Chapter Three
Caroline stared down the snarling bronze griffin knocker of the Swanleigh townhouse for a long while before she even considered raising her hand to announce her arrival.
Despite being one of her dearest friends—“her partner in crime,” the tabloids had once cried—she hadn’t seen Gideon in a month.
It wasn’t for his lack of trying, however.
He’d certainly extended invitations to her; tried to convince her to accompany him to their usual gaming haunts, wild fetes, to spend an evening carousing in Covent Garden with their group of mutual friends and fellow hell-raisers.
Caroline, however, had declined them all.
She’d decided she couldn’t face him until she knew precisely the right words to say…and now the time had come. After three months—perhaps a bit too long due to an abundance of caution—she was finally ready to reveal to Gideon the consequence of their impulsivity.
Well, she supposed consequence was an unkind label to apply to the little being growing inside of her.
Caroline’s heart had hardly slowed its pace since the physician confirmed to the best of his abilities that she was expecting.
Fear and excitement, dread and anticipation had all warred for supremacy inside of her.
Her position was a precarious one—if not downright dangerous—in their Society.
She had no husband, no supportive family, and, if there were any shreds of her reputation remaining, they were about to be ignited and burned to ash.
She supposed her apprehension over the upcoming conversation was only natural, but her heart told her Gideon’s reaction would be kinder than most men in his position.
Still…
She was a woman accustomed to being let down, so she had not foregone formulating alternative plans.
Didn’t women in her situation usually leave London to give birth in secret?
At least, those were the whispers she’d caught.
That was likely her best option should Gideon wish to step aside.
While she abhorred Cornwall, it was the farthest, safest option for her to see the pregnancy through, enter confinement, and give birth.
She had not yet sorted out what would be done once she needed to care for the child on her own, but that was a storm she would weather. She had no choice. She refused to consider abandoning the baby to the care of strangers, no matter what Society dictated.
In her secret heart of hearts, Caroline hoped it would not come to that, and Gideon would be pleased by the news and wish to offer support. After all, these circumstances were as much her fault as his—if not more so, because she had been the one to proposition him.
She had thought it over a great deal and decided that she would not demand that he marry her…though she would not lie and say the idea of marriage to him had not crossed her mind.
She adored him.
She was enamored of him.
A place in her heart would always be reserved for her dearest friend.
But she would love him from afar if that was his wish.
“You can do this,” Caroline murmured shakily to herself.
She’d already screwed up her courage, completed the process of donning her favorite marigold-colored morning dress and peony-pink spencer, allowed her maid to spend the better part of an hour shaping her rose-gold hair into an artful style of ringlets and pins, and taken a hired hack from her small townhouse to Mayfair.
She wouldn’t allow all of that to go to waste now.
She raised her hand and knocked before closing her eyes and retreating into her memories for support while she waited for the butler to answer.
It felt so long since she’d been a starry-eyed girl in braids who begged Nanny for more stories of knights and daring battles.
She’d mourned the loss of that innocence many times over at that point, but only in recent years had she come to acknowledge to herself that the true demise of her childhood had come about in preparation for her debut into Society, and the fallout shortly thereafter.
Gideon had been the only one who saw her for who she really was and appreciated her as more than just a salacious tabloid headline.
Back when he’d been only the Earl of Eastwich, Gideon had been the only ray of sunlight in her bleak new existence after her ruination.
Everyone knew his father, the Marquess of Swanleigh, to be quite dark and domineering, so Caroline had initially been shocked that Gideon had been allowed to interact with her.
She had learned very early on, however, that father and son were not particularly close, and Gideon was not one who deferred to his father’s preferences.
She and Gideon had met on several occasions before her scandal, and his easy smile was always quite charming.
At first, she’d been afraid he’d only come to harass her or offer a vulgar proposition, given her new status as a “fallen woman,” but he offered only the sincerest friendship.
