The Unexpected Marriage of Gabriel Stone (Lords of Disgrace 4)

Gabriel grunted and scrubbed his toothbrush into the powder. What he needed was a purpose and he supposed the obvious one was his earldom and, heaven help him, his brothers, although they would probably think he’d got a brain fever if he suddenly turned up showing a keen interest in their lives and welfare. It would certainly unnerve them thoroughly.

‘I’m at home until this afternoon, then I’ll be riding. I may as well put on buckskins and boots now.’ There was business to finish, then he’d blow away the cobwebs with a good gallop and try to work out how to finally come to grips with his inheritance, all of it, on his own terms. His identity had been that of the care-for-nothing rakehell for so long that he wasn’t certain he knew who the man underneath that mask was.

* * *

It was not until the evening that he sat down and began to sort through the jottings he had made on young Mr Holm’s inheritance. He picked up Caroline’s message again, feeling the same prickle of unease as he had experienced the day before. Something was not right with it. He rummaged in the papers until he found her first note and laid them side by side. Same paper, same ink, but while the first was neat and elegantly written, the writing in the second was uneven, straggling, untidy. It looked as though it had been produced in haste and by someone who was either not themselves or who found it difficult to hold the pen. One corner of the page was distorted and he picked it up to study it more closely. A water splash. Or one fallen tear...

I have grievously annoyed my father. Father, not Papa as she had always referred to him before. Something was wrong, very wrong. He had encouraged her to defy Knighton over the marriage and now she was exiled to the country, perhaps mistreated in some way, until she gave in. In his mind he heard the crack of the riding whip, felt the shock of the pain. He had withstood it, pride and sheer bloody-mindedness had seen to that. But a woman...

Surely Knighton wouldn’t beat his daughter? Yet he wanted her to marry Woodruffe. Surely he realised what the man was? Or perhaps he really was so obsessional that he could ignore the man’s reputation?

Just because his own father had been utterly ruthless in imposing his will did not mean that Caroline’s father was. Gabriel pushed away the old nightmares, studied the slip of paper for a long moment, then folded it and put it in his breast pocket. He was imagining things were worse than they were, surely. Even so, he could not rest easy. The paperwork for her brother’s estate was soon completed and he bundled it up to go to his lawyer, then got to his feet. He had a commitment to help Cris and that might take a day or so, but then he was going to find Lady Caroline Holm and undo whatever damage he had caused.

He imagined his friends’ expressions if they knew he was contemplating involving himself in some chit’s family dramas. But Caroline was not some chit, she was intelligent, courageous and determined, and he felt guilty about the way he had teased her, he realised. That was novel enough to provoke him into action. What that action might be he had no idea, but at least he was not feeling jaded any longer.

Chapter Four

Hertfordshire—August 1st

August was usually a month Caroline enjoyed, especially if she was in the country. Now Knighton Park was a hot, stuffy prison and the sunlit gardens and park outside were a bright, tantalising reminder of just how trapped she was.

It was not my fault, she told herself for perhaps the hundredth time. It was not her lack of duty, not her wilfulness, not her foolish whims—all the faults her father had thrown at her. It is his. His tyranny, his temper. His lack of love.

It had started mildly enough. Her father announced that they were moving to Knighton Park and, recklessly, she had chosen to make a stand, to announce that she would not marry Woodruffe, or any of the middle-aged suitors he had considered for her.

The bruises on her right cheek had finally vanished. She studied her reflection in the mirror and clenched her teeth. There was some soreness and a molar was still rather loose, but she thought if she was careful it would grow firm again. The marks on her arms had almost faded, too. She could write long letters to Anthony without discomfort. His future, at least, was safe now.

The image of her face faded and the scene she kept trying to forget swam up in its place.

‘You will do as you are told, you stupid girl!’

‘I am not stupid. I am not a girl. I am of age and I will not be bartered to some man for whom I have nothing but contempt for the sake of your obses

sions.’ Caroline had no idea what kept her voice so steady, what kept her standing there as his face darkened with rage.

Her father was a believer in corporal punishment for his children, although Lucas, the favoured elder son, always seemed to escape with only the lightest of canings. As a girl, her governess had been instructed to strike her once or twice on the palm with a ruler for laziness or inattention, or whenever her father deemed her deserving of punishment, which was often. But she had never been hit by him.

Her father had grabbed her arm, held her as she’d pulled back against his grip, her righteous defiance turned in a second to stomach-churning nausea.

‘You will obey me.’ He’d jerked again as she fought against the pain in her arm. It felt as though the bones were grinding together.

‘No,’ she’d managed. ‘Woodruffe is—’ But she didn’t have the words for what Gabriel had told her. And then her father had hit her across the face, backhanded, knocking her to the ground to land in a painful sprawl against a wooden chair. She had no clear memory of being taken upstairs, only of coming to herself to find her maid bathing her face. There was a bandage on her arm.

Now, with the bruises gone, she had permission to leave her rooms, go downstairs, allow herself to be seen, provided she maintained the fiction of a virulent sore throat that had laid her up for almost two weeks. She sat down in the window seat and searched for some courage. There were tales of how prisoners were afraid to leave their cells and the security of a familiar confined space and now she could understand how they felt. But she was desperate to get out, away from the tedium and anxiety, away from the circling thoughts and desires for Gabriel Stone.

She should be ashamed of herself for having carnal thoughts about a man, because that was what they were. She couldn’t deceive herself that these were romantic daydreams about love and marriage and family. This man was never going to be domesticated and when she imagined herself with him what she saw was a tangle of naked limbs, what she felt was the heat of his body and the pressure of his lips. Beyond that she was too inexperienced to imagine detail. All she knew was that this was shocking, sinful and impossible, because when she had offered herself to him on a plate even this hardened rake had not wanted her.

She had to stop thinking about him. I am the only person I can rely on, no one is going to help me if I do not help myself. And she could achieve nothing shut up inside, Caroline knew that. Her old world of certainties and duty and acceptance of the limitations of a lady’s powers lay in ruins. She would not submit to marrying Woodruffe and that meant she must act.

She had even thought through a strategy over the past few days: go downstairs and assess Pa... Father’s temper and intentions. If he had no intention of yielding, then gather money, jewels, information and escape. Somehow. There would be no help from Lucas, for although he had been shocked by their father’s violent outburst, he still shared his opinion that Caroline should marry as he directed.

But Anthony was a constant worry. What if he did something to arouse such violence in his father? And if she left home it was going to be horribly difficult to meet with him. One thing at a time, she told herself. If I am married to that man I would be equally helpless to look after Anthony. This way I can write, I could see him when he is at school perhaps.

She dressed with care and went downstairs. Her father and Lucas were at breakfast, the table littered with news sheets and the scattered pages of opened letters. Lucas stood up as she came in, her father merely grunted and went back to his reading.

Caroline found a soft roll and some scrambled eggs and took her place at the table and began to eat, favouring the left side of her jaw. Her father shot her a penetrating look, nodded, presumably with approval at her unbruised appearance, and turned to Lucas.

‘The hermit has had his first night in the folly now. I’ll not disturb him for a few days, let him settle in.’