Page 109 of The Secret Love of a Gentleman
He lifted the second letter and opened that, leaving the first on top of the bed.
Robbie,
You are no longer my favourite brother!
Why have you not replied? I am chastising you constantly and yet Andrew keeps telling me you must be busy doing what young men do in town, and I am not to nag you. So you cannot tell him that I have.
Caro is much changed since we returned.Quiet again. Though, she does everything she did before we visited London. Andrew worries about her.
The children are well. Iris has discovered how to clap and giggles at us when she does it. It is very sweet. It melts my heart when she does so and Andrew laughs along with her with a twinkle in his eye. You can imagine just how much he is charmed by it. I think she does it so much simply to please him.
Write and tell me how you are? What you are up to? It will cheer Caro too, I am sure. And send some word for George, so that he may cease asking me when he will see his Uncle Bobbie next.
Your impatient sister,
Mary
He would not write. Perhaps when his wounds were less raw. But not now. He had nothing to say. His father’s advice was right, he should give Caro time, that is what she asked for. He could not see her as he was anyway. For now, it was better to say nothing.
55
Caro watched Drew sort through the morning’s letters at the breakfast table as keenly as Mary.
‘Is there a letter from Rob?’ Mary asked.
He looked up. ‘No, my dear.’
‘It has been four weeks,’ she complained.
‘That is not long to wait to hear from a young man in town.’
Mary sighed. ‘Yet it is not like him. I am worried.’
Every time Mary spoke of it, a heavy pain settled in Caro’s chest. She was worried too – she worried he would never contact Mary because he knew she would read the letters in front of Caro.
‘You should go to town and visit him,’ Mary told Drew. ‘At least then I would know he is well.’
‘He is well. Your father has written and told you so. They have seen him.’
Caro folded her napkin and lay it on her half-full plate. She was not hungry. Her stomach had been bilious every morning for three weeks. ‘I am going to the nursery for an hour then I plan to spend the day with Isabella and Pauline.’
Drew smiled at her sympathetically. Drew knew Caro was thecause for the wedge between Mary and Rob, but he had no idea how awful the mess she had made was.
When she walked upstairs, her hand rested over her stomach. She believed there was a child within her. Her courses had stopped. When she counted back, she realised the last had been at the end of July.
She could not carry a child full-term. Five small graves in the grounds of her ex-husband’s home attested to it. So, there was no need to speak of it to anyone, it would be her secret. To believe there was a child within her flooded her heart with joy. She would embrace it and love the child for however many months it lived inside her.
In the nursery, she sat with Iris on her knee. Iris clapped as George ordered her to. Iris had become his playmate, or perhaps another toy, now she could clap on command.
Whenever Caro sat with the children, thoughts of Rob filled her mind, she enjoyed memories, and wondered what he was doing, hoping he was happy.
What would he think if he knew they had created a child? She imagined a look of wonder in his eyes. But how could she speak of it to him? He would want to marry her now, and have to endure the hurt when the baby died, and possibly, they would both endure a marriage which he might later decide had been a mistake.
Caro stood by the window in the nursery looking at the dusting of snow covering the gardens. It had been six weeks since they left town. Caro continued to carry the child, and Rob had still not written to Mary.
Caro’s hand often hovered near her stomach. She loved thechild with all her heart. At night when she lay in bed she would lie with her palm on her stomach and sing to the child within her. She wished her child to feel loved for every minute of the months it was alive in her womb, to know her love as much as it might.
‘Caro, I meant to say, there is a dinner dance next week at the Morrisons’. Will you come with us?’
