He had been single, heart-free and with no responsibilities in the world other than three brothers who were either independent of him or on the verge of being so. He owned estates that were run efficiently by excellent employees, a house full of memories that he could close the door on and walk away from and three close friends whose own lives had recently been turned upside down in a way that he had been certain would change their relationship with him for ever.

He’d been comfortable, self-indulgent, vaguely uneasy and...bored.

Now those locked doors had been flung wide open and it had been his brothers who had come to stand shoulder to shoulder with him. His friends had rallied to guard his back just as they always had. He had a wife, a child on the way and a secret lifted off his neck.

He had a wife who loved him. That promise she had extracted from him made sense now. She was afraid that he would take pity on her and mouth the words in response, pretend a depth of emotion he did not truly feel. Clever Caroline. She knew he would lie
for
her, but now, not
to
her.

There was a bang on the door and Gabriel put down the untouched brandy, cursing under his breath and got to his feet.
What now?
His brothers came in, filling the room with their energy and their excitement.

‘It is all over town.’ Louis, grinning like an idiot, threw his arms around Gabriel and hugged him fiercely. Startled, he found himself hugging back, then both Ben and George piled in to.

When they finally broke apart Ben picked up the brandy glass and knocked it back in one gulp. ‘The gossip mill is in full swing and your father-in-law’s name is mud. The ladies are swooning with the romantic delights of the elopement and you rescuing Caroline from what was some sort of Gothic house of horrors and the gentlemen are assuring each other that they always knew Knighton was queer in the attic and that you are as good a man as our grandfather.’

‘And they got all this from the statement that witnesses had been examined and the fact of an accident has been confirmed?’ Gabriel asked, suspicious.

‘We have been elucidating the situation,’ George pronounced, looking pious. ‘Naturally we did not want anyone to retain the wrong impression.’

‘And we’ve done a damn good job,’ Louis said, straightening his spectacles. ‘Ben stuck his chest out, rattled his sabre and looked manful while commending your honourable reluctance to call out your father-in-law. George has been murmuring about the chivalrous rescue of a lady in terms which, frankly, were fairly sickening when he got round to comparing you to Lancelot, although it did make Lady Hesslethwaite weep. And I’ve been muttering about having my advice about suing for slander turned down. In fact, Brother, you are probably not safe to go out alone or you’ll be mobbed by the ladies and have your hand shaken off by the men.’

Gabriel stared round at them. Ben was smirking, George was smug and Louis was grinning and suddenly they were all laughing and he was, too, and they were just his brothers. Not responsibilities to sacrifice himself for, not a constant aching worry. Simply his brothers whom he loved and, startlingly, appeared to love him. Not that a gentleman talked about such things, so, still gasping with laughter, Gabriel filled four glasses and raised his own in a toast.

‘The Brothers Stone.’

Chapter Twenty-Three

T
he bed dipped and warm lips began to kiss their way down the back of her neck. It was a dream...but did dream lovers rasp their stubbled chins on your more delicate areas of skin and did they smell of brandy?

‘Gabriel?’ Carolyn wriggled back and there was a moment of tugging and flapping before there was a male body under the covers for her to snuggle into. Definitely not a dream. Dream lovers did not have to fight the bedding.

‘No, the Archbishop of Canterbury. Who were you expecting?’

‘Are you drunk?’

‘Surprisingly not.’ He wrapped an arm firmly around her waist and Caroline realised that he was as naked as she was. ‘Did we sound as though we were carousing downstairs? I’m sorry if we disturbed you.’

‘You sounded happy. That was good to go to sleep hearing.’ She twisted round until she could burrow her head under his chin and pressed her lips to his collarbone.

‘I sincerely hope I usually sound happy when we finally do go to sleep,’ Gabriel grumbled into her hair.

‘You don’t laugh then. I have never heard you laugh before.’

‘Never?’ He bent back and pushed up her chin so he could frown at her, their noses almost touching.

‘Never. Not a proper, letting-everything-go laugh because you are happy rather than because something amuses you.’

Gabriel tucked her head down against his shoulder again. ‘I must be a misery to live with.’

‘No, merely rather intense sometimes.’

There was silence and she was content to lie there against his warmth, feeling his heart beating close to hers, his breath stirring her hair.

‘I have no idea how to be a father,’ Gabriel said abruptly.

‘And I have no idea how to be a mother, so we will just have to work it out as we go along. You know what makes a bad father.’

‘That’s true.’ By some miracle he sounded amused. ‘And you already know how to be a wife.’

‘I do? I suspect I am rather a disobedient one.’

