The Unexpected Marriage of Gabriel Stone (Lords of Disgrace) (4 page)

If he loved anyone, it was his friends and he knew they returned the sentiment, even if they would have died rather than admit it. From the hell that had been his childhood he had met them and learned that friendship gave what family never could, an equal give and take.

‘Good morning, my lord.’ Corbridge came in with hot water. Obviously he judged Gabriel to be back amongst the living,

‘Is it?’ Gabriel got out of bed and strode, naked, into the dressing room. ‘What’s the point of it all, Corbridge? Life, I mean, because I’m beginning to wonder.’

‘My lord...is anything amiss?’

Gabriel was aware of the valet laying one hand protectively over the razors and, despite himself, grinned. ‘It is all right, I’m not about to cut my throat, blow my brains out or otherwise put a period to my existence. I am simply wondering what I am doing with my life.’

‘My lord, you are an
earl
,’ Corbridge said repressively.

‘That is a title, not a job description.’ Although perhaps it was.

Manage the estates, look after the dependents, take my seat in the House, marry well, have heirs, teach the next generation to do it all over again...
Focus on the title and not myself. Give up taking lovers? Step back and pray I can manage not to make a disaster of heading a family? But who would listen to
my
prayers?

He grimaced at his reflection and reached for the soap and sponge. He did everything he needed to do to keep the wheels of the earldom turning, but he did it at a mental distance that felt as though he had preserved it in ice. When the frost melted would he find something fresh and new to engage with or find only the rotted carcase of the past?

A disgusting image.
He shook off the ghoulish thought with an effort. ‘I’m getting old, Corbridge.’ Is that why it was so hard to accept how his life was changing?

‘My lord, you are not even in your prime yet, if I may be so bold.’ The valet began to work up a lather with the shaving soap.

Gabriel grunted and scrubbed his toothbrush into the powder. What he needed was a purpose and he supposed the obvious one was his earldom and, heaven help him, his brothers, although they would probably think he’d got a brain fever if he suddenly turned up showing a keen interest in their lives and welfare. It would certainly unnerve them thoroughly.

‘I’m at home until this afternoon, then I’ll be riding. I may as well put on buckskins and boots now.’ There was business to finish, then he’d blow away the cobwebs with a good gallop and try to work out how to finally come to grips with his inheritance, all of it, on his own terms. His identity had been that of the care-for-nothing rakehell for so long that he wasn’t certain he knew who the man underneath that mask was.

* * *

It was not until the evening that he sat down and began to sort through the jottings he had made on young Mr Holm’s inheritance. He picked up Caroline’s message again, feeling the same prickle of unease as he had experienced the day before. Something was not right with it. He rummaged in the papers until he found her first note and laid them side by side. Same paper, same ink, but while the first was neat and elegantly written, the writing in the second was uneven, straggling, untidy. It looked as though it had been produced in haste and by someone who was either not themselves or who found it difficult to hold the pen. One corner of the page was distorted and he picked it up to study it more closely. A water splash. Or one fallen tear...

I have grievously annoyed my father.
Father, not Papa as she had always referred to him before. Something was wrong, very wrong. He had encouraged her to defy Knighton over the marriage and now she was exiled to the country, perhaps mistreated in some way, until she gave in. In his mind he heard the crack of the riding whip, felt the shock of the pain. He had withstood it, pride and sheer bloody-mindedness had seen to that. But a woman...

Surely Knighton wouldn’t beat his daughter? Yet he wanted her to marry Woodruffe. Surely he realised what the man was? Or perhaps he really was so obsessional that he could ignore the man’s reputation?

Just because his own father had been utterly ruthless in imposing his will did not mean that Caroline’s father was. Gabriel pushed away the old nightmares, studied the slip of paper for a long moment, then folded it and put it in his breast pocket. He was imagining things were worse than they were, surely. Even so, he could not rest easy. The paperwork for her brother’s estate was soon completed and he bundled it up to go to his lawyer, then got to his feet. He had a commitment to help Cris and that might take a day or so, but then he was going to find Lady Caroline Holm and undo whatever damage he had caused.

