His Christmas Countess Read online

  ‘You want me to show you around? But you have been here for months, running the household. Charlie must have dragged you all over the grounds, Mrs Havers will have covered the domestic side of things.’

  ‘Yes, but it is your home, you grew up here. Now I am your wife I need to understand it as you do, if that is possible.’ Grant still seemed surprised. ‘It will help me understand you, too.’

  ‘If that is what you would like, then of course.’ He sounded merely polite, but Kate thought he was pleased. ‘You realise that you will be undermining the main complaint of husbands everywhere—my wife does not understand me?’

  ‘Is that what you men say to each other in your clubs to justify lurking there, drinking and gaming, or is it what you whisper in the ears of ladies who you hope will take pity on you and share their favours?’

  Her relief at the change of mood between them had carried her into dangerous waters. Grant raised one dark brow and was suddenly no longer the amused, slightly flirtatious husband of a moment ago. ‘Are you asking me if I am faithful to you?’

  Kate slid from her perch on the desk. It was no longer the time and place to sit swinging her feet, behaving like a milkmaid with her swain. She must remember that she was a countess. ‘No, I am not asking you that question and I do not think I ever would. But if you are asking if I wonder about other women, then, yes, of course I do. I know that men are not designed to be celibate, even the best of husbands.’

  ‘I keep forgetting that you do not know me,’ Grant said and she saw from the set of his mouth that she had managed to insult him again. ‘I take marriage seriously. I may not have made vows to you in church, but I will act as though I have. I will be faithful to you and I have been since we wed, if you are wondering about a mistress in London, or even less reputable arrangements.’

  ‘Thank you…’ Kate managed. Her sister-in-law, Jane, had confided that no man could be trusted to be faithful, that it was in their very nature to seek out new excitements, new women. She had shrugged in the face of Kate’s shocked disbelief and incoherent protests about honour and love matches. Men, Jane maintained, were all tomcats by nature and male honour did not preclude infidelity. Either her sister-in-law was wrong, or Grant was telling her what she wanted to hear. She trusted his honour, she realised. Grant would keep his vows.

  ‘And I am sure I do not need to say that I do not subscribe to any fashionable tolerance in regards to my wife.’ He waved a dismissive hand when she opened her mouth to protest. ‘I am sure you will be as faithful as a wife can be, Kate. I am just saying, for the record, that I will call out any man who lays a finger on you—and do my damnedest to kill him. And if your Jonathan had abandoned you and not drowned, then I would go after him and kill him, too.’

  They stared at each other for a long moment, then Kate said, slowly, ‘You may trust me with your honour and mine and I trust you in the same way.’ She would never betray him with another man—but the pit was gaping at her feet. She had lied to him, she continued to lie to him, and if he realised that her lover was alive and was being blackmailed by her brother, she did not know what he would do.

  ‘Enough of this serious stuff.’ Grant’s sudden grin caught her off balance as it had done every time he had surprised her with it. ‘What is the first place you want to explore with me?’

  ‘The water garden.’

  ‘We do not have a water garden,’ Grant pointed out.

  ‘I know. I think we should, don’t you?’ He need never find out. She forced herself to smile and found it was real. Tomorrow might never come, Christmas was a long way off and, for now, they were happy.

  Chapter Twelve

  Grant came with her to visit Anna, who delighted him by smiling and gurgling and gripping his fingers. He picked her up, despite the nursemaid’s warnings about babies who had recently been fed, and tossed her up to make her laugh.

  ‘Never mind, my lord,’ Jeannie said consolingly, ten seconds later. ‘I’m sure it will sponge off.’

  By the time Kate had found her bonnet and cloak, Grant had surrendered his milky coat to a silently disapproving valet and changed to a battered old shooting jacket and well-worn boots. ‘I have a suspicion that water gardens mean bogs,’ he said as he joined her on the steps down to the rear garden. ‘At least the sun is shining.’

  Kate led the way across the formal parterre to the lower level where a lawn, uneven and rank despite the gardeners’ best efforts with scythe and roller, sloped away from the woods.

  ‘The view from the parterre in this direction is dull and this lawn leads nowhere except to that boggy patch just inside the woodland. See, where all the alders are, and those rushes, beyond the bank?’

  ‘There’s a spring there. I remember that it used to be a good place to find frogs. I think Grandfather had the bank thrown up to keep the water from the lawn.’ Grant strode towards the woodland, then stopped as his foot sank into mud. ‘And not very effectively, by the looks of it!’

  ‘We can skirt round.’ Kate was already leading the way and scrambled up the bank. ‘I thought if the bank was breached and the spring water channelled, then it would come out here. We could excavate a chain of ponds across this lawned area and puddle the bottoms.’

  Grant had walked further along the top of the bank, but he turned to look back at her. ‘And what do you know about puddling bottoms, Lady Allundale?’

