His Compromised Countess. Deborah Hale
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than the damp cold of the windy April night.
After all, she was not some green girl fresh from the country in her first Season. Over the years she had seen enough scandal to recognise the impropriety of slipping into that curtained alcove with a man other than her husband. She should have known how incriminating it would look if they were discovered there, even without the kiss.
That damnable kiss! How could she have let it happen? She still found it difficult to reconcile the scoundrel who’d taken such a liberty, then callously dragged her name through the dirt, with the charming gentleman who’d traded witty banter with her over the card table and cast admiring glances at her on the dance floor. She’d thought it was only a harmless, flattering flirtation, like a number of others she’d enjoyed in the past without ever compromising her reputation.
When her husband angrily forbade her having any further contact with a man who looked at her in a way he had not in years, her long-simmering resentment had suddenly come to the boil. She could not simply turn her back on her ardent admirer without a single word of explanation or apology. The last thing she’d expected when he beckoned her into that alcove was to find his arms suddenly around her and his lips pressing upon hers.
For an instant, she’d been too shocked to react. Then she’d been further paralysed with uncertainty and shame, fearing she had led him to believe his amorous attentions would be welcome. When she’d finally come to her senses and been about to pull away, the card room suddenly went quiet and she’d plunged into her worst nightmare.
Would Bennett truly go through with his threat to seek a divorce? Until lately, he hadn’t seemed to care how much other men admired her. She’d once heard it quipped that every gentleman of her acquaintance was besotted with her, except her husband. Though she’d pretended to be amused at the time, those words dealt a humiliating blow. What did it signify how many men desired a married woman if her husband was not among them?
In the early days of their marriage she had eagerly welcomed Bennett to her bed, deceiving herself that the pleasure he brought her was a token of the love he could not express in other ways. Later she’d faced the harsh truth that his ardour sprang from nothing more than physical desire. He had never felt anything deeper for her and he never would. In recent years, even his desire had waned. Caroline wished she could say the same. She had finally succeeded in quelling the feelings for her husband that had only made her miserable. Yet there were still nights when she lay in her empty bed aching for his touch.
Was it possible Bennett knew Astley was lying, but had seized upon this opportunity to be rid of a wife who had proven such a disappointment to him? Hurt and angry as that thought made her, Caroline was far angrier with herself for giving him such a fine excuse to cast her off.
Her husband was right about one thing, unfortunately. If he wanted a divorce, he could likely get one even though she had never committed adultery. Her single public indiscretion would be taken as proof that she must have done far worse things in private. And Astley’s deceitful boasting would be taken as fact, even if he later recanted.
After that, life as she knew it would be over.
As far as society was concerned, she might as well be dead. She would be exiled to the dullest depths of the country, forced to live on whatever pittance Bennett chose to give her. No lady who valued her good name would ever be permitted to associate with such a scandalous outcast. But by far the worst deprivation was that she would never be allowed to see her little son again.
The prospect of losing Wyn battered Caroline’s heart. Bennett had accused her of not caring about their son, but he did not understand.
The moment the carriage came to a halt in front of Sterling House, she hurried inside, throwing off Bennett’s coat. The whiff of his clean, bracing scent that clung to the garment roused a gnawing hunger within her that she’d spent years striving to subdue.
Stopping by her rooms, she bid her maid pack a trunk for the journey on which they would set out the next morning.
‘The Isles of Scilly, my lady? Why in the world are we going there?’
‘It was the earl’s idea, Parker.’ Caroline hoped that excuse would forestall any further questions. ‘We must leave at first light and I’m not certain how long we’ll be gone, so get to work.’
‘Very well, ma’am.’ Parker set about her task with a sulky air.
Leaving her maid to pack, Caroline rushed to the nursery. Though she’d arrived home much earlier than usual, Wyn was already asleep. She crept to his bed and perched on the edge of it, listening to his soft, even breathing.
‘Your papa thinks I don’t care about you,’ she whispered, not wanting to wake her sleeping child, yet hoping some part of him might hear and understand. ‘But I do love you very much and have since long before you were born.’
At first she’d wanted a baby as a way to please her husband and prove that she could fulfil her chief duty as a wife. But when she’d finally become pregnant and felt that tiny life grow and move within her, she began to cherish him for his own sake and look forward to giving him all the love and happiness most of her childhood had lacked.
But nothing had turned out as she’d hoped. ‘I had such a hard time bearing you. And afterwards, you were a fretful little thing and wouldn’t feed properly.’
Caroline heaved a deep, shuddering sigh as she recalled the shrill, angry shrieks of that tiny creature, his face a raw mottled red. The grave, accusing looks of the doctors still haunted her, as they’d shaken their heads and whispered together. She’d felt like such a terrible mother—rejected by her own child when he was barely out of her womb.
Though Bennett hadn’t said so, she sensed he was disappointed in her inability to succeed at something so simple and natural. He’d engaged Mrs McGregor and a wet nurse for her baby, who’d immediately begun to thrive in their care.
The gaiety and admiration of society had helped ease the sting of her failure. But her evening engagements often lasted late into the night, making her sleep the next morning until nearly noon.
‘I visited the nursery as often as I could.’ Her heart ached with the memory. ‘But I was afraid to pick you up in case I dropped you or made you cry.’
His nurse, a brusque Scotswoman who intimidated Caroline no end, had made it clear she wished the mistress would not come to the nursery too often and disrupt the young master’s routine. To her shame, she had allowed herself to be pushed out of her son’s life.
She could not let his father banish her entirely!
Wave after hot wave of anger seared through her. Anger at Bennett, who had stubbornly refused to believe her. His accusations that Wyn would be better off without such a mother had hurt far more than his charges of infidelity. Anger at the law, which punished a wife’s infidelity so harshly while letting a husband take a dozen mistresses with impunity. That same unjust law decreed that children belonged to their fathers—sons especially. A divorced mother was considered an immoral influence, unfit to raise the offspring she had borne. Bitterest of all was Caroline’s anger at herself for not realising how much her harmless flirtations and one moment of heedless impropriety could cost her.
Just then her little son stirred in his sleep, making Caroline fear he might wake and take fright at her presence. Instead he snuggled closer to her, with a murmur of the sweetest contentment. A warm, brooding ache spread through her chest, cooling the fierce fire of her anger.
‘It is not too late,’ she vowed to her sleeping son, and to herself. ‘It cannot be. I will become the kind of mother I always wanted to be.’
After a pensive moment she added in a whisper so soft she could barely hear it herself, ‘At least for as long as your father will let me.’
Chapter Two
The next day, when he judged it late enough that his wife must be on the road to Cornwall, Bennett returned home. He looked forward to a sound sleep in his own bed, having scarcely got