Jane Lark - The Secret Love of a Gentleman

“And Drew is a good man.”

“Yes.” Caro’s vision clouded with tears. He was not known for his goodness, but he had always shown it to her. His love had been precious to her as a child, when he’d protected her from the cruel taunting of their siblings and tried to shelter her from their lack of parental love. He’d been her safe harbour when her marriage had turned sour. He deserved happiness. “I owe him much.”

“The two of you are not alone anymore. Will you come with us?” the Duke asked, his baritone cutting the stillness in the room and making her jump.

When Caro looked at him a tingle like hackles lifting on her spine rippled across her skin, cat-like. His authority and arrogant stance reminded her of Albert. “I will come.” Because Drew asked it of me .

“Then we should go directly.” Mary stood. “John can send a cart back for your possessions.”

A new sensation, a sense of drowning, overwhelmed Caro, stealing her breath, as though the water about her was icy.

To be outdoors again.

To be amongst people again.

She took a deep breath, fighting against panic. Yet Drew would not have asked her to do this if he did not think it right. “I have barely anything… Lady Framlington, I left everything in town.”

“You must call me Mary. You are my sister.”

Yes, and that is what Caro must think. This was not accepting charity from strangers, and this was for Drew.

“The magistrate wishes to speak with you, Lady Kilbride.”

Was she to be charged now too? Caro’s fingers clasped together at her waist as the nervous discomfort that had claimed a hold over her ever since she’d left her cottage roared through her. Her heart pounded so loud in her ears it was deafening.

The Duke of Arundel, Mary’s uncle, stood before her, in her private sitting room. He’d come to speak with her, in Mary’s company, while downstairs the magistrate who had the say over Drew’s situation waited in the formal drawing room.

“If you wish to help your brother then you must speak. He has told us of the Marquis of Kilbride’s violence and sworn that is the only reason you accepted his protection, yet unless you confirm it I fear Kilbride’s word will be taken over Drew’s.”

Then she must speak. She would not see her brother hang because of her.

But to speak of such private things… Shame touched her skin with warmth. She had lived with the Duke of Pembroke for only two days and yet she had seen love as it ought to be returned here. He loved his wife and Mary loved Drew—Caro still loved Albert too, the Albert of her fairytales, the Albert who for a little while had seemed so similar to the Duke of Pembroke and how the Duke was towards his wife, Kate. Yet Albert had never looked at Caro quite as the Duke looked at Kate. Caro knew what she’d lacked. She had been right to run, but her heart still remembered all the emotions of her first year with Albert, and it clung to the only time she’d known such tenderness and admiration in her life, even if it had been a shallow image of it. It also clung to the moments Albert’s touch had been gentle and tender in her bed. Those had been the most precious moments of her life…

And the times he had hit her the worst. It had been betrayal.

“Do you wish me with you?” Mary asked.

“No. Thank you.” She could not bear to tell the truth of her humiliation before Mary, she wished no one to know. Yet she must speak to save Drew. “If I speak, will the details remain private?”

“I shall ask for the records to be handled discretely.”

Caro took a breath trying to calm her heart and the terror in her blood. “You may take me to him. I will speak.”

The magistrate rose as she entered the room. He was a large, tall man. His gaze studied her as she walked across the room. He knew things about her and she could see in his eyes that he assumed other things. But she doubted Drew had spoken of the children; she hoped he had not. Yet it was the reason she was here. If there had been living children perhaps Albert would have adored her still.

“Please sit.” The magistrate lifted a hand.

She did so, as he sat too. Lord Wiltshire sat beside him.

“Please tell me about your relationship with your brother, Lady Kilbride?”

She took a breath, then began from when they were children, because the isolation and ill-treatment they had suffered then was what had truly brought them together and held them fast.

“And since your marriage?”

“We have not been so close. My husband did not wish me to go out alone, but Drew and I have managed to speak.” She’d spoken to Drew mostly about the beatings since her marriage.

“To speak…”

She took a breath. She did not care for the inflection in the magistrate’s tone. If she was to save Drew she must tell him what she spoke to Drew about. Tears welled in her eyes and her fingers shook as nausea spun in her stomach.

“Here.” Lord Wiltshire passed her his handkerchief.

“I spoke to him mostly when my husband beat me. Drew would give me comfort.”

“Comfort…”

She had looked at her hands, but now she looked up and glared at the magistrate, her heart racing wildly. “Not the physical kind. I sought words of comfort. He was someone to speak with when I had no one else. As I said, neither my mother nor my sister will speak with me.”

“And so you turned to a brother.”

“Yes. Because my brother is a good man.” She stared at the magistrate, denying the accusations in his eyes, as fear danced through her nerves, running up her spine.

“It has never gone further? Never become something beyond what it ought to be? You have been accused of incest by your husband.”

“My husband is a liar. He does not like to lose. There has never been anything inappropriate between myself and my brother. My husband is merely angry because I have left him and my brother has enabled it.” And she had once thought that man cared for her… She was a fool. Her heart had been deceived. Yet it could not forget the web of emotions his shallow devotion had cast. It wished to believe his devotion continued to lie beneath all else, and guilt had hung over her since she’d fled because, despite everything, her heart told her she’d been disloyal and had disgraced herself—and him.

“And you have left your husband because?”

“I cannot breathe,” she said to Lord Wiltshire as the vice of terror tightened about her chest.

He rose and turned, going to a table across the room, then returned with a glass of amber liquor. “Here.”

She swallowed a mouthful. It burned the back of her throat, but it relaxed the muscles in her chest. “Because he beat me, violently, sometimes daily. If I had stayed with him he would have killed me. Is it a crime to wish to be alive?” Her words echoed through her head. Was it a crime? She felt as though it was, and now she served her sentence. She had spoken the words to her foolish heart as well as to these men.

“It is no crime. But nor is it crime for your husband to reprimand you, yet neither point is the cause of my investigation. Did anyone witness the Marquis strike you? I am not entirely insensitive to the fact that such a thing would justify and explain your brother protecting you.”

Nor is it a crime for your husband to reprimand you… So the men agreed to her guilt—that she ought to be blamed and chastised for her inability to breed. Hearts should not be involved in marriage—love like that which Drew had found was abnormal. Most couples in society lived without love.

Yet what the magistrate said meant there was hope for Drew, if there was a witness who would dare to stand against Albert.