Page 23 of The Secret Love of a Gentleman (The Marlow Family Secrets #3)

Rob offered his arm to Caro. ‘Will you walk in the garden with me?’

Caro lay her hand on the sleeve of his evening coat. The evening was warm and yet it was not the cooler air that beckoned but the privacy of the gardens.

She looked up and saw a smile hovering in his eyes.

The summer heat had been building for two days and become endless. Caro had spent those days in the nursery with the children, trying to soothe the pain inside her; playing with George, bringing smiles to Iris’s lips with a silver rattle and rocking her to sleep in her arms.

But the evenings were her time with Rob. He was leaving for London in a few days and she was making the most of every last precious hour.

What will I do when he is gone? She did not let her mind dwell on that question, she refused to feel sad when she was with him.

Her fingers closed about his arm gently, rather than merely resting on it, as they stepped out through the French doors.

They contrived a moment of privacy to kiss at least once an evening: as now, in the moments after dinner, when Drew and Mary were in the habit of visiting the nursery to say a last goodnight to the sleeping children.

Each time, their kisses began with an apology and ended with forgiveness, perhaps because Rob knew as much as she did that they ought not to be kissing. The desire to kiss him frequently possessed her, though. She constantly felt pulled to him; whenever he was in a room, she was aware of him.

They walked sedately about the first tall hedge in the gardens, then his arm dropped, he took her hand and pulled her into a run. She laughed as they raced along the paths and around the yew hedges, running deeper into the garden, to the area where the pond was.

Rob’s hands rested on either side of her waist and pressed her back against the prickly clipped branches of the yew. ‘I will say sorry now, Caro.’

‘You are forgiven,’ she answered as her arms rose and wrapped about his neck.

Then they were kissing and she lost herself in the intoxication of it.

One of his hands trailed slowly across her back. Rob always touched her tenderly, but since the night in the library, he had not touched her intimately. She supposed that since he would leave soon it was sensible, and yet she longed to be irrational.

He broke the kiss and kissed her temple.

She nipped at the skin of his jaw above his neck cloth then sucked the soft, freshly shaven skin on his neck just beneath his jaw.

He looked up at the sky, breathing heavily.

Then he pulled away, pressed a palm to her cheek, his thumb beneath her chin, and kissed her lips again; his warm lips pressing over hers and his tongue delving into her open mouth.

‘Caro! Robbie!’ Drew shouted into the garden .

Rob pulled away from her, red staining his cheeks.

‘Mary and I thought we would play cards! Where are you?’ Caro could tell from his voice he had walked out from the house and was now walking through the garden.

‘Caro?! Robbie?!’

Caro’s heart raced.

‘You go,’ Rob whispered. ‘I have a small predicament. Tell him I am upstairs.’

‘Your predicament is not small.’ Caro laughed, doing what she had never done with him and running a fingertip up the length of his erection. When she left him, a smile lingered on her lips.

‘Here!’ she shouted, as she ran about the hedge.

She almost bumped into Drew as she ran into the next room of the garden.

He was only a few steps away from discovering them.

‘Sorry,’ she said, trying to catch her breath and calm her racing heartbeat.

‘I walked out as far as the woodland path, it’s such a beautiful night. ’

‘Where is Robbie?’

‘Upstairs, I think. He said he would come back down.’

Drew looked at her a little oddly.

She clasped his upper arm and turned him around.

Rob walked into the drawing room ten minutes later, as Drew was setting up the card table. She partnered Rob for the game, as was their habit, facing him across the table. They won the first four hands. She only had to look at him and he seemed to know which suit he should lay.

Because it was hot and humid, Rob and Drew stripped off their evening coats and rolled up their sleeves.

When Rob leaned forward to play the first card of a new hand, his dark-brown fringe cloaked his eyes, and when he leaned back, he slid a little further down in the chair, slouching slightly, as he looked at his cards.

The pose gave him an endearing quality. His long fingers pulled out a card and moved it to another place in his hand.

‘Caro, it is your turn,’ Drew prompted.

She leaned forward and laid the Queen of Hearts. ‘I claim the trick.’ The King had already been laid. It was in the pile of cards she and Rob had won, beside her elbow.

‘Oh,’ Mary huffed, throwing away the Two of Spades to end the hand.

Rob looked up from his cards and laughed. Then, he looked at Caro and smiled, his dark-blue eyes glinting with amusement as Caro gathered up the cards in the middle of the table.

‘How do you two do it?’ Drew complained. ‘Have you a code? I have been watching you and I cannot see one.’

Heat flooded Caro’s skin with a blush. She hoped he had not noticed how often she watched Rob.

‘You are too good at this game,’ Mary protested.

Caro laid the Five of Spades. ‘Hearts are trumps again.’ She knew neither Drew nor Mary had a Heart.

Drew and Mary sat in mirrored poses, upright and leaning on the table, with their feet tucked beneath their chairs, eager to win.

Mary lay the Seven of Spades.

Caro slid down a little, slipped her foot from her shoe and touched Rob’s shin with her toes.

He glanced up and shook his head, but he smiled as he sat straighter in the chair, pulling his legs out of reach, then he lay the King of Spades.

‘Damn you, you have it again.’ Drew threw the Knave of Diamonds onto the hand.

Rob gathered up the cards and pushed them across the table for Caro to add to her pile. Her fingers brushed his and the contact lanced through her, spiralling down through her stomach.

She longed to do more than kiss Rob.

When he left, the house would feel empty; she would feel like a parasite once more.

She would not urge him to stay, she had told herself that a dozen times.

She would not trap him here with her. This was not his life.

But if she had to let him go, she longed to lie with him just once; to have a memory to keep.

She wanted to know the bliss of a marriage bed with him.

She was not a virgin, and she could not bear a child, so, what harm would there be in indulging themselves?

‘Caro,’ Drew prompted again. ‘It is your turn.’

Her attention turned to the cards he and Rob had laid. She chose a card that Mary beat, and they lost their first trick of the night. Caro smiled apologetically at Rob.

Drew celebrated their victory by leaning across the table and pulling a laughing Mary over for a kiss.