His Compromised Countess

Those were all things Caroline wanted to do with Wyn. But first she would have to get that deserted house cleaned so it would be fit to live in.

‘What sort of woman was my husband’s mother? I never had the pleasure of knowing her.’ Would Mrs Pender think it strange that Bennett had not told her about his mother?

‘Well…’ The landlady thought back. ‘I recall she was always polite to folks, no matter what their station.’

Caroline wondered if that was how Bennett had come by his political principles—his admirable concern for the enslaved and the working poor.

‘She was pretty as a picture,’ Mrs Pender continued, ‘though never very strong, poor soul. She always came here for the climate in the autumn while her husband was hunting.’

The maid returned then with a teapot, cups and a steaming kettle. Caroline watched as Mrs Pender brewed up their tea.

While it steeped, she continued to pump the landlady for information to appease her curiosity. ‘I suppose it has been quite a long while since they last came to the island?’

‘Laws, yes, my lady. It must be every day of two dozen years.’

‘That must have been when his mother died,’ Caroline murmured to herself.

In the process of lifting the teapot, Mrs Pender froze. ‘No, my lady. She came back once, a few years later, without him. Not to stay, but just for a few days to pack up some things from the house to take away.’

The woman looked as if she meant to say something else, then suddenly changed her mind. Instead she fussed with the tea, pouring it through a tiny strainer.

‘Is there something else?’ Caroline fixed the woman with a searching gaze as she took the offered cup. ‘Whatever it is, I should very much like to know.’

The landlady wavered. ‘I don’t like to gossip, ma’am. Especially not about her ladyship. She was always good to me.’

The woman’s evasive answer only intrigued Caroline more. What manner of gossip could she know about Bennett’s mother?

Taking a sip from her cup, she savoured the wholesome, mellow sweetness. The fragrance alone seemed to soothe her. ‘I appreciate your discretion, Mrs Pender, in not talking over the private matters of my family with strangers. However, since I am a member of the family, perhaps you could make an exception?’

The landlady sipped her tea in silence, clearly mulling over Caroline’s request. ‘Perhaps it’s no great matter, after all, ma’am. It’s just that when her ladyship came back that last time, she brought a gentleman with her. Fine looking, he was, and very agreeable. I can’t recall his name, now, but he… wasn’t her husband.’

Those last few words, Mrs Pender spoke in a scandalised whisper.

Caroline nearly choked on a mouthful of her tea. Had Bennett’s parents been divorced? He had never said so, but then again he’d never spoken of them at all. Could this be the reason—because he was ashamed of the family scandal?

‘Perhaps the man was some relative of her ladyship?’ she suggested. ‘A brother or a cousin?’

‘Aye, ma’am. He might have been.’ Mrs Pender sounded doubtful.

If Bennett was ashamed of his parents’ divorce, Caroline mused, why was he so eager to taint their young son with that same kind of shame?

Chapter Three

By taking flight with their son, his wife had banished Bennett’s few doubts about seeking a divorce. He’d pursued Caroline’s party relentlessly all the way from London, and might have caught up with them at Penzance if a lame horse had not delayed him. By the time he landed on Tresco, late the next afternoon, he feared he would find no sign of Caroline or his son because Astley had spirited them abroad.

Striding up from the quay at Old Grimsby through a spit of rain, Bennett was struck by an uncanny feeling that he’d journeyed back in time. Nothing about the island appeared to have changed in the past twenty years, from the stone cottages with their thatched roofs to the wheeled barrels for fetching water from Great Pool. As he approached the house, he half-expected to meet his younger self running out the front door.

Perhaps that was what stopped him from calling out, compelling him instead to lift the latch with care and ease the door open almost reluctantly. He found the parlour deserted, the furniture still draped in voluminous dust sheets. The room seemed so much smaller than he remembered it. The floor was covered with a layer of dust, soot and dead flies. Was no one tending to the place any more? Or had they stopped bothering after so many years? Perhaps they’d expected some message to warn them of an impending visit before they went to the trouble of cleaning. The only sign anyone had been there recently was a scattering of fresh footprints on the dirty floor.

Had Caroline come here, as he’d bidden her, only to flee from the place in disgust? He wasn’t certain he could blame her if she had.

Unpleasant smells issued from the direction of kitchen, but the faint sound of movement overhead drew Bennett to the stairs, which he mounted quietly. Following the sound, he peered into the bedchamber that his mother had occupied on their long-ago holidays here. The sight that met his eyes quite confounded him.

There was Caroline, down on her hands and knees, scrubbing the floor with violent energy. Though she was turned away from him, he recognised her golden curls and her gown. It was one of the simplest she owned, yet it still looked far more elaborate than any housemaid would wear to undertake such a task.

His elegant countess stooping to common housework? If he had not seen it with his own eyes, Bennett never would have believed it possible.

