A Convenient Gentleman

“I’ve burned them for you. They were unwearable anyway.”

The fingers that were free clenched into a fist. Caro wondered what it would take to provoke him into dropping the tiny towel.

“Right, then,” Leander said, his voice very soft. Padding wetly, he crossed the floor to the door.

“Where are you going?” she demanded breathlessly.

“Back onto the streets, where I belong.”

“But…but you’ll freeze out there!”

“I’ll be arrested for indecent exposure long before I freeze to death, Mrs. Gray.”

Caro dragged her gaze away from the disconcerting curve of his buttocks to manage a careless shrug and toss of the head. “Well, suit yourself, then. If you want to go ahead and make an…an…absolute spectacle of yourself, it has nothing to do with me….”

“Apart from the fact that you’re my wife, Mrs. Gray, you’re quite right.”

A Convenient Gentleman

Victoria Aldridge

www.millsandboon.co.uk

VICTORIA ALDRIDGE

lives in Wellington, New Zealand, in what she is assured is a haunted Victorian cottage. She shares it with her husband, whichever of her adult children find themselves otherwise homeless, and two bossy cats. She is a fifth-generation New Zealander, and finds her country’s history—especially that of women—absolutely intriguing.

To Sidney—for everything

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Epilogue

Prologue

The Hawkesbury, New South Wales, Australia, 1863

F or the third night in a row, war raged in the Morgan house.

The skirmishes took place at a number of sites in the huge house—the sitting room, the dining table, and in the kitchen—but all encounters were protracted and very, very loud.

Every farmhand in the cottages behind the main house followed the proceedings with great interest, and a number of wagers were laid on who the eventual winner was going to be. Most of the money was on Morgan. Young Caroline had always been a bit of a tearaway, but her father had always prevailed in the past, hadn’t he? And he was not the man to cross, was Ben Morgan. His eldest daughter would come to heel eventually.

Other, perhaps more knowledgeable, money was on Caroline Morgan. For all that she had her father’s lungs, she was her mother’s daughter, wasn’t she? And who was it who really ruled inside the big Morgan house? The older farmhands nodded and winked to each other. Wait and see, they said.

On the third evening, the two protagonists faced each other across the kitchen table, a pot of cold tea marking the battle line between them. The bread-scented air was virtually crackling with animosity. Emma Morgan, sitting quietly in a chair beside the stove, put down the tiny nightgown she was stitching and looked at her husband and daughter in exasperation.

‘I have had just about enough of you two! When, may I ask, are we going to return to civil conversation in this house?’

Ben Morgan shoved himself back on his chair and glowered at his wife. ‘When your daughter learns some manners and some common sense. But I’d advise you not to hold your breath for either!’

‘Really?’ Caroline tossed her head pertly. ‘You will note, Mother, that you have been my sole parent for the past three days? Which means, Father, that if you didn’t sire me, you’ve no right to order me around like one of your chattels!’

‘Caro!’ her parents chorused in shocked tones, just as they had almost daily since the time Caroline could talk. Emma looked at her daughter with the oddly mingled feelings of love and dismay that she always felt for her eldest child. She was so much her father’s child, with the same fair colouring and striking good looks, and the same volatile personality. Only her green eyes were her mother’s, but surely, Emma thought in despair, her own eyes had never glittered with such ferocity? Sometimes she truly feared for Caro. She possessed a hard, determined core just like her father’s and, while that quality might be considered desirable by some in a man, in a woman it was simply not…feminine.

‘All your father is asking you to do, Caro, is consider Mr Benton’s offer of marriage—’

‘And I’ve told him! How many times do I have to tell him? The answer is no!’

Emma transferred her steady gaze to her husband. ‘She doesn’t want to marry him, Ben.’

‘Then she’s a bloody fool! Benton is his father’s sole heir. When he inherits, he’ll own one of the best farms in the Hawkesbury, and when it’s adjoined to this place—’

‘So you’re selling me off, are you?’ demanded Caro.

‘No, I’m not! I’m just pointing out a few salient facts! There’s nothing wrong with young Benton—’

‘He’s an idiot and his ears stick out.’