‘Dreadfully so,’ he agreed. Caroline felt him take a deep breath and the long body cradling hers became tense. ‘Not letting yourself feel emotion is like taking laudanum when you’ve got a broken leg. You know there is a vast amount of pain out there somewhere, but it is behind shutters, quite safe unless you are foolish enough to let it out by stopping the dose. But you have to stop the dose because otherwise you become addicted to the medicine.’

‘You have to want to stop,’ Caroline suggested.

‘Yes. You caught me at just the right moment.’

‘I caught you? That makes me sound like a designing hussy.’

‘You are a hussy.’ She could hear the laughter in his voice. ‘You proposition notorious rakes, you drug unwanted suitors, you hide up chimneys, you order marquesses about and invade the homes of respectable magistrates. No wonder I love you. Such a rakehell as I am needs a wicked wife to love.’

‘You...’ Her heart seemed to have stilled to a slow, almost painful, thud. ‘Gabriel, I know you desire me—’ Just at the moment there was absolutely no ignoring the physical evidence of that.

‘Have you such little faith in my promises?’ Gabriel rolled over on to his back as though to stop himself clouding her thoughts with his touch. ‘I had no idea that was what I was feeling and I didn’t want to dig and find out, coward that I am. I have always controlled risk. People think gamblers are reckless, but successful ones are the exact opposite. We calculate risk, we know just what we can afford to lose. Loving gives a hostage to fortune, doesn’t it? I did not dare to hazard my heart on you. How have you so much more courage than I do?’

Caroline turned to rest on her elbow and smiled at him. ‘I have been practising loving all my life. My mother, my brothers. I even worked hard at loving my father. And I suspect women find it natural to take the risk, because if we have children then every moment we could be in fear for them and if we couldn’t face that, then the human race would die out.’

She loved Gabriel’s face when he was thinking hard. Every ounce of intelligence, every scrap of ferocious concentration showed in those dark eyes, in the set of the sensual lips, in the line that formed between his brows. He was so good at putting on the mask that hid his feelings that she knew it was only absolute trust that let him relax so in front of her.

‘I can’t promise I’ll always get it right.’

‘Nor me. How dull if we did,’ Caroline teased. ‘No arguments, no drama, no lovely making it up afterwards.’

‘Hmm.’ Gabriel’s eyes had lost their brooding intensity. ‘Are you tired still?

‘No,’ Caroline said demurely. ‘I am wide awake. Oh!’

Gabriel tossed back the covers and began to smooth his hands down over her body. ‘Nothing shows yet.’ He sounded ridiculously disappointed.

‘Of course not! It will soon enough and then I’ll be lumbering about like a whale.’

‘More lovely curves.’ Gabriel’s tongue drew a lingering trail of liquid fire down over the swell of one breast, into the valley between them and up over the other. He explored her body as though it were new to him, murmuring with appreciation over the curve of her hip, the dimple beside her knee, the elegance of the curl of her ear until he almost had her believing herself that she was the most beautiful woman in the world.
Perhaps I am to him,
Caroline thought in wonder.
I think he is the most handsome man. And the kindest and the...

‘Wickedest!’ she gasped as Gabriel slid down the bed and began to do outrageous things with his tongue.

‘You called?’ He lifted his head and looked at her with such an innocent expression that she laughed and was still laughing, joyously, as he came up the bed and abandoned gentle teasing for a passionate possession that sent her spinning from laughter into blind ecstasy in moments.

* * *

‘You are thinking,’ Caroline said much later, as she lay with Gabriel watching the light fade out of the sky. ‘I can hear the wheels turning.’

‘So are you. A guinea for them?’

‘You may have them for free. I was wondering what you wanted to do with Edenvale.’

‘Turn it into a home,’ Gabriel said without hesitation. ‘I won’t let my life be ruled by memories and secrets any more and I certainly won’t allow my father’s ghost to drive me out of what should be our family home. And we’ll have my brothers and yours to stay, often, and Alex, Cris and Grant and their children and make so much noise that not a single spectre dare linger.’

‘I do like the idea of ghosts and ghouls fleeing gibbering in the face of a house full of happiness. And what was on your mind?’

‘What you wanted to do about your father. Louis wants to sue the boots off him, I favour leaving him to stew in his own juice.’

‘I will write to Lucas. I do not want to be estranged from him and I suspect if he and Anthony encourage my father to start a new building project he will soon retreat from reality into that. And perhaps one day he will be...stable enough to want to see his grandchild.’

‘So we have put the world to rights between us.’ Gabriel stretched, languorous as a big cat.

‘We have put our corner of it to rights at least,’ Caroline leant over to kiss his smiling lips.

