Louise Allen – The Unexpected Marriage Of Gabriel Stone (страница 11)

‘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.