only people she felt comfortable touching her were Drew and the children… and yet she craved touch. She felt starved of it at times. It was another anomaly of her madness.
He flashed a smile across his shoulder. “She notices. They all do. But admittedly no one thinks ill of you, and yet you still hide.”
She said nothing to that.
The family groups were gathered about the refreshment tables. Some of the children ran between people’s legs, playing a game of chase, until one of the Duke’s uncles called a stop to the game. “Enough, children, you shall knock one of us over!” Caro flinched at the tone of his voice. It rattled through her nerves.
“Come on.” Drew’s hold tightened on her hand as he felt her hesitation.
Caro focused on Mary, her heart racing with the pace of a galloping horse. Her panic was irrational, there was no threat and yet every one of her senses tingled with a need to run. Fear hemmed her in and tightened in a heavy grip about her chest, making it difficult to breathe.
Flashes of memory stirred, images sparking through her thoughts like flashes of lightning—there and then not.
“Look what I found,” Drew said to Mary.
Caro fought the growing pain in her chest when Drew let go of her hand and tried not to gasp for breath as her heart pounded out a wild rhythm.
Mary smiled and patted a vacant space beside her on the blanket.
Caro sat down.
“Caro was in the house. I thought I’d bring her out here so that she could converse with you at least.”
Caro’s gaze fell to Iris—her niece was asleep in Mary’s arms. Instantly the panic eased, replaced by love and longing.
“Would you like to take her,” Mary offered.
Mary was a few years younger than Drew, but she was so good for him, and good to Caro.
“Thank you.” When Caro took Iris from Mary, the child stirred, her little hands opening as her eyes did.
Drew’s fingers brushed his daughter’s cheek. Iris looked up at her papa.
“Poppet,” he whispered.
Iris gurgled in recognition.
“Aun’ie Ca’o!” George barrelled into her side, tumbling onto the blanket with a roll. She clasped one arm about George while the other held Iris, and the world was at peace again.
“I hit a ball with Uncle Bobbie.” George announced.
“I held the bat with him.” The words came from above them.
Mary looked upward. Caro did not. Robbie’s voice grated on her nerves.
“I hit it far,” George declared slipping from beneath Caro’s arm to hug his mother instead.
“Clever boy,” Mary praised her son. “Perhaps Uncle Robbie will teach you how to hold the bat yourself in the summer.”
“And I missed this marvellous feat,” Drew said. “You will have to do it again after luncheon so I may see you.”
Robbie stepped closer.
Tremors ran across Caro’s skin and unravelled into her veins. She wished Robbie to move away.
He dropped down to sit on the end of the blanket, near Mary’s feet.
Panic claimed Caro in full force, her chest becoming so tight she could not pull the air into her lungs.
The baby made an impatient sound in Caro’s arms.
“Sorry, she’s fractious, she is hungry, I ought to take her in and feed her.” Mary gave her son another squeeze, then let him go and stood up. “Come along, little one.” She reached down so Caro could pass Iris back.
Robbie’s gaze rested on Caro as she held Iris up.
When Mary walked away, Drew sat down beside Caro and leant back on his hands, stretching out his legs. “You know your mother is taking your absconding personally,” he spoke to Robbie.
Caro’s limbs filled up with the weight of lead and she adjusted her sitting position, bending up her knees within the skirt of her dress and hugging them, as George crawled towards Robbie.
Robbie laughed and his hand ruffled George’s hair. “She is not ready for me to leave the nest. She thinks we are all growing up too fast.”
“I suppose that is my fault, for snatching Mary from it.”
“She does not hold that against you. You have given her more grandchildren in return. It is an exchange. I am just a loss.”
“Shall I tell her to stop henpecking and let you fledge?”
Drew was joking. He was close to Mary’s and Robbie’s parents. They were his parents too—because theirs had never fulfilled that role.
“Papa spoke to her. He supports me. He knows I cannot live on his estate, there is nothing for me to do there.”
When Caro had first come to the Duke’s home Robbie had been eighteen. He’d smiled and laughed frequently, but as a man he seemed more serious than the others. Most of his cousins had no interest in the children, his peers within the family always kept to their own group, but Robbie never stood with them. Yet his younger brother, Harry, did. Drew at his age had been wild, playing with danger, fighting everyone and everything.
“Of course you cannot, if you wish to sow a few wild oats?” Drew added.
“Not my style,” Robbie answered.
Drew’s face split into a broad smile, “So your brother told me.”
“Harry?”
“Harry…” They laughed again. Caro did not know the joke.
“Well, you may tell Harry to mind his own business, not mine,” Rob said, with a smile.
“But younger brothers are born to be a thorn in the side. Mary and I are working on one for George solely for that purpose”
“I have never been a thorn in John’s. He’d win whatever argument I started with a simple glance.”
“True, your older brother does have a way of making a man feel as small as a mouse. I ignore it.”
“I do not risk it. I never give him cause to deploy that look on me.”
Another laugh was shared between them as George scrambled back across the blanket to Drew, then began using his father as a climbing frame. He clambered up Drew’s back and then tumbled over Drew’s shoulder. George’s legs flew out towards Robbie.
Robbie reached to catch him and slow his fall.
Caro instinctively
