Lords of Disgrace

Bachelors for life!

Friends since school, brothers in arms, bachelors for life!

At least that’s what The Four Disgraces—Alex Tempest, Grant Rivers, Cris de Feaux and Gabriel Stone—believe. But when they meet four feisty women who are more than a match for their wild ways these Lords are tempted to renounce bachelordom for good.

Don’t miss this dazzling new quartet by

Louise Allen

His Housekeeper’s Christmas Wish His Christmas Countess The Many Sins of Cris de Feaux The Unexpected Marriage of Gabriel Stone

All available now!

Author Note

Gabriel Stone, Earl of Edenbridge, is the fourth of the Lords of Disgrace, whose stories I have been chronicling. Gabriel always was the wildest of the friends, but at first I had no idea what lay behind the dangerous rake’s façade. His story, I discovered, was far darker than I had ever imagined, but neither his past nor his present hedonistic lifestyle prevent him becoming entangled in the affairs of Lady Caroline Holm.

Innocent Caroline will do anything to save her young brother’s future—even bearding a dangerous rake in his lair. Gabriel discovers, to his horror—and to the amusement of his friends—that he’ll do whatever it takes to rescue Lady Caroline from the dangers she faces, even if that involves masquerading as a Welsh hermit. As I explored, I found that Caroline, innocent or not, was more than a match for her reluctant rescuer… even when his past and the long arm of the law catch up with him!

I hope you enjoy reading Caroline and Gabriel’s story as much as I enjoyed writing it.

The Unexpected
Marriage of
Gabriel Stone
Louise Allen

www.millsandboon.co.uk

LOUISE ALLEN loves immersing herself in history. She finds landscapes and places evoke the past powerfully. Venice, Burgundy and the Greek islands are favourite destinations. Louise lives on the Norfolk coast and spends her spare time gardening, researching family history or travelling in search of inspiration. Visit her at louiseallenregency.co.uk, @LouiseRegency and janeaustenslondon.com.

MILLS & BOON

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Contents

Cover

Introduction

Author Note

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

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

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Epilogue

Extract

Copyright

Chapter One

London—June 1st, 1820

‘There is a young lady to see you, my lord.’

Gabriel Stone, Earl of Edenbridge, swung his feet down from the fender and sat up in his saggingly comfortable armchair to fix his butler with a quizzical look.

‘Losing your touch, Hampshire? Young ladies do not come calling on me, not even with a bodyguard of chaperons.’

‘Quite so, my lord. However, this is indubitably an unaccompanied lady and a young one at that.’

‘Does this mythical creature have a name?’

‘Lady Caroline Holm, my lord.’

‘Holm?’ That rang a bell. A very faint and slightly muzzy chime, given that Gabriel had been playing cards and drinking brandy into the small hours at a cosy hell in St Christopher’s Place. He glanced at the clock and found it was now eleven o’clock in the morning. He really must summon up the energy to go to bed.

It had been a profitable night and the crackle of promissory notes in his pocket told him so as he lounged to his feet and stretched all six foot two inches of weary body. Profitable to the tune of several hundred pounds, a very nice signet ring and the deeds to a small estate in Hertfordshire.

The estate... ‘Ah, I have it, Hampshire. I presume Lady Caroline is the daughter of Lord Knighton.’

‘The eccentric earl, my lord?’

‘A euphemistic description, Hampshire, but it will serve. The man appears to suffer from occasional bouts of gambling fever and is notoriously obsessional about improving his estate in the intervals between his binges. Of his other peculiarities I have no personal experience, I am thankful to say.’

Gabriel turned to look in the over-mantel mirror and was confronted by a vision of unshaven, rumpled dissipation, guaranteed to send any gently born lady fleeing screaming from the house into Mount Street. That would be an excellent outcome, although possibly without the screaming. He had some consideration for his neighbours. ‘Where have you put her?’

‘The drawing room, my lord. Should I bring refreshments?’

‘I doubt she’ll stay long enough. Have my bathwater sent up, will you?’

Gabriel sauntered out of his study towards the drawing room, the details of the night before gradually becoming clearer. Knighton was the man who had lost the Hertfordshire deeds to him as a result of one ill-judged hand after another. He hadn’t appeared particularly concerned at the time, certainly not to the extent of sending his innocent and respectable daughter to the home of one of London’s most notorious rakes and gamesters to buy back the stake.

The innocent lady in question was standing before the unlit grate and turned at the sound of the door opening. Gabriel had time to admire a slim, unfashionably tall figure in a blue walking dress before she threw back her veil. The move revealed a chip-straw bonnet over neatly dressed blonde hair, a pair of admirable blue eyes a shade darker than her gown, a severely straight nose and, to balance it, a mouth erring on the side of lush.

Not a beauty, not with that determined set to the chin, but striking. Tempting. ‘Lady Caroline? I am Edenbridge. To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?’

She dropped a hint of a curtsy, nicely judged to reflect both his rank and his dishevelled state. ‘You played cards with my father last night.’ Her voice was normally warm and mellow, Gabriel suspected. She sounded anything but, just at the moment.

‘I did. To save time, yes, I won the deeds to an estate in Hertfordshire from him in the process.’

‘I know. I overheard Papa telling my elder brother about it this morning.’

‘You have not come to tell me that it is your dowry, I hope?’

‘It is not.’ She took a few steps away from him, turned and marched back, chin up, apparently using the few seconds to marshal her words. ‘It belongs to my younger brother, Anthony.’

‘I regret to disagree, it now belongs to me. It is an unentailed estate, I gather, one that may be legally disposed of.’

‘Legally, yes, morally, no.’

‘Lady Caroline, I have very little time for morals.’

‘So I understand, my lord.’ A sensitive man would have flinched at her tone. ‘My father is...’

‘Eccentric.’

She seemed to weigh the word for a moment. ‘Yes. And obsessed with both his title and Knighton Park, our home. That is entailed of course and my brother Lucas, Viscount Whiston, will inherit it. Anthony is only sixteen. Papa has decided that he will become a clergyman, installed in one of the livings at his disposal, and therefore he has no need of lands of his own. He doesn’t understand Anthony like I do. I virtually brought him up and—’ She must have realised she was losing his attention and her tone became brisk again. ‘Springbourne is ten miles from Knighton Park, too far for it ever to be integrated into the main estate, so Papa thinks little of it.’

‘The church is a common career for a younger son,’ Gabriel observed. His own brothers seemed happy enough with their respective roles, but they hadn’t been born first and saddled with the responsibility of title, tenants and lands. Let alone brothers. Promise me, Gabriel...

With the ruthlessness of long practice he pushed away memories of childhood and thought of his brothers now. Ben, the elder, a blood-and-thunder cavalry major, George, newly ordained as a vicar, a mild soul who tended to flinch when he encountered Gabriel, and Louis, painfully studious and conscientious and both sensitive and pugnacious, a difficult combination to handle. He was a student in his final year at Cambridge where he was reading law before taking over the family’s business affairs, an outcome Gabriel was looking forward to immensely.

Now they were adults Gabriel gave them money when they asked for it, had introduced each to a good clean brothel when he judged them mature enough, warned them about predatory young ladies and their even more predatory mothers and beyond that managed to avoid them for months at a time. It was better for all of them that way.

‘It may be usual,’ Lady Caroline said in a voice that made him think of lemons inadequately sprinkled with sugar, ‘but it is quite unsuitable for Anthony.’ She glanced at him, then looked away hastily. It might have been the morning light shining directly into her eyes, it might have been the sight of him. The blue gaze flickered back, she bit that full lower lip and the hunting cat in him stirred, twitched its tail and began to purr. ‘Anthony loves Springbourne. He isn’t studious or intellectual. He is a natural farmer and countryman and it will break his heart to discover it has gone.’

‘And you expect me to hand it back to you, just like that? Sit down, Lady Caroline. I have had a long, hard night and I cannot sit until you do.’ Besides anything else, he wanted to watch her move.

With a small sound he assumed was exasperation, she sat on the nearest chair and studied her clasped hands as he subsided into the seat opposite. ‘No, I do not expect you to do anything so altruistic as to save my little brother’s dreams and future for no return.’

‘Perceptive of you,’ he drawled and was rewarded by a hiss of anger before she was back to being the perfect lady again. ‘Do you intend to buy it back then?’ He pulled the mass of vowels out of his pocket and sorted through the IOUs until he found the one scrawled in Knighton’s hand. He held it up for her to see. ‘That is the value your father put on it.’

Lady Caroline winced. ‘No, of course I cannot buy it back. You must know that as an unmarried woman I have no control over my own money.’

‘Then what do you propose?’

‘You have a certain reputation, Lord Edenbridge.’ Those gloves must be fascinating to require such close scrutiny.

‘As a gambler?’

She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, then opened them and sent him a defiant stare before her gaze skidded away to settle on the fire irons. ‘As a man of amorous inclinations.’

Gabriel tried not to laugh, but it escaped in a snort of amusement. ‘That is one way of putting it.’

‘I am a virgin.’

And one who blushed delightfully. ‘So I should hope,’ he said piously. The lush mouth compressed into a hard line and he had a sudden urge to capture it beneath his, tease it into softness and acceptance. Into pleasure.

‘I propose an exchange, my lord.’ She addressed the fire irons. ‘My virginity for those deeds.’

Gabriel had always thought himself sophisticated in his dealings with women. After perhaps half a minute, during which time Lady Caroline’s cheeks turned from light rose to peony and he revised his opinion of his own unshockability, he said, ‘I am not in the habit of deflowering virgins, respectable or not.’ But in your case...

‘Perhaps you would consider making an exception? I understand men are almost obsessed with virginity, which seems strange, but then I know very few men.’ And, by the sound of it, wished to keep it that way.

He flicked the IOU with one finger, making her start at the sharp sound and glance at him again. ‘This debt is not your problem, Lady Caroline.’

She bit her lip and Gabriel drew in a steadying breath. Even talking about making love to her was having an uncomfortable effect on him. He could understand that men wanted a virgin bride because they needed to be certain their heirs were from their own seed. But maidens held no attraction for him. Forcing women was revolting and a willing virgin was doubtless a great deal more trouble than she was worth—tiresomely inexperienced with a price to pay in the form of a maddened father with a shotgun. Besides, he expected expertise and sophistication from his lovers.

And yet, this one... It has nothing at all to do with her virginity. Those blue eyes and that mouth and the stubborn, innocent courage of her... Damn, she is not safe out when she has no idea the effect she has on a man.

‘Oh, but it is my problem.’ Lady Caroline was becoming animated now, her blush disappearing as she leaned forward earnestly, trying to convince him, or, perhaps his disordered neckcloth, which is what she was now fixed upon. ‘Mama died ten years ago. Anthony is my little brother and I promised her I would look after him. I love Papa, of course, but he is...difficult. He would regard paying you to buy back the deeds as a waste of money that should go into Lucas’s inheritance, or towards improving Knighton Park.’ When Gabriel did not respond she said fiercely, ‘Anthony is the only one of my family who truly loves me and I love him as though he was my own child, not just my brother.

