‘Never mind your bootmaker, my lord, this is urgent.’ At any moment someone could come along the passageway and find them compromisingly tête-à-tête.
He winced. ‘You utter blasphemy.’ But he replaced his shoe and opened the door opposite them. ‘As I recall... Yes, excellent, and a key in the door. How accommodating of dear Hermione.’
He meant, she supposed, that this might be a refuge for lovers. There was certainly a chaise longue. Caroline pushed away speculation about how Lord Edenbridge knew this room was here and waited while he turned the key.
‘Now, Lady Caroline, how may I help you? I have been down in Devon,’ he added. For all his light tone and the smile, she detected a wariness about him. From her urgency he must think she was pursuing him, which was embarrassing, to put it mildly.
She sat down squarely in the middle of the chaise longue, spread her skirts out on either side in a way that made it quite clear she was not expecting him to join her and almost smiled at the rueful twist of his lips. ‘Perhaps you have misjudged the situation, my lord?’
‘Perhaps I have.’ He lounged across and propped a shoulder against the mantel-shelf looking for all the world like a Romany who had, for reasons of his own, donned an evening suit and strolled into a ton ball. She half-expected to see a glint of gold in his earlobes. His eyes, she realised, were brown. ‘I do wish you would stop addressing me so formally. Call me Gabriel, Caroline.’
‘And risk letting it slip out should we meet in company?’ Gabriel. She liked the sound of the name and she liked her own name on his lips even better. Perhaps not such a gypsy after all, she thought, watching him from beneath her lashes. His hair had recently been cut, although it was still on the long side, he had shaved to perfection and it was only the carelessness with which he wore his expensive clothes and the feline ease with which he lounged that spoiled the picture of the fashionable aristocrat.
‘Your chaperon would run me through with a hatpin before I got within conversational range of you, Caroline, so I think we are safe. Now, having established that you do not desire me to deflower you in a retiring room at HermioneAncaster’s dance, which I agree would be unwise, however informal she insists the occasion is—’
‘Oh, do not make me laugh! Not that there is anything to laugh about. I must be hysterical.’
‘Just very anxious, I think. Ask me what it is you want to know.’ He sounded not bored, precisely, but certainly reassuringly unexcited by being dragged off for an intimate chat. The coolness was bracing. Then she met his gaze and saw heat and a raw masculine awareness of her as a woman. No, he wasn’t cool at all, simply controlled and that very control was almost as arousing as the heat.
She could be controlled, too. She must be or he would read the utterly immodest carnal desire that was making it so hard to breathe. Inhale. ‘How burdened are you with the management of your own estates, Lord Edenbridge?’
He straightened up, hooked an upright chair away from the wall and sat down. ‘I am not easily surprised, Caroline, but I must admit that our meetings are presenting me with one novel situation after another. Would you care to explain why you wish to discuss estate management?’
‘I have realised that securing the deeds to Springbourne for Anthony is useless unless there is some way we can run the estate. I cannot do it. As an unmarried woman I will never be able to open a bank account without my father’s permission and Anthony is under age.’
‘That is so. I have to admit, this had not occurred to me when I gave you the deeds back.’
‘If I hand them back to you, will you manage the estate for Anthony until he is twenty-one?’
The silence seemed to go on for a very long time. Then Lord Edenbridge said, ‘No.’
‘Naturally we could not allow you to be out of pocket, Lord Edenbridge. Perhaps your man of business could find a suitable manager and the estate would meet all the costs. It is perfectly solvent, I believe.’ Caroline kept her tone as brisk and efficient as she could in the face of his frowning refusal.
‘Money is not the point, Caroline. It is irrelevant.’
It is? How nice that would be, for money to be irrelevant.
‘I employ perfectly competent people to run my own estates and my business matters. My own involvement will become even less as soon as my brother Louis leaves university. I can certainly add your brother’s property to the portfolio and extricate it again when he reaches his majority, but you are asking me to assume a position of trust, to be responsible for another man’s estate and income. That is a considerable responsibility. Who is going to audit the revenues and financial transactions?’
‘Why, no one. I trust you. You are a gentleman.’
He ran both hands through his hair, turning it into something disordered and wild, then leaned forward to emphasise the words that emerged through what sounded like clenched teeth. ‘Then you are an idiot, Caroline, and I had thought you innocent and trusting, but not empty-headed. You do not know me. I gamble and that in itself should raise warning flags. What if I suffer a big loss and see an easy way to borrow some funds?’
‘I am not completely air-headed, Gabriel,’ she retorted. The name was out before she realised what she was saying. He lifted his head, looked at her and the tight jaw relaxed as he smiled. Nettled by that little sign of male smugness, she pressed on firmly. ‘I am a good judge of character. I told you I have heard the talk about you and no one accuses you of deceit or dishonourable behaviour, even the people who have no cause to love you. I was reckless going to your house the other day, proposing what I did. You could have taken advantage of me then and you did not.’
‘You should not confuse financial probity with an unwillingness to pounce on young ladies when I am half-asleep and three-parts drunk.’ His smile deepened, suggested that now he was not tired or drunk he might reconsider pouncing.
‘Were you really? Goodness, I would never have guessed.’
‘You thought I look like that stone-cold sober and after a good night’s sleep, a bath and a shave? I am wounded, Caroline.’
‘No, you are not, you are teasing me. And, yes, I do understand that I am asking you to shoulder a significant responsibility, even if it makes little actual work for you personally and involves no financial loss. How can I recompense you?’
The amusement faded out of the deep-brown eyes and they became harder than she could ever have imagined. ‘I already hold one too many of your IOUs, Caroline. I will undertake this for you because you asked and because you are doing it for your brother, not because you have got yourself into this ridiculous mess.’
The smile edged back, curving the corners of his mouth, but not warming his eyes as he moved to stand beside the chaise. ‘I have spent my youth and my adult life being disgraceful. A gambler, a hedonist. Being responsible is a bore. And yet now I find myself having to be the sensible one. This summer I have been attempting to talk a close friend out of a totally unsuitable marriage and now I am resisting the urge to take you up on your reckless offer. I do not know what is coming over me. Old age, possibly.’
Old age? Nonsense. Surely he cannot be above twenty-eight or nine? ‘You still have my promise.’ Somehow their fingers met, brushed, then hers curled into his. Not quite a hand-clasp, not quite a caress. She looked up and met Gabriel’s unreadable gaze as his fingers tightened. ‘And Papa tells me he has given Lord Woodruffe permission to court me.’
‘Edgar Parfit?’ Her hand was her own again and Gabriel was three angry strides away. ‘That per— Is your father insane?’
She