The Secret Love of a Gentleman. Jane Lark

to have me that he threatened to run off with me if the Marquis disagreed. Of course the Marquis did not refuse.”

      A sound of amusement slipped from her throat when she remembered how happy her mother and the Marquis had been at the news they were to be rid of her so easily.

      “Even when we married, though…” She glanced at Rob, to see him watching and listening. “…things were wonderful, Albert spent hours in my company at the beginning. He never said he loved me, but I thought it was love. Yet in the second year his interest waned, and he began keeping mistresses.” Her memories drifted into things she did not want to recall, and she stopped talking as images flashed through her thoughts: strikes, words shouted in her face, the unbearable sensation of failure and loneliness.

      “Caro…”

      She had stopped walking as well as talking. Her consciousness returned to the woodland walk, the sound of the birds and the sunshine above the trees. Those bad moments and those feelings were behind her. She looked ahead and began walking again. “He spent less and less time with me. He wanted a son and I could not carry a child. In the end I was not good enough for him. Things turned sour and his anger grew worse, and, well… you know the rest,” she whispered the last.

      They walked a few steps in silence, her gaze focused on the grass pathway.

      She glanced at Rob. George was sucking his thumb as his head rested against Rob’s shoulder.

      An elemental warmth twisted in her stomach—longing. “I am glad I married him. In the first year and the year that he courted me, he made me happy. I was fortunate to have those years. They were the happiest of my life. What I had missed in attention as a child, I received from Albert tenfold, and it felt like heaven then.”

      “You need more happy years, then,” Rob said in answer, as he looked ahead.

      “I do not anticipate them…” A lump caught in her throat. She’d never thought of her unhappiness. She had spent years here, angry with herself for her failure to succeed as a wife, disappointed and ashamed. But to be unhappy was unfair on Drew. He’d done so much for her. Yet now Rob was here and she’d discovered what it was to be happy again. She knew how unhappy she’d been.

      She swallowed, not looking at Rob, and she did not think he was looking at her. “Why am I telling you this? I’ve told all this to no one else, not even Drew.” She laughed then, to dispel the melancholy feeling wrapping about her heart.

      “I do not know. But I am glad you feel able to. We have truly become friends, haven’t we?”

      She smiled at him.

      “Perhaps I am easy to talk to because I’ve spent a lifetime listening to my sisters.”

      She laughed and it was not shallow laughter, it came from her stomach. How absurd. A moment ago she had been remembering the awful muddle she’d made of her life with Albert and then Rob had made her laugh.

      Her gaze turned to Rob’s shoulder. “George has fallen asleep.”

      “We’re nearly back anyway.”

      Caro looked ahead. The narrow stream that signalled the end of the woodland walk was a few feet ahead.

      Robert navigated it first, carefully stepping onto the flat stone in the middle of the stream. He set one foot on the far bank, left one on the stone, reached an arm behind him, bowing forward to carry George’s sleeping weight, then held out a hand to Caro.

      Her heartbeat raced, and her breathing fractured when she looked at his bare, slender, long fingers as his hand reached out.

      He was being gentlemanly, gallant. It would be ridiculous to refuse the gesture. Yet her hand was bare too. It was too hot for gloves.

       It is nothing of consequence.

      She clasped his fingers and their warmth and strength closed about her grip, but the feeling of his security grabbed at her soul too when she stepped onto the stone. Her heart thumped as her bosom brushed against his chest briefly.

      Heat flared in her cheeks, but there were other sensations too, sensations that recalled memories from her marriage bed.

      “Caro…” he said in a low voice, his eyes a very dark grey.

      She smiled, ignoring the heat burning in her cheeks and fought a foolish urge to kiss him. Then she stepped on, climbing up onto the far bank, lifting the hem of her dress with her free hand.

      He kept hold of her hand and she held him steady as he stepped onto the bank. She met his gaze when he did, her limbs turning to aspic. There was a look in his eyes that she had seen in Albert’s long ago, when Albert had courted her—Rob’s pupils were wider, and they seemed to glow with a depth that was not normally there.

      “George, will fall if you’re not careful,” she said, letting his hand go.

      He smiled. “I’ll move him. Just take him for a moment so he does not topple off.”

      Caro lifted George from his back, and then Rob took him again.

      George’s head rested against Rob’s shoulder, while Rob’s arm braced George’s back and his hand gripped one of George’s legs. He gave Caro another smile. “Do you ride?”

      She nodded. She did, but she had not done so for years.

      “Then, shall we ride tomorrow? We could ride onto John’s land and give the horses their heads.”

      A gallop. She hadn’t ridden since she’d left Albert—she didn’t even really know why. But Drew had never offered to accompany her and she’d never asked, nor thought of riding alone. But the thought of it now…

      “I would like to.”

       Chapter 11

      “You should come,” Rob suggested, leaning back in his chair at the dining table and eyeing Caro with determination as he twisted the stem of his wine glass in his fingers.

      She wished to poke her tongue out at him, but she would not before Drew and Mary. Instead her forehead creased into a scowl as she closed her lips on her argument.

      “Why not, Caro?” Drew, pushed.

      She ignored him.

      Drew, Mary and Rob had visited a neighbour’s for dinner the night before. She had not joined them, she had become used to Rob being here, and her feelings of discomfort being silent, she did not wish to stir them up again. But now they were trying to persuade her to attend an assembly in Maidstone that they had heard about from Drew’s neighbour.

      “You will have all three of us with you,” Mary urged, quietly.

      “You need not even dance, if you do not wish to,” Drew stated. “One of us will stay with you.”

      “I will stay with you,” Rob stated, “They will wish to dance with each other.”

      “We will not,” Mary answered, “I can barely persuade him to dance one set, even if it is a waltz. Drew does not like dancing.”

      “It’s superfluous,” he responded, laughing, “once you have a wife.”

      “Well, I enjoy it,” Mary bit back.

      “Then I will dance with you, and Drew can keep Caro company.” Rob smiled at his sister.

      “Well, I prefer swimming, but I get precious little chance to do that these days.” Drew lifted an eyebrow at Mary, who blushed.

      “I dare you,” Rob said to Caro from across the table.

      She shook her head at him. “No, Rob.”

      “Why?”

      “Rob…” she pressed him to be silent.