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

His mood was communicating itself to the hired pair who fidgeted and sidled as he kept them waiting for Caroline to emerge from the house. Gabriel forced himself to relax his hands, to speak to the horses until they calmed. He only wished he could exert the same soothing influence over his knotted guts. The memories of the past were bad enough. Not the pain, that he had learned to lock away, but the flashbacks to his father’s body at his feet, strangely pathetic in death, all that power and fury reduced to nothing but flesh and bone and expensive tailoring. He had been glad he had died, he had to bear the guilt of that as well.

The images flooded in as he fought them. Louis, a white-faced child, mercifully unconscious; Ben and George, just boys themselves, stammering questions; and further back, his mother as white as the sheet she lay upon and the doctor sweeping a bottle into his case with one hasty brush of his hand. A tragic accident, he had said, and fourteen-year-old Gabriel, shivering with dread behind the curtains, had known with absolute certainty that he lied.

But that was the past and he had learned to live with it, contain it. His marriage was the present and he had allowed the poison to leak from that sealed room in his mind to hurt Caroline. And what had he done this for, this marriage, if it were not to save her from hurt?

She came down the steps using her parasol as a cane, her weight on her heel, waving away the footman. ‘Thank you, Robert. I can manage.’ But she let the man help her into the curricle and settled herself with perfect composure beside Gabriel.

His wife was a lady through and through, he told himself as the pair moved sedately out into the traffic bordering the Steine. Whatever had passed between them, whatever hurts she had, mental or physical, she would not sulk and she would not show anything but a pleasant face in public. His mood softened, he felt himself grow calmer, just because she was beside him.

‘I had expected a high-perch curricle,’ she said as he gave a wide berth to the fishermen drying their nets on the end of the greensward nearest the beach and then turned eastwards along the seafront.

Play the cards as they were dealt, he reminded himself. You didn’t win at cards by cursing every poor hand that came your way, but by working with what you had. And just now he had a wife who was apparently forgiving enough to drive out with him.

‘The roads around Edenvale are more lanes than anything. One needs a carriage built with substance rather than style. I had no wish to deposit you in a ditch when an axle broke.’

‘Then you had planned for us to make this expedition today?’ Unspoken was the question of why he had not mentioned it before.

Cowardice was probably the correct answer, but he left that unspoken also. ‘Yes. It is less than an hour’s drive.’ Which was no answer at all.

Caroline maintained a flow of intelligent conversation as they drove, commenting on the landscape, the boats to be seen along the coast, the state of the tide, the occasional picturesque cottage or view. None of it was taxing, none required an answer beyond the occasional monosyllable. Gabriel decided he was probably being managed and that he deserved it. That he welcomed it. He did not want to be at odds with his wife.

He turned inland when they reached Saltdene, wending his way through narrow lanes up on to the rolling downland. ‘Access is better from the north, but this is a more attractive route,’ he added as he made the sharp turn into the park through the gate to the Home Farm.

She was silent as they drove across the parkland, past the famous herd of fallow deer, past the lake and the great stable block and, finally, to the front of the house.

‘Queen Anne,’ Gabriel offered when she was still silent. ‘Not over-large and the rose-red brickwork is considered rather fine.’

‘It is beautiful and seems very well kept up.’

‘I have excellent staff here.’

As he spoke the front doors were opened. Two footmen appeared and a groom came running from the stables. Gabriel helped Caroline down and offered his arm as she limped across to the steps. ‘Does it pain you very much?’

‘Just the bruising coming out. If I did not have to wear a shoe it would be trivial.’

‘My lord.’ Hoskins, the butler, stood waiting, permitting himself one of his rare smiles. ‘Welcome home, my lord. And, my lady?’

‘Indeed yes. My dear, this is Hoskins, who has been with me for ten years. Hoskins, Lady Edenbridge, your new mistress.’

Caroline smiled warmly at the man and then looked around the great double-height hall. ‘I see you manage the house in fine style, Hoskins. What a magnificent staircase!’

‘It is one of the showpieces of the house, my lady. That double sweep, the ornately carved newel posts, the painted ceiling—students of architecture frequently call just to admire it.’

She stood at the foot where the two arms of the stairs came together on the pure white stone and Gabriel could see, beneath her feet, the pool of crimson slowly spreading, spreading... Then he blinked and all was clean marble again.

‘Refreshments for her ladyship in the Chinese Drawing Room, Hoskins. And no doubt Mrs Hoskins will make certain the countess’s suite is in readiness should she wish to rest.’

‘Thank you, but I feel the need for tea more than anything else.’

‘You have the butler charmed, which is a good start,’ Gabriel observed as they seated themselves in the drawing room. It was in good order, but then it should be: he had written before they had set off to Brighton to tell Hoskins that he would be opening up the house again.

‘A good start for when you leave me here by myself, you mean?’

‘There is little to entertain you in London just now, I would have thought. Naturally you will want to return when the Season starts, but in the meantime I assumed you would want to order this place as you see fit.’

‘While you will have plenty to entertain you in London?’

‘Probably. My clubs... It is pretty much a bachelor society at this time of year. And then when hunting starts I expect to receive invitations to various people’s boxes in the shires.’ The clubs, the hells, the safe, solitary evenings. The l