‘You have brothers, I know you have because I looked you up in the Peerage.’ For some reason that brought the colour up again in her cheeks. ‘This morning, I mean. I know, as a man, you can’t feel about them as I feel about Anthony, but you would do anything you could to help them, wouldn’t you?’ It was more a statement than a question.

Yes. ‘No.’ He was not going to encourage her in this, allow her to see that her promise to her mother meant something to him. What his duty was as a man, as the eldest son, was quite different from hers as a daughter, a woman. ‘Listen to me, Anthony is a boy. He’ll find his own way in the world eventually. He isn’t a child, your responsibility, any more. Your older brother will look after him.’

She was finally staring at him, although her expression suggested that it was because he had grown two heads. ‘I do not understand you. I love him for himself, but Anthony is also all I have left of Mama. I know from the Peerage that your mother is dead too. Have you no affection for your own family? Don’t you see your parents when you look at your brothers? Surely they are the most important thing in the world to you, even if sometimes you fall out with one of them?’

All I have left of Mama, she had said. He understood that too well. The blackness swirled down, the memories clamouring. Promise me...the still white hand, limp beside the bottle...

Gabriel shrugged the images away, unable to acknowledge what lay at the heart of them. He would kill...he would protect his brothers, of course he would. He had. They were his responsibility, his trust. He shrugged again. ‘It is my duty. But I am a man and head of the family.’

‘I am so sorry you feel like that, you must miss so much,’ Lady Caroline murmured.

For an appalled moment Gabriel thought she was going to cry, she looked so upset. ‘You are not going to sell yourself to me in exchange for those deeds. What will your husband say?’ The heavens only knew where this impulse to decency was coming from.

‘I do not have one. Yet.’ Lady Caroline’s expression changed from sad to rigid.

‘You will, soon enough.’ She must be in her early twenties, he guessed. Twenty-three, perhaps. ‘And a husband means a wedding night.’

‘Papa has a number of men in mind for me, but he hasn’t made up his mind yet which would be the most advantageous match. Frankly I would be delighted to give any one of them a shock on the night.’ She seemed to have recovered her spirit, but her gaze had slid away to the fire irons again.

‘You do not have to obey him.’

‘He is my father, of course I have to obey him. I have no choice.’

‘Your duty, I suppose.’

She nodded, one sharp jerk of her averted head. ‘Duty and lack of other options. My father tends to discourage suitors who do not match his wishes for me.’

‘You don’t really want to have sex with me, do you?’ Gabriel smiled as she looked back, startled at the deliberate crudity of his words. He made the expression more wolfish than reassuring and ran one hand over his morning beard, drawing her eyes to his mouth. She stared and then swallowed and his arousal kicked up another notch. Damn it.

‘To be frank, rather you, my lord, than Sir William Claypole or Mr Walberton. Or Lord Woodruffe.’

‘Hell’s teeth! Has your father made a list of every middle-aged bachelor in society?’ If he had sisters he would not have been willing to match one of them to any of those men, least of all Woodruffe.

‘Only of those with lands close to ours who would be willing to exchange them for me.’ When he did not respond she said urgently, ‘Please, Lord Edenbridge. I know you are supposed to be hard and cynical and to care for nothing and nobody, but deep down you must have family feeling. You must, surely, understand how desperate I am.’

The first part of that description was more or less accurate. ‘You have managed to do a remarkable amount of research on me, considering that it is not yet noon.’

Lady Caroline blushed again. ‘I have seen you about at balls and so forth. People talk.’

And you have been interested enough to ask about me? Gabriel laughed inwardly at himself. Coxcomb. Flattered because some attractive girl has noticed you? Women tended to look at him, just as he looked at them. But not well-bred virgins. He had a highly developed sense of self-preservation.

‘I will take you up on your offer,’ he said. She gasped as though she had not expected it and the colour fled from her cheeks. ‘I will send the deeds to you when I receive them from your father and you will give me an IOU for your maidenhead, to be surrendered when your marriage is definitely arranged.’

‘But...’

‘I may be a gamester and a rake with a shocking reputation, Lady Caroline. But I am a gentleman. Of sorts.’ Just enough of one not to barter your innocence. On the other hand, if she thought they had an agreement it would prevent her doing anything else reckless in order to raise money to pay him. He could simply hand her the deeds and he should do just that without any conditions. But the hunter in him enjoyed having her between his paws. Not to hurt, just to play with a little. He was so damnably bored these days. ‘On my honour I will speak of this to no one. What is your decision?’

* * *

She had expected to be sent packing with Lord Edenbridge’s derisive laughter ringing in her ears, or to find herself flat on her back in his bedchamber, and had not been able to work out which of those was the worst of two evils. What she had not expected was this reprieve. Which was not a reprieve after all, merely a postponement, she realised as his words sank in.

‘I accept.’ Caroline wondered if she was about to faint. She was not given to swooning, but the room seemed unexpectedly smaller and there was a strange roaring in her ears that must be the sound of her blood.

‘Please send the deeds to this address.’ She found her piano teacher’s card in her reticule and handed it to him without meeting his gaze. She had tried not to look at him, partly because the whole situation was so mortifying, but also because she knew she blushed every time she saw that rangy, carelessly elegant figure. Looking at his face, so close, would be too disconcerting. ‘Miss Fanshawe understands the situation at home.’

‘She is used to acting as a go-between for your illicit correspondence, is she?’ The earl moved away towards a writing desk and Caroline realised that she had been holding her breath. A hasty glance at his back made her shiver. He was far too large and male and animal to be so close to. Whenever she had seen him before it had been across a ballroom floor at a safe distance and there his dark hair and the slight carelessness of his formal evening attire had been attractive.

This near, in the same room with him, his casual disregard for the niceties of fashionable male dress and grooming was shocking and more than a little unsettling. His hair was thick, slightly waving, rumpled as though he had run those long fingers through it. His face was shadowed by dark stubble, his neckcloth was pulled askew and his collar had been opened, exposing the base of his throat. He smelled of brandy and smoke and something faint and musky and his eyelids drooped with a weariness at odds with his drily intelligent voice. She wondered what colour his eyes were. Dark blue, brown?

At a safe distance he had attracted and intrigued her. The gossip about him was both titillating and arousing to a well brought-up young lady and she had fed her fantasies with it. Of course, she’d had no expectation of finding herself within ten feet of the object of her lurid imaginings. Aunt Gertrude, her chaperon, would have hysterics at the thought that Caroline might actually speak to Gabriel Stone.

His reputation was shocking and yet no one accused him of being vicious. He was amorous, said the whisperers, dangerous to a lady foolish enough to risk her heart with him and he was far too good at cards for the health of anyone reckless enough to cut a deck in his company, but Caroline was not hazarding her allowance. Nor her heart, she told herself. In the shock and anger of discovering just what Papa had done last night, Lord Edenbridge had seemed like the answer to her dreams—amoral, unconventional, sophisticated and possessed of his own particular brand of honour. The man had disturbed those dreams often enough, so surely the bargain she was proposing would not be so very unpleasant to go through with, given that one had to lose one’s virginity some time, to someone? Lord Woodruffe’s stomach wobbled over the top of his breeches. She shuddered. I will not think about Woodruffe. Think about this man. Nothing about Lord Edenbridge wobbled physically, nor, apparently, mentally.

Caroline gave herself a mental shake. ‘I do not have any illicit correspondence,’ she said. ‘But Miss Fanshawe is a friend.’

‘Not much of one if she is encouraging you to come here.’ He pulled back the desk chair for her.

‘She has no idea what I am doing.’ Caroline eyed the pen stand warily. She was not at all certain she knew what she was doing herself. It had seemed such a good idea at nine o’clock that morning. ‘What should I write?’

‘Whatever you feel covers our agreement.’ The wretched man had a perfectly straight face and his eyes beneath those indecently long lashes were veiled, but she suspected that he was amused.

‘Very well.’ She dipped the nib and began, choosing her words with care. She was not, whatever he thought of her, completely reckless.

I agree to pay Lord Edenbridge the price agreed upon the arrangement of my betrothal.

Caroline Amelie Holm

June 1st, 1820

She sanded the paper with a hand that shook only a little and pushed the note towards him. ‘Will that do?’

‘Admirably discreet.’ He folded the paper and slid it into his breast pocket. ‘This will reside in my safe, most securely.’

‘Of course.’ Strange that she had total confidence in his discretion and his honour—in keeping this a secret, at least. He would not be bragging in his clubs that he had made a conquest of the retiring and virtuous Lady Caroline Holm. Would he?

‘Why do you trust me?’ he asked abruptly, the question so near to her thoughts that she stared at him, wide-eyed, convinced for a moment that he could read her mind.

‘I have no idea,’ she confessed. ‘Only my own impressions and the fact that everyone says how shocking and ruthless you are, yet you are never accused of dishonourable behaviour.’

‘It is easy enough to be honourable if one is never tempted.’ His voice was dry and his smile held little amusement. ‘I confess that it is a novelty to be trusted quite so implicitly, Lady Caroline.’

The heat that had been ebbing and waning throughout this entire outrageous interview swept up her cheeks at the thought of what tempting this man might involve. She was innocent, certainly, but not ignorant. ‘Obviously I have not tempted you beyond reason, my lord, given the very businesslike way we have concluded our bargain.’

‘I did not say that I am not tempted, Lady Caroline.’ He took her hand, raised it to within a hair’s breadth of his mouth and held in there for a moment. His breath was warm, his fingers firm. She braced herself for the brush of his lips.

‘How did you come here?’ Lord Edenbridge asked, releasing her without the slightest attempt at a kiss. He walked to the fireside and tugged the bell pull.

‘In a—in a hackney.’ Damn him for making me all of a flutter, for making me stammer. For disappointing me. Behind her the door opened and she bit back any more stumbling words.

‘Hampshire, find the lady a hackney with a reliable-looking driver. Good day, Lady Caroline. I look forward greatly to the announcement of your nuptials.’

Her last glimpse of the earl was of him pulling his neckcloth free and beginning to unbutton his shirt. Caroline did not deceive herself, her brisk walk down the hallway was as much a flight as if she had run.

Chapter Two

It had seemed such a good idea at the time. It had seemed the only idea at the time. Caroline took her place at the dinner table and wondered if the sinking feeling inside was guilt and shame or...anticipation. More likely, she thought as she made herself sip her soup, it was all three plus very sensible fear at what would happen if her father found out what she had been doing that morning.

‘Something wrong, Caro?’ Lucas, her elder brother, glanced across at her.

Her father, who was unlikely to notice anything amiss with anyone else, short of one of the party spontaneously combusting, ignored them. He had always been self-centred and selfish and she had given up years ago expecting any parental warmth and attention. She just prayed that Lucas would find a wife soon, someone who would stop him becoming just like his father.

‘This soup is a trifle salty. I must speak to Cook about it.’ Apparently her face did not convey the depth of her feelings, for Lucas merely nodded and went back to discussing with their father a planned visit to Coade’s Artificial Stone Manufactory in Lambeth in pursuit of statuary for their latest landscape project.

