Page 19 of His Haunted Duchess
“I’m sorry—” she started but got no further. Aunt Olivia had already clasped her hand.
“Sorry, child? What do you have to be sorry for?” She hugged Caroline fiercely, like a bear clutching its cub. Caroline struggled simultaneously against a flood of relief and the crushing desire to breathe.
“You’re not angry then?” she gasped as her aunt let her go. “Oh, I was so worried you might be.”
Aunt Olivia straightened her hat.
“Not angry at you, dear one,” she said. “I don’t believe a word of the gossip, no matter who claims what. It’s a pack of insidious lies.”
She dragged the brush across Vizir’s hocks. His ears shot back. Caroline patted him reassuringly.
“Of course, the news—if you can call it that—has already caused enough damage.” She looked at Caroline with heavy eyes. “It will be very difficult, child, to find?—”
Caroline blushed.
“You won’t have a chance, after this, to find the love we hoped you would,” Aunt Olivia said. “That wretched, wretched ball—” She pulled the brush across Vizir’s shoulders. He swung his head to stare at her. She patted his head. “The ball has made sure of that.”
“If it consoles you,” Caroline said, pulling a long stroke on Vizir’s shoulder, “I don’t feel the loss as terribly as you do.”
Aunt Olivia sighed and sat down heavily on a farrier’s stool.
“I really had little intention of marrying,” Caroline said, hurriedly. “It’s all right if I never do, you know.”
Aunt Olivia closed her eyes. When she opened them, her gaze looked backward to a past to which Caroline was not privy.
“No,” she said slowly. “It’s not all right.”
She opened her eyes.
“A marriage for convenience is little more than a formality. But a marriage of love—of mutual, enduring trust that blossoms over a lifetime—there’s nothing else like it.”
Her eyes shifted back to the present.
“I wouldn’t shuffle you off, dear, as a matter of convenience. Thank heaven we haven’t ever had need for that. But I would hope—as I know would your family and your uncle if they were here—for such a lifetime love as I had once experienced.”
Caroline’s heart swelled. She forgot, sometimes, how lonely her aunt must feel. She stepped forward and took her hand. Marengo whinnied like a trumpeter going to battle. Aunt Olivia rolled her eyes.
“Yes, your majesty, we hear you,” she said. “Attend him, will you, dear, before you go back up to the house? He’s a glutton for affection, that one.”
Caroline laughed, she realized, for the first time since yesterday.
“Come, you thoroughbred,” she said, patting his velvety brown nose. It looked as though it had been dipped in an inkwell. “You’re one royal I’m happy to attend.”
Marengo snuffled happily. She scooped a handful of oats, keeping her fingers flat as his lips nipped it off her palm.
“You’ll spoil him,” Aunt Olivia grunted. “He’ll be begging for oats every day.”
Caroline stepped closer until Marengo’s head fell over her back. She scratched his long, broad shoulders. The close, warm comfort as he blew out seemed to sweep away the dark concerns that plagued her. She patted him gratefully.
Aunt Olivia finished with Vizir and headed over to Atlas, the patient Gypsy Cobgelding.
“It was a horrible night,” she said, half to herself. “But good things will come, child. Good things will come.”
CHAPTER 7
Frederic swung himself off his horse. His enthusiasm—which couldn’t help but feed off the clear, country air on the brisk ride over—quailed a little at the formidable front door. Here he was, fresh from a night of scandal, seeking a wife—he, who thought he would never marry.
His anxiety threatened, had he permitted it, to make him peek through the keyhole and dash back to his horse. He clenched his jaw, cleared his throat, and knocked.