‘Our new world,’ her husband said. ‘And it will take us a lifetime to explore it, my love. Beginning now.’

Epilogue

Half Moon Street, London
—February 14th, 1821

‘W
e are definitely going to have to move house. We cannot even hold a christening party without it resembling the crush at a royal Drawing Room and Alex’s valet is becoming fretful over the dressing room becoming a nursery.’

Tess sank down on the end of the sofa in the window alcove, the only available seat left in the drawing room, and tucked Dominic Alexander Hugh Tempest and all his yards of christening robe snuggly into the crook of her arm.

‘Perhaps this fashion for huge skirts and ridiculous puffed sleeves will subside.’ Kate, the Countess of Allundale, squashed her own skirts up to make more room. ‘Although that will only help with parties, not bedchambers. I worry that our new house in Brook Street isn’t big enough.’ She laid one hand over the spot where a myriad of heaped ruffles concealed the third of the Rivers’ brood, due to make an appearance in July. ‘Grant has become so enthusiastic over suffrage reform that he keeps throwing political receptions and dinners so the downstairs guest bedchamber must be sacrificed to extend the drawing room.’

‘You don’t mind London life and parties any more? No, don’t move, I’ll just slide round and prop myself up on the back of the sofa which is inelegant, but does wonders for my back.’ Caroline sighed with relief. ‘Don’t say anything, but I have just taken off my slippers.’

‘
What
a good idea,’ Kate said. There was some surreptitious rustling and two more sighs. ‘How we suffer for fashion. And parties. But, no, I enjoy them now. I’ve even become used to being a countess. Almost. I still keep thinking people are going to point at me and cry “Imposter”, but it hasn’t happened yet. I can hardly believe how much my life has changed. Do you know, I even found myself arguing with the Prime Minister about married women’s property rights the other evening?’

‘Goodness. What did he say?’ Tamsyn arrived, set a footstool in front of the sofa and sank down in a cloud of amber silk and blonde gauze, careless of what anyone might think of a marchioness virtually sitting on the floor.

‘He huffed and puffed and called me
dear lady
and escaped as soon as he could, but I’ll corner him yet. We’ve all taken our slippers off,’ she added in a whisper to Tamsyn who promptly did the same.

‘My ankles are swelling,’ she grumbled. ‘No one tells you these things.’

‘You— You’re not expecting, too?’ Caroline managed to keep her voice down to a muted shriek.

‘Shh! Yes, but I haven’t told Cris yet. I saw how Alex fussed and Gabriel and Grant seem almost as bad. But today is St Valentine’s Day, so I have ordered a special supper and I am going to tell him then.’

‘You are looking smug,’ Kate observed. ‘I assume a new negligée is to hand?’

‘Definitely. Sea-green silk. That should keep his mind off fussing.’

‘So the four Lords of Disgrace are going to be the proud and respectable fathers of four babies within a year,’ Tess mused. ‘Just think, if one of you has a boy and two have girls, perhaps in twenty years’ time we could be sitting down and planning two weddings.’

‘Tess, you are a hopeless romantic,’ Caroline teased. ‘But what a wonderful thought. We all had such a rocky path to finding our true love and the men were there for each other...’

‘Here they are.’ Tamsyn waved to Cris, who stood with his friends, the four of them making the room seem crowded with masculine energy.

‘And so beautiful, all of them,’ Kate said with a sigh as their husbands crossed the room to them. ‘And not looking in the slightest bit respectable, thank goodness.’

‘What are up to, my ladies?’ Cris asked, stooping to kiss his wife.

‘We were just saying how handsome you all were.’ Kate batted her eyelashes at Grant as he stretched out a hand to her.

‘And what else?’ Alex demanded. ‘You are scheming, I can tell. I’ve come to claim my son for five minutes,’ he added as he took the sleeping baby from Tess.

‘Yes, we are,’ Caroline agreed. ‘But you can all relax. You will not need to worry for, oh...twenty years at least.’

Gabriel looked from his wife to his friends. ‘Gentlemen, I suggest we retreat to the study and take young Dominic with us. I have no idea what our wives are up to, but he is going to need all the advice we can give him if he is to end up as happy as we are.’

* * * * *

If you enjoyed this story, make sure you don’t miss
the other three books in Louise Allen’s
LORDS OF DISGRACE
quartet:

HIS HOUSEKEEPER’S CHRISTMAS WISH

HIS CHRISTMAS COUNTESS

THE MANY SINS OF CRIS DE FEAUX

Keep reading for an excerpt from
UNBUTTONING THE INNOCENT MISS
by Bronwyn Scott.

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