He imagined his friends’ expressions if they knew he was contemplating involving himself in some chit’s family dramas. But Caroline was not
some chit
, she was intelligent, courageous and determined, and he felt guilty about the way he had teased her, he realised. That was novel enough to provoke him into action. What that action might be he had no idea, but at least he was not feeling jaded any longer.

Chapter Four

Hertfordshire
—August 1st

A
ugust was usually a month Caroline enjoyed, especially if she was in the country. Now Knighton Park was a hot, stuffy prison and the sunlit gardens and park outside were a bright, tantalising reminder of just how trapped she was.

It was not my fault
, she told herself for perhaps the hundredth time. It was not her lack of duty, not her wilfulness, not her foolish whims—all the faults her father had thrown at her.
It is his. His tyranny, his temper. His lack of love.

It had started mildly enough. Her father announced that they were moving to Knighton Park and, recklessly, she had chosen to make a stand, to announce that she would not marry Woodruffe, or any of the middle-aged suitors he had considered for her.

The bruises on her right cheek had finally vanished. She studied her reflection in the mirror and clenched her teeth. There was some soreness and a molar was still rather loose, but she thought if she was careful it would grow firm again. The marks on her arms had almost faded, too. She could write long letters to Anthony without discomfort. His future, at least, was safe now.

The image of her face faded and the scene she kept trying to forget swam up in its place.

‘You will do as you are told, you stupid girl!’

‘I am not stupid. I am not a girl. I am of age and I will not be bartered to some man for whom I have nothing but contempt for the sake of your obsessions.’ Caroline had no idea what kept her voice so steady, what kept her standing there as his face darkened with rage.

Her father was a believer in corporal punishment for his children, although Lucas, the favoured elder son, always seemed to escape with only the lightest of canings. As a girl, her governess had been instructed to strike her once or twice on the palm with a ruler for laziness or inattention, or whenever her father deemed her deserving of punishment, which was often. But she had never been hit by him.

Her father had grabbed her arm, held her as she’d pulled back against his grip, her righteous defiance turned in a second to stomach-churning nausea.

‘You will obey me.’ He’d jerked again as she fought against the pain in her arm. It felt as though the bones were grinding together.

‘No,’ she’d managed. ‘Woodruffe is—’ But she didn’t have the words for what Gabriel had told her. And then her father had hit her across the face, backhanded, knocking her to the ground to land in a painful sprawl against a wooden chair. She had no clear memory of being taken upstairs, only of coming to herself to find her maid bathing her face. There was a bandage on her arm.

Now, with the bruises gone, she had permission to leave her rooms, go downstairs, allow herself to be seen, provided she maintained the fiction of a virulent sore throat that had laid her up for almost two weeks. She sat down in the window seat and searched for some courage. There were tales of how prisoners were afraid to leave their cells and the security of a familiar confined space and now she could understand how they felt. But she was desperate to get out, away from the tedium and anxiety, away from the circling thoughts and desires for Gabriel Stone.

She should be ashamed of herself for having carnal thoughts about a man, because that was what they were. She couldn’t deceive herself that these were romantic daydreams about love and marriage and family. This man was never going to be domesticated and when she imagined herself with him what she saw was a tangle of naked limbs, what she felt was the heat of his body and the pressure of his lips. Beyond that she was too inexperienced to imagine detail. All she knew was that this was shocking, sinful and impossible, because when she had offered herself to him on a plate even this hardened rake had not wanted her.

She had to stop thinking about him.
I am the only person I can rely on, no one is going to help me if I do not help myself.
And she could achieve nothing shut up inside, Caroline knew that. Her old world of certainties and duty and acceptance of the limitations of a lady’s powers lay in ruins. She would not submit to marrying Woodruffe and that meant she must act.

She had even thought through a strategy over the past few days: go downstairs and assess Pa...
Father’s
temper and intentions. If he had no intention of yielding, then gather money, jewels, information and escape. Somehow. There would be no help from Lucas, for although he had been shocked by their father’s violent outburst, he still shared his opinion that Caroline should marry as he directed.

But Anthony was a constant worry. What if he did something to arouse such violence in his father? And if she left home it was going to be horribly difficult to meet with him.
One thing at a time
, she told herself.
If I am married to that man I would be equally helpless to look after Anthony. This way I can write, I could see him when he is at school perhaps.

