My Darling Caroline (26 page)

Dropping his gaze to the desk as if he hadn’t noticed her stricken look, he nonchalantly added, “As for being your home, Caroline, it never has been. It’s been nothing more than your place of residence while you awaited your chance to run from your unwanted entanglement. Now sign these and get out. I have work to do.”

Suddenly, standing in front of the blazing fire, she was freezing, and although she tried to hold them in check, her eyes slowly filled with tears.

“I cannot believe you’re doing this to us,” she said in a husky, desperate whisper, wrapping her arms around her waist for warmth and comfort.

“There is no us, Caroline, there never has been.” He sat again casually and pulled his ledger forward, turning through the pages and effectively ignoring her.

Rising panic overwhelmed her. “I’m not going anywhere or signing anything until you listen and allow me to explain. I’m hardly young and naïve, and I won’t stand for it, Brent. You cannot dismiss me as easily as you dismissed Charlotte. I am not a disobedient sister, I am your wife.”

He looked up. “There’s a concept here you’re not grasping, Caroline. Charlotte left me, and I pushed her out of my mind. You never existed.”

“What does that mean?” she fairly shouted. “I never existed in your mind? In your bed?” She swallowed to fight stinging tears but refused to look away. “What we shared was real, and you know it. You’ll never be able to convince me or yourself that what happened between us the night you made me your wife, or the beautiful intimacy we shared in the greenhouse three days ago, meant nothing. I remember everything I saw in your eyes and heard from your mouth quite vividly. It was very real, Brent, and it exists even now.”

She sparked something inside of him with that. His lips thinned, his jaw tensed, and his soft silk shirt became tight across his chest as his muscles flexed. This reaction of building anger was certainly better than coldness, aloofness, and as instantaneous as the change in his demeanor occurred, she wanted everything laid bare.

Calming, she bravely contended, “I admit to you now that when we married I wanted to leave you. I wanted an annulment. You didn’t want me either, so even if you don’t like the thought, you should at the very least understand it. Many married couples live separate lives or receive annulments, and I rationally believed we could be one of them.”

Boldly she straightened, looking him dead in the eyes. “But our feelings for each other changed everything. I didn’t calculate love as being part of our relationship, but it happened, Brent, it’s there between us, most assuredly, and you
know
it—”

He stood so quickly that his chair fell back hard against the floor, and for the first time since he’d entered the study, his features contorted in absolute fury.

“Love?” he whispered in rage. “You think this is love? Love is never built on lies, Caroline, and that’s the only constant we’ve ever had between us.”

Keeping her gaze locked with his, she said dauntlessly, defiantly, “Whatever you think about me, Brent, I swear I never lied to you—”

“You lied to me when you took the goddamn vows!” he exploded, his eyes erupting in blazing fire as he towered over her. “From the moment we met you lied to me, used me, and I was the fool because it never occurred to me that any woman could be so deceitfully heartless!”

She stared at him, wide-eyed and stunned at the strength of his outburst, the repulsion in his tone, no longer caring as water, hot and salty, slid freely down her cheeks.

He breathed heavily and fast, the muscles in his throat sticking out tautly against his collar. “I just don’t understand how someone with any brain at all could think to get away with this kind of complex prevarication. How did you think you were going to ask me for an annulment? Were you just going to come right out and say it, explain your thoroughly organized plans after you’d booked passage and had your notes compiled? Or perhaps you wanted to wait until I was most vulnerable because you simply enjoyed pulling me along on a string like a puppet.”

“It—it was never like that—”

“It was always like that, Caroline! You teased me with your body, proficiently exploited my feelings to your advantage, hurt me, then lied to me about never hurting me again. You tactfully implied that Rosalyn and I would manage without you, cleverly remained secretive with your thoughts. You skillfully avoided the marriage bed until you needed satisfaction yourself; then, while lying there naked, you casually wondered aloud if I’d let you leave me.”

He raised his hands in absolute wonder. “Even Davis saw it coming and advised me about your scheming little mind months ago, but I refused to acknowledge it because to the depths of my soul I found it unthinkable, incomprehensible, that a wife would be so disloyal, so conniving, that she’d actually consider marrying her husband strictly because she assumed it would be easy to
leave
him.”

Caroline, dazed, placed a shaky hand on the desk to keep from reeling. “It—it was never like that,” she whispered hoarsely once more. “Please—”

“Please what?” He slammed his fists on the desk. “Please what? Forgive you? Forget about it? Please…let’s start over? Christ, you are pathetic, Caroline!”

Her body sagged, and she dropped her head, no longer able to look at him, and uncaring as wetness freely dripped from her chin and jaw, staining the neckline of her dark-blue gown.

“You wove your way into a new home, a new life,” he slowly, calmly articulated, “taking the precious innocence of a deaf child into your hands without considering the consequences of how your departure would shatter her.”