She had noticed before that once her father had sustained a major loss he would stop gambling abruptly. It was as if the bubble of gaming fever that had built up in him had been pricked and he was back to normal, until the next time. At least he did not continue throwing good money after bad for very long, but the irrationality of his behaviour, the wild swings of mood, were an increasing worry.

‘What new feature are you planning, Papa?’ she asked as the soup plates were cleared.

‘A hermitage. I will adapt the Gothic chapel that is already almost complete. The position where the path through the plantation has the view of the small lake is more suitable for a hermit’s cell than for a church.’

‘A hermitage there would be very dramatic and atmospheric,’ Caroline observed dutifully, not adding and damp. That location faced north and the trees dripped moisture on to the mossy bank. But years of experience had taught her what to say to keep her father happy.

‘Finding the hermit may take some time,’ he commented, gesturing impatiently for Lucas to add more of the capon he was carving to his plate.

For a moment, despite all her years of experience with him, Caroline thought her father was joking, but he sounded perfectly serious. ‘That might be challenging, I can see.’ Somehow she kept her voice steady. ‘I doubt the usual domestic agencies would be of any use. Perhaps an advertisement in the newspapers?’

‘What kind of hermit had you in mind, Father?’ Lucas was apparently fully behind the scheme. ‘As it is a Gothic chapel then a Druid would be unsuitable.’

‘I envisage a reclusive scholar,’ their father declared. ‘Once a monk, then expelled from the monastery by King Henry, now living alone in the ruins with the books and manuscripts he has saved from the Dissolution.’

‘You intend him to actually live there, Papa? That way of life might be too rigorous for a modern applicant to accept,’ Caroline ventured.

‘Of course I have considered that. The chapel exterior will disguise a one-roomed cottage, just as I built accommodation for the gamekeepers into the folly tower.’

‘And his duties?’ What did a hermit do anyway? Herm, perhaps. Somehow she managed not to give way to her feelings. It would be all too easy to collapse into hysterical laughter this evening.

‘I will want him simply to be there when anyone passes by. He must keep the hermitage in good order and maintain the area around it. I have no objection to him carrying on his own work—studying, writing and so forth—if he is a genuine scholar.’

‘Will we be returning to Knighton Park soon, Papa?’ Headlong flight down the hallway to the Earl of Edenbridge’s front door was not enough, it seemed. Headlong flight out of London was beginning to feel much safer. ‘The Season is drawing to its end in a few weeks.’

It had been the familiar round of socialising, of eligible young men who flirted and danced and then sheered off as soon as they encountered her father. Her looks were passable, her breeding acceptable, her dowry reasonable but her parent was the kind of father-in-law that bachelors were warned about. If she had ever met anyone who had wanted her for herself, loved her, then that would not have mattered, she supposed. But that had never happened and she was well aware of the whispers that Lady Caroline Holm was perilously close to being on the shelf. Such a pity, the old cats gossiped, such a charming girl. But... And then she had seen Gabriel Stone.

‘We will stay in London for June,’ her father said, jolting her out of her reverie. ‘That will give the builders time to finish the hermitage while Lucas and I select the ornamental details and find the hermit.’

No escape then. Unfortunately it was not Lord Edenbridge from whom she felt she needed to escape, it was her own absolutely irrational desire to see more of him. Playing with fire, Caroline thought. He is dangerously attractive and he is not for me. The man is downright wicked. As well as beautiful in that wild gypsy manner.

Her food was becoming cold. Caroline applied herself to it and told herself she was suffering from an attraction that was as ridiculous as any schoolgirl’s tendre for the music master. Only that was usually a hopeless passion, quickly forgotten. This was something that was going to lead her into the man’s bed and might, if she was not very careful, end in scandal.

* * *

‘The post, my lord.’ Hampshire proffered the salver with so much silent emphasis that Gabriel picked up the pile of letters immediately, intrigued to see what had interested the butler.

The letter on top, of course. Sealed with a plain wafer, posted in London and addressed in an elegant feminine hand. He lifted it to his nose. Unscented and good quality paper.

The note inside was to the point. The package has been received. I am most obliged for your prompt attention to the matter. There was not even an initial.

‘My prompt attention, indeed.’ Gabriel tapped the note on the table. Lady Caroline would have done better to have written begging him to reconsider their agreement. He was in half a mind to stop playing with her, tear up her IOU and send it back to her via her obliging pianoforte teacher. He would never act on it.

Would I?

As a gentleman he most certainly should not, but part of him admired her outrageous logic. It was certainly one sure way to hit back at her father’s schemes to marry her off advantageously whatever her own inclinations. Not that losing her virginity was going to save her from marriage, not unless she was prepared to inform her hopeful suitors in advance of the ceremony.

Yes, he should tear up the note and forget her and she would spend her entire married life giving thanks for a narrow escape. On the other hand he was bored, the situation was novel and a little internal devil prompted him to see just how this game played out a little longer.

He opened the next letter in the pile, noticing that it was from his old friend Crispin de Feaux and that the wax was impressed, not with the Marquess of Avenmore’s usual seal, but with the discreet abbreviated version. Cris was up to something.

Not only that, he discovered, but requiring Gabriel to get himself involved as well. ‘Collect information about Lord Chelford’s debts...obtain a sedan chair and bearers...send to Stibworthy, North Devon... North Devon?’ What the blazes was Cris up to now?

The study bookshelves returned no answer to his questions. This was too intriguing to deal with by post. Gabriel tugged the bell pull. ‘Hampshire, I am going into Devon by way of Bath. I will want my travelling coach.’ He glanced at Cris’s letter again and smiled. ‘Tell Corbridge to pack for action rather than amusement, I think.’

By the time he got back from whatever was brewing on the wilder western shores of England he would have located his better nature. He would do the right thing by the innocent Lady Caroline immediately and he would not yield to the temptation to discover just what the delicate skin at the base of her throat tasted like. Strawberries, perhaps...

* * *

June was drawing towards July, complete with sunshine, roses in bloom, a flurry of fashionable parasols—and no indication from her father that he would be leaving for the country for at least another week. Caroline could only be grateful because she had just realised the great flaw in her scheme, the gaping black hole in the centre.

She had the deeds, so Anthony’s future was assured, she had told herself. Then, when she was locking them away in the base of her jewellery box, she realised that in solving one problem she had created another—or two, if she counted the looming shadow of Lord Edenbridge and her promise to him.

Anthony’s estate was safe, but estates had to be managed. Plans must be made, orders must be given, wages paid, staff supervised, income banked and invested. Somehow Springbourne had to function for five years until her brother reached his majority and could take control. Meanwhile, she had no resources, no experience and no legal standing in the matter. Anthony was a minor, so neither did he. And if either of them tried to employ a solicitor or a land agent to act on their own behalf the first thing the man would do was consult their father.

Lord Edenbridge. Papa thought the earl was about to take over Springbourne and doubtless he had already notified all concerned. If Lord Edenbridge took nominal control it would solve everything. Would it be a huge imposition? Perhaps she could offer him a percentage of the income, or might he be offended by that? She needed to ask his advice.

It was the day she realised that she must speak to him that Lord Edenbridge disappeared from London. She looked for him in vain at balls and parties, she heard no gossip about him and, when she contrived to have the barouche drive along Mount Street, she saw the knocker was off his front door.

There was nothing for it, she would have to write to him. Caroline sat in the little room optimistically referred to as her boudoir, chewed the end of her pen and racked her brains for a tactful way of phrasing a request that a virtual stranger take on the supervision of an estate she had extracted from him in return for the dubious value of her own virtue.

The knock on the door was almost a relief.

‘Yes, Thomas?’

‘His lordship requests that you join him in his study, my lady.’ The footman had doubtless translated a grunted command to fetch my daughter into a courteous message, so she smiled at him, even though he had thrown what little she had managed to compose into disorder.

As she went downstairs she wondered what Papa wanted. Perhaps he had decided to go back to Knighton Park, in which case life would become immeasurably more complicated, for not only would all her correspondence with Lord Edenbridge have to go via Miss Fanshawe, but then be posted on to her in the country.

‘You sent for me, Papa?’

For once he was not buried in a pile of plans and estimates, sparing her only a glance. To be the focus of his attention was unnerving. ‘Sit down, Caroline. I have good news for you.’

That was definitely unnerving. ‘Yes, Papa?’

‘I have received an offer for your hand in marriage from Edgar Parfit, Lord Woodruffe. What do you say to that?’

‘Lord Woodruffe? But he’s...he’s...’

‘Wealthy, a good neighbour, in excellent health.’

‘Forty. Fat. He thinks of nothing but hunting. His first wife died only a year after they were married.’

‘It is hardly his fault the foolish chit fell off her horse.’

‘Miranda was frightened of horses and she hated hunting. He forced her to ride, to follow the hounds. He is a bully.’ And he frightens me. She managed not to say the words, for she had no justification for them, simply instinct.

‘He is a well set-up, mature man who expects loyalty from his wife.’

‘He can expect it of someone else, then.’ Caroline found she was on her feet. ‘I will not marry him.’

‘You do not tell me what you will and will not do, my girl! Your duty is to accept this most advantageous offer that has been made to you.’ Her father’s face was already darkening with building rage at her defiance.

The match was far worse than she had been dreading and advantageous only in what Lord Woodruffe would be offering in the way of land to increase the Knighton estate. But she could do nothing until she had spoken to Lord Edenbridge, secured Springbourne for Anthony.

If Mama was still alive she would not let you do this. The words were almost out before she could control them. Mention of his late wife always triggered her father’s worst rages. ‘Yes, Papa.’ She forced herself to meekness. ‘But I hardly know Lord Woodruffe.’

‘That didn’t stop you spouting nonsensical opinions a minute ago,’ he grunted. ‘There’s plenty of time to get to know him, no need to rush things. I’m too busy at the moment to worry about details like weddings and settlements.’

Reprieve...

‘Next month or so is soon enough. We’ll go down to Knighton in a week or two, Woodruffe can do his courting, wedding in September.’

September? She had been hoping for six months, not two. The thought of the baron’s courtship made her feel queasy. ‘Yes, Papa.’ It sounded weak, defeatist, but it calmed him. He was unused to defiance from her, she realised. Perhaps there had never been anything to make a stand about. Rebelling over being ignored and undervalued or complaining about her marriage prospects would have been pointless. But this was different and she had just won a little time to think.

First she had to locate Lord Edenbridge and settle Anthony’s estate safely, then, somehow, she had to find a way to escape from this marriage. Her brave words about losing her virginity and giving her husband a shock on their wedding night were wishful thinking, she realised now. Edgar Parfit’s response to finding that his bride was not what he expected was likely to be extreme: she had no illusions about the man, only fears that seemed worse because of their very vagueness.

‘Will Lord Woodruffe be at Lady Ancaster’s supper dance this evening, Papa?’ She infused as much interest into her voice as possible.

‘Doubt it.’ He did not glance up from his papers. ‘He’s still in the country as far as I know.’

