Page 2 of The Secret Love of a Gentleman (The Marlow Family Secrets #3)

Lady Caroline Kilbride stood alone inside the house, watching everyone else gathered on the broad stone terrace and the lawn beyond it. Her stomach felt as though it contained wriggling frogspawn not butterflies.

There were dozens of people here, adults and children, the sound outside full of laughter, gleeful screams and merry conversation.

Her brother, Drew, was among them, playing cricket on the lawn with others, and many of the children.

Her sister-in-law, Mary, was sitting on a blanket beneath a canopy with other women.

She held their daughter, Iris, in her arms.

Many of the women had young children.

It was more than three years ago that she first came to the Duke of Pembroke’s ostentatious Palladian mansion.

She felt then as she felt now, overwhelmed, not by the house, or John’s wealth, but by the people.

Her heart pulsed with the beat of a bird’s wings and a lump of nausea pressed at the back of her throat urging her to be sick.

She felt like a parasite, a divorcee hiding among these happy couples, clinging to her brother and sucking life from his family.

She hated the need to rely on Drew; her shame pressed down on her daily with a steel-hard pain.

Sometimes it felt as though her former husband’s hands were still about her throat, cutting off her breath.

Sometimes it felt as though she had not breathed for three years.

This family accepted her, all of them. Her misery was of her own making. But the perfect lives of these people reminded her she had failed to be a loved wife and mother. Guilt, shame, and longing to be able to change the past, were her constant companions.

If she was at Drew’s house, she would retire to her rooms, but she had agreed to come here with them and so she must wait until her brother and his wife left. Mary said she would need help with Iris and George, but there were enough adults to manage all the children.

‘Bowl! Hurry!’ John yelled from his position behind the wicket, holding up his open hands, waiting to catch the batsman out. The ball was thrown by an uncle, and his cousin was caught out.

Some of the women and children cheered, others booed, depending on whom their allegiance lay with.

John slapped his uncle’s shoulder and his uncle laughed.

The Pembroke family were a harmonious clan, and Drew was one of them these days.

Mary’s brother, Robbie, walked up to bat.

A moment later, the crack of hard leather hitting willow broke across the conversation in the open space. Robbie ran.

When the rest of the family left, he was to stay with Drew and Mary for a few weeks.

He raced from one wicket to the other, tapping the bat on the ground and running back. He was taller than most men, lithe and athletic .

A tingle of discomfort rippled through her nerves. Drew constantly complained about her nerves . The doctor had told her, ‘ It is just that you have an overly sensitive nervous system… ’ He had prescribed laudanum, but she had never used it. She did not want to feel tired and ill as well as mad.

‘Uncle Bobbie!’

Caro’s gaze turned to Drew’s son. George ran to join the game. Mary’s father caught him and hoisted a squealing George onto his shoulders.

Her nephew and niece were Caro’s sole happiness. She spent as many hours with them as she could, they were the reason she was here.

Applause echoed over the lawn as Robbie ran his fourth length and beat the ball back to the wicket. He turned and braced himself to hit again, his dark-brown hair falling forward over his brow.

His colouring was different from most of the Pembroke family’s; the old Duke’s pitch-black hair and pale blue eyes had travelled through his family, but Robbie had his father’s colouring not his mother’s.

Drew told her yesterday that Robbie was concerned about staying because he thought she would feel uncomfortable. Drew had waited for her to say she did not mind. She had not answered. She would feel uncomfortable but she would not discuss her silent madness with her brother.

Guilt and shame ate at her not only because of Albert’s, her former husband’s, behaviour, but also because she still loved him. Feelings could not simply be snuffed out like the flame of a candle. She could neither excuse nor forgive herself, so she did not expect Albert to.

Perhaps Drew ought to have her admitted to an asylum and be done with it. She felt as though she were trapped in a glass cell anyway.

A raucous cheer went up, Robbie’s wicket had been smashed.

‘Shall we break?’ John shouted. ‘I am in need of refreshment.’

Several male voices agreed.

Her heartbeat pounded violently in her chest, as the men walked towards the terrace.

Drew spotted her. Of course, he knew where to look. He knew she would be inside the house. He lifted his hand and waved as he peeled away from the others who walked towards their wives and mothers.

She and Drew were not particularly alike, apart from their eyes.

They had the same mother, and different fathers.

He had carried insecurities too, before he married Mary.

These days, he was as confident in his own skin as any man could be.

