The Unexpected Marriage of Gabriel Stone (Lords of Disgrace) (6 page)

Gabriel lifted the bottle of brandy from behind the log pile, poured himself two fingers into a horn beaker and sipped while the heat of the spirits settled the faint nausea that came with some ruthless self-examination. He had shaken his head over Caroline’s lack of foresight beyond her aim of retrieving her brother’s estate, now he wondered if he had been equally thoughtless.

He had landed himself in this situation on a sudden impulse when Alex Tempest had reported overhearing Knighton at White’s talking about his advertisement in
The
Times
. He had been brooding on what to do about his unease over Caroline’s welfare and Alex’s gossip seemed like the answer on a plate, so he’d snatched at it.

Pretend to be a hermit—there would hardly be competition for the post—combine an amusing small adventure with the opportunity to soothe his nagging conscience over Caroline, get himself out of his London rut for a while. It had all seemed like the perfect answer.

Perhaps if things had not fallen into place so easily he might have reconsidered the masquerade and found some other way of discovering how Caroline was faring. But the necessary delay while his ‘agent’, otherwise known as Corbridge his valet, had negotiated on his behalf, and he ostensibly travelled from Wales, had given him time to grow an impressive beard and for his untrimmed hair to develop an unfashionable shagginess. He had to shave twice a day to maintain an acceptable appearance for a gentleman and the resulting thicket of neglected growth was enough, he was confident, to hide his identity from a self-obsessed man who had only seen him closely in a poorly lit gaming hell.

The Welsh accent that he had learned to mimic when he had stayed with his Great-Aunt Gwendoline near Caernarvon as a boy had come back easily. Alex had been so amused and impressed by his disguise that they had even tried the imposture out on Alex’s wife, Tess, although with Gabriel in ordinary clothes and not his monkish robe. Lady Weybourn had carried on almost five minutes of polite social chit-chat in Green Park with Mr Petrus Owen, the gentleman from Wales, before her husband’s poorly suppressed laughter had made her suspicious.

It was a shock to find Caroline at the chapel when he’d returned from his morning dip in the lake and he’d been surprised, too, that she had failed to recognise him. With the painful discipline of self-examination that he had imposed on himself recently Gabriel pondered whether his reaction to that lack of recognition was hurt pride. They had, after all, discussed becoming lovers—one would expect a woman under the circumstances to have looked closely at the man she was proposing such a bargain with.

‘Coxcomb,’ he muttered to himself. Caroline had been in turn embarrassed, mortified, shy, angry and afraid during both of their encounters. It would have been a miracle if she had recognised him in the street, let alone hiding behind all those whiskers.
Which cover all my best features
, Gabriel thought with a grimace as he tugged at the offending growth.

He needed to talk to her again, reveal his true identity and discover the truth about her situation. That might be easier said than done, because catching her alone so that any startled reaction was not observed was not going to be easy. He found that it was not just the fire and the brandy that was warming him. The thought of Caroline Holm was...stimulating.
In much the same way as a hair shirt, no doubt,
Gabriel told himself as he reached for a book and moved the candles closer. She was likely to cause him nothing but trouble, anxiety and hard work, all things that he normally avoided like the plague.

He had become unused to worrying about anyone else’s welfare. His employees were easy enough—you paid them properly, made your expectations clear and dealt fairly—and mistresses were much the same. His brothers more or less looked after themselves now they were adults and, except for the occasional request for money, seemed quite happy with the state of affairs.

But Caroline was alone and courageous. She had been hurt, was probably still at risk, and he could no more stand by and see a woman injured than he could fly. And she had blue eyes like speedwell in sunlight and soft, soft skin under his fingers. That thought was almost worse for his peace of mind than fighting old nightmares, but he could not walk away and leave her, not if he wanted to live with his conscience afterwards. Gabriel removed a bookmark and applied himself to an analysis of the post-war European political situation.

Chapter Six

G
abriel, staying firmly in the role of Petrus Owen, poet and hermit, had bathed, broken his fast and tidied his humble residence. He was contemplating a visit to the kitchen door of Knighton Park in the hope of discovering if the mistress of the house came down to give her orders to Cook or sent for her, when the sound of approaching riders brought him to the threshold of the chapel.

