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

Gabriel looked up, then leaned forward and caught her hand, pushed back the sleeve. The bruises had quite gone now. ‘They have a clean slate to begin again. If your father hit you once, he will do it again if you anger him. And Woodruffe...’ How the devil did one explain such tendencies to an innocent? ‘Woodruffe is aroused by violence. Your resistance will only encourage him.’

Caroline met his eyes and shuddered. ‘I don’t think I want to know what you mean by that or how you discovered it.’ She squared her shoulders and pulled her hand free from his lax grip. ‘I will have to run away then. I’ve been hoping against hope that I wouldn’t have to, but at least Anthony is at school much of the time and old enough to go to friends in the holidays. He is in no danger of anything but neglect from our father.

‘I don’t suppose you are any good at safe breaking? Mama’s own jewellery is locked up in the study along with the things my godmother left me. I don’t want to sell it, but I will need to part with some of it to live on until I find work.’

‘I can pick a lock. Some locks,’ Gabriel qualified. He hadn’t needed to since his childhood. ‘It all depends on how good it is.’

‘You really are unscrupulous, aren’t you?’ Caroline’s expression had turned from anxious but determined to something close to judgemental. ‘Not that I am criticising, you understand.’

It sounded like that to him and, amazingly, her words hurt. ‘You are not?’ he enquired, unable to prevent the hint of ice in the question. What the devil was the matter with him if one young woman’s opinion had the power to pierce his armour and wound? He was becoming vulnerable and he had never felt so before. Not mentally, at least.

‘I know you are only trying to help me and I am very grateful, but subterfuge over who you are in order to become the hermit, searching Woodruffe’s things with a view to blackmail and now lock-picking...’

She was right, this was over the thin line and into illegality, even if the jewellery was Caroline’s. He should walk away. Now.

Chapter Eight

Walk away, for her own good. For mine. I have never become emotionally involved with a woman before and that is what this is.

Women wanted a man’s thoughts, his secrets, his soul. His mother had uncovered her husband’s soul and what she found had blighted her entire marriage, had driven her to the drug bottle and to her death. Gabriel had done what he had promised her, but taking responsibility for another person was like a heavy chain around the neck. His brothers had needed his protection and he had given them that at the cost of pain and loneliness and, almost, his freedom, if not his life. But a woman would want emotion.

Emotion is dangerous. Someone is going to get hurt. Stop now before this has gone beyond the point of no return and find some other way to help her. Gabriel found it was easier to decide to walk away than to do it. He sighed inwardly at his own unfamiliar indecision and tried to work things through logically.

Caroline was learning caution fast, it seemed. At first, seized with the desperate need to retrieve those deeds, she had almost innocently offered herself in order to save her brother’s land and future. Now she was regarding the man who had been a stranger, perhaps almost an unreal figure, with speculation. There were questions in the clear blue gaze, questions and doubts that had not been there before he had kissed her.

‘You think I should not do these things and ignore a lady in distress in order to preserve my own moral purity?’ he asked when she did not speak. And when did you ever have morals, let alone pure ones? Get down off your high horse, Edenbridge. ‘And now we are in deep you wonder just who you are involved with? You knew I was a sinner, not a saint, when you first came to me. I might break the law here and there, but are you telling me that your father and Woodruffe do not deserve to be thwarted?’

‘No. No, of course not.’ He could see the thoughts chasing each other, the anxiety and the doubt, the desire to snatch at help and the growing awareness that she was getting into very dangerous waters with a man she did not know. ‘And I was the one who suggested you pick the lock,’ Caroline added, obviously striving to be fair.

‘Look, you can stay here, pretend none of this ever happened, marry Woodruffe.’ Her shudder was an adequate answer to that suggestion. ‘Or you can stay here, but refuse to marry him.’ She shook her head. And he did not miss the betraying way one hand went to her cheek, cradling it. So the swine had hit her in the face as well as bruising her arms. Gabriel thought longingly of having Knighton at his mercy at the card tables again, a sure and legal way to ruin the man. But hell, the thought of killing him was tempting. Far more tempting. Murder solves nothing, he reminded himself. But it was so easy to do, the human frame was so vulnerable. He saw his father’s broken body at his feet, all that power and vigour rendered impotent in a moment.

Gabriel clenched his fists until the nails bit into his palms and breathed deeply until the swirling memories were back under control. ‘Or you can flee, with my help or without it. I assume as you have put it off this long that there is no one you can run to?’

How had he got himself into this?

One step at a time, of course. He had let himself care, allowed himself to feel responsible for someone for the first time since his father’s death, and now he had no more choice but to help Caroline than if he had found her drowning.

‘There is no one.’ Gabriel saw the conscious effort she was making to gather her courage and cope. ‘I can go without your help, or with it, as you say. I had thought to find some cheap lodgings while I looked for work, but I really have no idea how to go about that. The risks to me are far greater if I try it alone—’ She caught the involuntary twist of his lips and smiled, although it was not with much warmth. ‘I have realised that you have no desire to take me up on my foolish IOU, so that makes me feel even safer.’

‘I kissed you. Twice.’ Where was this scrupulous urge to point out all the facts coming from? And he wanted to do far more than kiss her. He forced himself to plan how he was going to get her away, what he was going to do when he had.

Caroline shrugged. ‘Men do tend to try to kiss women, I have observed. It doesn’t mean anything.’

So his kisses were to be dismissed, were they? Gabriel got a grip on what remained of his sense of humour after this evening’s events and waited for her to work her way through to a decision before he told her the results of his rapid planning.

‘I will be safer with you, whether or not we can retrieve my jewels. But,’ she added as he drew breath to suggest that, if she had made up her mind, they should get on with things, ‘it has decided disadvantages for you.’

‘It has?’ Perhaps she was not so innocent after all.

‘I am asking you to commit a criminal act, even if they are my own jewels, because the safe is not mine. And I will be putting you to considerable inconvenience and, I rather fear, expense. At least until I can sell or pawn some jewellery and pay you back.’

‘This much entertainment is cheap at the price,’ he drawled, hoping to lighten her mood, or at least make her cross enough to carry her through the night. Cost, if she only realised it, was the least of their problems.

‘We will get to London and I will take you to one of the wives of my best friends. They are all married to women of...’ he groped for the words to encompass the three and compromised with ‘...independent thought. It will not disconcert them in the slightest to harbour a runaway and we can rely absolutely on their discretion. Pack what you will need for about four days in your smallest valise. Then we will take the jewellery and be on our way. The fewer trips back and forth inside this house tonight, the better.’

‘Oh, yes, thank you, that would be wonderful. The thought of some female support is, I must confess, very welcome.’

Gabriel braced himself for a long wait and then a tussle over a bulging valise and a hatbox or two. Caroline surprised him by removing a few items from drawers and bringing an oilskin bag and a hairbrush from her dressing room. Finally she lifted the lid of the window seat, rummaged inside and produced a large purse that clinked. ‘I have been hoarding my pin money,’ she explained when she saw his attention on the bag.