A small mercy, she thought as she let herself out of the study. If only Lord Edenbridge was at the dance, too, then she had some hope of settling Anthony’s future and with that done, and her promise to Mama fulfilled, then perhaps she could find some way out of the mire for herself.

* * *

‘You look very well, Caroline.’ Aunt Gertrude, the Dowager Countess of Whitely, was normally sparing in her praise, but tonight, perhaps prompted by the news that Caroline was to receive an eligible offer, she was positively gracious.

‘Thank you, I was rather pleased with this gown, I must confess.’ It was an amber silk with an overskirt of a paler yellow and she was wearing it with brown kid slippers and her mother’s set of amber jewellery.

‘The neckline, however, is verging on the unacceptable.’ Her chaperon leaned forward in the carriage, the better to glare at Caroline’s bosom.

‘I believe it is well within the current mode, Aunt.’

‘Humph. And you are somewhat pale.’

It was a miracle that she was not white as a sheet with tension, Caroline thought as she set her lips in a social smile and prepared to follow her aunt out of the carriage and into the Ancasters’ Berkeley Square house. At least the necessity to act in a certain way prevented her from simply sitting down and having a fit of the vapours. She’d had to dress, have her hair styled, talk to her maid, choose her jewels, pay attention to Aunt Gertrude and now enter the Ancasters’ ballroom looking as though she had nothing on her mind except pleasure.

‘Good evening, Lady Farnsworth... Yes, Lord Hitchcombe, the floral decorations are charming... No, Aunt, I will be certain not to accept more than one dance from Mr Pitkin... Thank you, Mr Walsh, a glass of champagne would be delightful.’ She smiled and prattled on, just like every other young lady in the crowded, hot room, while all the time she expected to open her mouth and find herself announcing, ‘I have offered my virginity to Lord Edenbridge. I am deceiving my father. I am plotting to...’ To what? Ruin myself, most likely.

And there, strolling along on the other side of the room as the company began to take their places for the first dance of the evening, was a tall, black-haired figure. Edenbridge. He turned and went through a set of double doors that Caroline knew led to several sitting-out rooms and the ladies’ retiring room.

She murmured in her aunt’s ear.

‘Oh, for goodness sake, Caroline! Why on earth didn’t you visit the closet before we came out?’ Lady Whitely demanded in a penetrating whisper. ‘The first set is forming and you do not have a partner yet.’

‘I really must,’ Caroline whispered back. ‘The rhubarb posset...’ She escaped before her aunt could reply. With any luck she would attribute her niece’s haste to natural urgency, not the desire to go chasing after wicked bachelors.

She was moving so fast that she almost cannoned into Lord Edenbridge around the first corner of the corridor. He was standing with one evening shoe in his hand, prodding at the inside with a long finger and frowning.

‘Lord Edenbridge, I must speak with you. Where have you been? I have been looking for you for days...’

‘And good evening to you, Lady Caroline.’ He inclined his head in an ironical half-bow, shook the shoe and held up a small tack between finger and thumb. ‘I will have words with Hoby about this.’

‘Never mind your bootmaker, my lord, this is urgent.’ At any moment someone could come along the passageway and find them compromisingly tête-à-tête.

He winced. ‘You utter blasphemy.’ But he replaced his shoe and opened the door opposite them. ‘As I recall... Yes, excellent, and a key in the door. How accommodating of dear Hermione.’

He meant, she supposed, that this might be a refuge for lovers. There was certainly a chaise longue. Caroline pushed away speculation about how Lord Edenbridge knew this room was here and waited while he turned the key.

‘Now, Lady Caroline, how may I help you? I have been down in Devon,’ he added. For all his light tone and the smile, she detected a wariness about him. From her urgency he must think she was pursuing him, which was embarrassing, to put it mildly.

She sat down squarely in the middle of the chaise longue, spread her skirts out on either side in a way that made it quite clear she was not expecting him to join her and almost smiled at the rueful twist of his lips. ‘Perhaps you have misjudged the situation, my lord?’

‘Perhaps I have.’ He lounged across and propped a shoulder against the mantel-shelf looking for all the world like a Romany who had, for reasons of his own, donned an evening suit and strolled into a ton ball. She half-expected to see a glint of gold in his earlobes. His eyes, she realised, were brown. ‘I do wish you would stop addressing me so formally. Call me Gabriel, Caroline.’

‘And risk letting it slip out should we meet in company?’ Gabriel. She liked the sound of the name and she liked her own name on his lips even better. Perhaps not such a gypsy after all, she thought, watching him from beneath her lashes. His hair had recently been cut, although it was still on the long side, he had shaved to perfection and it was only the carelessness with which he wore his expensive clothes and the feline ease with which he lounged that spoiled the picture of the fashionable aristocrat.

‘Your chaperon would run me through with a hatpin before I got within conversational range of you, Caroline, so I think we are safe. Now, having established that you do not desire me to deflower you in a retiring room at HermioneAncaster’s dance, which I agree would be unwise, however informal she insists the occasion is—’

‘Oh, do not make me laugh! Not that there is anything to laugh about. I must be hysterical.’

‘Just very anxious, I think. Ask me what it is you want to know.’ He sounded not bored, precisely, but certainly reassuringly unexcited by being dragged off for an intimate chat. The coolness was bracing. Then she met his gaze and saw heat and a raw masculine awareness of her as a woman. No, he wasn’t cool at all, simply controlled and that very control was almost as arousing as the heat.

She could be controlled, too. She must be or he would read the utterly immodest carnal desire that was making it so hard to breathe. Inhale. ‘How burdened are you with the management of your own estates, Lord Edenbridge?’

He straightened up, hooked an upright chair away from the wall and sat down. ‘I am not easily surprised, Caroline, but I must admit that our meetings are presenting me with one novel situation after another. Would you care to explain why you wish to discuss estate management?’

‘I have realised that securing the deeds to Springbourne for Anthony is useless unless there is some way we can run the estate. I cannot do it. As an unmarried woman I will never be able to open a bank account without my father’s permission and Anthony is under age.’

‘That is so. I have to admit, this had not occurred to me when I gave you the deeds back.’

‘If I hand them back to you, will you manage the estate for Anthony until he is twenty-one?’

The silence seemed to go on for a very long time. Then Lord Edenbridge said, ‘No.’

Chapter Three

‘Naturally we could not allow you to be out of pocket, Lord Edenbridge. Perhaps your man of business could find a suitable manager and the estate would meet all the costs. It is perfectly solvent, I believe.’ Caroline kept her tone as brisk and efficient as she could in the face of his frowning refusal.

‘Money is not the point, Caroline. It is irrelevant.’

It is? How nice that would be, for money to be irrelevant.

‘I employ perfectly competent people to run my own estates and my business matters. My own involvement will become even less as soon as my brother Louis leaves university. I can certainly add your brother’s property to the portfolio and extricate it again when he reaches his majority, but you are asking me to assume a position of trust, to be responsible for another man’s estate and income. That is a considerable responsibility. Who is going to audit the revenues and financial transactions?’

‘Why, no one. I trust you. You are a gentleman.’

He ran both hands through his hair, turning it into something disordered and wild, then leaned forward to emphasise the words that emerged through what sounded like clenched teeth. ‘Then you are an idiot, Caroline, and I had thought you innocent and trusting, but not empty-headed. You do not know me. I gamble and that in itself should raise warning flags. What if I suffer a big loss and see an easy way to borrow some funds?’

‘I am not completely air-headed, Gabriel,’ she retorted. The name was out before she realised what she was saying. He lifted his head, looked at her and the tight jaw relaxed as he smiled. Nettled by that little sign of male smugness, she pressed on firmly. ‘I am a good judge of character. I told you I have heard the talk about you and no one accuses you of deceit or dishonourable behaviour, even the people who have no cause to love you. I was reckless going to your house the other day, proposing what I did. You could have taken advantage of me then and you did not.’

‘You should not confuse financial probity with an unwillingness to pounce on young ladies when I am half-asleep and three-parts drunk.’ His smile deepened, suggested that now he was not tired or drunk he might reconsider pouncing.

‘Were you really? Goodness, I would never have guessed.’

‘You thought I look like that stone-cold sober and after a good night’s sleep, a bath and a shave? I am wounded, Caroline.’

‘No, you are not, you are teasing me. And, yes, I do understand that I am asking you to shoulder a significant responsibility, even if it makes little actual work for you personally and involves no financial loss. How can I recompense you?’

The amusement faded out of the deep-brown eyes and they became harder than she could ever have imagined. ‘I already hold one too many of your IOUs, Caroline. I will undertake this for you because you asked and because you are doing it for your brother, not because you have got yourself into this ridiculous mess.’

The smile edged back, curving the corners of his mouth, but not warming his eyes as he moved to stand beside the chaise. ‘I have spent my youth and my adult life being disgraceful. A gambler, a hedonist. Being responsible is a bore. And yet now I find myself having to be the sensible one. This summer I have been attempting to talk a close friend out of a totally unsuitable marriage and now I am resisting the urge to take you up on your reckless offer. I do not know what is coming over me. Old age, possibly.’

Old age? Nonsense. Surely he cannot be above twenty-eight or nine? ‘You still have my promise.’ Somehow their fingers met, brushed, then hers curled into his. Not quite a hand-clasp, not quite a caress. She looked up and met Gabriel’s unreadable gaze as his fingers tightened. ‘And Papa tells me he has given Lord Woodruffe permission to court me.’

‘Edgar Parfit?’ Her hand was her own again and Gabriel was three angry strides away. ‘That per— Is your father insane?’

She had often wondered what would be the verdict on her father’s behaviour if he had been simply plain Mr Henry Holm, a shoemaker, perhaps. What in an earl was eccentricity would, surely, be treated rather differently in other circumstances. The obsessions, the mood swings, the recklessness and the utter disregard for other people were not normal, she knew. But to say the words was a step too far.

‘No one has ever suggested my father is not legally competent,’ she said carefully. ‘Many in society would say Lord Woodruffe is an eligible match...’

‘Well, quite obviously you cannot marry him. Besides his unpleasant preferences, he is probably diseased—’

What does he mean, diseased? Horrible suspicions presented themselves and she pushed them away, knowing they would come back to haunt her dreams. The atmosphere of closeness, of something trembling on the edge of desire, vanished in the cold chill of reality.

‘What do you mean, preferences?’

He shook his head.

‘Tell me! Preserving my innocence until I am actually married to the man is not going to help.’

‘Some men enjoy pain as part of sex. Some want to receive it, be beaten.’ His face tightened as though at some unpleasant memory. ‘Others enjoy inflicting it. Woodruffe has a reputation for the latter.’

‘Oh.’ She felt sick as she recalled Miranda, Woodruffe’s first wife. The bruises because she was so careless. The days when she did not leave her room because her health was fragile. Bullying her into riding despite her fear of horses had been the least of it.

But what could she do? ‘Lord Edenbridge, listen to me. Your friend who is contemplating an unsuitable marriage is, I assume, male. He can choose. He is independent, free. I cannot choose and I am not free. Not legally, not financially and not emotionally. I have a family and I promised Mama I would somehow look after them.’ My brothers at least. Heavens knows if anything can be done for Papa. She found she was on her feet. ‘I will send back the deeds and I am truly grateful for your help. Please will you open the door now?’

