The Dangerous Love of a Rogue (53 page)

The door opened and a footman raced to set down the step when Peter appeared, smiling. “Good-day, my friend. I told you I would see you here.”

A smile rose up from within Drew, the sort of smile he had never known until he’d met Mary.

As Peter descended, Drew saw Harry and Mark behind him.

His heart thumping hard, he walked forward to embrace his friends, realising that he had always known love. He loved them.

Harry and then Mark gripped his shoulders, making humorous comments about his situation, among the Pembrokes, in his ear.

Drew laughed.

He saw through their tactics, they’d arrived on mass to make it harder for Pembroke to turn them away.

But when he looked back at Pembroke, the man merely smiled and nodded at Peter, then the others, “You are welcome here, as friends of Drew.”

Looking at each other, the pride of lions turned away. But Mary hovered.

“Would you mind if I walk through the Park with them, sweetheart.”

She shook her head, then turned to follow her family.

He was a fool, to have so maligned and fought her family. They’d never been against him, just for Mary. They’d always been on the same side really. He’d been wondering all through breakfast, when no one had said a word about last night, if it was normal for couples to disappear in this house. Certainly all the men were deeply attached to their wives, he had seen constant looks and gestures passing between couples, silent conversations like he and Mary had.

Brooke gripped his shoulder turning him and laughing. “Oh ye of little faith, did I not say all would be well.”

“The rest of the world shuns you and your wife’s family take you in. I shall attempt that ploy and do something utterly scandalous when I pick out my future wife.” Harry grinned.

“You may pick her out, but she may not take you, you would be lucky to have anyone take you,” Mark jested.

“Mary, took Drew,” Harry bit back, my reputation is nowhere near as bad as his.

“Drew has a charm that you do not,” Mark responded.

“And my prose,” Peter inserted.

“Ah, about your prose…” Drew felt a smug smile pull up his lips. “It had nothing to do with it.”

“It did? You said she was charmed by that letter,” Peter protested, smiling.

“That letter, yes, but it was not your prose, it was a paragraph I had written at the end. Mary, quoted it to me last night, every word. I’m sorry old friend, she could not recall your prose.” Drew slapped Peter’s back and laughed, as they walked on down the slope.

“Damn, that is my chances lost. You shall have to write my love letters then, when I need them.”

“I think Mary would be better at it, you may ask her.” Drew looked at Mark and Harry. “Has Peter told you, Mary is expecting.”

“No I saved that thunder for the proud papa.”

Mark and Harry looked their shock.

“My God.”

“Good grief, I am to be an uncle.”

Yes, they all were, they were his family. His surrogate brothers. He wished them in his child’s life.

After an hour of walking and talking, Drew saw Mary striding out towards them from the direction of the house.

She held her youngest sister’s hand in hers, and the child looked up at Mary with adoration in her eyes.

It touched his heart to think of their children thus.

Drew smiled at the child who he remembered playing with her doll that afternoon in town. “Do you wish to come into the house to take tea?” Mary asked Peter, Mark and Harry.

All of them declined. They were not a home and hearth bunch by nature. They would rather be back in London at Jackson’s, pounding each other with their fists.

Drew looked through a window into his old life.

He preferred his new one.

He could live this life, and be proud of what he had.

Mary stayed with him as he said farewell, and they all kissed her cheek as she begged them to visit again, making sure they knew they would be welcome, for his sake. Drew gripped her waist as she held her sister’s hand, while they waved goodbye.

This was his future, he had a place – a home. Someone who loved him. Someone to love.

Epilogue

Leaning back against the broad trunk of an oak, Drew cradled little George in his arms, crooning to the child. He’d taken his son from the nursery while Mary slept. George was already two months old, and summer was setting in again, springs bright light and blossom turning to green leaves to shade them from the more golden sunshine which would nourish and then dry out the crops.

The child’s fingers opened and then grasped his thumb.

