and it made Caro feel absorbed in nature. Birds sang from the branches above, and the summer breeze swept through the leaves, which shaded them from the sun, rustling them and making a pretty sound, while bees buzzed and butterflies fluttered through the air, adding more bright colours to the occasional planting that lined the route.
It was a beautiful day.
Rob had left his coat and waistcoat off because the day was so hot. They were used to being informal because of playing with George. He’d rolled his shirt sleeves up too and so, as he carried George under his arm the fine, dark hairs on his forearm showed against his pale skin, and he was sweating, so his shirt stuck to his side and became transparent.
It was a very hot day. It was the best place to be, beneath the trees.
“Put me down, Uncle Bobbie!” George wriggled harder.
“When you can behave, little monkey. You were told not to run.”
Rob turned and stopped, waiting for her to catch up. George kicked out, complaining, at Rob’s side.
She smiled, her legs slashing at her petticoats and the skirt of her dress. Her bonnet, which hung from her neck by its ribbons, bounced against her back. It was not fair that Rob could strip off layers and she could not. The thought stirred a tight feeling in her stomach.
When she reached him, she ruffled George’s hair.
“Aun’ie Ca’o.”
Rob swung him round to sit at his hip, and Caro actually glimpsed Rob’s skin at his waist as his shirt pulled up.
Rob gripped George’s chin and made George look him in the eyes as George clasped Rob’s neck. “Now, George Framlington, you are not to run ahead, there is a stream further along. If you tumble into that and drown your mama and papa would string me up. You’re to do as you are told or I will not bring you out for a walk again. Do you hear?”
George lifted his chin free, but nodded.
“I wish to hear the promise from your lips. Say it George, I will not run off.”
George’s lower lip wobbled. He hated to be told off, but then he said, “I won’t ‘un. I p’omise.”
“Good boy.” Rob patted George’s back, then he added more softly. “There’s no need for tears. You did wrong. You know you did, but now you are going to do right.”
“You may hold my hand,” Caroline offered.
“Or ride on my back,” Rob added.
“’ide” George chose, already lifting his hands to Rob’s neck. Rob shifted him, spinning him to his back as George’s arms circled his neck, and then he carried George in a piggyback, with George’s legs looped over his arms.
George looked ahead over Rob’s shoulder. Caro smiled at them both.
Rob’s patience was a wonderful thing.
“You are good with him,” she commented when they began walking again.
“I’ve had enough practice. Remember the size of my family.”
“I did not have a close family. We were not like yours.”
Rob glanced at her and smiled. “I know. Mary met them. She’s spoken of it. She described them as unpleasant.”
“She was being polite. But they were not unkind to me. Drew and I were just not wanted and ignored—for understandable reasons. The Marquis did not want Mama’s little cuckoos in his nest.” She laughed—she was talking to him of things she never spoke of. But they had become friends and friends shared confidences. “I do not even know who my father is. Neither does Drew.”
“But the fault was your mother’s, not yours. Did the Marquis not recognise that?”
She looked at Rob with a shrug. She had never understood her mother. The woman had not one maternal bone in her body. “Perhaps, but if we were treated as though we did not exist then her infidelity could be ignored. It was Mother’s view too. We were mistakes to be disposed of. Fortunately for me, Albert was willing to ignore my birth—or perhaps he did not know. He never mentioned it and neither did I.”
“Fortunately… Forgive me if this is ignorant, but what was fortunate about your marriage?”
Caro glanced at him, surprised to hear him speak of it, but she did not feel horror as she might have done a few weeks ago, and she had spoken of it first.
“I’m sorry, it’s none of my business.” His smile became apologetic.
But it was nice to feel comfortable to talk, and Rob was easy to talk to. He never judged. “It does not matter. You may speak of it. But my marriage was not always bad. I loved him.” She still did, in a way. He was the only one who had ever shown her the intensity of feeling that had felt like love, and her body and her soul had never forgotten it—the thing she’d lacked and longed for as a child. Drew may care for her, but it had always felt such a shallow comparison to the infatuation Albert had shown. And she still knew Drew’s affection to be a shallow emotion compared to what he felt for Mary… “I was young when I met him and I suppose I idolised him. He was attentive and earnest. He courted me with devotion. We spent hours and hours together before we married, and he was so determined to have me that he threatened to run off with me if the Marquis disagreed. Of course the Marquis did not refuse.”
A sound of amusement slipped from her throat when she remembered how happy her mother and the Marquis had been at the news they were to be rid of her so easily.
“Even when we married, though…” She glanced at Rob, to see him watching and listening. “…things were wonderful, Albert spent hours in my company at the beginning. He never said he loved me, but I thought it was love. Yet in the second year his interest waned, and he began keeping mistresses.” Her memories drifted into things she did not want to recall, and she stopped talking as images flashed through her thoughts: strikes, words shouted in her face, the unbearable sensation of failure and loneliness.
“Caro…”
She had stopped walking as well as talking. Her consciousness returned to the woodland walk, the sound of the birds and the sunshine above the trees. Those bad moments and those feelings were behind her. She looked ahead and began walking again. “He spent less and less time with me. He wanted a son and I could not carry a child. In the end I was not good enough for him. Things turned sour and his anger grew worse, and, well… you know the rest,” she whispered the last.
They walked a few steps in silence, her gaze focused on the grass pathway.
She glanced at Rob. George was sucking his thumb as his head rested against Rob’s shoulder.
An elemental warmth twisted in her stomach—longing. “I am glad I married him. In the first year and the year that he courted me, he made me happy. I was fortunate to have those years. They were the happiest of my life. What I had missed in attention as a child, I received from Albert tenfold, and it felt like heaven then.”
“You need more happy years, then,” Rob said in answer, as he looked ahead.
“I do not anticipate them…” A lump caught in her throat.