‘Caroline, this is the year 1820. Your father cannot force you to the altar.’ Gabriel stood, unlocked the door, but kept his hand on the handle.

‘Not physically, no,’ she agreed, even as she wondered what bullying and bread and water might reduce her to if she defied Papa. Somehow she was going to have to persuade him because the alternatives, marriage to Woodruffe or fleeing her home and leaving Anthony, were too horrible to contemplate.

She reached the door handle and he caught her fingers in his, pulled her close until her skirts brushed his legs and she could smell him—clean, warm man, starched linen, brandy, a careless splash of some citrus scent, that hint of musk again.

‘Infuriating, stubborn woman. I do not know whether to shake you or kiss you,’ he said, his tone suggesting that neither was very desirable.

‘Kiss me then, for courage,’ she said, seized with recklessness and something that must be desire: a hot, shaky feeling, a low, intimate ache, a light-headed urge to toss common sense out of the window. No other attractive man was ever going to kiss her, it seemed. She must seize the opportunity while she had it.

Gabriel lifted one hand, cupped her jaw, stroked his thumb across her lips and the breath was sucked out of her lungs. ‘Have you ever been kissed before?’

She shook her head and he bent to touch his lips to hers, caught her around the waist with his free hand and pulled her, unresisting, against him. His mouth was warm, mobile, firm. He pressed a little, shifted position, his hand came up from her cheek to cradle her head and he made a sound of satisfaction when he had her as he wanted. Then she felt his tongue and the heat of his open mouth and opened her own in response as he slid in, exploring and stroking.

It was incredible and strange. It should be disgusting and wet, but she found the taste of him exciting, the heat inflammatory. She sensed his restraint, that he was holding back, toying gently with her, and she stepped forward until their bodies were tight together, wanting more of this strange new intimacy.

His body was hard against her curves and there was the urge to rub against him, as a cat might burrow into a caress. But he was still and perhaps he would not like it if she did that...

Far too soon Gabriel ended the kiss, took his hands from her body, stepped back. ‘Enough. Enough for your safety and more than enough for my comfort,’ he added mysteriously, as he pulled open the door and looked out. ‘Quickly, while there is no one about. Turn down Woodruffe, Caroline. Send me those deeds, then stay away from me.’ He almost pushed her out into the corridor. ‘Now go while I can still listen to what passes as my conscience.’

Gabriel had kissed her and now he did not want her. Of course not, no doubt I was clumsy in my inexperience. So what was that caress for if he did not desire her? There was something that had driven him to kiss her, something that had made that relaxed body tense. I want him, perhaps he could come to want me? Madness.

‘Well, if you do not want me I shall not burden you any longer, Lord Edenbridge.’ She made to sweep past him, annoyed that he could make her feel so much and yet obviously feel nothing himself.

There was a flurry of skirts, the muffled sound of a collision and a feminine voice said, ‘I do beg your pardon, sir.’

Gabriel half-turned to confront the speaker and Caroline caught a glimpse of a tall young lady dressed in an exquisite sea-foam-green gown.

‘Oh. Lord Edenbridge.’ The stranger did not seem overjoyed to see him and he did not even respond to her.

Caroline stepped away, her hand to her mouth, not certain whether she was stifling a sob or trying to hide her face.

‘Come back!’

She stopped, looked back.

‘Don’t be a fool,’ Gabriel said. ‘You do not have to marry him and you do not have to... Damn it, I’ve burned the thing.’

He had only been teasing her then, demanding that IOU that day at his home. She had gone through a maelstrom of emotions, through shame and fear and excitement and triumph that she had somehow rescued Springbourne for Anthony in return for that pledge, and all the time Edenbridge had never intended to take her up on it.

‘A promise is a promise,’ she said, chin up. ‘But if you do not want me—’ She shrugged, turned and walked away, gathering the rags of her dignity around her.

* * *

Gabriel swore silently, then turned to confront the other female bedevilling his life, the widowed Mrs Tamsyn Perowne, who was tying his friend Cris de Feaux, Marquess of Avenmore, in knots.

‘What in Hades are you doing here?’ he demanded ‘Does Cris know?’

‘Certainly not. I do not need Lord Avenmore’s permission to visit a relative.’ The wretched female looked down her sun-browned nose at him.

‘Come with me.’ He took her arm and swept her back into the main reception room. There, thank goodness, were Alex, Viscount Weybourn, and his wife, Tess. They could help him deal with Mrs Perowne.

Goodness knew who or what was going to help him with Lady Caroline because that clumsy kiss had made him realise that he could not cynically despoil an innocent, nor was it fair to tease her. And yet she had somehow got under his skin. Damn it, she is not my responsibility. Knighton could never force her to marry Woodruffe if she refused. Could he?

* * *

The deeds came back to him three days later with a brief, rather hurried-looking note.

I am about to leave for the country. I doubt very much if I will be able to receive or send any correspondence from there as I have grievously annoyed my father, but I know I can rely on you to look after my brother’s interests in the estate.

Thank you, you cannot know how much it means to me to have Anthony’s future safeguarded.

So Caroline had refused Lord Woodruffe. That could be the only explanation for her ‘grievously’ annoying Knighton. Good for you, my girl, Gabriel thought. He pulled paper and pen towards him and began to draft instructions for his man of business and solicitor to set in motion all the things that must be done to manage the estate and preserve the income for the young man.

None of it was very taxing, it merely required logical thought and meticulous attention to detail. His solicitor might well advise setting up a trust to safeguard both parties, but that was straightforward enough. Yet there was something niggling at the back of his mind, some sense that everything was not as it should be. Whatever it was, it was more than the memory of that innocent first kiss he had claimed, which was now wreaking havoc with his sleep. He reached for the brandy.

* * *

He had still been brooding when he fell asleep that night and he woke with a crashing headache and a feeling of unease. Corbridge, his much-tried valet, came in on silent feet and left a glass with something sinister and brown beside the bed, then wisely left without speaking.

Gabriel hauled himself up in bed, swigged back the potion without letting himself smell it, fought with his stomach for a moment, then lay back with a groan. His life was changing. Two of his closest friends were married now, Cris soon would be. Where there had been four, now there would be seven. He liked Tess and Kate. He would probably like Tamsyn when he got to know her. But the change to that close foursome only made his dissatisfaction with life worse.

He had been aware of being unsettled for months. He was bored with his life, no longer content with an existence in which winning was all that counted. Jaded, that was the word. He had a title, lands, money far beyond his needs or wants. What was he doing it for? Damn it, he had toyed with the idea of ruining a respectable young lady just for the novelty. He didn’t much like the man who could do that. Perhaps it was time to change. But if he didn’t spend his time gambling, socialising, drinking, what was the point to his life?

His three friends had been closer than his family, closer than he had ever dared allow his brothers to be. Cris, Alex and Grant had come into his life when he had been at his most desperate and vulnerable, at a time when they all needed the help that only others who had been wounded could understand. They knew his secrets, all but one of them—he could not burden them with the lies he had told the day his father died. That burden was his to carry, ever since he had made a promise to his mother, a woman so desperately unhappy she had taken her own life.

If he loved anyone, it was his friends and he knew they returned the sentiment, even if they would have died rather than admit it. From the hell that had been his childhood he had met them and learned that friendship gave what family never could, an equal give and take.

‘Good morning, my lord.’ Corbridge came in with hot water. Obviously he judged Gabriel to be back amongst the living,

‘Is it?’ Gabriel got out of bed and strode, naked, into the dressing room. ‘What’s the point of it all, Corbridge? Life, I mean, because I’m beginning to wonder.’

‘My lord...is anything amiss?’

Gabriel was aware of the valet laying one hand protectively over the razors and, despite himself, grinned. ‘It is all right, I’m not about to cut my throat, blow my brains out or otherwise put a period to my existence. I am simply wondering what I am doing with my life.’

‘My lord, you are an earl,’ Corbridge said repressively.

‘That is a title, not a job description.’ Although perhaps it was.

Manage the estates, look after the dependents, take my seat in the House, marry well, have heirs, teach the next generation to do it all over again... Focus on the title and not myself. Give up taking lovers? Step back and pray I can manage not to make a disaster of heading a family? But who would listen to my prayers?

He grimaced at his reflection and reached for the soap and sponge. He did everything he needed to do to keep the wheels of the earldom turning, but he did it at a mental distance that felt as though he had preserved it in ice. When the frost melted would he find something fresh and new to engage with or find only the rotted carcase of the past?

A disgusting image. He shook off the ghoulish thought with an effort. ‘I’m getting old, Corbridge.’ Is that why it was so hard to accept how his life was changing?

‘My lord, you are not even in your prime yet, if I may be so bold.’ The valet began to work up a lather with the shaving soap.

Gabriel grunted and scrubbed his toothbrush into the powder. What he needed was a purpose and he supposed the obvious one was his earldom and, heaven help him, his brothers, although they would probably think he’d got a brain fever if he suddenly turned up showing a keen interest in their lives and welfare. It would certainly unnerve them thoroughly.

‘I’m at home until this afternoon, then I’ll be riding. I may as well put on buckskins and boots now.’ There was business to finish, then he’d blow away the cobwebs with a good gallop and try to work out how to finally come to grips with his inheritance, all of it, on his own terms. His identity had been that of the care-for-nothing rakehell for so long that he wasn’t certain he knew who the man underneath that mask was.

* * *

It was not until the evening that he sat down and began to sort through the jottings he had made on young Mr Holm’s inheritance. He picked up Caroline’s message again, feeling the same prickle of unease as he had experienced the day before. Something was not right with it. He rummaged in the papers until he found her first note and laid them side by side. Same paper, same ink, but while the first was neat and elegantly written, the writing in the second was uneven, straggling, untidy. It looked as though it had been produced in haste and by someone who was either not themselves or who found it difficult to hold the pen. One corner of the page was distorted and he picked it up to study it more closely. A water splash. Or one fallen tear...

I have grievously annoyed my father. Father, not Papa as she had always referred to him before. Something was wrong, very wrong. He had encouraged her to defy Knighton over the marriage and now she was exiled to the country, perhaps mistreated in some way, until she gave in. In his mind he heard the crack of the riding whip, felt the shock of the pain. He had withstood it, pride and sheer bloody-mindedness had seen to that. But a woman...

Surely Knighton wouldn’t beat his daughter? Yet he wanted her to marry Woodruffe. Surely he realised what the man was? Or perhaps he really was so obsessional that he could ignore the man’s reputation?

Just because his own father had been utterly ruthless in imposing his will did not mean that Caroline’s father was. Gabriel pushed away the old nightmares, studied the slip of paper for a long moment, then folded it and put it in his breast pocket. He was imagining things were worse than they were, surely. Even so, he could not rest easy. The paperwork for her brother’s estate was soon completed and he bundled it up to go to his lawyer, then got to his feet. He had a commitment to help Cris and that might take a day or so, but then he was going to find Lady Caroline Holm and undo whatever damage he had caused.

