Page 71 of The Secret Love of a Gentleman
The rhythm of her heartbeat pulsed at her throat, remembering where his hands had pressed. Yet there was also, still, an echo of love in her heart. Why? Why could she not free herself from the emotions of her past?
Albert’s gaze ran across the dancers as she watched him, waiting for him to find her. She would not look away, she refused to weaken her newfound bravery. He could not hurt her, she was not his wife now, and she had learned how deep her courage ran.
‘Caro.’ Drew called her attention to him. He had lifted a hand that she ought to hold in the pattern of the dance. Albert stood behind him. Drew did not know he was there.
She looked at her brother and beyond him saw the moment Albert spotted her. The focus of his blue eyes firmly collided with hers. Her nerves – past emotions – screamed. She had looked into his eyes so often in their marriage and seen so many different expressions, from adoration to hatred.
She loved Rob, but that was a different feeling, it was like a rose bud with a promise of what it might be, the flower of it yet to bloom. What she felt for Albert was more like a diamond – hard and glistening – yet broken into glinting pieces of memory. But Albert had occupied her heart first and he would not leave it.
He never loved you, she told herself and looked away, knowing that he continued to stare.
When she completed the next steps of the dance, a back-to-back turn with Drew, she looked for Rob. He was standing withhis Uncle Robert, leaning forward to listen to him, the soft curl of his fringe cloaking his eyes. As though he sensed her gaze, he straightened and looked in her direction, a smile lifting his lips. She smiled quickly too, focusing on Drew, the music and the steps.
When the dance came to an end, Caro rested her hand on Drew’s raised forearm and immediately said, ‘Albert has been behind you during the dance, watching me.’
Drew briefly glanced over his shoulder, confirming what she said.
Caro looked too. Albert was no longer looking at her, but talking with a blonde-haired woman who had joined him. She lifted onto her tiptoes and whispered in his ear. He smiled the benevolent smile she had seen in the first year of their marriage. The expression meant he was going to bestow some form of generosity. An outing. A new dress.
The woman must be his new wife. She did not look beaten or brutalised. She was younger than Caro, full of youth and smiles, this mother of his heir.
‘Caroline…’
She turned and faced John who performed a handsome bow.
Of course, she had agreed to dance with him too, she had already forgotten.
Four months ago, she knew John far better than his half-brother. Yet she had never let him touch her hand and said barely a dozen words to him. It was testament to how high the glass walls of her prison cell had been, and how vital Rob was to her freedom.
She accepted John’s hand and walked back to the centre of the room.
He was not like Rob. Rob was as readable as a book, he let aperson see what he thought and felt; John was reserved, cautious, he kept the man she knew in his home hidden in society.
‘I’m sorry to increase your woes, Caroline, I am sure you have noticed Kilbride, but you may also wish to know that your family have arrived.’
Rob had said if she endured this step then she would have faced every fear, and he could not have been more right. She did not look for them; she had no interest. They had not contacted her since she left Albert. Not one single letter had arrived from her mother. She stiffened her spine, pinned a smile on her lips, looked only at John and danced. After dancing with him, she danced with others in Rob’s family, his uncles mostly.
Then at last the chords of the last dance before supper would be served began. The orchestra played the opening notes of a waltz.
‘You are very pale,’ Rob stated as he came to lead her in the dance.
Her heart swelled with relief as he held her hand and his other hand came to her lower back. She felt safer than she had all evening. ‘Albert has been watching me.’
‘I know. I have been watching him.’
‘Have you heard what people are saying about me?’
‘Only that no one expected to see you in town again. You have flouted their expectations, and Kilbride’s too.’
‘And from your voice, you think that a good thing.’
‘And you do not?’
‘No, I would happily walk from the room, never return and let them think what they like. I much prefer the country.’
His eyes suddenly became a dozen shades darker. ‘I would rather be in the country too, then we might have slipped away and I could kiss you. But we cannot do that here and so let us enjoy this moment. I feel as though I have waited a century tohave you in my arms again, and now you are, even if it is before a crowd.’
Her lips parted in a warm smile, and she forgot their audience entirely, as they spun and spun for a few steps, looking into each other’s eyes.