Without warning, he reached across the desk, gripped her jaw tightly, and forced her head up.

“Look at me,” he whispered.

She opened wet lashes to a blurry vision of hard, cold eyes filled with complete intolerance and pity.

“You don’t love me or Rosalyn, you love yourself. You used and manipulated me when you moved into my home and my bed, lied to me when you spoke vows to honor me, planned to leave me from the moment we met, not considering for a second how I would feel to lose my wife, the woman I had vowed to protect and cherish for the rest of my life. You are the cruelest, most selfish person I have ever known, Caroline, and looking at you nauseates me even now.”

He abruptly dropped his hand from her face, pushed the pen in her direction, then turned to lift his chair. “Sign these and take one with you if you don’t want to end up on the street, then get out. I never want to see you again.”

Numbly she lowered her gaze once more, staring at the rugs beneath her feet, suddenly realizing that her choice, her destiny, regardless of where it was, had been made for her the minute she’d agreed to marry the earl under what he so appropriately called false pretenses.

He was right. She had been dishonest and deceitful, and now he was giving her the opportunity to leave, the only thing she’d wanted from the beginning of their marriage. Except now she felt not elation or excitement; she instead felt as if she were drowning in a lonely sea of emptiness.

Trembling, she took the pen in one hand, wiped her eyes with the fingers of the other, steadied herself the best she could, and signed her name at the appropriate lines on the two pages in front of her. Then, with finality and the oddest sense of detachment, she slowly stood upright, lifted one of the pieces of paper, turned, and walked on leaden legs to the grate.

She stared into the fire, tears of pain and helplessness streaming down her cheeks, and quickly, without second thought, she tossed the paper into the flames.

“I don’t need this kind of degradation from you, regardless of what I’ve done,” she said huskily. “Keep your money.”

He had nothing to say to that as he once again sat casually at his desk, engrossed in his ledger.

Smoothly she turned and walked to the door.

“I hope you find fulfillment breeding roses, madam,” he stated formally, gruffly, never bothering to look up to her. “Your plants may require the attention and devotion we did, but they won’t give you anything in return, least of all companionship. Remember that in the lonely years to come.”

Quietly, anguish and frustration consuming her, she turned and left the study, closing the door softly behind her.

Chapter 22

J
ane held her gloved hand out to one of the four polished footmen, then stepped from the coach. The morning was bright and clear, and the smell of spring was in the air. A lovely February day for a bout with her arrogant brother-in-law.

She ascended the steps to the front door with confidence and was immediately ushered in formally by a parlor maid who took her pelisse and told her without the slightest trace of interest that she was to wait in the drawing room for Lord Weymerth’s appearance.

This she did, but as the minutes ticked by, she grew impatient and incensed. The earl was indeed as insufferable as Caroline had described without hesitation, and he was purposely making her wait as she sat primly in a chair, staring into the slow-burning fire.

“Well, finally. If it isn’t number one.”

She turned to the sound of his voice.

“I beg your pardon, Lord Weymerth?” she said stiffly, boldly looking him up and down.

“Number one, meaning you, Jane.”

His usually expressive face appeared drawn and exhausted, as if he’d been awake into the early hours of the morning, tossing back whiskey and wallowing in pity. Good for him. She hoped he was miserable.

He dressed casually in a cotton shirt, dark-brown breeches, and black scuffed boots. Obviously he wasn’t dressed for receiving but ready to ride. Too bad for that. The man would listen to what she had to say even if he had to throw her out on her heels, which appeared to be the only thing Weymerth was dexterous at accomplishing where women were concerned.

After eyeing her speculatively for a moment, he sauntered toward her. “Why did it take you so long?”

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”

“I’m sure you do,” he drawled, sitting heavily in the chair across from her. “Why are you here?”

“I’m here to discuss Caroline,” she replied bluntly.

He leaned his head back against the soft leather, eyes narrowing. “Really? The rest of Baron Sytheford’s daughters were here to plead for her before she left. And where
is
your father, by the way?” he added suspiciously. “He hasn’t contacted me at all.”

She brushed a lock of shiny blond hair off her forehead. “I am here for more important matters than to tell you Caroline feels terrible about what she did to you,” she brusquely informed. “As for my father, he is under the assumption you’ll take her back, so he chooses not to get involved.”

He raised his brows. “Assuming I wanted her, how could I take her back when she left the country weeks ago to pursue…glorious dreams of flowers.”

Jane ignored his statement. “I’ll not play games with you, Lord Weymerth,” she related, composed and daring him to counter with the determined glare she gave him. “My sisters love Caroline, as do I; however, being the oldest and most practical of them all, I’m not here to tell you she loves you more than roses, or wants you more than a greenhouse, or would give her life for you, or any other piece of nonsense. Those are romantic notions that do not concern me. I’m here to tell you, among other things, that I know without question that Caroline had every intention of annulling your marriage the day you wed.”