He imagined his friends’ expressions if they knew he was contemplating involving himself in some chit’s family dramas. But Caroline was not some chit, she was intelligent, courageous and determined, and he felt guilty about the way he had teased her, he realised. That was novel enough to provoke him into action. What that action might be he had no idea, but at least he was not feeling jaded any longer.

Chapter Four

Hertfordshire—August 1st

August was usually a month Caroline enjoyed, especially if she was in the country. Now Knighton Park was a hot, stuffy prison and the sunlit gardens and park outside were a bright, tantalising reminder of just how trapped she was.

It was not my fault, she told herself for perhaps the hundredth time. It was not her lack of duty, not her wilfulness, not her foolish whims—all the faults her father had thrown at her. It is his. His tyranny, his temper. His lack of love.

It had started mildly enough. Her father announced that they were moving to Knighton Park and, recklessly, she had chosen to make a stand, to announce that she would not marry Woodruffe, or any of the middle-aged suitors he had considered for her.

The bruises on her right cheek had finally vanished. She studied her reflection in the mirror and clenched her teeth. There was some soreness and a molar was still rather loose, but she thought if she was careful it would grow firm again. The marks on her arms had almost faded, too. She could write long letters to Anthony without discomfort. His future, at least, was safe now.

The image of her face faded and the scene she kept trying to forget swam up in its place.

‘You will do as you are told, you stupid girl!’

‘I am not stupid. I am not a girl. I am of age and I will not be bartered to some man for whom I have nothing but contempt for the sake of your obsessions.’ Caroline had no idea what kept her voice so steady, what kept her standing there as his face darkened with rage.

Her father was a believer in corporal punishment for his children, although Lucas, the favoured elder son, always seemed to escape with only the lightest of canings. As a girl, her governess had been instructed to strike her once or twice on the palm with a ruler for laziness or inattention, or whenever her father deemed her deserving of punishment, which was often. But she had never been hit by him.

Her father had grabbed her arm, held her as she’d pulled back against his grip, her righteous defiance turned in a second to stomach-churning nausea.

‘You will obey me.’ He’d jerked again as she fought against the pain in her arm. It felt as though the bones were grinding together.

‘No,’ she’d managed. ‘Woodruffe is—’ But she didn’t have the words for what Gabriel had told her. And then her father had hit her across the face, backhanded, knocking her to the ground to land in a painful sprawl against a wooden chair. She had no clear memory of being taken upstairs, only of coming to herself to find her maid bathing her face. There was a bandage on her arm.

Now, with the bruises gone, she had permission to leave her rooms, go downstairs, allow herself to be seen, provided she maintained the fiction of a virulent sore throat that had laid her up for almost two weeks. She sat down in the window seat and searched for some courage. There were tales of how prisoners were afraid to leave their cells and the security of a familiar confined space and now she could understand how they felt. But she was desperate to get out, away from the tedium and anxiety, away from the circling thoughts and desires for Gabriel Stone.

She should be ashamed of herself for having carnal thoughts about a man, because that was what they were. She couldn’t deceive herself that these were romantic daydreams about love and marriage and family. This man was never going to be domesticated and when she imagined herself with him what she saw was a tangle of naked limbs, what she felt was the heat of his body and the pressure of his lips. Beyond that she was too inexperienced to imagine detail. All she knew was that this was shocking, sinful and impossible, because when she had offered herself to him on a plate even this hardened rake had not wanted her.

She had to stop thinking about him. I am the only person I can rely on, no one is going to help me if I do not help myself. And she could achieve nothing shut up inside, Caroline knew that. Her old world of certainties and duty and acceptance of the limitations of a lady’s powers lay in ruins. She would not submit to marrying Woodruffe and that meant she must act.

She had even thought through a strategy over the past few days: go downstairs and assess Pa... Father’s temper and intentions. If he had no intention of yielding, then gather money, jewels, information and escape. Somehow. There would be no help from Lucas, for although he had been shocked by their father’s violent outburst, he still shared his opinion that Caroline should marry as he directed.

But Anthony was a constant worry. What if he did something to arouse such violence in his father? And if she left home it was going to be horribly difficult to meet with him. One thing at a time, she told herself. If I am married to that man I would be equally helpless to look after Anthony. This way I can write, I could see him when he is at school perhaps.

She dressed with care and went downstairs. Her father and Lucas were at breakfast, the table littered with news sheets and the scattered pages of opened letters. Lucas stood up as she came in, her father merely grunted and went back to his reading.

Caroline found a soft roll and some scrambled eggs and took her place at the table and began to eat, favouring the left side of her jaw. Her father shot her a penetrating look, nodded, presumably with approval at her unbruised appearance, and turned to Lucas.

‘The hermit has had his first night in the folly now. I’ll not disturb him for a few days, let him settle in.’

She had not intended joining in the conversation, but this was startling enough to make her forget that. ‘You have found a hermit, Father?’

He did not appear to notice that she had stopped calling him Papa. Somehow the affectionate diminutive was impossible to use for a man who had raised his hand to her.

‘I put it about at my clubs that I was looking for one and he turned up, don’t know how he heard about it, although the fellow is a gentleman of sorts. He seems ideal. Educated fellow, for all that he looks as though he hasn’t had a haircut or a shave for six months. Says he’s a poet or some such nonsense. Wants to write in peace and quiet. Told him he can do what he pleases as long as he wears the costume and looks the part. I’ll not send warning that we’ll be about when we do go, so I’ll catch him unawares, see how he performs.’

‘Are you going to the Home Farm this morning, Father?’ Lucas looked up from his correspondence.

‘Yes.’ The earl lifted a bundle of papers. ‘These are the plans for the new Model Farm that Hardwick sent over from Wimpole Hall in Cambridgeshire. Their new buildings are excellent, we’ll see how they’d do for our site.’

They left together soon afterwards. Caroline looked out across the sweep of the South Lawn, over the invisible line of the ha-ha to the shoulder of Trinity Hill. Just visible above it was the tower of an apparently ancient chapel which had, in reality, only just been completed.

She finished her cup of tea and pushed back her chair without waiting for the footman to help her. She needed exercise and fresh air and the faux hermitage was one place where her father was not this morning. An unkempt poetry-writing hermit might not tempt her to linger long, but at least he would give her walk a destination.

* * *

The slope of Trinity Hill was gentle, but for someone who had been shut up inside with no exercise for days it was enough to bring a glow of perspiration to her face and an ache to her legs. Caroline reached the point where she could look down on the lake and on the hermitage, apparently deserted in its shady grove of trees.

She was not at all certain she wanted to converse with a professional hermit, for he must be a strange creature, but curiosity drew her down the slope to the clearing. The door to the chapel stood open and in front, on the other side of the path, a rough trestle table had been created by balancing a slab of wood on two tree stumps. A log was set in front of it as a seat and the table was laid with a pitcher, a pewter plate and a horn beaker, the remains of the hermit’s breakfast, she supposed. As she watched, a robin flew down and pecked hopefully around in pursuit of crumbs.

Treading with care, Caroline approached the chapel and glanced at the open door. No movement within, but she did not feel she had the right to pry by entering.

Then the sound of a twig snapping brought her round to face the path up from the little lake, the robin flew away in whir of wings and a tall robed figure walked into the clearing.

The man stopped when he saw her and stared, just as she was doing, she supposed. What did one say to a recluse, even an ornamental one? He was certainly not her idea of a hermit, which was a white-bearded, stooped figure supported by a staff. This man was big, with a mass of thick black curling hair that fell across his brow and shadowed his eyes and a beard that, although not long, covered his lower face completely. It made him look older than he probably was, for he moved like a young, fit man and there was no grey showing in the black hair that brushed the folded-back hood of his brown robe.

His hair was wet, catching the sunlight that filtered through the tree canopy, and droplets of water hung in his beard like improbable diamonds. He must have been bathing in the lake, she realised. In one hand he held a battered leather satchel, perhaps containing soap and a towel.

‘Good morning,’ Caroline ventured, wondering if a clean hermit was a contradiction in terms.

He inclined his head, but said nothing. Nor did he move any closer.

‘Has my father forbidden you to speak? I am Lady Caroline Holm. I hope the kitchen sent you food or do you go down to collect it yourself? You must let us know if there is anything you need.’

His silence was unnerving, but not as unsettling as the feeling of familiarity that was growing as they stood there separated by ten feet of leaf litter and sparse turf. Then, maddeningly, he inclined his head again.

‘Which of my questions is that an answer to?’ she demanded.

The thicket of beard moved as though he was smiling, but with his eyes in shadow she could not be certain. Of course, if he had been forbidden to speak then it had been quite illogical of her to follow on with more questions.

‘Are you required to keep silent?’

The man cleared his throat. ‘No, my lady.’ He spoke quietly, but the deep voice was quite clear in the still, warm air. It had an attractive lilt to it. ‘I have food, I thank you.’

‘You are not English, are you? Your accent is unfamiliar.’

‘It is a Welsh accent, my lady.’

‘Oh.’ Then that sense of knowing him was completely illusory. How strange. It must be her need for someone to talk to, to confide in. To plan with, if she could trust them. But all her friends were in London, or away at country houses or at the seaside and she had hardly had a conversation for weeks, except with her maid. ‘You are comfortable here?’

In response the hermit gestured to the open door of the chapel. He did not move and when she took a step towards the building he sat down at his makeshift table as though to reassure her that it was safe to enter, that he would not follow.

Inside all pretence of a religious building disappeared. There was a single whitewashed room with a bed made up with coarse sheets, blankets and a worn patchwork quilt. A table and chair stood in the middle of the space and a chipped stone sink was propped up on empty crates that served as makeshift shelves. A wide fireplace with logs stacked beside it was set into what must be the base of the tower, which would disguise the chimney, and a rag rug on the stone floor provided the only touch of decoration or comfort.

Bleak, but weather-tight and warm enough during the summer. She only hoped her father did not expect the man to stay here in all seasons. There was a small pile of books on the table, some paper and an inkwell and pen. Tools for a poet, she supposed, resisting the temptation to see what he was reading—or writing.

When she left the folly he stood up again and she sensed he was smiling. ‘It seems rather comfortless,’ she observed. ‘Are you certain there is nothing that you need?’

‘I am a hermit, my lady. I am supposed to live the simple life.’

‘You are acting the hermit,’ she corrected. ‘There is no need for you to endure such a Spartan existence in reality.’

‘His lordship requires authenticity and he employs me.’ He shrugged. ‘When he brings visitors to view the scene nothing must jar.’

He was certainly conscientious. Caroline knew she would have been tempted to smuggle in some comforts if she was in his place. ‘What is your name?’

There was a long pause and she wondered if she had disconcerted him. Then he said, ‘Petrus.’

‘That means Peter, doesn’t it? Peter the Hermit. Why does that sound familiar?’ Caroline wrestled with the elusive memory. ‘Of course—Peter the Hermit, the First Crusade.’

Now she was certain he was taken aback. Bother that impenetrable beard. ‘You are well read, my lady. It is simply coincidence, not a deliberate choice.’

