Jane Lark - The Secret Love of a Gentleman

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 was no longer a Marchioness. She no longer had a right to such things.

The letter trembled when Caro took it and unfolded it.

Drew’s familiar bold, assertive letters stretched across the page. She spotted words. Kilbride. He has accused us. I have to go to London to face the charge. She stopped and read it in full, her heart pounding harder.

When Caro looked up, Mary had turned to beckon her brother forward.

“He has accused Drew of being my lover. Incest is a crime. I never thought… Oh God.” A dark cloud crowded Caro, and a heavy sensation pulled her down. She’d never imagined this.

“This way Ma’am.” Beth directed them to the parlour.

“Here” Mary held Caro’s arm as the Duke of Pembroke removed his hat to pass beneath the lintel.

His presence robbed the dark cottage of even more light.

Caro’s heart kicked against her ribs, like Albert’s boot had often done and she shivered.

She’d grown too used to her own company, to the safety of her solitude. She wished to run, and yet Drew had been imprisoned. He’d asked her to go with these people.

The letter trembled in Caro’s cold hand.

“You must sit,” Mary said.

They’d been accused of incest…

Caro sat in an armchair and looked up. Drew’s letter crumpled in her fingers. Nausea twisted through her stomach. “Drew will regret helping me.”

“He does not. The last thing he said to me was that he could not regret it.”

The Duke, who could not stand straight beneath the low ceiling, took the other chair in the room. Now he was not looming over her, Caro remembered her manners. “Your Grace.” She moved to rise, but Mary pressed a hand on her shoulder to keep her seated.

“Forgive me, I would stand myself but it is a little awkward,” the Duke said “and I would rather you felt able to be informal in my presence. Besides, it is far easier to converse with us both seated.”

Caro’s fingers clung to Drew’s letter in her lap. She did not understand this. Drew had eloped with Mary and had made an enemy of the Duke. Why would he be here? Why was Mary here? She had been estranged from Drew… She’d left him…

“I have promised to protect you,” The Duke continued, as Caro looked her bewilderment, she could take none of this in. “You will be safer at Pembroke Place. No one can get within miles of the house without being seen, and my wife, Katherine, and Mary and I will be there to keep you company. Of course the house and grounds will be at your disposal. You may mix with the family or avoid us entirely if you wish. But there is a music room and a library to entertain you. It need not be confinement as this must feel, and you need not live in fear, Lady Kilbride?”

“Why would you help me?” Caro looked from the Duke to her sister-in-law.

“Because you are my sister now.” Mary dropped to her haunches and gripped one of Caro’s hands.

“You are together again?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“I thought he had been disloyal and betrayed me. He was seen with another woman in a draper’s and I was told and I heard him saying he was setting up a woman in a house. I thought he’d taken a mistress. I was mistaken. The woman he was taking care of was you. He has forgiven me my misjudgement.”

Oh, Caro was glad for Drew. “He deserves to be happy. I knew you would make him so, you are good.” Yet he would not be happy because of Caro, he was in a true prison, locked away for helping her.