Page 16 of The Secret Love of a Gentleman (The Marlow Family Secrets #3)

Caro had spent her time very differently in the last few weeks.

She would spend most of the day playing with George and Rob, while Rob thought up silly games.

Then in the evenings she would dine at the table and afterwards sit in the drawing room with Rob, Drew and Mary, where they would converse, play a four of cards, read or sing.

It was probably the strangest period of her life because it was the most normal she had ever felt.

She and Rob often talked. He offered his arm when they walked anywhere together, and she accepted it with no flutter of nerves.

Some evenings, he sat beside her at the pianoforte to turn the music for her as she played, and on rare occasions, if the song desperately needed a baritone he would concede and sing a duet.

She did not feel like a parasite, or isolated, she felt alive. She was happy. She found reasons to laugh every day and smiled often.

‘Uncle Bobbie!’ George protested gleefully, as his uncle captured him and picked him up. George’s legs continued running in mid-air .

‘I caught a little monkey.’ Rob grinned at her. ‘I am not sure exactly what species it is, though.’

George wriggled. ‘Aun’ie Caro!’ he complained, begging her to make Rob put him down.

They were taking George for a walk, leaving Mary and Drew to enjoy some peace with Iris.

The path was a circular route about the edge of the garden.

It wove through a woodland, creating a fashionable wilderness walk.

It did not have the orchestrated views of Albert’s vast gardens, but it was pretty.

Birds sang from the branches above, and the summer breeze swept through the leaves, which shaded them from the sun.

While butterflies fluttered through the air, adding more bright colours to the occasional planting that lined the route.

Rob had left his coat and waistcoat behind because the day was hot, but it did not bother her, they were used to being informal while playing with George. He had rolled his shirt sleeves up too because he was sweating in the heat.

‘Put me down, Uncle Bobbie!’ George wriggled harder.

‘When you can behave, little monkey. You were told not to run.’

George kicked out, complaining. The heat was making him tired and grumpy, which is why they had come for a walk in the shade.

Her legs slashed at her petticoats as she strode after them, trying to catch up. Her bonnet, hung from her neck by its ribbons, bouncing against her back. It was not fair that Rob could strip off layers and she could not.

Rob stopped, waiting for her to catch up.

When she reached him, she ruffled George’s hair.

‘Aun’ie Ca’o,’ he whined.

‘Tyke,’ Rob said, turning George and sitting him at his hip, revealing a glimpse of the skin at his waist as his shirt tails pulled up from his trousers.

Rob braced George’s chin between his fingers, looking him in the eye.

‘Now, George Framlington, you are not to run ahead. There is a stream further along, and if you tumble into that and drown, your mama and papa would string me up. You are to do as you are told or I will not bring you out for a walk again. Do you hear?’

George lifted his chin free, and nodded.

‘I wish to hear the promise from your lips. Say it, George, I will not run off .’

George’s lower lip wobbled. He hated to be told off, but then he said, ‘I won’t ’un. I p’omise.’

‘Good boy.’ Rob patted George’s shoulder. ‘There’s no need for tears. You did wrong, but now you are going to do right.’

‘Would you like to hold my hand?’ Caroline said.

‘Or ride on my piggyback,’ Rob offered.

‘’ide,’ George chose, lifting his hands to Rob’s neck. Rob spun him to his back as George’s arms circled his neck. He caught up George’s legs, looping them over his arms at the elbows.

George peered over Rob’s shoulder.

Caro smiled at them both.

Rob’s patience was a wonderful thing.

‘You are so good with him,’ she commented when they walked on.

‘I have had plenty of practice. Remember the size of my family.’

‘My family were never close. We were not like yours.’

Rob glanced at her and smiled. ‘I know. Mary met them. She’s spoken of it. She described them as unpleasant.’

‘She was being polite. Drew and I were unwanted and ignored – for understandable reasons, as we are not the Marquis’s children.’ She was talking about things she never spoke of. But they had become friends and friends shared confidences. ‘I do not know who my father is. Neither does Drew.’

‘But the fault was your mother’s, not yours. Did the Marquis not judge her?’

She shrugged. She had never understood her mother.

The woman had not one maternal bone in her body.

‘Perhaps, but if we were treated as though we did not exist then her infidelity could be ignored. That was my mother’s view anyway.

Fortunately for me, if Albert knew, he overlooked my birth.

He never mentioned it and neither did I. ’

‘Fortunately… Forgive me if this is ignorant, but what was fortunate about your marriage?’

Caro glanced at him, surprised to hear him speak of it, but she did not feel horror as she might have done a few weeks ago, and she had spoken of it first.