‘Caro, they don’t,’ her mother remonstrated gently. ‘Well, not all that much. And he just adores you! And you’ve known him all your life.’

‘Exactly, Mother! Father wants me to marry a boy he can order around, and you want me to marry a boy I think of as a brother! Although if I’d had a brother, Father wouldn’t be in such a hurry to marry us all off!’

Her father looked at her through narrowed eyes. ‘A son would have taken over the farm when I’m gone, would have looked after you girls so that there would be no need to find you good husbands.’

‘Then leave the farm to me!’ Caro said wearily, for the umpteenth time. ‘I can run it better than any jug-eared boy you can pick out for me! You know that!’

‘Try to show a little common sense, Caroline,’ her father snapped. ‘A woman can’t run a farm, or any other sort of business for that matter. That’s not what they were made for.’

Caro looked in appeal at her mother. Usually Ben’s daughters fell about laughing at their father’s pronouncements on the female ideal, and took not one whit of notice of them. But for once his firmly held beliefs were holding Caro back from what she wanted more than anything in the world. She loved the huge, fertile lands that had been in the family for three generations. There had been a brief period in her grandfather’s day when the farm had been in the mortgagor’s hands, but under Ben’s sober guidance the Morgan family had grown to be one of Australia’s wealthiest, with extensive interests in both farming and shipping. But Ben was now ancient—why, he’d had his fiftieth birthday the previous month! He was in his dotage, whereas Caro was young and clever and full of innovative ideas. She could easily see herself in charge of everything. Very easily.

‘I suppose you want me to be like Olivia,’ she said truculently. ‘All sweetness and light, and marrying who you tell her to.’

Emma picked up the small nightgown she had been sewing for her first grandchild and held it closer to the light, frowning as she noticed the irregular stitches she had made in her agitation. ‘Your sister always wanted to marry William, Caro. He was her choice, and we’re both delighted that she is so happy. Now she’s settled down, with a baby on the way—’

‘How perfect!’ Caro said sarcastically. ‘Not, of course, that either of you have ever made any comment on the fact that Olivia’s baby is due in January, just seven months after her wedding!’

‘Caro, that is enough!’ Emma rose to her feet and Caro realised that for once she had gone too far, even for her eternally patient mother. ‘That was a spiteful and completely unnecessary thing to say. Go to your room!’

‘Mother—’

‘I said, go to your room! And don’t bother coming out until you have decided to conduct yourself with some degree of civility!’

Caro thought about staying to argue, but her mother was perilously close to tears. And if she made her mother cry, her father’s rage would be truly terrifying. He had never once, that she could recall at least, raised a hand to her or any of her sisters, but there was always a first time for everything. With her head held high, she made a dignified exit, although she could not resist banging the kitchen door so hard behind her that the sound reverberated through the house and woke her sleeping younger sisters.

In the kitchen, her parents looked at each other.

‘Mercenary little baggage,’ Ben said savagely. ‘I swear I’ll throttle that girl one day. A husband is what she needs, to keep the reins on her. Although I’m not sure that Frank Benton would be able to do that for more than five minutes.’

Emma folded her sewing slowly as she carefully edited what she was about to say. She had to be tactful—the faults that her husband and her daughter shared were the ones they found hardest to tolerate in each other.

‘I’m not so sure,’ she said slowly, ‘that marriage is the answer for Caro. Not yet. She needs to see the world a little, to realise that she doesn’t know everything and that she can’t always have her way. I think we should let her go. To England, perhaps. Meg Parkins is visiting Home in a month or two, and taking her daughters with her. I could ask her if Caro could accompany them. I’m sure Meg wouldn’t mind in the least…’

Ben groaned. ‘Not England, Emma! It’s so far away! We wouldn’t see her for years, and you don’t know what could happen to her on the other side of the world.’

She smiled up at him. ‘You always were too soft on them, Ben. That’s why Caro is the way she is. Let her go—you’ll have to some time, you know.’

‘I suppose so.’ He bent over and kissed the top of her head. ‘We should have had sons. They wouldn’t have been this much trouble.’