He picked up the large book that he had selected, thinking it looked like an appropriate text for a hermit to be studying, shut the door on the domestic interior and took up a position looking out over the wooded dell down to the lake.

The horses filled the clearing behind him, hooves tramping on the leaf mould, bits jingling, breathing heavy after what must have been a gallop up the long slope on the other side of the crest. There were at least half a dozen of them, perhaps more, but the riders fell silent as they saw him and he could not be certain.

Gabriel waited, counting up to twenty in his head in Welsh to make certain his accent was firmly in place. The sound of movement subsided, leaving only the occasional snort and stamped hoof.

When he turned he made the movement slow, scanned the clearing until he saw Lord Knighton, then bowed, straightened and waited, his gaze on his employer’s face. The man was pleased, he could see that. Pleased to find his hermit in the right place, pleased with his bit of theatre and pleased, too, by the admiring murmurs from his guests.

There were nine mounted men facing him. Seven guests in addition to Knighton and his son and, on the edge of the group, Caroline on a neat bay hack, her habit a deeper shade of the blue of her eyes, a pert low-crowned hat on her head. He let his gaze pass over her, frustrated by the veil that hid her expression from him.

‘So this is your hermit, eh, Knighton!’ Woodruffe, of course, was always ready to state the obvious, probably because it saved thinking. ‘What are you doing, fellow?’

Gabriel turned by a few degrees, met Woodruffe’s stare and bowed again. ‘Meditating.’ He let the silence hang heavy and saw the two youngest men, the Willings brothers, if he was not mistaken, shift uneasily in their saddles. He had spoken as though to an equal and they were uncertain, he guessed, how to react to that. ‘I was pondering upon the transience of glory and the fall of pride.’

Woodruffe nodded, as though he understood some great truth. ‘Good show.’

Gabriel managed not to roll his eyes and waited.

‘You are a poet?’ That was Calderbeck. No fool, the old man, and someone who had known him distantly since Gabriel’s childhood. This was no time to be complacent.

‘A bard.’ He deliberately thickened his accent.

‘So you sing?’ That was Frampton, who had lost two hundred guineas to him only a month ago. Gabriel bowed assent. To deny an ability to sing would undermine his Welsh credentials if they held to that stereotype.

‘You will come down to the house and perform your work for my guests, in that case,’ Knighton ordered.

‘When it is ready, my lord, with pleasure.’

‘You have nothing but what you are working on now?’ Calderbeck demanded, bridling at Gabriel’s indifferent tone.

‘Nothing that is of the spirit of this place.’

‘Well, perform something else,’ Knighton said impatiently. ‘Tonight, nine o’clock.’

‘And bring your harp to the party,’ Frampton added, making the younger men guffaw with laughter.

‘I sing unaccompanied,’ Gabriel said.
Hell and damnation.
Could he recall any of the Welsh tunes his great-aunt and her housekeeper had taught him as a child? He could sing well enough, but he had not been prepared for this.

‘No doubt your hermit is wary of performing to an audience after so much time alone, Father. Or perhaps he fears his voice is not all he boasts of.’ The words, spoken indifferently, brought the men round to stare at the speaker as though they had forgotten there was a woman with them.

‘We do not want a poor performance. Not with such distinguished guests,’ said Lady Caroline as she rode forward into the clearing. She put back her veil as though to study him more closely and her expression, as she stared down at Gabriel, was suited to a lady who has found the chimneysweep’s boy on her new Oriental hearth rug. He risked a quick assessing glance. Her face was unmarked and she seemed to be managing her horse without any difficulty. He let out a breath he had not realised he’d been holding.

‘Why not have him come up to the house later this afternoon, Father? Blackstone can show him the salon and let him practise his voice a little.’ She shrugged. ‘Or not, as you choose. I merely thought it might save us an evening of strange discords if I were to hear what he can do.’

Gabriel kept his eyes lowered, respectfully not staring, it must have seemed, when in fact he was having difficulty keeping the surprise off his face. Where had the Lady Caroline he knew vanished to? This bored, haughty creature was surely not the blushing, passionate, brave woman who had made him that outrageous offer, who had come to visit her father’s hermit to assure herself of his welfare?

