Page 83 of The Secret Love of a Gentleman (The Marlow Family Secrets #3)

A noise breached the windows of the dining room, where Rob and Caro were eating breakfast. An arrival, a lone horse-rider.

Rob stood as the footsteps of their visitor crunched on the gravel outside.

A knock sounded on the door before Mr Birch reached it. ‘Lord Barrington,’ he said when he opened the door.

‘Uncle! In here!’ Rob shouted.

Caro moved to rise, but Rob pressed a hand on her shoulder. ‘You need not stand.’ She had recovered from the birth, but even so, she still easily became tired.

‘What is wrong?’ Rob asked as his uncle joined them in the room.

‘Have you seen a newspaper?’

Rob shook his head.

‘Here.’ His uncle held out a copy he had withdrawn from the chest of his morning coat.

Rob took it.

‘Look at the obituaries.’

Rob sat down and scanned the pages. His uncle sat too, and Polly stepped forward offering to fill a cup with coffee. He nodded to accept, as Rob found the right page.

‘You are rid of him,’ his uncle said. ‘Yet, I do not know if you, with your high morals, can live with the cause. He died from an infected wound, that never fully healed.’

‘He is dead.’ Shock washed through Rob, draining all the blood from his head. But it was in black and white, the announcement of the death of the Marquis of Kilbride.

‘Polly would you leave us and close the door,’ Caro instructed.

When the door shut, Rob met her gaze. ‘Kilbride is dead.’

A frown creased her brow. ‘Why did you mention Rob’s morals?’ She looked at his uncle.

‘Because,’ Uncle Robert stared at Rob, ‘Harry has confessed the cause of the wound to your father.’

‘I do not understand,’ Caro protested.

‘Does she not know?’ Uncle Robert said.

‘I do not understand,’ she said again.

‘Robbie shot him in the leg in a duel replicating the wound he caused Robbie.’

Caro’s eyes opened wide. ‘What duel? What wound?’ Her voice expressed frustration.

‘Rob did not fall from a horse in the autumn. He was beaten by men Kilbride paid. They left him for dead in the street, with a broken leg and arm.’

Rob wished his uncle would hold his tongue.

‘They…’ Caro looked at Rob, her eyes swimming with tears.

‘I did not challenge him to a duel because of that,’ Rob explained. ‘I challenged him because he hurt you. I shot him the day of our wedding, it is why my ear had bled.’

She stared at him, open-mouthed.

‘You will feel the burden of his death,’ his uncle predicted .

Rob looked at him. ‘I will not. His fate was God’s judgement, he could have survived that shot.’

‘Then God is just,’ Caro whispered. ‘He is dead, and we have Sarah. But a duel, Rob… And why did you not tell me what he did to you?’

‘We have had that conversation long ago, Caro. Because you would have worried and been hurt as much as me, and you would have married me then, after refusing me, and I would not have been certain it was really your choice.’

‘That is stupid,’ she snapped. But then she rose from her chair and came to him. ‘Hold me, please.’

Rob’s uncle stood, smiling. ‘I have probably thrown enough cats among the pigeons. I will leave my coffee and be on my way. I just thought you would want to know. I will let myself out.’

Rob stood, not to say farewell to his uncle, but to enfold Caro in his arms. ‘I am sorry. I know how you felt for him.’

She pulled away, tears on her cheeks and glistening in her eyes.

‘Felt for him… Do you think I am crying for him? Do not be silly, Rob, I am crying for you. The next time I see Drew I shall tell him severely…’ She swiped the tears from her cheeks.

‘He should have kept his thoughts to himself. Had he not counselled me to leave you alone you would not have been on the street that night, and he was wrong on every count. I loved you as deeply as you loved me.’

‘It does not matter now.’

‘No. But you have still made me feel like crying.’

With that she held him again and sobbed gently on his shoulder.

A knock tapped the door his uncle had left open. ‘Ma’am, Sarah is awake,’ the nursery maid said. ‘She is fed and keen to see her mama.’

‘Thank you, we will come and fetch her. ’

When Caro held Sarah in her arms, their daughter’s dark-grey eyes watched him across her mother’s shoulder.

He hoped those eyes would become the colour of gold like her mother’s.