That statement surprised him, for he lifted his brows almost imperceptibly. Jane, though, prided herself on being enormously perceptive, which was, in fact, exactly why she’d bothered to visit the earl.

Slowly she began to remove her gloves. “First I’m going to explain why I came to you, sir, and then I’m going to tell you some things about your amazing wife.”

He groaned, annoyed, and gently rubbed his tired eyes. “I see no use in rehashing old lies that I’ve tried to erase from memory, Jane.” Candidly looking back at her, he added, “There’s no point in discussing any of this.”

She set her features with grim determination. “If you will allow me the opportunity, I believe you’ll see the point.”

He shook his head, smiling pompously. “Caroline didn’t want what I offered, and now she is on her own.” He shrugged. “I no longer care—”

“Oh, of course you care. Don’t give me that rubbish,” she cut in, standing abruptly. She dropped her gloves on the chair and strode purposefully to stand at the window.

Her eyes grazed over sunny grasslands and patches of white velvety clouds dotting the sky beyond as she shook her head pathetically. “Everybody knows you care, and that’s why we’re all more irritated with you than concerned about my sister’s welfare. Just one look at you reveals it all, for heaven’s sake. You’re not sleeping, you’ve probably been drinking far too much whiskey, and the lines on your face tell a thousand tales of worry. In fact, it’s Mary Anne’s opinion that you’re angrier at yourself than you are at Caroline right now. I happen to agree with her.”

She turned, facing him fully, eyes piercing his with confidence as she stated firmly and with pure pleasure, “Everybody knows how you feel about my sister. You’ve loved her for a very long time, Weymerth, are still in love with her now, and yet strangely enough, you are the only one left to accept this. You are undoubtedly the most stubborn and foolish man alive.”

She waited for him to rage at her audacity, watching him closely for signs of an impending verbal attack or rebuttal. Instead he stared directly into her eyes for a long moment, then slowly dropped his gaze to the cold, polished floor and leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees.

“Why are you here to…scold me now, Jane?” he asked in a gravelly whisper. “The entire matter has become irrelevant.”

She took a deep breath and boldly replied, “Because for the last few weeks, Caroline has been staying with me. She hasn’t gone anywhere.”

His head shot up immediately.

“That is to say, she hasn’t gone anywhere
yet.
”

That startled him, as she knew it would, and she watched his face display powerful emotions of shock, confusion, elation, hope, and grave uncertainty, which in turn gave her tremendous encouragement.

Suddenly he masked his features and sat back. “Yet?”

She began walking toward him. “Caroline has remained in this country under the hopeful assumption that you’ll come to your senses, forgive her and yourself, and request her return to Miramont as your wife. However, since you haven’t made inquiries regarding her intentions in America, or where she can be reached, or even if she’s still in England, she’s gradually come to believe you truly don’t care anymore. Because of your lack of concern, in three days’ time, on Friday, she will sail to New York.”

“How is she?” he hesitantly asked, looking to his hands.

That made her smile. “Just as you are. She’s angry, worried, hurting, feeling lonely because she misses you and Rosalyn terribly.” And quite noticeably pregnant, but that was beside the point and not something Jane intended to reveal. If the earl wanted his wife, he would take her back because he wanted her alone, not because she carried his heir.

“Does she know you’re here?”

“No,” she quickly returned. “That would just make her angry with me, and as I said before, I’m not here to boast of how much she cares for you or declare how wrong you were to dismiss her—”

“She lied to me,” he interjected coldly, as if that explained everything.

“Oh, good heavens, married people lie to each other all the time. That’s nothing new,” she said, exasperated. “But it’s also not the issue here. Caroline didn’t really lie—she just kept her feelings from you.”

“Her well-made plans, I think you mean.”

He continued to look at his hands, so she took the opportunity to return to the point.

“I am here for two reasons, Lord Weymerth. The first is to tell you some very private and extraordinary things about your wife, many of which I’m quite certain you’re completely unaware. The only reason I’m willing to discuss and divulge this information is because I personally think you are an exceptional man, and I’m not saying that to boost whatever ego you possess. I’m saying that because I think Caroline found a rare jewel in you.”

He raised his head and stared at her sheepishly, bemused.

She sighed heavily. “I want you to know that I understand what marriage is nearly always like for ladies of our class. Mine is no exception. My husband is generally kind to me, Weymerth, but to him I am his property, his caregiver and the mother to his heir. Nothing else. He has taken lovers over the years and has one even now in the Baroness Montayne. He doesn’t realize I know he beds her, because he has no idea how quick wives are in discerning such things.”