As he watched Caroline dip her brush into a bucket of steaming water, then drag it back and forth across the floorboards, his gaze was irresistibly drawn to her shapely bottom. Raised towards him and covered only with flimsy layers of linen and muslin, it swayed with a most enticing rhythm as she worked. He could picture it bare, those smooth, firm lobes fairly begging for the attention of his hands. His body responded to the imagined invitation with straining hunger. He ached to toss his wife upon the cold, musty-smelling bed and purge all the conflicting feelings she provoked in him.

Against his will, a growl of sultry yearning rumbled deep in his chest.

The sound made Caroline glance back over her shoulder. Catching sight of him, she shrieked as if she’d seen a ghost. Trying to rise while keeping as far away from him as possible, she scuttled like a crab, knocking over the scrub bucket. When she sprang up to avoid the gush of water, she struck her head on the steeply sloped gable ceiling.

‘Look what you made me do!’ She rubbed her head as a stream of soapy water poured over the floor. ‘Why did you sneak up on me like that?’

Her furious glare and accusing tone quenched his sympathy for her difficulties.

Bennett’s temper flared, fuelled by the volatile desire she’d ignited in him. ‘What did you mean by sneaking away from London with my son? I never gave you leave to take him!’

‘You never forbade me either!’ She stooped to tip the bucket upright, too late to do any good. ‘This was the only way I could get a final chance to spend time with my child.’

‘I would have forbidden it,’ he snapped, ‘if you’d had the civility to inform me of your intentions. Instead I was left to discover you’d made away with him without my knowledge or consent. For all I knew, you’d run off abroad with him and your… paramour.’

Her blue-green eyes blazed with the fury of a storm on the Mediterranean. ‘If you mean Mr Astley, he is not my paramour. Even if he were, how could you think I would ever steal Wyn away? It is you who are determined to deprive our son of a parent, with your threat of divorce.’

If she had snatched up her scrub brush and hurled it at his head, it could not have hit Bennett as hard as that accusation she seemed to pluck from the depths of his conscience. Never in seven years of marriage had they quarreled with such open animosity. Their preferred weapons had been frosty silences broken by the occasional waspish barb. Much as this raw hostility horrified his deep-rooted sense of self-control, another part of him relished the opportunity to vent some of the resentment that had long smouldered inside him.

‘How could I think you capable of absconding with my son?’ He hurled Caroline’s question back at her, heavy with sarcasm. ‘Perhaps because you have recently demonstrated the depths of impropriety to which you are capable of sinking. With Astley of all men—the choice does not speak well for your discernment.’

‘Why do you refuse to believe there was nothing worse going on between me and Mr Astley than what you saw with your own eyes at Almack’s?’ she demanded. ‘Is it because you don’t want to? Perhaps you have been waiting for a chance like this all along—a pretext to be rid of me now that I have served my purpose by bearing you an heir.’

Did she truly believe he was seeking an excuse to divorce her? Or was she only trying to deflect attention from her infamous conduct by casting aspersions on his motives? Beneath the passionate hostility that crackled between them, Bennett sensed the other kind of passion. In a plain gown, with her hair tousled by her exertions and a dewy glow in her cheeks, Caroline looked less like the pampered diamond of society and more like an earthy, sensual woman who appealed to him in far too many ways. Did she suspect what power she might hold over him if he let down his guard?

He must take care she did not.

Refusing to dignify her preposterous accusation with an answer, he changed the subject instead. ‘Speaking of my heir, where is Wyn? And what were you doing down on your knees, scrubbing the floor? I didn’t think you knew how.’

‘It is not Greek or higher mathematics. I’ve watched servants scrub floors all my life.’ Caroline pushed a fallen lock of hair off her forehead. ‘Wyn is with Albert, back at the inn. I was trying to get this room fit for us to sleep in tonight. It hasn’t been easy, considering the place has not been cleaned in years. Now it’s a worse mess than ever.’

Gazing down at the drenched floor, she shook her head and heaved a weary sigh. She looked so thoroughly discouraged Bennett could not suppress a secret pang of shame. ‘I had no idea you would find the house in such a state. I thought there was still someone taking care of it.’

Caroline cast him a look that made it clear she did not believe his excuse any more than he believed she’d been a faithful wife. Did she think he had sent her to such a dirty, deserted old place on purpose? Not that it would harm her to do a bit of honest work and learn how ordinary folk lived. Still, after seven years of marriage, she should know he took his responsibility to provide for her seriously—even when she neglected her duty to be faithful.

‘But why were you scrubbing the floor,’ he persisted, ‘while Albert plays nursemaid?’

‘Because Albert is in no fit condition to do anything else at the moment.’ Caroline told him how the footman had injured his ankle. ‘Parker flatly refused to scrub floors and I didn’t dare press her for fear she might leave on the next boat. She agreed to do the marketing and cooking, both of which take more skill than this.’

By the smells rising from the kitchen, Bennett had grave doubts about Parker’s culinary abilities. ‘Why did you not stay a few more days at the inn and engage some local women to set this place to rights?’