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

‘Nor mine,’ Barton said. He looked at George. ‘Reverend Stone, can you confirm what has been said?’

‘Yes, sir. Every word.’

‘Then Sir Humphrey and I will issue a report stating that we have interviewed three new witnesses to the death of the late earl and that their evidence supports the original verdict of accidental death. The newspapers will get their teeth into that, I have no doubt. I suggest, my lord, that you take legal advice and issue your father-in-law with a strongly worded warning of what will happen if he does not withdraw his slanders. Major, Reverend, Mr Stone, I will take down your evidence with Sir Humphrey as witness. I see no reason to detain you, my lady, my lords. Good day.’

Gabriel found himself outside a firmly closed door. ‘I can’t leave my brothers.’

‘They are grown men.’ Cris gave him a decidedly unfriendly shove towards the front door. ‘I would suggest you cannot leave your wife.’

There was a considerable crowd in the street outside, far more than could be explained by the sight of Cris’s magnificent coach and team of matched bays. ‘Get in.’

‘Cris—’ Gabriel realised that he was confused, relieved and, quite simply, furious.

‘Damn you, accept some help from your family for once. The last time you were this aggravating I knocked you on your backside and I swear if you do not get in that carriage with Caroline in the next twenty seconds I’ll do it again.’

Gabriel offered his hand to Caroline and she got into the carriage. She had put down her veil and he could not see her face, but her chin was up, he could tell.

Cris slammed the door on them. ‘Now go home. I’m walking.’

‘Gabriel?’

‘How could you?’ he asked, hearing his own voice cold and hard. ‘How could you do that without asking me? All my life I have protected my brothers and you tossed them to the wolves.’

‘They told the truth, finally, and everything is all right.’ Caroline threw back the veil. ‘You are safe, they are safe, my father’s horrible scheme has been checkmated. Can’t you be happy about that?’

‘Not when you lie to me in front of a room full of people, try to manipulate sympathy by telling falsehoods. You cannot know that you are pregnant, it is barely a month since that first night.’

Chapter Twenty-Two

So, this is what you get for loving a rake. Accusations and ingratitude and anger. Caroline took a deep breath and saw they were drawing up at their own front door where there was another, smaller, crowd with Cris’s grooms holding them at bay. This was not the time to lose all control and scream at the man, tell him how much he hurt her, how much she cared for him.

‘I may not have to tell our child his father is a murderer,’ she said as she lowered her veil. ‘But I am going to have to explain to the poor little soul that he is an ungrateful idiot.’

The groom holding the door for her lost his composure for a moment, then got his face under control as Caroline swept out of the carriage and up the steps to the front door that, thankfully, opened as she reached it.

‘I am an idiot?’ Gabriel slammed the door behind him, shaking the silver tray on the hall table. ‘I was not the one smuggling hairpins and firearms and sovereigns into a magistrate’s house. Why not go the whole nine yards and bake a cake with a file in it?’

‘I didn’t think of that.’ She paused on the bottom step of the stairs and swung round. ‘Perhaps because I am a poor feeble woman with my brain turned to porridge by pregnancy. Or perhaps because I knew there were no bars, but that you might need to get out of the house and bribe a boatman to take you across to France. For some reason, which is escaping me now, I did not want you to hang.’

Caroline stalked upstairs, ignoring the throbbing in her toe, and found a little comfort in the fact that she could close the bedchamber door without slamming it. She turned the key and sat down at her dressing table. Men were the very devil, all of them. But she loved one, was married to one and she was carrying his child, whatever the stubborn creature believed.

* * *

She had expected Gabriel to come to the door and ask her to open it. She had half-expected him to kick it down, but when the tap came half an hour later it was Tamsyn.

‘May I come in?’ When Caroline opened the door Tamsyn caught her in a hug, then held her at arm’s length. ‘Cris says we are to pack and go back to London straight away. He says, and I quote, “Gabriel always was the one with the brains, if he could only be brought to realise it. Let him work this out, because it is beyond me.”’

‘Oh. If Cris is abandoning us...’

‘I think he is simply putting a safe distance between himself and the urge to hit Gabriel. Personally I think it would be an excellent idea to punch him, but men are strange.’ She cocked her head on one side. ‘This isn’t just about his father, is it?’

‘I told him I was expecting his baby.’

She could see Tamsyn doing some mental arithmetic. ‘Er...’

‘It is very, very early. But it is his. I am certain, but he thinks that I lied to the magistrate just to get sympathy.’

‘Oh, so you...before the wedding?’