6. Caroline

6

Caroline

T he weather was dismal, but the people were lovely.

Wherever they went, David seemed to know everyone.

The gnawing misery in her chest was still there, but for once it wasn’t the only thing that occupied her thoughts. Instead, she devoured the sights around her, the shops, the people, the hints of the sea peeking at her behind buildings wherever she went.

Nobody questioned David’s story of her being a family friend. In fact, they seemed to welcome here with open arms. The bank was their first stop, the post office the second, but their third stop was somewhat unexpected: the florists.

“What’s your favourite flower?” David asked, his voice low in the busy shop.

Caroline blinked, a myriad of floral scents hanging in the air. “Mine? I…I don’t know. I’ve never…” She trailed off, not wanting to embarrass herself any further.

A frown flicked across his brow as he pulled them into the queue. “Perhaps we should go through them all—and then you can pick which one you liked best.”

“You mean like in a catalogue?”

“I was thinking more along the lines of a different bouquet getting delivered every day. ”

Her jaw went slack. “They…they sound like they’d pile up very quickly.”

A devilish, alarmingly handsome grin curled his lips. “Then it’s a good thing I have an entire castle in which to house them.” His focus shifted over to the shop assistant as they reached the front of the queue. “Good morning, Gwenllian. I have a bit of an odd order.”

Gwenllian nodded, her dark eyes flicking between the two of them. “I’ll do my best to help.”

“Would you be able to deliver a daily bouquet to Castell Du'r Arddu for the foreseeable future, if possible? The only catch would be each bouquet has to use a different flower from the previous bouquets.”

Tucking a black hair behind her ear, the shop assistant pursed her lips. “Does the foliage have to be unique every time?”

David glanced down at her. “Are you all right with that?”

Panic suffused every inch of her being. “Of course,” she said quickly, her voice an octave higher than usual. “But you don’t have to spend any money on me, honestly.”

“I don’t have to.” David’s soft tones were almost too quiet to hear. “But I want to .”

There was nothing but kindness in his expression, yet as she watched David settle up with Gwenllian, Caroline couldn’t tap down on her feeling of discomfort. As though thousands of tiny insects were crawling over her skin.

Her mother would sometimes give her gifts—only to hold them over her head in perpetuity. Especially when Caroline’s behaviour—or her figure—didn’t measure up to Mama’s requirements, until her guilt hung around her neck like a millstone.

As David guided Caroline back out of the florists, a brisk wall of wind laid in wait for them. Shards of icy rain pelted their cheeks pink, and the gentle floral scent was replaced with the salty tang of the Irish Sea .

David wasted no time in peeling his jacket off and holding it over her head to protect her from the rain. “Come on,” he yelled, the gulls almost drowning him out.

With her vision partially obscured by his deliciously scented jacket, Caroline let him steer her towards a shop, the condensation on its windows promising relief from the elements.

The hammering of rain above her head disappeared as she stepped inside—a tearoom full of smells almost as divine as David’s jacket. It was less old-fashioned than the tearoom near Scarlett Castle; instead of ruffled doilies and lace curtains, clean white tablecloths had been draped over the cluster of tables within. A wicker basket of potted daffodils sat on the centre of each table, adding a burst of colour to the dull grey skies outside.

“Shall we get some lunch?” David asked, hanging his sodden jacket on the stand—conveniently placed next to a radiator. “Hopefully the rain stops by the time we’ve finished. Shall we get some Darjeeling tea and some sandwiches?”

Caroline nodded. “That would be lovely.”

An array of cakes, tarts, and shortcakes met them beneath the glass counter’s warm golden light. Eclairs smothered in sleek chocolate, a tiered strawberry gateau piled high with fruit and sprinkled in icing sugar, a quarter of a latticed apple pie, a startingly purple blackberry tart spilling its filling over its crust, a dazzling raspberry and pecan meringue whipped into fluffy, eye-catching peaks.