He adored his son but he’d hated naming him Framlington. Yet it was the name he had and thus it was his son’s.

But a name was not the thing that made a man. His son had strength of will and purpose, presented in the grip on Drew’s thumb. His son would grow up well, and be nothing like the others who bore the Framlington name, because his blood was half Marlow and part Pembroke.

A name was just a name.

Drew looked into his son’s dark grey eyes.

Mary had gone into labour three weeks before the child was due, her stomach ripe and round.

They’d been walking through the gardens with Peter, who’d been staying with them, and she had complained of a little back ache through the day, but nothing else. She’d been laughing and then suddenly she had doubled over in pain clutching her stomach as her waters vented in a flood.

Drew had sent Brooke hurtling off to fetch the doctor and a midwife and to call at Pembroke’s; while Drew had carried her upstairs.

She’d been told the first labour was always slow and there was no need for panic and yet the pain had seemed severe from the outset.

She had clung to his hand and not let him leave her, as her maid had sent for linens and hot water.

He had seen her contractions clutch at her stomach, even through her gown, clamping like a buckling belt.

The terrified maid had urged him to help her undress Mary, while every few moments her stomach would grip solid again and she’d grip his arm and not let him move.

The child had arrived barely half an hour later slipping from her body in a slimy bundle just as the sounds of the doctor’s arrival echoed through the house.

Mary’s maid had picked the child up, while Mary gripped at Drew’s hand and they both stared half in shock as the woman slapped the baby’s bottom hard.

Then George had opened his lungs and wailed.

Mary had let go of Drew and reached for the baby and Drew’s heart had dissolved.

He’d thought he’d learned the full extent of love. He had not. Not until the moment he’d met his son. A life he and Mary had created – through love.

The doctor had burst into the room, and ordered Drew out then mustered all the women into action with a bewildering efficiency.

Drew could still not quite believe he’d done the unthinkable and seen his child born, this little tiny human-being coming into the world, a piece of him and a piece of Mary put together in life.

He doted on the child; while Mary walked about with a half-smile all the time, a look of love and affection that was as much for him as it was for their son.

The hardship was to leave George alone in his cradle. How had he ever feared that he could not love his child?

George gurgled, kicking a single leg free of his loose blanket; a strong firm healthy leg.

Drew had embarrassed himself and shed a tear before Peter, when George had been born. Peter had merely poured a brandy from Drew’s decanters and given it to Drew.

But Peter was enchanted too, and now considering finding a wife for himself.

Drew kissed his child’s soft cheek, and absorbed the infant’s sweet baby smell. But the boy was getting fractious, hungry for a feed, the one thing his son could not get from his father. But everything else,
everything else
, he could.

Drew cautiously rose, then walked across the front lawn to the house. Caro was sitting outside on a bench, her face turned to the sun. She doted on his son too, but every time she looked at the baby he could also see her remembering the children she’d carried who’d never been born.

He touched her shoulder. “Do you wish to hold George for a moment? He’s due a feed and getting fractious but it will do him no harm to wait a moment, before I take him back to Mary?”

“No. He wants his mother and his milk.” She smiled, but it did not touch her eyes.

She was sad, her life virtually empty. She had told him she felt like a failure because she had not been able to succeed in a marriage as he had done. He’d told her it was Kilbride’s fault, not hers. She did not believe it, though. She considered herself worthless and unworthy and he knew how that felt. It had become something more for her, though. A monster that seemed to roar at her. She suffered with some nervous disorder. Yet she refused to speak to the doctor.

He wished he could change things for her, he had tried, but she’d expressed no interest in any social engagements. She’d cut herself off from the world, she would not go beyond his gates and when Mary’s family visited she retreated to her rooms. She said she could not breathe among people.

But when it was just he and Mary here, she would read and sew, and she liked to work in the garden cutting flowers and gathering seeds, and occasionally she would dine with them.