‘A good idea, Caroline.’ Gabriel looked up and saw that Knighton was nodding approval. He had no qualms, it seemed, about exposing his daughter to the close proximity of his hermit. Presumably he had every faith in her chaperon. The earl gestured abruptly at him. ‘Come to the kitchen door at three. We’ll all be outside, no one for you to disturb.’

Except your daughter, but apparently she does not count.
‘My lord.’ He was finding it mildly amusing to discover the amount of meaning—and insolence—one could convey with an apparently subservient bow. He must see if his own and other servants possessed the same skill.

Gabriel stood at the edge of the clearing and watched the riders make their way along the twisting track that skirted the contour of the hill before descending to the far side of the lake.

‘Grottos...’

The word floated back on the still air. Another of Lord Knighton’s landscape follies in planning. Gabriel wondered what he would want to ornament his grottos. Water nymphs, perhaps, or tritons.

He watched until the last of the horses, the bay hack with its blue-clad rider, vanished into the trees, ignored and unpartnered. Woodruffe took a complacent approach to his courting, Gabriel thought as he sat down on the log seat. Or perhaps the matter had been agreed and he was behaving as neglectfully as a fiancé as he would as a husband. From what he knew of the man, neglect would be infinitely better for Caroline than his attentions.

The summons to the house solved the problem of gaining an interview with her. If he had not known better he would have thought she had arranged matters in order to speak with him in private, but apparently this confounded beard was enough to hide from even the most perceptive young lady. He tugged at it and thought longingly of his razors before he began to dredge through his memory for Welsh songs, poems or even sermons.

* * *

‘You are very clean for a hermit.’ Mrs Gleason, the cook, eyed Gabriel up and down as he stood in the doorway of her immaculate kitchen looking as meek as he knew how. Subtly mocking Lord Knighton was one thing, but cooks were the empresses of their domains and even their employers treated them with respect if they knew what was good for them.

‘I wash in the lake every day, Mrs Gleason.’

‘And what’s your name then?’ That was Molly, the kitchen maid, all freckles and crooked teeth and a big grin that showed them both off.

‘Petrus Owen, Miss Molly.’

That triggered the giggles again. ‘Ooh,
Mis
s Molly!’

‘You’ll be Miss Out On Your Ear, my girl, if you don’t finish those potatoes,’ Cook snapped. ‘And you, you big Welsh lummox, stop lurking about like something out of those novels Lady Caroline’s maid is always reading, go on through to the end of the passage and knock on Mr Blackstone’s door. You give me the cold grues, standing there in that Popish outfit.’

‘Yes, Mrs Gleason.’ He winked at Molly as he passed and was out of the door before her giggles erupted again.

The butler answered the knock on his door after a good minute. From the waft of violet pastilles on his breath Gabriel deduced he had been having an after-luncheon snooze to recover from the onerous duty of finishing off the leftover wine.

‘Oh, it’s you. His lordship said to take you up to the Blue Salon.’ He glowered at Gabriel, apparently found nothing obvious that he could object to, considering his employer was misguided enough to employ such a man, and stalked off along the passageway to the foot of the servants’ stairs.

‘Bring that with you.’ He gestured in passing to one of the hard wooden hall chairs. ‘I’ll not have you sitting on the good upholstery. That robe or whatever it is looks as though it would shed.’

Where Mrs Gleason’s distrust merely amused him, the butler’s attitude filled him with a strong desire to apply one booted foot to his chubby buttocks. Gabriel picked up the chair by the back rail and hefted it into the salon without replying.

Blackstone waved a hand towards the piano. ‘Lady Caroline said you might need to play it.’ His expression showed strong doubt that the silent hermit was capable of such a feat.

Gabriel, without acknowledging he had heard, shifted the piano stool, dumped down the chair, sat and ran his hands up and down the keyboard in a series of perfectly accurate scales. He rarely played the piano, but he could recall enough of his lessons to manage that, at least.

‘Ha! Don’t touch anything else. I will tell her ladyship you are here.’