As well as a dozen small, circular treats that looked to be halfway between a pancake and a scone. “Welsh cakes,” Caroline read the handwritten label aloud as they waited behind the counter. “What are they?”

“Did you never have them growing up?” David enquired.

She shook her head. “Mama never let me have cakes. ”

A little notch formed between his brows. “Why not?”

She wanted the earth to swallow her whole. “She said she would be embarrassed to go out in public with me if I got any bigger.”

Shock blew David’s eyes wide, but before he could respond, an older woman arrived to take their order—a woman who clearly knew her host by sight. Caroline smiled as she was once again introduced as a friend of the family.

They took an empty table near the window, and a queer feeling arose as David pushed her chair in for her. It was something Michael often did for her back at Scarlett Castle, but then he was Emmeline’s husband. He did it for Caroline because she was family. Family was obligated to be nice to her.

Other than Mama.

David was different. Her reactions to David were different.

“Thank you for being so nice to me,” she whispered. Everyone had been nice to her in Holyhead. The staff at Castell Du'r Arddu. The café worker. The people who stopped them in the street. The bank manager. The postmaster.

The more time she spent around him, the stronger her certainty became.

Whenever Caroline’s father had ventured into the local village, there had been no smiles waiting for him there. His servants trod on eggshells—and his family even more so.

But David was different. David was a good man; she was certain of it.

Holding the lid on the teapot, he filled both his cup and hers. Quiet contemplation filled the space between them, until he broke it. “When we leave, I want you to pick out whatever you want from that counter. Cakes, tarts, the lot.”

Her curls shook with the movement of her head, but he carried on .

“I told you before, Caroline. You’re my daughter-in-law now, and it just so happens that I tend to spoil my family.” David sent her a lopsided grin. “If you see something you want, whether it’s a pasty or a dress or a bouquet, then I want you to have it. If you’re going to live here, then you’re going to be spoilt. Okay?”

As the sunlight broke free of the clouds outside, a strange giddiness swelled her heart. Harry may have abandoned her, but his father was kinder than he had any right to be. “Has anyone ever told you you can be quite bossy sometimes?”

David’s guileless smirk disappeared as he took a sip of tea. “I have no idea what you mean.”

David held the door open for her as they arrived back at the house. “You’re looking almost chipper.”

Clutching the brown paper bag full of cakes they’d bought to share, she smiled up at him. “Thank you for asking me to come,” she said sincerely. “The walk certainly blew some of the cobwebs away.”

And it had given her some time to think , more importantly. To leave the bubble of misery she’d been living in for the last few days. She’d been able to focus on the two most pertinent facts of her situation.

The first was that divorce was possible. The second was that she and Harry hadn’t consummated their marriage, meaning annulment was also possible .

“I’m glad,” he replied. “Shall I go and fetch some tea and cutlery from the servants’ quarters? We can eat those cakes in the music room if you like.”

Caroline headed towards the music room. The wind had been far too blustery to eat in town; it was easier to appreciate the sea foaming against the cliffs from the safety of the upholstery in the music room.

She smiled to herself as she made her way there. Harry might have broken her heart and fled in the night, but at least his father wasn’t an ogre. She did wonder how he’d turned out to be such an arse in the first place.

The crinkling of paper beneath her feet brought her out of her reverie. Caroline looked down to pick it up—just as another piece of paper was blown across her vision.

Oh dear.

She scooped the two of them up before they escaped, glancing down the offending corridor to find more casualties along the way. She followed their trail, discovering that a window in David’s office had been left open.

Holding the stack of rescued papers tight to her chest, she fought with the wind to close the window—and eventually, giving one last heave, won. In addition to the stacks and piles she’d seen last time, paper littered the floors like carpet. None of it seemed to be handwritten, she noticed, adding yet more sheets to her stack. It was all written on a typewriter—something her father had never permitted at Holyhead.

She glanced at David’s desk. Presumably that typewriter.

“Caroline?”

“In here,” she called, bending to pick up yet another sheet.