It was just before dawn when Ben heard the faint clink of the dogs’ chains from the yards in the valley below the house. The dogs weren’t barking, so whoever was moving past them was someone they knew. Damn her, he thought. Stupid little bitch. He carefully removed his arm from around the waist of his sleeping wife and left her warmth to pad out into the chilly hallway.

He was standing on the front porch, moodily buttoning his trousers and staring down the valley to the darkness that was the Hawkesbury River when Mr Matthews loomed silently out of the darkness.

‘She’s gone.’

‘Yeah.’ Ben rubbed his chin thoughtfully with the back of his hand.

‘She ain’t coming back.’

Ben tried to make out his expression in the gloomy light. Mr Matthews had been with him since the days when Ben’s father had lost the farm to the mortgagors. A transported convict who had long since earned his ticket, he was an indispensable and much-treasured family member. Mr Matthews’s only fault, to Ben’s mind, was that Caroline had always been his favourite child and he’d never been able to deny her anything. If she had confided in anyone, it would have been him.

‘She told you that?’

‘Nah. But she wants to run this place real bad. You should have let her.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Ben snapped. ‘Anyway, she’ll be back soon enough, when she realises what a pampered life she’s had here. She won’t last an hour out there.’

‘Unless something happens to her, of course,’ Mr Matthews said after a while. ‘Like she gets abducted, or raped, or robbed, or sold to the bars down by the Sydney docks or—’

Ben slammed his hands down hard on the veranda railing. ‘Dammit! All right, then, go after her and make sure she’s all right. And you’d better take some money with you. She won’t have much on her.’

‘She took Summer.’

Ben swore, remembering just in time to drop his voice. ‘That horse is worth a bloody fortune! She won’t sell him…’

‘She will to spite you. And that’ll give her a heap of money. Enough to leave the country with, I reckon.’

Ben thought for a moment and then nodded slowly. ‘You’re probably right. I… Oh, hell, we can’t bring her back in chains. She’ll just run off again. I wish I could bring myself to take to her with a horsewhip.’ He glared at Mr Matthews’s sudden snort. ‘What’s funny?’

‘Nothing. You want me to follow her, then?’

‘Yeah. Only I don’t want to have to pay an arm and a leg to buy the goddamned horse back.’ He turned to go back into the house, but stopped as a horrible thought struck him. ‘Oh. Just one thing, Mr Matthews.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Whatever you do, don’t let her go to Dunedin.’

Chapter One

Dunedin, New Zealand, 1863

D unedin was covered with a light layer of snow, the first Caroline had ever seen. Entranced by the picture-book prettiness of the white-speckled hills, she stood at the dock gates, heedless of the crowd buffeting her. She had seen pictures of snow before of course, in books about Home. But this was much more exciting than England could ever have been. This was a real adventure!

The fact that she had nothing but a single change of clothes in her bag, and twenty-five pounds to her name, simply added an edge to the excitement. Being on board ship for three weeks had been much more boring than she had anticipated: three meals a day, a narrow little bunk to sleep in, nowhere to walk but to the limits of the cabin passengers’ deck. It had been a lot like boarding school, really. But now, for the first time in her life, she was on her own, and she had never been happier.

She felt in the pocket of her coat for the envelope, turning it over in her gloved fingers, not needing to take it out and read it to remember the return address.

Mrs Jonas Wilks, Castledene Hotel, Castle Street, Dunedin.

Dunedin was not as large as she had thought it would be—certainly nowhere as large as Sydney. Built along the shores of a natural harbour inlet, cradled among steep hills, the town that was the hub of the Otago goldrush was still in its infancy. But whereas Sydney had a quiet, settled feel to it after eighty years of colonisation, Dunedin seemed to be teeming with energy.

Fed by the Otago goldfields, the richest since Ballarat and California, Dunedin’s prosperity was obvious. Spanning out from a small central park, called The Octagon, were streets of substantial buildings with ornate façades, between which were empty spaces and busy building sites. Over the lower reaches of the hills spread a canvas town of tents, hundreds of them, which Caro guessed belonged to either transient miners or people unable to find or afford accommodation. There was a vibrancy to the town, almost a sense of anticipation, which thrilled Caro to the bone.