She dressed with care and went downstairs. Her father and Lucas were at breakfast, the table littered with news sheets and the scattered pages of opened letters. Lucas stood up as she came in, her father merely grunted and went back to his reading.

Caroline found a soft roll and some scrambled eggs and took her place at the table and began to eat, favouring the left side of her jaw. Her father shot her a penetrating look, nodded, presumably with approval at her unbruised appearance, and turned to Lucas.

‘The hermit has had his first night in the folly now. I’ll not disturb him for a few days, let him settle in.’

She had not intended joining in the conversation, but this was startling enough to make her forget that. ‘You have found a hermit, Father?’

He did not appear to notice that she had stopped calling him
Papa
. Somehow the affectionate diminutive was impossible to use for a man who had raised his hand to her.

‘I put it about at my clubs that I was looking for one and he turned up, don’t know how he heard about it, although the fellow is a gentleman of sorts. He seems ideal. Educated fellow, for all that he looks as though he hasn’t had a haircut or a shave for six months. Says he’s a poet or some such nonsense. Wants to write in peace and quiet. Told him he can do what he pleases as long as he wears the costume and looks the part. I’ll not send warning that we’ll be about when we do go, so I’ll catch him unawares, see how he performs.’

‘Are you going to the Home Farm this morning, Father?’ Lucas looked up from his correspondence.

‘Yes.’ The earl lifted a bundle of papers. ‘These are the plans for the new Model Farm that Hardwick sent over from Wimpole Hall in Cambridgeshire. Their new buildings are excellent, we’ll see how they’d do for our site.’

They left together soon afterwards. Caroline looked out across the sweep of the South Lawn, over the invisible line of the ha-ha to the shoulder of Trinity Hill. Just visible above it was the tower of an apparently ancient chapel which had, in reality, only just been completed.

She finished her cup of tea and pushed back her chair without waiting for the footman to help her. She needed exercise and fresh air and the
faux
hermitage was one place where her father was not this morning. An unkempt poetry-writing hermit might not tempt her to linger long, but at least he would give her walk a destination.

* * *

The slope of Trinity Hill was gentle, but for someone who had been shut up inside with no exercise for days it was enough to bring a glow of perspiration to her face and an ache to her legs. Caroline reached the point where she could look down on the lake and on the hermitage, apparently deserted in its shady grove of trees.

She was not at all certain she wanted to converse with a professional hermit, for he must be a strange creature, but curiosity drew her down the slope to the clearing. The door to the chapel stood open and in front, on the other side of the path, a rough trestle table had been created by balancing a slab of wood on two tree stumps. A log was set in front of it as a seat and the table was laid with a pitcher, a pewter plate and a horn beaker, the remains of the hermit’s breakfast, she supposed. As she watched, a robin flew down and pecked hopefully around in pursuit of crumbs.

Treading with care, Caroline approached the chapel and glanced at the open door. No movement within, but she did not feel she had the right to pry by entering.

Then the sound of a twig snapping brought her round to face the path up from the little lake, the robin flew away in whir of wings and a tall robed figure walked into the clearing.

The man stopped when he saw her and stared, just as she was doing, she supposed. What did one say to a recluse, even an ornamental one? He was certainly not her idea of a hermit, which was a white-bearded, stooped figure supported by a staff. This man was big, with a mass of thick black curling hair that fell across his brow and shadowed his eyes and a beard that, although not long, covered his lower face completely. It made him look older than he probably was, for he moved like a young, fit man and there was no grey showing in the black hair that brushed the folded-back hood of his brown robe.

His hair was wet, catching the sunlight that filtered through the tree canopy, and droplets of water hung in his beard like improbable diamonds. He must have been bathing in the lake, she realised. In one hand he held a battered leather satchel, perhaps containing soap and a towel.

‘Good morning,’ Caroline ventured, wondering if a clean hermit was a contradiction in terms.

He inclined his head, but said nothing. Nor did he move any closer.

