The Unexpected Marriage of Gabriel Stone (Lords of Disgrace) (5 page)

‘Who did that?’ Petrus still did not look up and the lilting voice was steady, but she could feel the shock and the anger coursing through him even though she could not see his face.

‘It was an accident. I fell and my...someone caught my arm to steady me.’

‘No, they did not.’ He rebutted her lie quite calmly. ‘These are not the marks of someone catching you, but of someone holding you forcibly, as though they intended to hurt you. Who was it? Your brother or your father?’

‘Lucas would never—I mean no one wants to hurt me.’

‘So it was your father.’ He stood and held out his hand so she could take it with her uninjured right.

There did not seem to be any point in arguing with him. Caroline allowed him to pull her to her feet. ‘It is none of your business,’ she said as she found herself standing with her nose virtually pressed against the rough cloth of his robe.

‘And I am merely an employee,’ the hermit observed. ‘Of course, a husband is permitted by law to beat his wife with a rod no thicker than his thumb and a father may chastise his children. But you are not a child.’ His voice became harder, angry.

‘No. I am not.’
We are both adults.

The fingers wrapped around hers were strong and still slightly cool from the lake water. Standing so close, she could smell damp wool from his robe and the sharp tannin scent of crushed bracken and leaf mould and something indefinable that must be the scent of his skin. A little shiver of recognition, as elusive as a breath of wind, stirred her and he let go of her hand and stepped back.

‘I am sorry, my lady. It is not my business, as you say. But is there no one to take your side, for you to confide in? Who looks after you?’

‘Why, no one! I am twenty-three, Petrus the Hermit, and I have people to look after, not the other way around. Or do you think all women are feeble little things who need keeping in cotton wool?’

‘No, I do not. Nor do I think they are fair game for any man who feels he has a right to bully and abuse those who cannot fight back, for whatever reason.’ He walked away from her towards the chapel, then stopped and half-turned in the doorway. ‘You should go, my lady. You should not be here alone with me.’

The sense of recognition was almost
déjà vu
now. Something about the way he stood there, one hand on the door, the way the broad shoulders filled the frame, the utterly relaxed pose that hinted at an ability to move instantly if the need arose... Caroline gave herself a brisk mental shake. She had never met a bearded Welshman before, her mind was playing tricks on her. The only tall, black-haired, broad-shouldered man she knew was miles away in London, probably nursing a hangover or totting up his gambling winnings. Or just getting up from the bed of some sophisticated and beautiful woman.

Petrus lifted his head, no longer relaxed. ‘Someone is coming. Two horses.’

Without a word Caroline turned and plunged down the narrow path that led through the bushes to the lake. It must be her father and Lucas, but she would be safe down here, the path was too steep and narrow for riders to follow.

She reached the shelter of an ancient oak tree and moved behind the massive trunk, round to where honeysuckle had created a tangled screen. Looking up, she could see the area in front of the chapel door where Petrus stood waiting.

The horses moved into the space, large hunters, ridden with no thought that they might be intimidating to a man on foot. Petrus stood his ground, then bowed, his hands inside the wide sleeves of his habit, the gesture somehow utterly lacking in servility and with a hint of the exotic about it.

‘You have made yourself at home, I see.’ Her father’s voice carried clearly. ‘What are you up to?’

‘Eating my breakfast, bathing in the lake, contemplating a rhyme for
bruise
, my lord.’ Petrus’s voice was respectful and yet lilting through it was a thread of laughter, of mockery that had a dangerous edge to it.

Bruise
. He had been angry when he saw her arm, angry when he realised who had inflicted the fading brownish-purple fingermarks that circled it like a malevolent bracelet. She should have been wary, on her guard approaching a complete stranger like that, and yet she had felt safe, even when he had touched her, even when the savage note had marred the liquid music of his accent.

Her father appeared to have noticed nothing amiss with the hermit’s tone, but then he would never believe that an employee would dare to mock him, let alone threaten him. What was the status of a professional hermit anyway? Was he a servant or did he have a professional standing akin to an artist or architect called in to provide a service? she wondered, smiling a little at her own whimsy.

‘Very good, carry on as you are.’ No, her father had heard nothing amiss and his self-centred imagination had not picked up on the oddity of Petrus’s remark about bruises. ‘I have house guests arriving in three days’ time. I will send word of when I want you to be here, but the first evening I think you should be seen at a distance, wandering across the hillside. It will intrigue the company before dinner, make a topic for conversation. You will receive detailed instructions.’