A gust of icy wind blew along the quay, billowing the dresses of the women and loosening a few hats. The half-dozen ships tied up at the docks creaked as the gathering gale plucked at their furled sails and hummed along the ropes. Caro realised that she was growing cold. In fact, she could never recall being so cold in her life. Another new experience to savour!

Pulling the fur trim of her jacket collar up around her chin, she strode along the quay and up the road that lay straight ahead, quite unaware, as always, that she was turning heads as she passed. She had always been hard to overlook, being well above average height for a woman. What was more unusual was the way she bore herself, with a loose-limbed, graceful walk that in a man would have verged on being a swagger. Combined with classically blond beauty and a pair of sparkling eyes, Miss Morgan’s looks had always drawn admiring comment. Most remarkable, however, was that she had always remained blithely oblivious to the fact that her appearance was anything out of the ordinary.

She might as well get her bearings first, she thought, stepping up on to the narrow wooden footpath that ran below the shop awnings. There was only room for three people walking abreast, so she kept politely to the left, holding her bag close to her side so as not to bump into other walkers. Despite the foul weather the streets were busy, and she noted with interest the preponderance of Scottish accents she heard. She passed no fewer than two Churches of Scotland within five minutes’ walk and half the shop names began with ‘Mac’. It was true, then, the description she had heard on the ship of Dunedin being the Edinburgh of the South.

‘Excuse me, sir,’ she said to a man obstructing the footpath as he loaded up his dray. He looked rough, a miner perhaps, and he had a scowl on his face.

‘Get lost,’ he snarled, not looking up. She waited patiently. Her parents had always insisted on the utmost courtesy to everyone, no matter what their station in life, and she was not going to break that ingrained habit now. She could, of course, step down into the road and walk around the horse and dray, but the snow had turned to sleet, and the icy mud looked most uninviting.

‘Will you be long, sir?’ she enquired after a moment.

‘Long as I need to be.’ He slammed down a box with unnecessary force and turned to hoist up the next one. There were still two high piles of crates to load.

‘I see.’ Caro put down her bag. ‘What if I help you load? That will speed you up, won’t it?’

He turned around then with a curse, which died unspoken on his lips as he saw her wide green eyes, utterly devoid of malice or sarcasm. A slow flush rose over his face as he shuffled ponderously to one side to allow her to pass. He was staring at her in the way lots of men did whenever her parents had taken her into Sydney or Parramatta. She really wished they didn’t—one usually couldn’t get any sense out of them when they looked like that. However, this was New Zealand. Perhaps men were a little more sensible here. She gave him a smile and pulled out the envelope from her pocket.

‘Thank you, sir. I wonder if you could tell me where I would find Castle Street? Is it close by?’

He ignored the envelope—too late Caro realised he might not be able to read and that she might have inadvertently given offence—and waved his arm in the direction she had been heading.

‘Down there. Second on yer left.’

‘Thank you so much.’ She picked up her bag and went to move past him, but he had recovered by now enough to move to block her way.

‘Heavy bag for a young miss,’ he said ingratiatingly. ‘Like a hand with it?’

‘How kind. But you couldn’t leave all these boxes here.’ She looked down at him—he was at least two inches shorter—and added with a touch of asperity, ‘And your poor horses. They must be cold. You’ll want to get them moving, won’t you?’

She flashed him a smile and moved smartly away down the sidewalk before he could detain her any further. Already she could see the signpost for Castle Street, and her heart began to beat a little faster. She wasn’t sure what she would find, or what sort of reception she would get at the Castledene Hotel. Indeed, would Mrs Wilks still live there?

