His Compromised Countess

‘But that’s not fair!’ she cried, as if she were an innocent victim.

‘The world is not fair!’ Bennett thundered. ‘As you might know if you would once look beyond the tip of your pretty nose. Every day innocent children are born or sold into slavery, torn from their families at the whim of cruel masters. Have you any idea how much damage you may have done to the Abolition Movement with your wanton, wilful behaviour? Or do you not give a damn?’

‘Of course I do! I have heard and seen and breathed Abolition ever since I was young enough for Mr Wilberforce to bounce me on his knee. But how can I have hurt your cause?’

It galled him to have to explain to her. ‘I have made great progress, rallying support for an Abolition Bill in the House of Lords, which has always been a stumbling block in the past. How effective an advocate do you suppose I will be when it becomes known my wife has been bedded by my most vicious opponent? No one respects a cuckold.’

‘But you aren’t! That’s what I am trying to tell you, if you’d only heed me.’ She leaned towards him, emerging from the shadows into the faint light shed by the street lamps, her arm outstretched.

Bennett resisted the urge to pull her into his arms and reassert his claim upon her, as another part of him longed to do. That was dangerous weakness to which he must not succumb.

Perhaps realising she had exhausted all other means of saving herself, Caroline marshalled her final-line defence. ‘If you divorce me, I may never see Wyn again!’

‘See him again?’ How dared she try to use their son that way, after what she’d done? Her behaviour was a betrayal of the child as much as him. ‘You do not see much of him now that I can tell. You swan into the nursery for an hour or two to amuse yourself. Once you’ve got the boy overexcited and fractious you leave Mrs McGregor to manage him. Wyn would be far better off without a mother who treats him like a plaything to be picked up and cast aside again at a whim.’

Before Caroline could attempt to defend herself from his charges, their carriage came to a stop in front of his club.

‘What are we d-doing here?’ she asked in a dazed, plaintive tone against which Bennett steeled his heart.

The earlier fight seemed to have gone out of her. In a splash of light from the street lamp, Bennett glimpsed her bare arms wrapped around her torso and realised she was shivering.

‘I intend to stay here tonight,’ he announced, then added, ‘You left your cloak.’

‘I d-didn’t think of it until w-we were outside. And I didn’t d-dare go back for fear you’d leave me b-behind.’

He would have been well within his rights to do just that, Bennett mused bitterly. Yet a deeply ingrained code of gentlemanly conduct compelled him to remove his coat and thrust it towards her. ‘Take this.’

Caroline only hesitated an instant before pulling the garment around her.

Now Bennett had one thing left to say to her. Ever since they’d quit Almack’s, part of his mind had remained detached, pondering how best to handle this beastly situation. One step was imperative. ‘You must get out of town first thing tomorrow and stay away until the worst of the tattle dies down.’

Expecting her to object, he was surprised when she replied, ‘Where shall I go? Brighton?

Bath?’

‘Good Lord, no! The gossip will spread there in no time and word of your whereabouts would get back just as fast. You must retire to some place as far away as possible from society.’

He’d considered and discarded a score of options. Now, suddenly, the ideal destination occurred to him. ‘The Isles of Scilly. I have a house there, on Tresco.’

He hadn’t thought of the place in years. Now that he had, it seemed a perfectly fitting destination for his adulterous wife.

How could she have been so foolish and unguarded as to place everything she cared about in jeopardy? As the carriage sped through Kensington towards Sterling House, the harsh tribunal of her conscience chilled Caroline worse than the damp cold of the windy April night.

After all, she was not some green girl fresh from the country in her first Season. Over the years she had seen enough scandal to recognise the impropriety of slipping into that curtained alcove with a man other than her husband. She should have known how incriminating it would look if they were discovered there, even without the kiss.

That damnable kiss! How could she have let it happen? She still found it difficult to reconcile the scoundrel who’d taken such a liberty, then callously dragged her name through the dirt, with the charming gentleman who’d traded witty banter with her over the card table and cast admiring glances at her on the dance floor. She’d thought it was only a harmless, flattering flirtation, like a number of others she’d enjoyed in the past without ever compromising her reputation.

When her husband angrily forbade her having any further contact with a man who looked at her in a way he had not in years, her long-simmering resentment had suddenly come to the boil. She could not simply turn her back on her ardent admirer without a single word of explanation or apology. The last thing she’d expected when he beckoned her into that alcove was to find his arms suddenly around her and his lips pressing upon hers.

For an instant, she’d been too shocked to react. Then she’d been further paralysed with uncertainty and shame, fearing she had led him to believe his amorous attentions would be welcome. When she’d finally come to her senses and been about to pull away, the card room suddenly went quiet and she’d plunged into her worst nightmare.