A few moments later, he entered, weighed down by the tea tray he carried. “Gods,” he muttered, balancing it on the windowsill and bending to help. “Did the Germans bombard us when we were out? ”

“That or they left the window open.” She couldn’t resist a grin, flipping the paper over to take a glance at the side with writing on it. “I do hope you’ve numbered these, otherwi—”

She did a double take when she saw her name, her brain reading the words before her sensibilities could stop it.

“ Hary Harry has Married a yung woman named Caroline out of no were. I arived hom to find him in Castel Du'r Ardu with his pore wife outsid his Bedrom dore whilst Harry and his mistris mistres we—”

Caroline was speechless as the letter was whipped out of her hand, recognition slamming into her chest at the sight of his words. “I apologise,” she whispered slowly, nostalgia curving the edges of her lips into a sad smile. “You wrote that?”

David’s jaw tensed, his chest sinking as he exhaled. “I’d appreciate if you didn’t—”

She cut him off. “I don’t mean to disparage you, truly. Your writing reminded me of my brother’s writing, that’s all.” Her voice quietened as she disappeared into her thoughts. “And no one has reminded me of my brother in a very long time.”

Only her memories had kept him alive. Thoughts of who he could have been. What he would have done. Before everything turned to ashes in the gamekeeper’s cottage.

“I didn’t know you had a brother.” His defensive stance lessened when he realised she wasn’t going to ridicule him. “Although I also didn’t know you were the daughter of a marquess, so that’s not saying much.”

Memories of Oliver came to her. Running around the Holyhead maze like loons. Oliver teaching her to make daisy chains in the spring and skip stones in the winter—and jump out from priest holes whenever they were cooped up indoors. That fun lasted until they did it to their father .

Her nostalgic smile faded when she thought of the welts Oliver had received for that. Or the punishments their father had inflicted when Oliver had trouble learning to read and write.

She swallowed past the lump in her throat when she thought of how protective Oliver had been over her. Caroline hadn’t understood why when she was younger, not truly. It wasn’t until she’d moved to Scarlett Castle to live with Emmeline that she understood how depraved her father’s abuse really was.

Their mother wasn’t much better, either—although their mother had always hated Oliver with a passion she never understood, even more than she’d hated Emmeline.

And Caroline had never realised how devastating that hatred could be until it was turned on her.

Her vision blurred when she thought of the Oliver she’d grown up with, who had protected her from so much…and the charred corpse he’d become, dying alone and abandoned in a gamekeeper’s shelter in the middle of winter.

“I used to.” She nodded, grief mangling her words into a sob.

The tears came then, in a great deluge of sorrow. The grief she’d been denying since the last time she’d laid eyes on her brother. Had it always been this close to breaking free? Or had Harry’s betrayal been the final straw?

Because it was grief, regardless of what she pretended at Scarlett Castle. Oliver’s final actions had been a betrayal of their own; he’d tried to shoot Emmeline as vengeance for their father’s death. Emmeline’s husband would have been happy to haul Oliver to the gallows, but Caroline grasped at Emmeline’s account of the night.

Oliver had broken into Emmeline’s bedroom with a gun, but she said he was lowering the weapon when it went off .

That meant something. Caroline had to believe it did.

The aftermath of that night meant that Caroline couldn’t publicly mourn her brother, not after what he’d done. Not in Emmeline’s own house, not when Emmeline herself had taken months to recover.

But at Castell Du'r Arddu?

For the first time since Oliver’s death, Caroline could grieve.

“I do apologise.” She sniffed, trying and failing to stem her tears. “I’m not normally like this.”

But then what was normal about her situation? The life she’d been dreaming about, planning for, looking forward to…

It had crumbled before her very eyes, leaving her standing on ground far shakier than it had been before Harry’s arrival in her life.

“Oh, Starling.” David’s words were a broken exhale before he crushed her into his embrace, the forgotten paper floating to the floor. His scent surrounded her just as securely as his arms, and she leant into it until she could hear his heart beating in his broad chest.

