Free Lady Caro by Marlene Suson Page B

better, you would understand my concern. She is not fly to the time of day, and she naively tumbles into trouble without being aware that she is in it. I tried to shelter her from all that is unpleasant in life, and in the process I fear I have let her remain a child too long. How is it that you noticed her leaving this morning?”
    “Her departure was difficult to ignore. She was climbing down the tree outside her window.”
    “Good God! She always was half monkey, but why the tree?”
    “Her door was locked, by her aunt, she thinks.” Levisham’s face reddened in anger.
    “That evil woman! Why did Caro not tell me?”
    “She believes that her aunt will only deny it.”
    “And Caro is right,” the marquess said grimly. “Olive knows I would not permit such a thing. How I wish I could send her and her drunken son packing immediately, but...”
    “But her presence is required for propriety until your guests depart.”
    Levisham nodded, then asked abruptly, “Are you excessively shocked by my daughter’s unconventional tongue and behavior?”
    Ashley was disconcerted by the speculative look that had suddenly appeared in his host’s eyes. He had seen it all too often in the gaze of determined mamas anxious to marry him to their eligible daughters. “She is a most amusing enfant ,” Ashley said, subtly emphasizing the last word. “I find her candor a trifle startling, but I overlook in a child what I would be dismayed by in an adult.” He was puzzled by Levisham’s clear eagerness to have his beloved daughter marry when she herself strongly opposed it.
    “She is so like her mama!” the marquess exclaimed. Ashley could not keep his disbelief from showing. Seeing it, Levisham explained, “Not so much in looks, I grant you, for Caro has my coloring, but in character and vibrancy. Her mama could never curb her tongue either and used to say the most outrageous things.”
    But Caro’s mama had been a great beauty and the toast of the ton. Such an exquisite creature could have gotten away with much that a plainer girl could not. But apparently the marquess did not realize that.
    “Her mama was my sun, and moon, and stars.” Levisham’s sunken face seemed to cave in more upon itself. “After she died, I lost interest in everything but my children. I retired from society to nurse my grief and devote myself to raising them. I thought that here at Bellhaven I could protect them from any harm, from the evil and disease that plague the world. Only now do I see what a foolish hope that was. Death cannot be outwitted.”
    Vinson looked sharply at his host’s shrunken face and body. So Levisham was a dying man. What, Ashley wondered uneasily, would happen to Caro when her father was dead? Custom dictated that she become the ward of the new marquess and head of the family, Tilford Kelsie, who was both a drunkard and a mama’s boy. Furthermore, Ashley had not liked the way that bacon-faced Tilford had eyed Caro the previous night in the drawing room, rather like a hungry cat stalking a mouse.
    What kind of life would poor Caro lead once she no longer had her father to protect her?

 
    Chapter 8
    When Ashley finished dressing for dinner that night, he sent his valet on a reconnoitering mission. Swope returned with confirmation of his master’s suspicion that Grace and Jane Kelsie, as they had the previous night, were again hovering just around the turn in the hall, waiting for him to emerge. Such overeager females, no matter how lovely, disgusted Ashley.
    Opening the door silently, he tiptoed down the hall in the opposite direction to the back stairs and took them to the first floor. Heading toward the drawing room, he heard, through the half-opened door of the dining room, Olive Kelsie’s shrilly raised voice. “But I would never have locked dearest Caroline in her room. She is dreadfully mistaken.”
    “Then how is it that the door was locked?” Levisham demanded.
    “I am certain that it was not locked,” her