acted like that whoever it was.
‘Her ladyship says, she can send up luncheon on a tray, or you are very welcome to come down. Whatever you wish, miss.’
‘I’ll go down.’ Caroline put her shoulders back, her chin up and made for the stairs. This was the start of her new life as an independent woman and she was going to take control, with the help of her new friends and allies.
Chapter Eleven
‘What is this? A Board of Inquiry, or a jury?’ Gabriel entered the drawing room to find a semicircle of his friends facing him. ‘I deny everything, on principle.’
The habit of self-protection, of hiding his feelings and his vulnerabilities, came back to help him. Then it had been a shelter from his father’s savage temper, the act that had allowed him to be strong enough to protect his brothers, the locked door behind which he could trap his own fear and vulnerability, his own guilt that somehow he could have prevented his mother’s suicide.
It had become his gambler’s mask and now he was using it to conceal emotions from his closest friends. He did not understand what he was feeling himself and, if he was not careful, he was going to entangle an innocent woman, a woman who had to be protected from all the darkness in his soul, just as she must be protected from Woodruffe’s cruelty.
‘We are concerned, that is all.’ Cris de Feaux sat back and crossed his legs, the gleam on his Hessians a reproach to every other pair of boots in the room.
‘For both of you,’ Tess said, a crease of worry between her finely drawn brown brows.
‘You must admit, this affair is not going to be easy to carry off without scandal,’ Alex said. ‘Sherry?’
‘Loathe the stuff. Scandal is out of the question. We need to get Caroline out of this with as little gossip as possible.’ He slouched in the one remaining armchair, the one facing the jury, and concentrated on keeping the tension out of his expression. ‘Woodruffe must not find out where she is, let alone her father. The man beat her.’
‘Bastard,’ Tamsyn said, with feeling. ‘Men like that need a good flogging themselves.’
Caroline’s slender shoulders as she sat there on the floor draped in that bath sheet, the pale, soft skin. The delicate bones under his hands on the narrow bed... He could not get the image out of his head. And that swine had struck her. He was going to pay for that.
‘But I do not see how we can avoid scandal,’ Tess said. ‘Caroline is of age, of course, and that helps. But you can’t marry her under a false name and even though you can obviously protect her physically, you can’t hide her. This is not a novel with secret wives hidden in some tower in the forest. Knighton and Woodruffe will raise every kind of storm. Lady Caroline will never be received at Court.’
‘Or, given your reputation already, Gabe, anywhere else,’ Alex commented.
‘Marriage?’ Gabriel stared at them, jolted right out of his normal control. ‘Are you mad? Whatever gave you the idea I want to marry the chit?’ Damnation, this was what came of brooding about feelings, I let my guard down and overreact.
‘The fact that you eloped with her?’ Cris said.
‘Lord Edenbridge did not elope with me. He helped me escape.’ The voice from the doorway was cool and polite and, Gabriel could tell after days spent in her company, the speaker was furious.
The other men got to their feet and Gabriel followed, more slowly. Caroline was standing behind him, her hair in ringlets on top of her head, her creased gown restored to order, her expression completely unreadable.
‘I have no intention of marrying Lord Edenbridge and he has no desire to marry me, which is an agreeable coincidence, is it not?’
She passed him, close enough to touch, close enough for him to have reached out and twitched a pin or two out of that provoking coiffure to see her hair tumble free. Gabriel kept his hands by his side and worked on restoring his expression to one of amused calm.
‘I am very grateful to you, my lord,’ she said earnestly, stopping just in front of him. ‘But if you call me a chit again I will have you kidnapped and force-fed sherry for a week.’
‘You were eavesdropping,’ he drawled, still fighting the tumbling curls fantasy. ‘No one ever hears good of themselves by listening at doors.’
‘A fortnight,’ Caroline amended with a sweet smile.
Cris gave a crack of laughter. ‘Please, take my chair, Lady Caroline.’
‘Thank you, Lord Avenmore.’
She sat with perfect decorum, while Gabriel’s memory provided a series of images of anything but ladylike behaviour—Caroline scrambling up the chimney, Caroline in a tangle of wet towels, Caroline standing on his hearth rug making him an outrageous proposition. Caroline under him in the split second before he got control of himself. He knew which version he preferred. He lowered his lids and sent her the smouldering look that was guaranteed to send innocent young debutantes fleeing to their mamas like a flock of panicking chickens. The one that should send her to safety from a man who was thoroughly unsuited for matrimony.
She looked down her nose at him, perfectly composed, then turned towards Tess. ‘I do not expect ever to regain the place in society I once had,’ she explained. ‘I am hoping for something respectable, but retired, like a companion’s post. I might pass muster as a nursery governess, I suppose. Or I could keep house, I have done that for my father for years.’
‘You would need references,’ Tamsyn pointed out. ‘Although we could supply those.’
‘You are ridiculously young to be a housekeeper,’ Gabriel said, sharply enough for the others to turn and look at him.