‘I will leave you in peace, Petrus, you will want to get dry...’ Caroline could feel herself blushing. She most certainly could not discuss a strange man’s washing arrangements. To add to her discomfort her imagination conjured up the vision of that tall, broad-shouldered figure naked in the lake, the water streaming off his chest as he stood up, the thick black hair tossed back from his face.

‘Oh!’ Before she was aware of moving, of turning to leave before her treacherous mind conjured up any more shocking images, her foot caught in something. She had a split second to realise it was a tree root as she went flying to land in a sprawling, inelegant heap. ‘Ouch!’

‘What hurts?’ Petrus knelt beside her, then caught her by the shoulders as she tried to lever herself up.

‘My left wrist.’ Caroline managed to sit. ‘The leaf mould is soft, but I put out my hand and I... I hurt it a while ago. No, it is all right—’

His fingers were circling her wrist, gentle and firm and all-enveloping. With the other hand he pushed back her sleeve to expose her forearm. There was silence as she went still in his grasp, watching the bent head as he studied the pattern of fading bruises that still encircled her arm. The sprain where her father had jerked her towards him, held her as she fell, was still a little sore.

‘Who did that?’ Petrus still did not look up and the lilting voice was steady, but she could feel the shock and the anger coursing through him even though she could not see his face.

‘It was an accident. I fell and my...someone caught my arm to steady me.’

‘No, they did not.’ He rebutted her lie quite calmly. ‘These are not the marks of someone catching you, but of someone holding you forcibly, as though they intended to hurt you. Who was it? Your brother or your father?’

‘Lucas would never—I mean no one wants to hurt me.’

‘So it was your father.’ He stood and held out his hand so she could take it with her uninjured right.

There did not seem to be any point in arguing with him. Caroline allowed him to pull her to her feet. ‘It is none of your business,’ she said as she found herself standing with her nose virtually pressed against the rough cloth of his robe.

‘And I am merely an employee,’ the hermit observed. ‘Of course, a husband is permitted by law to beat his wife with a rod no thicker than his thumb and a father may chastise his children. But you are not a child.’ His voice became harder, angry.

‘No. I am not.’ We are both adults.

The fingers wrapped around hers were strong and still slightly cool from the lake water. Standing so close, she could smell damp wool from his robe and the sharp tannin scent of crushed bracken and leaf mould and something indefinable that must be the scent of his skin. A little shiver of recognition, as elusive as a breath of wind, stirred her and he let go of her hand and stepped back.

‘I am sorry, my lady. It is not my business, as you say. But is there no one to take your side, for you to confide in? Who looks after you?’

‘Why, no one! I am twenty-three, Petrus the Hermit, and I have people to look after, not the other way around. Or do you think all women are feeble little things who need keeping in cotton wool?’

‘No, I do not. Nor do I think they are fair game for any man who feels he has a right to bully and abuse those who cannot fight back, for whatever reason.’ He walked away from her towards the chapel, then stopped and half-turned in the doorway. ‘You should go, my lady. You should not be here alone with me.’

The sense of recognition was almost déjà vu now. Something about the way he stood there, one hand on the door, the way the broad shoulders filled the frame, the utterly relaxed pose that hinted at an ability to move instantly if the need arose... Caroline gave herself a brisk mental shake. She had never met a bearded Welshman before, her mind was playing tricks on her. The only tall, black-haired, broad-shouldered man she knew was miles away in London, probably nursing a hangover or totting up his gambling winnings. Or just getting up from the bed of some sophisticated and beautiful woman.

Petrus lifted his head, no longer relaxed. ‘Someone is coming. Two horses.’

Without a word Caroline turned and plunged down the narrow path that led through the bushes to the lake. It must be her father and Lucas, but she would be safe down here, the path was too steep and narrow for riders to follow.

She reached the shelter of an ancient oak tree and moved behind the massive trunk, round to where honeysuckle had created a tangled screen. Looking up, she could see the area in front of the chapel door where Petrus stood waiting.

The horses moved into the space, large hunters, ridden with no thought that they might be intimidating to a man on foot. Petrus stood his ground, then bowed, his hands inside the wide sleeves of his habit, the gesture somehow utterly lacking in servility and with a hint of the exotic about it.

‘You have made yourself at home, I see.’ Her father’s voice carried clearly. ‘What are you up to?’

‘Eating my breakfast, bathing in the lake, contemplating a rhyme for bruise, my lord.’ Petrus’s voice was respectful and yet lilting through it was a thread of laughter, of mockery that had a dangerous edge to it.

Bruise. He had been angry when he saw her arm, angry when he realised who had inflicted the fading brownish-purple fingermarks that circled it like a malevolent bracelet. She should have been wary, on her guard approaching a complete stranger like that, and yet she had felt safe, even when he had touched her, even when the savage note had marred the liquid music of his accent.

Her father appeared to have noticed nothing amiss with the hermit’s tone, but then he would never believe that an employee would dare to mock him, let alone threaten him. What was the status of a professional hermit anyway? Was he a servant or did he have a professional standing akin to an artist or architect called in to provide a service? she wondered, smiling a little at her own whimsy.

‘Very good, carry on as you are.’ No, her father had heard nothing amiss and his self-centred imagination had not picked up on the oddity of Petrus’s remark about bruises. ‘I have house guests arriving in three days’ time. I will send word of when I want you to be here, but the first evening I think you should be seen at a distance, wandering across the hillside. It will intrigue the company before dinner, make a topic for conversation. You will receive detailed instructions.’

House guests? Who? And why hasn’t Father told me? Now she had to get back to the house without being seen and wait until he deigned to inform her. She could hardly ask straight out or she would betray where she had been. When she looked back her father and Lucas had ridden on and the little clearing was empty.

It would be quickest to return to the chapel, cut down through the slope above the kitchen gardens and enter the house from there. She would then appear to have been inspecting the vegetable and flower crops if anyone noticed her slightly muddied boots.

Caroline crossed the clearing silently. The chapel door was still open and she could hear the hermit moving about inside. As she tiptoed past he spoke, one loud, angry swear word that made her gasp. Then something hit the door and fell to the ground. For an appalled moment she thought the brown huddle was an animal, then a fold flopped over and she saw it was his robe.

Which meant the chapel contained one angry, damp, naked hermit. She picked up her skirts and fled.

Chapter Five

‘Woodruffe will be visiting in three days,’ her father announced at dinner. ‘Thought I would make a house party of it so Calderbeck’s coming and Turnbull—they are sound on landscape design—and Lucas has invited some friends.’

‘Yes, Father.’ Caroline’s heart sank. She had always thought it an exaggerated phrase, but it perfectly described the unpleasant lurch in her chest at the thought of her unwelcome suitor’s presence in the house. ‘Who have you invited, Lucas?’

‘Frampton, the Willings brothers and Perry Ratcliff.’ Lucas hardly looked up from his attempts to carve a tough chicken.

‘Seven, then. An all-male party?’ She tried to sound interested and positive.

‘Yes.’ Her father helped himself from the dish of buttered peas.

‘I had best ask Aunt Gertrude to stay.’ Caroline chased a sliver of beef around her plate. For once the idea of her aunt’s fierce chaperonage was welcome.

‘I don’t want my sister’s Friday face around the place for a week. What do you need a chaperon for when you’re in your own home with your father and brother? I’ve no time for this missish nonsense.’

I need it for protection with Edgar Parfit prowling the corridors at night and a houseful of men I hardly know, she thought, but held her tongue.

‘You complain that you don’t know Woodruffe well enough to wed him, so this will give you plenty of opportunity. I’ll have old Humbersleigh over to draw up the settlements while he’s here and tell that useless parson to sort out the licence.’

‘But, Father, what about my bride clothes?’ Best to pretend that she had given in.

That brought his head up and his attention full on her. Caroline put up her chin and fought the instinct to cringe back in her chair.

‘You’ve spent weeks in London doing nothing but shop. If you don’t have enough gowns now you can buy them when you’re wed and Woodruffe can pay for them. Hah!’ Obviously pleased with the thought of fobbing off expense on his prospective son-in-law, her father returned to his roast.

Protesting to him was not going to work, not with two hundred acres of Woodruffe’s land almost within his grasp. Caroline reached for the potatoes and bit into one with sudden determination. She would have to give Woodruffe a distaste for her, make him realise she would not stand to be dominated by him. Being missish and meek had not helped his first wife, he had simply bullied and beaten poor Miranda into submission. No, she would have to be bold and brassy, stand up to him, then he would think her too much trouble to wed. And if that failed, then her desperate plan to flee was the only alternative.

She bit down on her sore tooth without thinking and winced, reminded of what her father’s temper could do if he discovered her scheming. But first she had to worry about preparing for a house party of seven with only two days to do it in.

* * *

‘That’s a fine prospect, Knighton, I must say.’ Lord Calderbeck shaded his eyes as he looked out from the terrace across the garden to the slopes of Trinity Hill. ‘I like what you’ve done with that tower—it has an air of age and mystery about it, makes a man want to take a walk across the park and explore.’

‘That’s my latest project.’ The earl pulled his pocket watch out of his waistcoat and peered at the time. The shadows were lengthening as the summer evening drew in, but the sun still illuminated the far hillside. Caroline scanned the treeline, realising what her father was waiting for. She had been so busy over the past two days that she had hardly spared the hermit a thought. Certainly, all that afternoon, preoccupied as she had been with greeting the guests and avoiding Lord Woodruffe, she had quite forgotten him.

‘Who the devil is that?’ young Marcus Frampton demanded, pointing.

‘It looks like a monk!’ Mr Turnbull, an author of lurid Gothic tales, clapped his hands in delight. ‘That’s wonderful, Knighton, you have found yourself a monk.’

‘A hermit, actually. The building you can glimpse is a chapel and there he lives in solitude.’ Her father was beaming now, more than satisfied with the effect of his creation on his friends.

Caroline picked up the telescope that was lying on the bench and trained it on the distant figure. Petrus was walking slowly, using a long staff to good effect, for it showed the fall of his full sleeves. As she sharpened the focus he turned to face the house and flung his arms wide in a gesture that might have been a blessing. Or perhaps a curse.

‘Do let me help you, Lady Caroline. That is too heavy for dainty female hands.’ A large body pressed against her and one hand came around her waist as the other clasped her fingers on to the telescope, pressing hard so the metal ridges bit into her skin.

‘Oh!’ Caroline gave an exaggerated start of alarm and stepped back. It had the unfortunate effect of pressing her closer into Lord Woodruffe’s belly, but it also brought the narrow heel of her evening slipper down hard on his toes. He staggered, pulling her with him, and she lifted her other foot clear off the ground so her entire weight was on the one heel. When he let go of her hand she allowed her arm to fall so that the end of the telescope swung back in an arc to hit him squarely in the falls of his breeches.

The sound Woodruffe made was gratifyingly like a pig seeing the approach of the butcher. He bent double, his hands clutching his groin as the other men turned to see what all the noise was about.