He worked quite diligently to earn her trust, bringing her new books to read when she felt too low to venture outdoors, making her laugh when she would rather cry.
Though she’d lately realized she was a horrendous judge of character, she could sense no ulterior motives in him.
Through it all, he afforded her time and space when even she was unaware it was something her healing soul required—not only after the assault upon her person by a man who was supposed to be her sweetheart, but the banishment and condemnation from her family.
He always had the uncanny ability to bring sunshine and joy wherever he went and morph himself into whatever it was a person needed most. In him, she’d found a true friend who could see past the scandal to what lay within her.
Throughout the past decade of their friendship, she and Gideon had become quite the infamous duo in London, both of them used as a cautionary tale for mamas who sought to rein in willful daughters—“Take care with your reputation lest your options dry up and the only men who will want to keep your company are rakes and reprobates.” Naturally, it had bothered her at first, but, as she matured, Caroline had realized that the “rakes and reprobates”—her friends—were truer and more dedicated than any man she’d met at Almack’s.
And Gideon was at the top of her list of good men at whom the ton looked down their noses simply because he lived life a bit more loudly than was acceptable.
Naturally, she and Gideon had been connected by numerous gossip rags, each one salivating at the possibility of an illicit relationship playing out between a future marquess and the disgraced eldest daughter of a viscount.
She didn’t miss the titillated whispers, everyone expecting them to be longtime lovers, but they would have been wrong…
at least up until a few months ago, following a night of drinks, dancing, and poor choices.
She’d have been lying if she claimed she’d never found Gideon handsome—most women did with his midnight hair, thundercloud eyes, and tall, trim build—but, to her, he’d always been just a friend, and one of the very select few who had remained with her after her youthful rebellion and a miserable judgment of character.
He’d stayed by her side even after her family had chosen reputation over blood and turned their backs on her with no support other than a small income as a bribe to keep her distance.
His steadfast presence in her life had long provided her with solace enough when she was otherwise tragically alone.
Even if he’d never directly witnessed the vitriol with which her parents treated her since what had been dubbed The Incident, he’d done nothing but remain by her side and do everything in his power to show his support, cheering her when she might have otherwise wallowed in despair, making her laugh when tears felt like her only option.
Now, as she waited for the Swanleigh butler to open the door, Caroline hoped she wouldn’t lose Gideon, too, after she revealed her pregnancy to him. She didn’t know how she would weather that.
“Good afternoon, Perry,” she greeted the butler with what she hoped was a convincing smile.
“Miss Wells.” The man of middling years inclined his head with proper deference and immediately showed her inside.
It was a standing order at the Swanleigh household that Caroline was to be granted immediate entrance; she and the marquess did not stand on ceremony.
Still, there was something in the butler’s dark eyes that gave Caroline pause—as if the man was second-guessing allowing her in despite his master’s instructions.
“What is it, Perry?” Caroline asked bluntly, removing her gloves and hat before handing them over.
“My lord has had…a difficult morning.” His reply was accompanied by a shift in his gaze, clearly discomfited by revealing even that much to her.
“A long night, then?” she guessed.
“As well as a long day. I am certain he could do with some cheering.”
Interesting.
Not prone to fits of the blue devils, Gideon was usually the one who did the cheering. What could have happened to create such a change in his demeanor?
Caroline pondered that and prepared herself for what she might see as she was led down the hall and into the library. There, she found Gideon already present and sprawled out in an armchair upholstered in a garish green-and-brown pattern.
Just as Perry had warned her, her friend had no easy smile for her, no joke or comment about a mutual acquaintance.
Gideon, instead, saluted her with a cut crystal glass in his hand and said, “I hope you are here to brighten my day, sweet Caro, because I’ve certainly experienced a hellish past twenty-four hours. ”
This suddenly felt like a bad idea with even worse timing, but it had taken Caroline more than a week to build up the nerve to call at the Swanleigh townhouse. She affected a brave demeanor and approached him.