House guests? Who? And why hasn’t Father told me?
Now she had to get back to the house without being seen and wait until he deigned to inform her. She could hardly ask straight out or she would betray where she had been. When she looked back her father and Lucas had ridden on and the little clearing was empty.

It would be quickest to return to the chapel, cut down through the slope above the kitchen gardens and enter the house from there. She would then appear to have been inspecting the vegetable and flower crops if anyone noticed her slightly muddied boots.

Caroline crossed the clearing silently. The chapel door was still open and she could hear the hermit moving about inside. As she tiptoed past he spoke, one loud, angry swear word that made her gasp. Then something hit the door and fell to the ground. For an appalled moment she thought the brown huddle was an animal, then a fold flopped over and she saw it was his robe.

Which meant the chapel contained one angry, damp, naked hermit. She picked up her skirts and fled.

Chapter Five

‘W
oodruffe will be visiting in three days,’ her father announced at dinner. ‘Thought I would make a house party of it so Calderbeck’s coming and Turnbull—they are sound on landscape design—and Lucas has invited some friends.’

‘Yes, Father.’ Caroline’s heart sank. She had always thought it an exaggerated phrase, but it perfectly described the unpleasant lurch in her chest at the thought of her unwelcome suitor’s presence in the house. ‘Who have you invited, Lucas?’

‘Frampton, the Willings brothers and Perry Ratcliff.’ Lucas hardly looked up from his attempts to carve a tough chicken.

‘Seven, then. An all-male party?’ She tried to sound interested and positive.

‘Yes.’ Her father helped himself from the dish of buttered peas.

‘I had best ask Aunt Gertrude to stay.’ Caroline chased a sliver of beef around her plate. For once the idea of her aunt’s fierce chaperonage was welcome.

‘I don’t want my sister’s Friday face around the place for a week. What do you need a chaperon for when you’re in your own home with your father and brother? I’ve no time for this missish nonsense.’

I need it for protection with Edgar Parfit prowling the corridors at night and a houseful of men I hardly know
, she thought, but held her tongue.

‘You complain that you don’t know Woodruffe well enough to wed him, so this will give you plenty of opportunity. I’ll have old Humbersleigh over to draw up the settlements while he’s here and tell that useless parson to sort out the licence.’

‘But, Father, what about my bride clothes?’ Best to pretend that she had given in.

That brought his head up and his attention full on her. Caroline put up her chin and fought the instinct to cringe back in her chair.

‘You’ve spent weeks in London doing nothing but shop. If you don’t have enough gowns now you can buy them when you’re wed and Woodruffe can pay for them. Hah!’ Obviously pleased with the thought of fobbing off expense on his prospective son-in-law, her father returned to his roast.

Protesting to him was not going to work, not with two hundred acres of Woodruffe’s land almost within his grasp. Caroline reached for the potatoes and bit into one with sudden determination. She would have to give Woodruffe a distaste for her, make him realise she would not stand to be dominated by him. Being missish and meek had not helped his first wife, he had simply bullied and beaten poor Miranda into submission. No, she would have to be bold and brassy, stand up to him, then he would think her too much trouble to wed. And if that failed, then her desperate plan to flee was the only alternative.

She bit down on her sore tooth without thinking and winced, reminded of what her father’s temper could do if he discovered her scheming. But first she had to worry about preparing for a house party of seven with only two days to do it in.

* * *

‘That’s a fine prospect, Knighton, I must say.’ Lord Calderbeck shaded his eyes as he looked out from the terrace across the garden to the slopes of Trinity Hill. ‘I like what you’ve done with that tower—it has an air of age and mystery about it, makes a man want to take a walk across the park and explore.’

‘That’s my latest project.’ The earl pulled his pocket watch out of his waistcoat and peered at the time. The shadows were lengthening as the summer evening drew in, but the sun still illuminated the far hillside. Caroline scanned the treeline, realising what her father was waiting for. She had been so busy over the past two days that she had hardly spared the hermit a thought. Certainly, all that afternoon, preoccupied as she had been with greeting the guests and avoiding Lord Woodruffe, she had quite forgotten him.

‘Who the devil is that?’ young Marcus Frampton demanded, pointing.

‘It looks like a monk!’ Mr Turnbull, an author of lurid Gothic tales, clapped his hands in delight. ‘That’s wonderful, Knighton, you have found yourself a monk.’