It was almost silent when Blackstone’s footsteps died away. There was the draught from the open door on his cheek, the sound of birdsong through the window and, distantly, the lowing of cattle in the meadow beyond the ha-ha. It was curiously soothing, this bucolic peace. If he was not careful he would find himself seduced—

‘What on earth are you
doing
?’

Gabriel brought his hands down on the keys in a jangling discord and swung round and to his feet. ‘Lady Caroline.’

‘Lord Edenbridge.’

She knows me.
‘Not so loud.’ He reached her side in three long strides and pushed the door half-closed. ‘Where the blazes is your chaperon?’

‘Unnecessary, according to my father.’ She was tight-lipped and pale and he felt his temper rising.

‘Your maid, then?’

‘Upstairs immersed in a pile of fine mending and a lurid novel I deliberately left just by the mending basket. Never mind that, we are alone for a few minutes at least, so tell me, what are you doing here? And like this?’ Her sweeping gesture encompassed his beard, hair, robe and the scuffed toes of his oldest pair of boots showing beneath the frayed hem. ‘I do not know whether to laugh or run and hide in a cupboard.’

‘From me?’

‘No, of course not from you,’ Caroline said with a laugh that wavered dangerously before she closed her lips tightly upon it. ‘From my father when he discovers this imposture.’

‘What imposture? He cannot seriously delude himself that I am a genuine Welsh hermit. He assumes I am a gentleman or scholar fallen on hard times, but if I am an earl eccentric enough to wish to seclude myself in a chapel and write poetry for a few weeks then that makes me no more peculiar than the earl prepared to employ me.’

‘But that is not why you are here, is it?’ She had retreated to the far side of the piano and from there was studying his face with an expression somewhere between bemusement and alarm. ‘I wish I knew what you were thinking. That beard is extraordinarily effective in concealing both your features and your expression.’

‘I am glad to hear it. But how did you realise, if you did not recognise me close up that first day?’

‘I was watching from the terrace with the guests that evening. There was something about you that was nagging at the back of my mind and then, when I saw you moving, without the distraction of the beard and Welsh accent, I realised.’ She blushed for some reason.

‘I came because I was worried about you. Your note saying you were leaving London was written in a hand that shook and you mentioned your father’s displeasure. I know what kind of man Woodruffe is and I feared you were under intolerable pressure to marry him. If you are, then I could...discourage him.’

‘You were worried? Why should you be? I am no responsibility of yours.’

Gabriel gave a half-shrug. Honour? He supposed it must be that. And he liked Caroline, which in itself was a puzzle. He was unused to liking women for themselves, not as sexual partners, or flirts. Perhaps associating with the wives of his close friends, three brave, intelligent women, was changing his perspective. It was unsettling the way he felt so protective of Caroline.
As though she was a sister
, he thought, then discarded the idea. It felt strangely wrong.

‘I am not used to associating with well-bred virgins, but it seems that an encounter with you was enough to lay bare the few gentlemanly instincts I do possess,’ he said, unwilling to express his half-understood feelings. ‘I was concerned, as I say, but what I did not expect was to find that you had been physically mistreated. I cannot walk away from that.’

‘I told you, it was an accident.’

‘That is not true, we both know it, Caroline. Women tell those lies to shield the men who mistreat them.’
Mama’s voice as she explained away another bruise. So careless, she had been, so clumsy.
His father had hit his own wife and he found the sight of a bruise on a woman intolerable. And now he was an adult he could do something about it. He felt his voice begin to rise and regained control with an effort. ‘Your loyalty is misplaced.’

She made a little gesture of rejection, whether of his persistence or of the violence, he could not tell. Nor did he realise he had moved until he found himself beside her, her hand in his. He lifted it and pushed back the sleeve, feeling her skin under his fingertips, satin-smooth, rather cool. ‘The bruises are almost gone. Do you have new ones?’

* * *

She should make him let go of her hand. Caroline did not stir, letting the warmth from the long, sure, fingers soak into her skin.
Calloused horseman’s hands, perhaps swordsman’s hands
, she thought.
Strong.
‘No, there are no new ones. My father is content that I am allowing Lord Woodruffe to court me.’