Would Bennett truly go through with his threat to seek a divorce? Until lately, he hadn’t seemed to care how much other men admired her. She’d once heard it quipped that every gentleman of her acquaintance was besotted with her, except her husband. Though she’d pretended to be amused at the time, those words dealt a humiliating blow. What did it signify how many men desired a married woman if her husband was not among them?

In the early days of their marriage she had eagerly welcomed Bennett to her bed, deceiving herself that the pleasure he brought her was a token of the love he could not express in other ways. Later she’d faced the harsh truth that his ardour sprang from nothing more than physical desire. He had never felt anything deeper for her and he never would. In recent years, even his desire had waned. Caroline wished she could say the same. She had finally succeeded in quelling the feelings for her husband that had only made her miserable. Yet there were still nights when she lay in her empty bed aching for his touch.

Was it possible Bennett knew Astley was lying, but had seized upon this opportunity to be rid of a wife who had proven such a disappointment to him? Hurt and angry as that thought made her, Caroline was far angrier with herself for giving him such a fine excuse to cast her off.

Her husband was right about one thing, unfortunately. If he wanted a divorce, he could likely get one even though she had never committed adultery. Her single public indiscretion would be taken as proof that she must have done far worse things in private. And Astley’s deceitful boasting would be taken as fact, even if he later recanted.

After that, life as she knew it would be over.

As far as society was concerned, she might as well be dead. She would be exiled to the dullest depths of the country, forced to live on whatever pittance Bennett chose to give her. No lady who valued her good name would ever be permitted to associate with such a scandalous outcast. But by far the worst deprivation was that she would never be allowed to see her little son again.

The prospect of losing Wyn battered Caroline’s heart. Bennett had accused her of not caring about their son, but he did not understand.

The moment the carriage came to a halt in front of Sterling House, she hurried inside, throwing off Bennett’s coat. The whiff of his clean, bracing scent that clung to the garment roused a gnawing hunger within her that she’d spent years striving to subdue.

Stopping by her rooms, she bid her maid pack a trunk for the journey on which they would set out the next morning.

‘The Isles of Scilly, my lady? Why in the world are we going there?’

‘It was the earl’s idea, Parker.’ Caroline hoped that excuse would forestall any further questions. ‘We must leave at first light and I’m not certain how long we’ll be gone, so get to work.’

‘Very well, ma’am.’ Parker set about her task with a sulky air.

Leaving her maid to pack, Caroline rushed to the nursery. Though she’d arrived home much earlier than usual, Wyn was already asleep. She crept to his bed and perched on the edge of it, listening to his soft, even breathing.

‘Your papa thinks I don’t care about you,’ she whispered, not wanting to wake her sleeping child, yet hoping some part of him might hear and understand. ‘But I do love you very much and have since long before you were born.’

At first she’d wanted a baby as a way to please her husband and prove that she could fulfil her chief duty as a wife. But when she’d finally become pregnant and felt that tiny life grow and move within her, she began to cherish him for his own sake and look forward to giving him all the love and happiness most of her childhood had lacked.

But nothing had turned out as she’d hoped. ‘I had such a hard time bearing you. And afterwards, you were a fretful little thing and wouldn’t feed properly.’

Caroline heaved a deep, shuddering sigh as she recalled the shrill, angry shrieks of that tiny creature, his face a raw mottled red. The grave, accusing looks of the doctors still haunted her, as they’d shaken their heads and whispered together. She’d felt like such a terrible mother—rejected by her own child when he was barely out of her womb.

Though Bennett hadn’t said so, she sensed he was disappointed in her inability to succeed at something so simple and natural. He’d engaged Mrs McGregor and a wet nurse for her baby, who’d immediately begun to thrive in their care.

The gaiety and admiration of society had helped ease the sting of her failure. But her evening engagements often lasted late into the night, making her sleep the next morning until nearly noon.

‘I visited the nursery as often as I could.’ Her heart ached with the memory. ‘But I was afraid to pick you up in case I dropped you or made you cry.’

His nurse, a brusque Scotswoman who intimidated Caroline no end, had made it clear she wished the mistress would not come to the nursery too often and disrupt the young master’s routine. To her shame, she had allowed herself to be pushed out of her son’s life.

She could not let his father banish her entirely!

Wave after hot wave of anger seared through her. Anger at Bennett, who had stubbornly refused to believe her. His accusations that Wyn would be better off without such a mother had hurt far more than his charges of infidelity. Anger at the law, which punished a wife’s infidelity so harshly while letting a husband take a dozen mistresses with impunity. That same unjust law decreed that children belonged to their fathers—sons especially. A divorced mother was considered an immoral influence, unfit to raise the offspring she had borne. Bitterest of all was Caroline’s anger at herself for not realising how much her harmless flirtations and one moment of heedless impropriety could cost her.

Just then her little son stirred in his sleep, making Caroline fear he might wake and take fright at her presence. Instead he snuggled closer to her, with a murmur of the sweetest contentment. A warm, brooding ache spread through her chest, cooling the fierce fire of her anger.