‘A hermit, actually. The building you can glimpse is a chapel and there he lives in solitude.’ Her father was beaming now, more than satisfied with the effect of his creation on his friends.

Caroline picked up the telescope that was lying on the bench and trained it on the distant figure. Petrus was walking slowly, using a long staff to good effect, for it showed the fall of his full sleeves. As she sharpened the focus he turned to face the house and flung his arms wide in a gesture that might have been a blessing. Or perhaps a curse.

‘Do let me help you, Lady Caroline. That is too heavy for dainty female hands.’ A large body pressed against her and one hand came around her waist as the other clasped her fingers on to the telescope, pressing hard so the metal ridges bit into her skin.

‘Oh!’ Caroline gave an exaggerated start of alarm and stepped back. It had the unfortunate effect of pressing her closer into Lord Woodruffe’s belly, but it also brought the narrow heel of her evening slipper down hard on his toes. He staggered, pulling her with him, and she lifted her other foot clear off the ground so her entire weight was on the one heel. When he let go of her hand she allowed her arm to fall so that the end of the telescope swung back in an arc to hit him squarely in the falls of his breeches.

The sound Woodruffe made was gratifyingly like a pig seeing the approach of the butcher. He bent double, his hands clutching his groin as the other men turned to see what all the noise was about.

‘Oh, Lord Woodruffe, I am so sorry, but you pulled me quite off balance. Are you badly hurt? Perhaps our housekeeper has a salve you could rub in.’

Seeing where Woodruffe was clutching himself the two Willings brothers snorted with laughter. Even Lucas was struggling to suppress a grin. Caroline fluttered about, full of innocent concern, and her father glowered at the interruption to his discussion about stone quarries with Lord Calderbeck. ‘What the devil?’

‘I trod on Lord Woodruffe’s toes, Father. I am so sorry.’

‘Then why in blazes is he clutching his...er...?’ The fact that he was addressing his daughter appeared to dawn on the earl and he stopped mid-sentence. ‘Brace up, man, and stop whimpering!’

Woodruffe straightened, shot Caroline a malevolent look that made her shudder and limped back into the house.

It was a good start. Now she had to balance her behaviour on the knife edge between giving Woodruffe a disgust of her and betraying what she was doing.

The telescope had rolled across the terrace and she went to pick it up. It was a good instrument and there was a dent in its brass casing now. Caroline raised it to her eye to check that the lenses were not damaged, scanning round as she fiddled with the focus screw. Yes, it was working perfectly, thank goodness.

The trees on the far hill came into sharp definition and there, strolling back to his chapel, was the hermit.
He probably thinks no one is looking at him now he’s finished his performance,
she thought with a smile as the tall figure turned and walked up towards the path into the trees. Again that sense of recognition swept over her and this time, without the beard and the accent to distract her, she placed him.

Lord Edenbridge.
The image swooped and blurred as her hands shook.
Gabriel Stone. Petrus, the Latin for stone or rock. How could I not have realised?

‘I say, do take care, Lady Caroline, you almost dropped the telescope again.’ Mr Turnbull took it from her lax grip.

‘Thank you, Mr Turnbull. So foolish of me, but staring through it made me suddenly light-headed.’

Somehow she chattered on, made conversation as the party drifted back into the drawing room.
Gabriel Stone. Here. Why?
It had to be something to do with her. He had no reason to be taking employment of any kind, let alone something as peculiar and uncomfortable as fulfilling an eccentric man’s expensive fantasies about landscape features. But what did he want?

‘Dinner is served, my lord,’ their butler announced, making her jump.

Caroline got a grip on herself. Dangerous peers of the realm might be lurking in the shrubbery—literally and mysteriously—but she had a dinner party to deal with. ‘We are a most unbalanced group, are we not?’ she said with an attempt at a gay laugh. ‘Lord Calderbeck, may I claim your arm? The rest of you gentlemen must escort yourselves in, I fear.’

She had set out the place cards with strict attention to precedence. Marcus Fawcett, Viscount Frampton, sat on her left hand as she occupied the hostess’s chair at the foot of the table with Lord Calderbeck on her other side. Woodruffe, a baron, was left watching her from his position midway down the table. She turned and began to flirt lightly with the viscount. The stare turned to a glare and young Lord Frampton sat up straighter, his expression faintly smug.

