Page 57 of The Secret Love of a Gentleman (The Marlow Family Secrets #3)

‘Hey! There’s a toff over ’ere!’ The working man’s shout dragged Rob back to consciousness.

Rob’s head throbbed with a violent pain, and the bitter, iron taste of blood filled his mouth. He groaned as he tried to lift his arm and found it swollen and awkward. His eyes must be swollen too, he could only open his eyelids as far as narrow slits.

‘Governor…?’ The stranger squatted down beside Rob.

‘Where am I?’

‘He’s been robbed, he ’as,’ he heard a woman’s voice say from somewhere near.

‘It’s all right, governor, we’ll get you home,’ the man said.

‘Where d’you live, sir? Can you tell us?’ the woman coaxed, squatting or kneeling beside him too.

Rob groaned, struggling to think through the racket that the pain was making in his head. There would be no one to help him at his apartment, but he could not go to John’s, because Caro would be there. ‘Bloomsbury Square,’ he said. ‘Lord Barrington’s… The Earl’s.’

‘We’ll get a cart, Phyllis,’ the man said .

It took four men to lift Rob’s broken body onto a piece of tarpaulin and onto the cart. The pain from their efforts dragged him back into darkness as he retched and was sick.

When Rob woke again, someone was dropping something foul-tasting into his mouth. It ran across his tongue and down his throat.

He tried to sit up as his hand swiped away whatever it was, but neither his body nor his hand moved as he wished. A pain-filled groan escaped his lips as he dropped back onto a soft mattress and pillow.

The liquid, whatever it was, spilled on his chest, soaking through a linen nightshirt.

‘Robbie…?’ a familiar woman’s voice said.

‘Aunt Jane?’ His mouth was dry, and his lips swollen. He tried to open his eyes. Only one opened, and that only slightly. A cool damp cloth settled on his brow.

‘He is awake,’ she said to someone else.

‘Robbie?’

‘Uncle Robert?’

Rob tried to sit up again, pressing an elbow into the mattress. The world spun full circle and bile rose in his throat.

‘Lie back. Do not move.’ His aunt’s gentle hand rested on his shoulder. He caught a glimpse of her through his half-open eye.

His uncle stepped forward. ‘You were set upon by footpads last night. You are lucky some kind people brought you here. You have broken bones and several injuries. The doctor left laudanum for you. You have splints on your left arm and leg, so you will be here until the bones have healed. I was just about to send for your parents.’

‘No.’ It hurt to speak through his swollen and cut lips, and if felt as if his nose and jaw might be broken too.

‘Do not tell them.’ He would not have Caro know of this.

She wanted time, this would bring her running and she would never be able to feel certain of him.

‘No.’ She would marry him out of pity, and he would not have that.

‘Your mother will never speak to me again if I do not tell her that you are hurt. They need to know. You will not be healed for weeks.’

‘Then tell them they not must tell anyone else.’

‘Robbie…’ Jane complained.

‘No one else.’ He shook his head; his skull screamed with pain.

His aunt lay a hand on his arm. ‘Robert will do as you wish.’

‘I will go to John’s myself and ensure the news is not shared.’

‘Take this laudanum,’ his aunt said as his uncle left the room. ‘Then I will help you try to drink a little broth.’

He accepted the teaspoon of laudanum but rejected the broth, closed his eyes and let the darkness claim him.

‘Son.’

Rob opened the eye that had some movement, his other was still swollen shut. His father was sitting beside the bed.

‘What happened?’

Rob tried to speak but flinched with pain.

‘Never mind,’ his father said quietly. ‘You look like you had a fight with the Devil. Do you want me to get a mirror and show you?’

‘How awful I look…? No.’

‘Your mother and I are going to stay here with you.’

A laboured breath drew past Rob’s lips as he tried to shake his head.

His father’s hand rested on Rob’s upper arm.

‘Your uncle told me you do not want the others to know, yet your mother took one look at you and has gone outside to weep rather than cry before you. If you think she will leave your side once she has recovered from her tears, then you do not know your mother.’

The bedchamber door opened. It was her. She held a handkerchief and her eyes glistened with tears.

‘I do not know what to say to you,’ she said, as his father rose from the chair beside the bed and let her sit.

Rob tried to sit up, but the pain from his splinted arm and leg held him down.

His father’s hand rested on his mother’s shoulder.

Rob coughed painfully. His mother leaned forward and held her handkerchief to his lips. What he spat out was blood.

His father braced Rob’s head and held a glass of boiled water to his lips.

As his father lowered Rob’s head, Caro’s image hovered in his mind’s eye, but not the Caro of recent weeks. The Caro of the summer, when he had first fallen in love.

‘ The gentleman said to tell you to leave what is his alone,’ the voice of his attacker taunted.

Either they had mistakenly assaulted him, or Kilbride had paid the men to give him that message – there was no one else he may have upset to this degree.

Even more so now, he desired to make something of himself to give Caro the happiness she deserved. Kilbride would not win. He would not ruin the life she could have with Rob.