Page 30 of The Seductive Love of a Lady
Coward.‘Persist and I will go out,’ he responded from behind the newspaper.
‘Again?’
‘If I wish to, yes. I can do as I please, as can you.’
He heard the fabric of her dress stirring as she stood, and her light footsteps, then the newspaper was crushed down. Her blue eyes flashed fire. ‘So, is this it? You will not even claim to love me anymore.’
Oh, I love you, but I know your love will wither and die. Because I was wrong. We are not made for one another.
Her hands settled on her hips. His little firecracker.Not mine, some other man’s. It hurt to think it, but he must.
‘I love you,’ she said angrily.
‘You have no business doing so.’ He schooled his gaze, closing the shutters on his emotions. ‘Your family have it right, Mary. I am sorry I disappointed you.’
‘And you discovered this yesterday…?’
God, the woman could be clever.‘I discovered it last night.’
‘Because I let your friend, who you told me I should trust, escort me to a ball in your stead and dance with me.’
He folded the newspaper and threw it aside, standing as he did so. She stepped back. ‘Iwasonly ever pretending, and as you are determined to pursue an argument, I will go out.’ He walked around her, picked up his hat and put it back on his head.
‘You have a letter too. Joseph brought it up,’ she said as he pulled on his gloves.
The folded letter struck his sleeve and fell onto the floorboards.
He squatted down and picked it up. It was from Caro. His younger sister’s hasty handwriting formed his name in sharp strokes. It had no seal because she would want the letter to remain private. He took the letter with him as he left and stopped to read it in the street. She was confined to her bed. Kilbride had beaten her severely and she had lost a third child.
Drew was never sure which came first, the beating or the loss of a child.
He sighed. It had to end either way. He was unable to help himself, but he could help Caro. He would organise somewhere for her to run to, where she could live anonymously.
14
Two weeks later, Drew wandered down an aisle in the House of Millard, a warehouse in Cheapside, which sold Bengal muslins and flannels. Caro hung onto his arm. Despite the obscurity of their meeting place, she wore a fine gauze veil, perhaps to hide the bruises.
Kilbride had banned her from consorting with her rakehell brother. But when Caro asked to see him, Drew planned clandestine ways to meet her.
As the two illegitimate children, both excluded and ill-treated in their childhood, they had become each other’s sanctuary.
When she reached the age of sixteen, the Marquis sold Caro to the highest bidder on the marriage market, disposing of his second embarrassment. She was ostracised like Drew. None of their family acknowledged her in public or private, and she had no friends because Kilbride forbade her to have any contact with others.
She was in the room the night he hit Peter. So was their mother and the Marquis. He hated that they must have seen how much his visit dislodged his self-control, or rather his self-worth.
Now he had no family, wife or friends; none of his friends had contacted him.
Pain tightened around his chest, holding firm, like an invisible metal band. This pain had haunted him ever since that night.
‘I have found a house for you,’ he said to Caro.
‘I cannot leave him, Drew.’
Drew sucked in a breath, trying to dispel the tension in his chest. ‘If you do not leave, he will kill you eventually. The place I have found is a small cottage in Maidstone, not far from London, so I may visit frequently. I will employ a woman to manage it, cook and clean and such.’
‘What if he finds me?’
‘Why should he? He has no reason to go to Maidstone and you may change your name.’