‘Oh, Lord Woodruffe, I am so sorry, but you pulled me quite off balance. Are you badly hurt? Perhaps our housekeeper has a salve you could rub in.’

Seeing where Woodruffe was clutching himself the two Willings brothers snorted with laughter. Even Lucas was struggling to suppress a grin. Caroline fluttered about, full of innocent concern, and her father glowered at the interruption to his discussion about stone quarries with Lord Calderbeck. ‘What the devil?’

‘I trod on Lord Woodruffe’s toes, Father. I am so sorry.’

‘Then why in blazes is he clutching his...er...?’ The fact that he was addressing his daughter appeared to dawn on the earl and he stopped mid-sentence. ‘Brace up, man, and stop whimpering!’

Woodruffe straightened, shot Caroline a malevolent look that made her shudder and limped back into the house.

It was a good start. Now she had to balance her behaviour on the knife edge between giving Woodruffe a disgust of her and betraying what she was doing.

The telescope had rolled across the terrace and she went to pick it up. It was a good instrument and there was a dent in its brass casing now. Caroline raised it to her eye to check that the lenses were not damaged, scanning round as she fiddled with the focus screw. Yes, it was working perfectly, thank goodness.

The trees on the far hill came into sharp definition and there, strolling back to his chapel, was the hermit. He probably thinks no one is looking at him now he’s finished his performance, she thought with a smile as the tall figure turned and walked up towards the path into the trees. Again that sense of recognition swept over her and this time, without the beard and the accent to distract her, she placed him.

Lord Edenbridge. The image swooped and blurred as her hands shook. Gabriel Stone. Petrus, the Latin for stone or rock. How could I not have realised?

‘I say, do take care, Lady Caroline, you almost dropped the telescope again.’ Mr Turnbull took it from her lax grip.

‘Thank you, Mr Turnbull. So foolish of me, but staring through it made me suddenly light-headed.’

Somehow she chattered on, made conversation as the party drifted back into the drawing room. Gabriel Stone. Here. Why? It had to be something to do with her. He had no reason to be taking employment of any kind, let alone something as peculiar and uncomfortable as fulfilling an eccentric man’s expensive fantasies about landscape features. But what did he want?

‘Dinner is served, my lord,’ their butler announced, making her jump.

Caroline got a grip on herself. Dangerous peers of the realm might be lurking in the shrubbery—literally and mysteriously—but she had a dinner party to deal with. ‘We are a most unbalanced group, are we not?’ she said with an attempt at a gay laugh. ‘Lord Calderbeck, may I claim your arm? The rest of you gentlemen must escort yourselves in, I fear.’

She had set out the place cards with strict attention to precedence. Marcus Fawcett, Viscount Frampton, sat on her left hand as she occupied the hostess’s chair at the foot of the table with Lord Calderbeck on her other side. Woodruffe, a baron, was left watching her from his position midway down the table. She turned and began to flirt lightly with the viscount. The stare turned to a glare and young Lord Frampton sat up straighter, his expression faintly smug.

Just as long as I do not have to deal with him as well! Caroline accepted a slice of beef with a smile and asked the viscount about his horses. From experience, he could be relied upon to bore on for hours once started on that theme, which had the dual benefits of distracting his mind from flirtation and also allowing her time to think about a certain earl.

Why on earth hadn’t she recognised Gabriel immediately? That beard and the curling mane of hair, she supposed. And the fact that when they had met before she had been too embarrassed to study his face closely. It was that rangy body with its easy movement that had always attracted her and that was what she had recognised through the telescope.

‘Spavined? How distressing,’ she responded automatically to Frampton’s ramblings about one of his matched bays, then closed her ears to an account of just what the farrier had advised doing about it and what his head groom had thought.

But what was Gabriel Stone doing here with his Welsh accent and his poetry? She would wager her entire allowance for a year that the man had never so much as rhymed a couplet in his life. Surely he hadn’t come with a view to collecting on her shocking IOU after all? No marriage had been announced, no betrothal announced, so the terms of the bargain were not met in any case.

They had parted with angry words, on her part at least, but if Gabriel had wanted to make his peace with her he was going to preposterous extremes to do so. Besides, he had not revealed his identity when they met at the hermitage and he had made no attempt to contact her since.

‘And what do you think of your father’s hermit, eh, Lady Caroline?’ Lord Calderbeck’s voice was loud enough to draw the attention of all the diners.

‘I...I haven’t...I mean I don’t...’ She was blushing, she knew she was. And stammering and generally behaving in a most suspicious manner. ‘I have not had the opportunity to view the man at close quarters,’ she managed. ‘I have been rather occupied. But I consider the impression he creates from a distance to be most picturesque. My father has such a good eye for a landscape effect.’

That at least earned her an approving look from the far end of the table. Perhaps her father’s violent anger with her had been forgotten for now, although she could not delude herself that the truce would hold once she defied him again over Lord Woodruffe. And she would defy him, she was even more certain of that now as she watched her suitor eating his way through the mound of food on his plate without the slightest sign of appreciation or discrimination. His eyes, when they met hers, held promises of retribution that banished the image of a portly, middle-aged buffoon, replacing them with threats of domination and pain.

* * *

Gabriel dumped the bucket he had carried down to the stream to deal with his after-dinner washing up and closed the door of his cell. It was cool now that the sun was down and the mossy grove seemed to stay damp however high the daytime temperature. He had performed his first charade for his employer, seen the glint as the sinking sun had caught the lens of at least one telescope, and there was small risk the house party guests would leave after dinner to inspect him. It was safe to relax.

The fire was still alight after his culinary efforts earlier and he tossed on some wood, more for the cheerful flicker of light than for the warmth. For a man who had never had to so much as make himself a cup of tea before he was quite pleased with his cookery, even if all he was doing was converting the food sent over from the big house kitchens. He had heated soup without scalding it, he had chopped up what he assumed were the leftovers from yesterday’s roast along with onions and a carrot, fried the result with beef dripping and consumed the savoury mess along with a hunk of bread that was only slightly stale, washed down with a mug of the thin ale that had been provided in a firkin.

Not what he was used to, he thought as he stretched out his legs in front of the fire, but he was getting accustomed to it and the constant fresh air was sharpening his appetite, even for his own cooking. It was certainly easier to adapt to the food than it was to the long skirts of his robe. How the devil did women cope with the encumbrance? To say nothing of the fact that it was decidedly draughty around the nether regions.

The chilling effect of cold air had probably been an advantage to monks fighting the temptations of the flesh in their quest for celibacy. Not that cold draughts had been necessary the other day when he had found himself with Lady Caroline in his arms. It had been anger that had heated his blood then, fury that anyone could manhandle a woman, let alone her own father.

He had expected to discover that she had been bullied, but not that she was suffering actual physical harm. Bullying he had expected to be able to deal with by giving her moral support and by finding something on Woodruffe that would persuade the man to drop his pretensions to Caroline’s hand. His dubious sexual proclivities were well enough known for that to be ineffectual as a pressure point—Gabriel must find something else. It might amount to blackmail, but he had no qualms about that in this case. And probably Woodruffe would prefer it to facing him down the barrel of one of Manton’s duelling pistols, which was Gabriel’s fall-back plan. It wouldn’t be difficult to work up some kind of quarrel with a man as objectionable as Edgar Parfit.

But if Caroline was being mistreated then the whole business became more serious, for if her father blamed her for Woodruffe’s withdrawal then she could suffer more than bruised wrists.

Gabriel lifted the bottle of brandy from behind the log pile, poured himself two fingers into a horn beaker and sipped while the heat of the spirits settled the faint nausea that came with some ruthless self-examination. He had shaken his head over Caroline’s lack of foresight beyond her aim of retrieving her brother’s estate, now he wondered if he had been equally thoughtless.

He had landed himself in this situation on a sudden impulse when Alex Tempest had reported overhearing Knighton at White’s talking about his advertisement in The Times. He had been brooding on what to do about his unease over Caroline’s welfare and Alex’s gossip seemed like the answer on a plate, so he’d snatched at it.

Pretend to be a hermit—there would hardly be competition for the post—combine an amusing small adventure with the opportunity to soothe his nagging conscience over Caroline, get himself out of his London rut for a while. It had all seemed like the perfect answer.

Perhaps if things had not fallen into place so easily he might have reconsidered the masquerade and found some other way of discovering how Caroline was faring. But the necessary delay while his ‘agent’, otherwise known as Corbridge his valet, had negotiated on his behalf, and he ostensibly travelled from Wales, had given him time to grow an impressive beard and for his untrimmed hair to develop an unfashionable shagginess. He had to shave twice a day to maintain an acceptable appearance for a gentleman and the resulting thicket of neglected growth was enough, he was confident, to hide his identity from a self-obsessed man who had only seen him closely in a poorly lit gaming hell.

The Welsh accent that he had learned to mimic when he had stayed with his Great-Aunt Gwendoline near Caernarvon as a boy had come back easily. Alex had been so amused and impressed by his disguise that they had even tried the imposture out on Alex’s wife, Tess, although with Gabriel in ordinary clothes and not his monkish robe. Lady Weybourn had carried on almost five minutes of polite social chit-chat in Green Park with Mr Petrus Owen, the gentleman from Wales, before her husband’s poorly suppressed laughter had made her suspicious.

It was a shock to find Caroline at the chapel when he’d returned from his morning dip in the lake and he’d been surprised, too, that she had failed to recognise him. With the painful discipline of self-examination that he had imposed on himself recently Gabriel pondered whether his reaction to that lack of recognition was hurt pride. They had, after all, discussed becoming lovers—one would expect a woman under the circumstances to have looked closely at the man she was proposing such a bargain with.

‘Coxcomb,’ he muttered to himself. Caroline had been in turn embarrassed, mortified, shy, angry and afraid during both of their encounters. It would have been a miracle if she had recognised him in the street, let alone hiding behind all those whiskers. Which cover all my best features, Gabriel thought with a grimace as he tugged at the offending growth.

He needed to talk to her again, reveal his true identity and discover the truth about her situation. That might be easier said than done, because catching her alone so that any startled reaction was not observed was not going to be easy. He found that it was not just the fire and the brandy that was warming him. The thought of Caroline Holm was...stimulating. In much the same way as a hair shirt, no doubt, Gabriel told himself as he reached for a book and moved the candles closer. She was likely to cause him nothing but trouble, anxiety and hard work, all things that he normally avoided like the plague.

He had become unused to worrying about anyone else’s welfare. His employees were easy enough—you paid them properly, made your expectations clear and dealt fairly—and mistresses were much the same. His brothers more or less looked after themselves now they were adults and, except for the occasional request for money, seemed quite happy with the state of affairs.

But Caroline was alone and courageous. She had been hurt, was probably still at risk, and he could no more stand by and see a woman injured than he could fly. And she had blue eyes like speedwell in sunlight and soft, soft skin under his fingers. That thought was almost worse for his peace of mind than fighting old nightmares, but he could not walk away and leave her, not if he wanted to live with his conscience afterwards. Gabriel removed a bookmark and applied himself to an analysis of the post-war European political situation.

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