‘Has my father forbidden you to speak? I am Lady Caroline Holm. I hope the kitchen sent you food or do you go down to collect it yourself? You must let us know if there is anything you need.’

His silence was unnerving, but not as unsettling as the feeling of familiarity that was growing as they stood there separated by ten feet of leaf litter and sparse turf. Then, maddeningly, he inclined his head again.

‘Which of my questions is that an answer to?’ she demanded.

The thicket of beard moved as though he was smiling, but with his eyes in shadow she could not be certain. Of course, if he had been forbidden to speak then it had been quite illogical of her to follow on with more questions.

‘Are you required to keep silent?’

The man cleared his throat. ‘No, my lady.’ He spoke quietly, but the deep voice was quite clear in the still, warm air. It had an attractive lilt to it. ‘I have food, I thank you.’

‘You are not English, are you? Your accent is unfamiliar.’

‘It is a Welsh accent, my lady.’

‘Oh.’ Then that sense of knowing him was completely illusory. How strange. It must be her need for someone to talk to, to confide in. To plan with, if she could trust them. But all her friends were in London, or away at country houses or at the seaside and she had hardly had a conversation for weeks, except with her maid. ‘You are comfortable here?’

In response the hermit gestured to the open door of the chapel. He did not move and when she took a step towards the building he sat down at his makeshift table as though to reassure her that it was safe to enter, that he would not follow.

Inside all pretence of a religious building disappeared. There was a single whitewashed room with a bed made up with coarse sheets, blankets and a worn patchwork quilt. A table and chair stood in the middle of the space and a chipped stone sink was propped up on empty crates that served as makeshift shelves. A wide fireplace with logs stacked beside it was set into what must be the base of the tower, which would disguise the chimney, and a rag rug on the stone floor provided the only touch of decoration or comfort.

Bleak, but weather-tight and warm enough during the summer. She only hoped her father did not expect the man to stay here in all seasons. There was a small pile of books on the table, some paper and an inkwell and pen. Tools for a poet, she supposed, resisting the temptation to see what he was reading—or writing.

When she left the folly he stood up again and she sensed he was smiling. ‘It seems rather comfortless,’ she observed. ‘Are you certain there is nothing that you need?’

‘I am a hermit, my lady. I am supposed to live the simple life.’

‘You are
acting
the hermit,’ she corrected. ‘There is no need for you to endure such a Spartan existence in reality.’

‘His lordship requires authenticity and he employs me.’ He shrugged. ‘When he brings visitors to view the scene nothing must jar.’

He was certainly conscientious. Caroline knew she would have been tempted to smuggle in some comforts if she was in his place. ‘What is your name?’

There was a long pause and she wondered if she had disconcerted him. Then he said, ‘Petrus.’

‘That means Peter, doesn’t it? Peter the Hermit. Why does that sound familiar?’ Caroline wrestled with the elusive memory. ‘Of course—Peter the Hermit, the First Crusade.’

Now she was certain he was taken aback.
Bother that impenetrable beard.
‘You are well read, my lady. It is simply coincidence, not a deliberate choice.’

‘I will leave you in peace, Petrus, you will want to get dry...’ Caroline could feel herself blushing. She most certainly could not discuss a strange man’s washing arrangements. To add to her discomfort her imagination conjured up the vision of that tall, broad-shouldered figure naked in the lake, the water streaming off his chest as he stood up, the thick black hair tossed back from his face.

‘Oh!’ Before she was aware of moving, of turning to leave before her treacherous mind conjured up any more shocking images, her foot caught in something. She had a split second to realise it was a tree root as she went flying to land in a sprawling, inelegant heap. ‘Ouch!’

‘What hurts?’ Petrus knelt beside her, then caught her by the shoulders as she tried to lever herself up.

‘My left wrist.’ Caroline managed to sit. ‘The leaf mould is soft, but I put out my hand and I... I hurt it a while ago. No, it is all right—’

His fingers were circling her wrist, gentle and firm and all-enveloping. With the other hand he pushed back her sleeve to expose her forearm. There was silence as she went still in his grasp, watching the bent head as he studied the pattern of fading bruises that still encircled her arm. The sprain where her father had jerked her towards him, held her as she fell, was still a little sore.