‘I am sorry, it is none of my business.’ His smile became apologetic.

But it was nice to feel comfortable to talk, and Rob never judged.

‘You may speak of it. My marriage was not always bad. I loved him.’ She still did because he was the only one who had shown her the intensity of feeling that felt like love, and her body and her soul had never forgotten it.

‘I was young when I met him. I suppose I idolised him. He was attentive and earnest. He courted me with devotion. He was determined to have me.’ She smiled as she remembered.

‘When we married…’ she met Rob’s gaze, ‘…things were wonderful. He never said he loved me, but I thought it was love, because he treated me so kindly. Things changed, in the second year, when…’ she could not form the words to mention the children, ‘…his interest waned, and he took on a mistress.’ Her memories drifted to things she did not want to recall, and she fell silent.

‘Caro…’

She had stopped walking as well as talking.

Her consciousness returned to the woodland walk, the sound of the birds and the dappled sunshine on the ground.

She looked ahead and walked on. ‘He spent less and less time with me. He wanted a son and I could not carry a child. In the end I was not good enough for him. Things turned sour and his anger grew worse, and, well… you know the rest,’ she whispered the last. ‘But in the beginning, yes, I consider it fortunate that I enjoyed that period of my life.’

He was silent.

She looked at George who was sucking his thumb as his head rested against Rob’s shoulder.

An elemental warmth twisted in her stomach – longing. ‘I am glad I married him. The months of the first year of our marriage and the period he courted me, they were the happiest of my life. He showed me the attention my childhood lacked.’

‘You need more happy years, then,’ Rob said bluntly.

‘I have not anticipated them.’ A lump caught in her throat.

She never thought of her unhappiness. She had spent years being angry with herself for her failure to succeed as a wife, disappointed and ashamed.

But to be unhappy was unfair on Drew. He did so much for her.

Yet now Rob was helping her discover a new happiness, she realised how unhappy she had been.

She swallowed, then laughed briefly at herself. ‘Why am I telling you this? I have not even told all this to Drew.’ She laughed again, dispelling the melancholy feeling wrapping about her heart.

‘I am glad you feel able to. We have truly become friends, haven’t we? ’

She smiled. ‘Yes.’

‘Perhaps I am easier to share confidences with because I have spent a lifetime listening to my sisters.’

‘Drew has spent a lifetime listening to me too.’ Her gaze turned to Rob’s shoulder. ‘George is asleep.’

‘We’re nearly back anyway.’

The narrow stream that signalled the end of the woodland walk gurgled a little way ahead. It was a narrow, shallow stream, but too deep to walk through and too wide to step over, so a large flat stepping stone had been placed in the middle.

Robert navigated the crossing first, carefully stepping onto the stone and balancing George. He set one foot on the far bank, left one on the stone, reached an arm behind him, bowing to carry George’s sleeping weight, then held out a hand to Caro.

Her heartbeat raced when she looked at his hand. He wore no gloves. He was being gentlemanly, gallant. It would be ridiculous to refuse the gesture. Yet her hand was bare too. It was too hot for gloves.

It is nothing of consequence , she told herself as she lay her hand in his.

Warmth and strength closed about her hand as he steadied her weight, helping her balance as she stepped forward.

The security of his strength was the strangest thing.

Albert’s strength had become a threat. As she stepped onto the stone, facing him, her bosom brushed against his chest. Heat flared in her cheeks as the sensations brought back memories from her marriage bed.

‘Caro…’ he said in a low voice, his eyes a very dark grey.

She smiled, ignoring a foolish urge to kiss him, then stepped on to the far bank.

She kept hold of his hand and held him steady as he stepped across.

Their gazes collided as he moved. The look in his eyes was like that she had seen in Albert’s long ago, when Albert had courted her – Rob’s pupils were wider than usual, and they seemed to glow with a depth that was not normally there.

Her limbs turning to quivering aspic, she released his hand. ‘George will fall if you are not careful,’ she said.

He smiled. ‘If you take him for a moment, I will carry him instead.’

He turned so Caro could lift George from his back.

For a small boy, George weighed a ton when he was asleep, as limp and heavy as a sack of flour.

Rob took him back, resting George’s head against his shoulder, as he held one of George’s legs and braced his back with his other palm.

He smiled at Caro as they walked on. ‘Do you ride?’

She nodded. ‘Yes, but I have not done so for years.’

‘Then, shall we ride tomorrow? We could ride on to John’s land and give the horses their heads.’

A gallop. She had not ridden a horse since she left Albert – she could not say why. Perhaps only because Drew had never asked, and she had been too busy being miserable to think of riding alone. But the thought of it now…

‘I would like to. Yes.’