you.”
“We?” Caroline croaked as her knees began to wobble.
“Zach and I,” Rebecca clarified, leading her cousin over to a stone bench hidden deeper inside the inner sanctum of Pembroke Hall’s gardens.
Slumping down, Caroline knew not what to think. The idea of Rebecca and her husband observing…observing… “When?” she asked, turning to look at her cousin. “Where?”
Rebecca’s eyes narrowed, and a teasing smile played on her lips. “Oh, so there has been more than the one occasion? I see. That sounds promising.”
“Becca!”
“Very well,” her cousin relented, sitting down beside her. “It was yesterday in the front hall. I didn’t want to say anything because I know people confronted with a secret they’ve been keeping tend to lie, but,” she grasped Caroline’s hands, “I couldn’t keep it in any longer. What is going on with the two of you? I had no idea you were so well…acquainted.” The last word had a heavy note to it, and her brows lifted in question.
Caroline sighed deeply, surprised to feel relief flood her heart. Was this not what she had hoped for all along? To be able to confide in her cousin? To be offered counsel by someone who cared about her heart?
“Tell me,” Rebecca whispered, her hands closing over Caroline’s, warm and reassuring.
Another deep sigh shuddered past Caroline’s lips and, for a moment, she knew not where to begin. “It’s all so complicated,” she whispered, meeting her cousin’s green eyes. “I feel as though my head is spinning.”
Rebecca nodded. “Let me ask you this, how long have you two been better acquainted?”
“A year perhaps?” Had it truly been that long?
“A year?” Rebecca almost shrieked, her eyes going wide in shock. “I mean, I knew I’d been rather oblivious to anything outside my own quest for love, but a year?” Staring at Caroline, she shook her head. “How did you meet? I cannot remember ever seeing you together.”
“He always found me when I was alone,” Caroline mumbled, her eyes distant as she remembered the beginning of their acquaintance when she hadn’t yet known that Pierce and the masked man had been one and the same.
“That sounds promising,” Rebecca commented with a wide grin.
Caroline chuckled, welcoming her cousin’s enthusiasm. Indeed, not long ago, she too had felt it, had reveled in it. But now?
“Tell me everything,” Rebecca prompted when Caroline’s thoughts once more drifted to more disappointing developments.
Seeing the excitement in her cousin’s eyes, Caroline nodded. “Very well. In truth, I should have told you a long time ago.” And then step by step, she told Rebecca about how Pierce had first addressed her at a ball, about how she’d sneaked out at night to go to the orphanage—
“Wait! What orphanage?” Rebecca interrupted frowning.
Caroline paused. “Right. You don’t know about that either.”
“It seems you’ve been keeping quite a few secrets, dear cousin.”
“It does, doesn’t it?” Caroline shook her head. “I’m beginning to lose track of them.” With her elbows on her legs, she bowed her head, resting it in her hands, her eyes closed as she fought to remember all that had happened, all she had kept from her cousin.
“He tried to rob you?” Rebecca asked with wide eyes. The excitement in her gaze did not dim for Rebecca was an adventurer at heart.
Caroline smiled. “He did, but I outdid him and got away.” The memory of her first encounter with the masked man still lingered on her mind as though it had happened yesterday.
“You must have been terrified. I mean, you didn’t know who he was.”
Frowning, Caroline shook her head. “I can’t say that I was, at least not in the sense that I was fearing for my life.” A small smile tugged on her lips at the memory. “There’s always been something…honorable about him.”
With the warm sun shining down at the world around them, the two cousins sat in the shade of the tall hedge and finally spoke to one another without holding anything back. Caroline finally learned about all that had led to the day Pembroke had stolen Rebecca away from Lord Coleridge’s townhouse and whisked her off to Gretna Green before finally revealing all her own secrets, small and big, that had led her to this very day.
“Do you love him?” Rebecca asked carefully, her cheeks flushed after the ups and downs of Caroline’s story.
Caroline felt her teeth grit together. “I don’t know.”
“I think you do,” Rebecca observed shrewdly. “I think you simply don’t know whether or not it is wise to do so.” She squeezed Caroline’s hand, urging her cousin to