She lowered her voice with intensity. “As with all ladies of our station, I’ve put up with my husband, using him for stability, and likewise he’s put up with my usual frivolities over the years so I could give him a son. If Caroline had married a man like Robert, I would do everything I could to persuade her to leave, but she didn’t. She married you.”

Jane placed both palms on the back of the chair and gently squeezed the soft leather. “Caroline married you for an annulment, and this you know. What I don’t believe you know is why—”

“I know precisely why,” he interrupted harshly. “She cares for roses more than life itself.”

Fiercely, eyes flashing, she murmured, “You’ve never been more wrong about anything.”

“Indeed,” he said dubiously. “Do you know this instinctively, Jane, or did Caroline confess to such a falsehood?”

She waited for a moment to gather her thoughts, annoyed at his sarcasm. Then, watching him speculatively, she changed her approach.

“Do you remember the numbers you had her multiply the night of your dinner party, Weymerth?”

For a second he looked confused, then irritated. “I can vaguely recall the evening.”

He was purposely irritating her in return, but she decided it best just to ignore his impudence and move on.

Curtly she revealed, “Caroline did such equations in her head when she was four years old.”

Slowly, with growing comprehension, his eyes widened to gape at her, and the fact that he couldn’t hide his astonishment pleased her so much she graced him with a broad grin.

“You think you married a smart, talented, sharp-mouthed woman, but that’s not the half of it. Caroline is not simply a learned scientist, a woman wishing she could compete with men. She is an absolutely
brilliant
individual who was born with more intelligence than anyone I’ve ever known. She’s never needed to learn mathematics—she was gifted with the knowledge when she entered this world twenty-six years ago.”

She paused, allowing him to grasp and absorb the significance of her disclosure, then abruptly started to pace the room.

“From the moment she was born, she was different, and my parents realized this early because Caroline was very advanced for her age in everything she did. She walked at seven months, talked intelligibly at ten, and began speaking in short sentences when she was little more than a year old.” She flicked her wrist. “Some babies learn faster than others, so naturally my mother and father tried to brush these things aside as simple peculiarities. But when Caroline started to demonstrate her unusual ability with numbers, they found they could no longer do so, because it was slowly becoming apparent that their middle daughter wasn’t just advanced, she was extraordinarily gifted.

“She could count to twenty on her first birthday, to a hundred at eighteen months. She started adding objects around her before she was two, saying very odd things like, ‘Mary Anne got fourteen blueberries, and I only got twelve,’ or ‘There are nineteen cows in that pasture, and six of them are very fat.’” Jane grinned. “On Caroline’s second birthday, my mother placed a pile of pebbles in front of her, and with one look Caroline told her precisely that there were sixty-seven of them. After counting them herself, my mother nearly fainted.”

She stopped pacing and stared at the polished marble floor.

“Caroline began to read, without any help or tutoring, when she was three, and not simple nursery rhymes, mind you. She began reading books, Weymerth. You cannot imagine how baffled my mother and father were to see their little girl no more than a toddler, absorbed in the works of Dryden, Chaucer, Shakespeare, and perhaps not grasping the adult concepts, but reading the words and understanding the stories nonetheless.”

Jane raised her head and turned to him. His face told her nothing, but his eyes, so expressive and intense, showed intrigue, admiration, and amazement. It was just as she thought. He didn’t know any of this.

She continued fastidiously. “When Caroline was seven, she began working in the garden, and it immediately grabbed her attention. I think my mother purposely turned her in that direction because nobody in our family really knew how to relate to her. Suddenly she was not only planting, but growing things that shouldn’t grow in our soil, planting flowers just to see if they would bloom at the wrong time of year, which, I might add, some of them did.”

She shook her head, walked again to her chair, and leaned over the back of it, turning her face to the fire in tender remembrance.

“I vividly recall the day she began breeding. She was nine years old, Weymerth.” She tossed him a quick glance, but he just watched her, so she carried on. “Caroline decided to cross a white rose with a deep red, all on her own, without one shred of information on how to go about doing such a thing. They bloomed in the dead of summer, and I will never forget the look of pride and absolute joy she wore on her face the moment she walked into the garden to find blended, healthy pink roses. She, in her words, had found her destiny, and her life would be spent breeding flowers.”

Jane quieted for a moment and walked around her chair to sit again. She regarded the earl as he sat four feet across from her, taking note of his large stature, his chiseled facial features, and vibrant, attentive hazel eyes. Caroline was indeed fortunate, for this man was not only exceptionally attractive, but he also listened with interest when a woman had something to say. Remarkable.

Sighing softly, she creased her brows, concentrating to delve into the heart of the matter. “Two years after her first breeding, when she was nearly twelve, my sister learned of a man called Albert Markham who was attempting to breed a lavender mix from two unique and extremely fragile bushes. I think you know who this man is, so I will not embellish on his behalf.”