He was at peace with himself, and deeply in love with Mary.

Mary completed him. She was the other half that had made him whole. Caro was the shackle about his ankle.

‘Caro,’ he said as he walked across the terrace to the open French door. ‘Come and sit with Mary and I.’

‘I am happy here.’ Her lips trembled when she tried to smile.

‘Are you really?’ He smiled wryly, one eyebrow lifting to mark his disbelief. ‘Come on.’ He held out his hand. ‘You can keep George under control.’

Drew was generous and kind, but also, unfortunately, stubborn.

He grasped her hand. ‘Kate will be insulted if you do not at least come outside for a little while.’

‘The Duchess will not notice,’ Caro said, but she gave in to his urging rather than cause a scene, letting him lead her across the terrace.

Touch was another thing that assaulted her ‘ overly sensitive nerves ’ .

She did not mind Drew and the children touching her…

but others… If anyone offered an arm to lead her into dinner, or held out a hand to ask her to dance, even if they accidentally touched her, her senses screamed in revulsion.

Yet she craved touch. She felt starved of it at times.

It was just another anomaly of her madness.

Drew’s broadest smile flashed. ‘She notices,’ he said in a jovial tone. ‘They all do. But admittedly no one thinks badly of you for hiding.’

The family groups were gathering around refreshment tables that the servants had set up on the lawn. The younger children ran between people’s legs, playing a game of chase.

‘Enough, children, you will knock one of us over!’

Caro flinched at the deep dictatorial tone of Lord Wiltshire’s voice. It rattled through her nerves.

Drew’s hold tightened on her hand as though he felt her hesitation.

Caro focused on Mary, and Iris in her arms, her heartbeat galloping. This panic was irrational, she knew, yet her whole body screamed its desire to run away. Fear hemmed her in and tightened about her chest like a band of iron, making it difficult to breathe.

Flashes of memories sparked, images, there then not, like lightning. Moments of pain when she was struck. Moments of embarrassment when she was bruised. Moments of self-disgust when Albert had berated her for her failings.

‘Look what I found,’ Drew said to Mary.

Mary patted a vacant space beside her on the blanket, smiling a welcome.

Caro fought the growing pain in her chest as she sat down. The sight of Iris asleep in Mary’s arms eased Caro’s panic, replacing the emotions with love .

‘Would you hold her?’ Mary asked. ‘Then I can find something to eat. I am so hungry.’

‘Yes, of course.’

Mary was a good friend, a good sister, she never made Caro feel uncomfortable or unwanted.

When Caro took Iris from Mary, her little hands opened, her fingers uncurling and stretching, as her eyelids flickered, but she did not wake.

Drew reached across Caro and brushed his daughter’s cheek with a hooked forefinger. Iris’s eyelids popped open and she looked at her papa.

‘Poppet,’ he whispered.

Iris gurgled in recognition.

‘Aun’ie Ca’o!’ George barrelled into Caro’s side, tumbling onto the blanket with a roll. She lay one arm about George while the other braced Iris, and the world was at peace.

‘I hit a ball with Uncle Bobbie,’ George announced.

‘I held the bat with him.’ The next words had come from above them.

Mary looked up. Caro did not as Robbie’s voice grated on her nerves.

‘I hit it far,’ George declared, slipping from beneath Caro’s arm to hug his mother instead.

‘Clever boy,’ Mary praised her son. ‘Perhaps Uncle Robbie will teach you how to hold the bat yourself while he stays with us.’

‘I cannot believe I missed this marvellous feat,’ Drew said. ‘You will have to do it again after luncheon so I may see you, George.’

Robbie stood too near, Caro’s nerves tingled. She wished he would go away. Instead, he knelt on the end of the blanket, near Mary’s feet .

Panic claimed Caro in full force, her chest became so tight the breath had to fight its way to her lungs. Iris cried out as Caro’s fingertips pressed into her soft thigh.

‘Sorry, perhaps, she is hungry. I will feed her before I eat myself.’ Mary gave her son a squeeze, then let him go and stood. ‘Come along, little one.’ She reached down so Caro could pass Iris back.

Robbie’s gaze fell on Caro as she gave Iris up. She could feel him not just looking but watching her.

As Mary walked away, Drew sat next to Caro, in the space Mary had moved from. He leaned back on his hands and stretched out his legs. ‘You know your mother is taking your absconding personally,’ he said to Robbie.

George crawled over to his father.