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

She turned her fingers into claws beneath his hand and raked gently down his chest, following the trail of silky hair. When his eyes narrowed she whispered, ‘Do you know what I want to do now?’

Gabriel shook his head, his gaze as intent as a hawk watching a vole.

‘Get out of these stays and have a bath. Oh, no—we haven’t any luggage!’

‘Yes, we have. Look.’ In the corner were three valises and her dressing case. ‘I thought it was unwise to send everything ahead of us.’

‘Yes, but it has only just occurred to me, Harriet and your valet will be wondering what has become of us. They will be so worried.’

‘I expect they will guess we have been held up on the road.’ He was looking so innocent as he straightened up from the bags with their robes in his hands that Caroline was immediately suspicious.

‘You planned this, didn’t you? You told them we wouldn’t be in Brighton tonight.’

‘I thought you might like something more spontaneous, more like a scandalous elopement,’ Gabriel said as he shrugged on a heavy amber silk banyan over the tattered shirt. ‘Let me untie that tight lacing before we ring for baths.’

‘Why, I do declare you are a romantic, Gabriel Stone,’ she said on a sigh of relief as her stays tumbled to the floor.

He held the peignoir for her. ‘No, I am not, merely a rake. That’s why we are so dangerous to innocents.’

Caroline blinked hard as he crossed the room to tug on the bell pull. That’s what you get for being romantic yourself, you fool. He doesn’t love you, he is merely displaying his usual repertoire of seduction and lovemaking. And he is very good at it. The benefit of experience as he says.

Caroline had her smile stitched firmly in place as her husband turned back. He had spoken in jest with no intention of hurting her, she was certain, for he would have to know that she loved him for that comment to have been meant to wound. She’d had no illusions about who and what she was marrying and she was not going to start their life together with tears and reproaches.

The cheerful expression was still intact as the maid came in and Gabriel gave orders for baths, shaving water, dinner. The years of practice hiding my feelings from my father are bearing fruit now, she thought and then had to turn away abruptly as the tears slid down her cheeks. Of all the bitter ironies, to have to use the deceit learned in her early life in order to hide her true feelings from the man who had rescued her from it.

* * *

‘I am so enjoying Brighton.’ Caroline tightened her grip on Gabriel’s arm for a second and he glanced down at her, his expression amused.

‘You haven’t exhausted all the entertainments in a week?’

‘Of course not. After all, this is the first time we have been swimming.’ She gave him a sidelong look from under her lashes. ‘It is the first morning I have been able to drag you out of bed in time.’

‘You were not so unwilling to stay there,’ he murmured, lowering his voice because Harriet and Corbridge were walking behind them, the valet carrying towels and the maid with Caroline’s swimming outfit and hairbrushes.

It was true that she was easily persuaded to stay in bed for just one more kiss, which usually led to more than kissing. On the other hand Gabriel appeared to consider any time of the day or night suitable for lovemaking, so getting up on such a glorious morning as this would hardly deprive either of them.

‘Mrs Wilberforce is waving from her carriage,’ she said, drawing Gabriel’s attention to the passing matron and her daughters. He lifted his hat, Caroline exchanged slight bows with the other ladies and they walked on, passing several new acquaintances and others whom Caroline or Gabriel knew from London.

‘Everyone is so friendly,’ she said. ‘I did not expect it. We eloped, so I thought many of the matrons would poker up and that they would not welcome me associating with their daughters.’

‘I suspect our friends have been busy on our behalf, although I must admit to being pleasantly surprised. Probably your father’s eccentricities are so well known that no one blames you for escaping. And we did come to London and marry at once from a most respectable address. You are a countess now and although I have got a reputation, as you very well know, I have always been received.’ He doffed his hat to a handsome lady in an open carriage who dimpled back at him.

‘Stop flirting,’ Caroline said lightly. She might as well tell a cat to stop chasing mice. Gabriel noticed pretty women, looked at pretty women and smiled at them, too. And he had spent two evenings at the Castle Inn assembly rooms deep in card play. But there was no sign that he went any further than smiling and as for the cards, he kept an eye on her and tossed in his hand the moment he noticed her looking tired.

‘I am male, I have a pulse and I am under ninety and given that I caught you in Donaldson’s circulating library using the telescope to study the west beach, I have to tell you, my lady, that was a case of the pot calling the kettle black.’

‘I was not studying it! I only happened to swing the telescope in that direction. How was I to know it was the men’s bathing area?’ Or that they all bathe stark naked? None of the Brighton machines had the all-enveloping hoods that she had read about. It made her blush all over again just thinking of it.

‘I will bespeak two bathing machines, mine at the eastern edge of the men’s beach and yours at the western edge of the ladies’ beach and then I can keep myself between you and any more assaults on your modesty.’

They were approaching the bathing house where those wishing to be ‘dipped’ booked their machine. Down on the beach the mules were trundling up and down the shingle, dragging the bathing machines and from the water came faint shrieks as ladies were ducked by the muscular female dippers.

‘I do not want to be dipped, Gabriel.’

‘A dipper is a fixture with the ladies’ machines, I’m afraid. Besides, if you haven’t been in the sea before then it is easy to be swept off your feet. I do not want you drowned, my dear. Just tell her you want to keep your head above water.’

He thinks I am nervous of being forced under the surface. I never told him I can swim, she realised, almost blurting it out, then thinking again. It might be fun to surprise Gabriel if he really was going to be close enough to reach without the risk of encountering any of the other men. Her mother, hearing of a tragedy where an entire family had been drowned on a boating trip, had insisted that her daughter as well as her sons were taught to swim before they were allowed to row on the lake. Lucas had taught her, surprisingly patient as she doggy-paddled around in the shallows in a voluminous shift over a pair of his old breeches.