The Secret Love of a Gentleman. Jane Lark
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received from his wife to find his own happiness, not hers.
He said nothing, turning away to lift the edge of the blind and peer around it as they passed the front of the shop, and Albert’s carriage.
Drew looked back at her. “They do not appear to have noticed your absence yet.”
When they did discover her gone there would be bedlam. They would fear Albert’s response. She would always be terrified of her husband’s influence.
What if he found her?
Drew’s hand held hers, offering comfort and reassurance.
She was grateful and yet his own marriage was falling apart, his wife had left him.
They were both flawed.
They’d been scarred as children by their mother’s betrayal and their stepfather’s hatred. But on top of that Drew had the curse of male pride. He would not plead his case and try to persuade Mary to have him back.
~
“We will leave the carriage here and walk,” Drew stated when it jolted to a halt. It was the last stage of their journey.
He opened the door and took her hand. She climbed out, her eyes wide and heartbeat racing. He kept a hold of her, leading her out of the inn’s courtyard.
They turned a corner and walked down another street. Then past a shallow ford across a river and a large, ornate building.
Drew continued walking until they reached a row of terraced, whitewashed, thatched cottages. Most had gardens filled with vegetable plants, but the one in the middle was full of flowers in bloom. When they reached it Drew opened the gate in the stone wall that ran along the edge of the road.
They walked up the path.
The cottage door was small, but it was the entrance to her new life. In that context it was a giant step.
Drew knocked and the door opened. A thin, middle-aged woman, dressed in unrelenting black, stood there. Drew hurried Caro in and shut the door. It was dark inside and the ceilings were low. It felt a little like a prison cell—gloomy, cold and desolate.
She had come from affluence to this, tumbling down the stations of society, simply because she could not bear a child.
Drew stayed with her for a while, as the housekeeper who had opened the door showed her about the small four-roomed cottage, and then he drank tea with Caro. But he could not stay forever.
“Caro, you know I cannot return for a while. Kilbride will have people watching me for weeks. We both know it. Do not write either. It is not worth taking the risk. I will come as soon as I can, but in the meantime, simply live quietly here.”
She nodded as he stood. She rose too. Then she lifted to her toes and hugged him, crying, clinging to him. The one person in her life who had proved themselves constant—who loved her truly.
“You must be brave, Caro, stay calm and stay strong and sit it out here. He will not find you, I promise.”
She nodded again, but Albert would never cease looking. She knew him better than Drew. Albert would take her flight as an insult. He’d wish for revenge. He would continue to live his life without her and yet ensure she never felt able to live hers without fear.
The knocker struck on the cottage door with four firm raps.
Caro rose from her chair, fear clasping in her chest as she walked into the hall.
This was her haven—no one knocked on the door.
Beth, the housekeeper, had come out from the kitchen. She wiped her hands on the skirt of her white apron.
Caro had lived here alone for days, a prisoner in her new home, communicating with no one except Beth and no one else ought to be here. Drew had said he would not come.
Caro could not look from the window without giving herself away. Instead she stared at the door, willing her eyes to see through wood.
No word had come from town and she had not asked Beth to purchase a paper for fear that local people would wonder why a woman of the class she was now supposed to be would wish to read. She was living humbly, trying not to rouse suspicion.
“Madam, should I open the door?” Beth whispered as Caro merely stood there, her heart pulsing hard.
Foolishly she longed for Albert, for someone to turn to and say, what should I do? She missed none of her finery but she missed her husband. She missed the man who had felt like her protector once, the man who had come to her at night and touched her as though he loved her. A part of her foolish heart longed to be found, but not by the man who beat her.
“Ask who it is.” Caro whispered.
“Who is there?” Beth called as she looked towards the door.
“It is Lady Framlington. Your brother sent me, he could not come himself.” Mary’s soft voice penetrated the wood and pierced Caro’s heart. Drew’s wife should not be here if all was well.
Caro looked at Beth. “Something is wrong. Why would my brother not come himself? They are estranged…” Of course, it was foolish asking her housekeeper. How was Beth to know? But the anxiety skittering through Caro’s nerves stopped her from thinking clearly.
“Ma’am, I cannot say –”
Panic gripped and solidified in Caro’s stomach, and froze her limbs as though ice crept across her skin. She imagined Drew beaten or dead. “Should I trust her, do you think?”
“Ma’am.” The decision must be yours, Caro heard the words Beth did not utter.
Drew’s wife was from a good family, a family renowned for its loyalty and high morals. Surely Mary had not come to entrap her.
“Let her in,” Caro ordered in a broken whisper.
“Very well, my lady?” Beth’s hands reached behind her back to untie her apron as she turned away and went to hang it up in the kitchen.
When Beth returned, her black dress still dusty with flour, she freed the bolts that held the door.
When the door opened, a silhouette of the young woman standing outside was framed by the daylight.
Beth bobbed a curtsy. Mary looked at Caro, her gaze assessing the brown shawl Caro had wrapped around her shoulders to shelter from the chilly draughts in the cottage.
Embarrassment lay over Caro and her skin heated, probably colouring. Where was Drew?
Her fingers gripped her shawl tighter to hide the tremble in her hands.
“May I come in? My brother is with me.”
The Duke of Pembroke…
The thought of a man, a stranger, within any distance of her sent terror racing through Caro. She’d become used to this little four-roomed prison cell—used to there being no risk. He had once been her elder sister’s lover, and rumour had cast him as rakish and rebellious when he’d followed the route of the grand tour at the same time as Drew, but now the imposing duke was married, and all gossip and talk of him had died in town. He’d absorbed the morals of his family, people said, and Caro had heard his marriage discussed as a love match.
Her gaze reached past Mary as the housekeeper stepped aside, and her heart hit against her ribs like the beat of hooves on hard ground in a canter.
“I have this from Andrew, so you know that what I say is true.” Caro looked at the letter Mary held out. Then looked at her sister-in-law.
Mary was dressed in the fashion of the capital. In the finery Caro had been accustomed to, until she’d fallen out of favour and been forced to run. She