Charlotte Wilks. Aunt Charlotte. Her mother’s sister. Caro had never seen her, knew nothing of her except that there was some sort of scandal surrounding her aunt, and not of the common or garden danced-twice-in-a-row-with-the-same-man sort of scandal that would have had female tongues astir on the Hawkesbury. No, Aunt Charlotte’s sins were too dreadful to name, if her parents’ tense reactions to her occasional letters were anything to go by. Caro didn’t know if her mother had ever written back, but she did know that her father would have sternly disapproved. He always went rather…rigid, she thought, when one of Aunt Charlotte’s letters had arrived, or when Caro had mentioned her name, which she had made a point of often doing. Whatever Aunt Charlotte had done, Ben had never forgiven her, and he never would. He loathed her more than anyone else alive. Caro couldn’t wait to meet her.

She turned the corner into Castle Street and caught her breath in relief. Standing proudly at the end of a cul-de-sac, the Castledene Hotel was a magnificent, double-storeyed building, the finest Caro had seen so far in Dunedin. Her fears that she would find Aunt Charlotte starving in a cobwebby attic somewhere began to evaporate. The last letter from here to Caro’s mother had been posted only three months before, and if Aunt Charlotte could afford to board here, she must be reasonably in funds.

Caro gave a wide berth to the entrance to the public bar—although it was only mid-morning, there sounded as if there were already a number of noisy patrons inside—and pushed open one of the big front doors.

Very nice. She put her bag on the ground and looked around in approval. The entry was most imposing, if very cold, being paved and colonnaded in pale grey marble. Carved kauri staircases swept discreetly up on either side, almost obscured by rich velvet drapes. Immediately in front of her, panelled doors stood ajar, giving a glimpse of tables set with heavy damask and sparkling silver. It was as impressive as any of Sydney’s grand hotels, with only the underlying smell of recently sawn wood betraying its newness.

‘Can I help you, miss?’

Caro turned to the thin, neat-looking man behind the reception desk with a smile. ‘I hope so, sir. I’m looking for Mrs Wilks. Mrs Jonas Wilks. I understand she was a guest here some months ago. Is she still here?’

The man cleared his throat. ‘Indeed, miss.’ She was subjected to a politely swift scrutiny. ‘May I tell her who is calling?’

Caro hesitated. She had thought long and hard about this situation, and had decided that a little vagueness might initially be desirable. After all, what if Aunt Charlotte felt the same about Caro’s family as Caro’s father did about Aunt Charlotte?

‘I’m a relative,’ she said warmly. Then, as the clerk hesitated, she smiled encouragingly. ‘I know she’ll want to see me.’

He disappeared up one of the great staircases, his shoes noiseless on the thick carpet, and she sat down to wait on one of the elegant chairs placed between the aspidistras around the foyer. Despite her care, her walking shoes were covered with a light layer of wet mud, and she glared at them in irritation. They and a pair of boots were the only footwear she had now. At home, in her closet, stood rows of boots and shoes and slippers. And as for her dresses—she thought with regret of the wardrobe she had been forced to leave behind her. While it had seemed a good idea at the time to run away from home virtually empty-handed, to show her father that she didn’t need anything from him to stand on her own two feet, it was now proving to be very tiresome managing with a single change of clothes. She sincerely hoped that her aunt wouldn’t mind her shabby appearance. Caro always liked to make a good impression.

She started as she realised that the clerk was standing beside her. Waves of disapproval were almost tangibly emanating from him, and she wondered what she could possibly have done to have earned his censure.

‘This way, miss,’ he said abruptly. ‘You can leave your bag behind the reception desk.’

She followed him up the staircase and along a wide hallway. Her mittened hands were trembling slightly and she clasped them together tightly in front of her waist. The clerk rapped quietly on a door and stood back to admit her.

The hotel room was large, with long windows that let in what winter light there was. A fire burned brightly in the hearth, illuminating a clutter of silver-topped bottles and jars on the dressing table. The air was scented with an odd, but not unpleasant, mix of rosewater and tobacco. Clothes and shoes were flung carelessly over the big bed and on the floor, as if someone had simply stepped out of them and left them lying there. Caro bent and picked up a dress that had impeded the opening of the door. The gentle scent of roses escaped from its folds of soft lace as she smoothed it out and looked around the room for the owner. The room, for all its mess, was charming and utterly feminine.