Just as long as I do not have to deal with him as well!
Caroline accepted a slice of beef with a smile and asked the viscount about his horses. From experience, he could be relied upon to bore on for hours once started on that theme, which had the dual benefits of distracting his mind from flirtation and also allowing her time to think about a certain earl.

Why on earth hadn’t she recognised Gabriel immediately? That beard and the curling mane of hair, she supposed. And the fact that when they had met before she had been too embarrassed to study his face closely. It was that rangy body with its easy movement that had always attracted her and that was what she had recognised through the telescope.

‘Spavined? How distressing,’ she responded automatically to Frampton’s ramblings about one of his matched bays, then closed her ears to an account of just what the farrier had advised doing about it and what his head groom had thought.

But what was Gabriel Stone doing here with his Welsh accent and his poetry? She would wager her entire allowance for a year that the man had never so much as rhymed a couplet in his life. Surely he hadn’t come with a view to collecting on her shocking IOU after all? No marriage had been announced, no betrothal announced, so the terms of the bargain were not met in any case.

They had parted with angry words, on her part at least, but if Gabriel had wanted to make his peace with her he was going to preposterous extremes to do so. Besides, he had not revealed his identity when they met at the hermitage and he had made no attempt to contact her since.

‘And what do you think of your father’s hermit, eh, Lady Caroline?’ Lord Calderbeck’s voice was loud enough to draw the attention of all the diners.

‘I...I haven’t...I mean I don’t...’ She was blushing, she knew she was. And stammering and generally behaving in a most suspicious manner. ‘I have not had the opportunity to view the man at close quarters,’ she managed. ‘I have been rather occupied. But I consider the impression he creates from a distance to be most picturesque. My father has such a good eye for a landscape effect.’

That at least earned her an approving look from the far end of the table. Perhaps her father’s violent anger with her had been forgotten for now, although she could not delude herself that the truce would hold once she defied him again over Lord Woodruffe. And she would defy him, she was even more certain of that now as she watched her suitor eating his way through the mound of food on his plate without the slightest sign of appreciation or discrimination. His eyes, when they met hers, held promises of retribution that banished the image of a portly, middle-aged buffoon, replacing them with threats of domination and pain.

* * *

Gabriel dumped the bucket he had carried down to the stream to deal with his after-dinner washing up and closed the door of his cell. It was cool now that the sun was down and the mossy grove seemed to stay damp however high the daytime temperature. He had performed his first charade for his employer, seen the glint as the sinking sun had caught the lens of at least one telescope, and there was small risk the house party guests would leave after dinner to inspect him. It was safe to relax.

The fire was still alight after his culinary efforts earlier and he tossed on some wood, more for the cheerful flicker of light than for the warmth. For a man who had never had to so much as make himself a cup of tea before he was quite pleased with his cookery, even if all he was doing was converting the food sent over from the big house kitchens. He had heated soup without scalding it, he had chopped up what he assumed were the leftovers from yesterday’s roast along with onions and a carrot, fried the result with beef dripping and consumed the savoury mess along with a hunk of bread that was only slightly stale, washed down with a mug of the thin ale that had been provided in a firkin.

Not what he was used to, he thought as he stretched out his legs in front of the fire, but he was getting accustomed to it and the constant fresh air was sharpening his appetite, even for his own cooking. It was certainly easier to adapt to the food than it was to the long skirts of his robe. How the devil did women cope with the encumbrance? To say nothing of the fact that it was decidedly draughty around the nether regions.

The chilling effect of cold air had probably been an advantage to monks fighting the temptations of the flesh in their quest for celibacy. Not that cold draughts had been necessary the other day when he had found himself with Lady Caroline in his arms. It had been anger that had heated his blood then, fury that anyone could manhandle a woman, let alone her own father.

He had expected to discover that she had been bullied, but not that she was suffering actual physical harm. Bullying he had expected to be able to deal with by giving her moral support and by finding something on Woodruffe that would persuade the man to drop his pretensions to Caroline’s hand. His dubious sexual proclivities were well enough known for that to be ineffectual as a pressure point—Gabriel must find something else. It might amount to blackmail, but he had no qualms about that in this case. And probably Woodruffe would prefer it to facing him down the barrel of one of Manton’s duelling pistols, which was Gabriel’s fall-back plan. It wouldn’t be difficult to work up some kind of quarrel with a man as objectionable as Edgar Parfit.

But if Caroline was being mistreated then the whole business became more serious, for if her father blamed her for Woodruffe’s withdrawal then she could suffer more than bruised wrists.