Tears blurred her vision as her shoulders shook, until she closed her eyes to let them fall. They spilled over onto David’s shirt, leaving puddles of grief on the fabric. His hands swept over her shoulders, warm, large, and full of comfort, and Caroline found her own fingers clenching his shirt to pull herself closer.

When was the last time she had been hugged like this?

Never , her grief whispered. Never.

Her mother’s voice chimed in then. Pathetic.

“I’m sorry,” she juddered, hyperventilating out her apology. Her tears had become a constant flow, and she looked down to disguise them. “I shouldn’t be so weak.”

But David’s touch was kind, lifting her chin until their gazes met. The calm, steady security she needed in that moment. “I’ll have no apologies where none are needed,” he chided, his tone as soft as his eyes. “Grief is not weakness. God knows the war taught me that.”

He was so gentle she almost couldn’t stand it. As a child, she’d been used to her mother’s brusque dismissals of any emotion—and her father’s downright anger at any sign of weakness.

“Will you tell me about him, your brother?”

Of all the people to open up to, Caroline had never imagined it would be her husband’s father. Jilting makes for strange bedfellows.

“His name was Oliver.” Her smile was full of sorrow, a tear accompanying it. “He could be quite bad-tempered,” she admitted with a wet laugh. “But he made an exception for me.”

“Was he older than you?”

“By three years.” She nodded. “But he struggled with reading and writing. Our father was…” Caroline paused. How did she even begin to describe her parents, knowing everything she knew now? “Cruel. He abhorred any sign of weakness. He was determined to make Oliver into what he thought a man should be. I used to sneak into Oliver’s room in the nights to help him with his reading and writing.”

Beneath her grip, David’s chest expanded as he inhaled. “I’m sure he appreciated that.”

Caroline bit the inside of her lip. “I hope so.” She leant her head against him, realising her tears had stopped. As an adult, she felt ashamed when she looked back on some of her childhood behaviours. For a few years, she could do no wrong in her mother's eyes.

And then two things had happened at once; Oliver had left for Fettes College and Emmeline had married.

Meaning Caroline was the only target her mother had left.

“I loved him more than anyone,” she whispered. “I still do.” When was the last time she’d been able to admit that, even to herself? They had been as close as two siblings could be—which meant that Caroline had a front-row seat to all of Oliver’s struggles.

She eyed the typewriter’s array of buttons, all waiting to be pressed. “Do you use that because your handwriting isn’t as good as you’d like it to be?”

His laugh was small, but with her ear pressed against his chest it sounded far louder. “That’s one way to put it. But if your brother had similar difficulties, then I’m sure you already knew that.”

Caroline suddenly registered that his arms were still locked around her even though her tears had dried up.

But she didn’t attempt to step out of his heady warmth.

Idiotic girl.

“I was perhaps ten or so when my father bought me my first typewriter. He was keen to help me in any way he could. I have to admit,” David said, and she thought he might have been smiling, “it did help my writing become more legible—and my errors."

Her eyes went wide, shooting a horrified glance up at him. “Was he annoyed?”

For a moment, he paused. There was a softened element in his gaze she couldn’t identify, but it was soon replaced by alarm—before he withdrew from their embrace. David cleared his throat. “No, he wasn’t. He simply realised my talents lay elsewhere.”

The loss of his physical support left her craving his warmth—in a way that she should not be feeling for her husband’s father. To distract herself, she bent to help him pick up the rest of the paper blown far and wide by the wind.

She wanted to help him—not just to pick up the papers, but to make his life easier. Surely there was something she could do around here. He had shown her such kindness. She just had to work out a way to repay it .

“Come on,” he said gently, collecting the tea tray and the cakes. “Let’s go and warm ourselves up with some tea and cake.”

It felt like they’d skipped some steps, but after everything that had happened recently…she couldn’t feel sorry about it.

Caroline simply nodded, craving an entirely different kind of warmth.