She would be free of Kilbride soon at least. He was divorcing her. It was progressing through the courts.

He sighed, not really knowing what to do or say.

“Go on, go,” she urged as the child made sucking sounds and rooted, wriggling and burrowing against his chest.

He smiled. “Will you eat with us tonight? John and Kate are coming.”

She shook her head.

His fingers pressed her shoulder again before he turned away.

She may be physically free of Kilbride, but she had not escaped his wounds. She was still imprisoned by him.

When he entered the cool large hall, Mary stood with her hand on the newel post of the dark oak staircase, her eyes looking glassy from sleep.

She looked beautiful, womanly, with her breasts swollen with milk.

She smiled holding out her arms for George.

As Mary undid her bodice, Drew sat in an armchair beside the bed.

Mary leaned against the pillows on the bed and held her nipple to George’s mouth.

Andrew’s eyes glowed warm, as he watched.

She could not have imagined this in her wildest dreams, a happiness which was so bone deep.

George latched on to her nipple and sucked hard; the tug a wonderful sensation which pulled at her soul.

She looked up at Andrew. “Where were you?”

“Sitting out beneath the plane tree, enjoying the day, he likes the leaves swaying above his head.”

“Happy?” she asked him.

“Happy?” He laughed. “My goodness, what a meagre word. I am ecstatic with joy, and peace, and contentment, I cannot even begin to describe in words the well of bliss I feel each moment. If it were not for Caro’s sadness I would be enthusing over it constantly. But that does not seem fair to her.”

She glanced down at George, whose eyes were shut while he sucked and his little hand rested on her breast.

She looked back up at Andrew. “My father has a theory that you are more devoted to me than most men would have been because you know that what we have is special. He thinks it makes life more difficult for Caro, because she sees what she has never had.”

“Your father thinks me devoted? Damn, he has seen past my camouflage.”

“What camouflage? He does not think it, he knows it. Every look you give me, or now give George says it. You cannot hide it.”

“And that is because I adore you both.”

“Papa, admitted to me when they came to see, George, that you are the best thing that could have happened to me”

That did make him laugh. “I seem to recall some rather vicious denouncements that I was the worst thing and no better than a viper, a year ago.”

“But that was before he knew you, and you know both Mama and Papa love you now.”

His eyes held hers dancing with amusement, devil-may-care thoughts shining in them. Fatherhood and marriage had not made him any less of a rogue. But his hard shell had shattered and his soft centre was now fully visible. What was left was a man with endearing fun loving qualities, the first to set her family laughing, the last to settle to a quiet night and the one to propose the most boisterous activities.

When the family met at John’s, he was always whipping the boys up into a riot, establishing boisterous games in the woods, or the lake, and he had even had the girls playing cricket on the last occasion in a team against the boys. The girls had won with Andrew helping them bat.

For a man who had shied away from her family, he was now a pivotal part.

Mary only wished that Caro could find happiness too.

“What is it?” Andrew must have seen her sadness.

“I was thinking of Caro.”

“We will keep supporting her, she is at least content here, and hopefully with time, she will be happy too.”

“Yes.”

“But do not let it spoil your happiness, Mary.”

“I shall not.”

A smile twisted, his lips “I think, the next time I see Edward I shall call him father, and see how he reacts.”

“You will rock him completely off balance…” She laughed.

“He did propose it once, but I doubt it was done seriously.”

“Papa would never jest about that. He would love it if you did. John is not his son, but he has always called him papa. He thinks of you as his son, I know he does, more so because of your own family’s disregard. He told me he has stared your father down a dozen times in town.”

“Except the Marquis is not my father.”

She shook her head. “No, but my father would be if you let him.”

“He is,” Andrew answered his smile turning tender, “to all intents and purposes, as your brother is now mine. It is John and Edward after all who have set me up here and shown me how to manage this estate. Have my family even contacted us since we announced George’s birth? No. It hardly needs saying who is my family – you are, and yours.”