  ‘I read about it in a book I ordered on making artificial water features. You need a great deal of stiff clay, then it is spread across the bottom of the hollow and trampled down by lots of men in stout boots.’

  ‘Lots of men?’ Grant was frowning now.

  ‘I thought it would be valuable employment for the local people. But if you think it would be too costly, of course I understand.’ How foolish to allow her imagination to run away with her when she had no idea how far Grant’s resources would stretch. He had this estate and a London house to maintain, a son to educate and now a wife and daughter.

  ‘It sounds like an excellent idea. I was simply disappointed that when you said we, you meant a gang of hefty labourers. I had assumed you and I would be puddling in the mud.’

  ‘Us?’

  ‘Mmm.’ Grant seemed oblivious to her gasp of scandalised laughter as he looked around the boggy patch and then further into the woods to where a shaft of sunlight lit up one of Kate’s favourite places, a glade of soft grass spangled with wild flowers. ‘I like the idea of getting very wet and very muddy with you. I appreciate your eye for landscape as well, my dear. What do you make of that sunlit patch through there?’

  ‘It is lovely and usually quite dry underfoot because it is on a slight slope. I would not like to damage it if we do make the water garden.’

  ‘It merits further inspection.’ Grant held out his right hand. ‘Let me help you around the edge of the mire.’ Intrigued, Kate followed. ‘How very wise of you to bring a cloak,’ he observed as he turned to face her and she caught her breath at the wicked intent in his expression.

  ‘Why?’ Although she could already guess and his fingers were at the ties at her neck.

  ‘Because we do not want grass stains on the back of that charming walking dress, do we?’

  ‘Grant! In the open? What if someone sees us?’

  ‘Who?’ He looked up from spreading the cloak on the grass. ‘No one can see this spot from the house—I used to hide here often enough as a boy.’

  ‘I don’t know! Gardeners, gamekeepers. Poachers,’ she added wildly as her husband tossed aside his coat and began to untie his neckcloth.

  ‘The gardeners are scything the front lawns. The gamekeepers are chasing the poachers over there.’ Grant knelt down and gestured vaguely to the east. ‘I am tired of being serious and sensible. I am tired of duty. I want to be utterly frivolous with my wife.’ He held out his hand. ‘Do you want to be frivolous with your husband?’ he asked as his fingers went to the fastenings of his falls.

  *

  An hour later Kate flopped back
on to her crumpled cloak beside the long, naked body of her husband as he sprawled face down, half on and half off the cloak.

  ‘That,’ he observed without moving, ‘was excellently frivolous.’

  ‘I would never have thought it.’ Kate snuggled against Grant’s flank, glad of the heat of his skin. The breeze was cool through the trees, despite the sun almost reaching its height. ‘If I had been asked to describe you, frivolous would be one of the last words I would have thought of.’

  ‘I used to be wild, a rakehell in training, my grandfather always said.’ Grant rolled over on to his back. ‘When I was at university with Gabe and Alex and Cris they called us the Four Disgraces. That’s why he did not oppose my attending medical school. He said a few years in cold, dour Edinburgh delving into cadavers would sober me up better than anything short of a spell in the army and with less chance of him losing his heir.’

  ‘Did it sober you?’ Kate buried the chilly tip of her nose in the angle of his neck and shoulder and smiled as he muttered in protest. He stopped complaining when she slid her hand, palm down, across the flat planes of his chest and began to play with the curls of hair.

  ‘Coming home and finding my grandfather recovering from a heart seizure did that. I was needed here and I couldn’t expect him to carry the burden of the estate and all its business while I pursued an interest that could only ever be that—an interest.’

  She sat up, but stayed close to his warmth as she admired the lean, masculine beauty of the body lying beside her. The only flaws were the raking scars from his right shoulder, disappearing down to his shoulder blade. That was what she had felt the first time they had lain together.

  Kate leaned over and touched them. ‘You said you were in the army for a while. When was that?’ She could feel him bracing himself against the desire to shrug her hand away.

  ‘I volunteered in ’15, when Bonaparte escaped from Elba. I was at Waterloo and escaped with my life and a healthy horror of warfare.’

  ‘So you were wounded and these are battle scars?’

  ‘No.’

  She stared at them. There was something familiar about them, the way the flesh had been damaged, the way the weapon had raked through the flesh. Then she remembered Jason Smith, who had been Henry’s groom years ago. He would get drunk and pick fights and he was, from all the rumours, a nasty dirty fighter when he’d taken drink. Then one evening he had come staggering into the kitchen, pouring blood, and Kate had helped the housekeeper dress the wounds. Long, raking parallel cuts like these, the result of a slashing blow from a broken bottle. Surely Grant was not the kind of man who got involved in barroom brawls? But that flat negative had been a clear warning, and if he had wanted to explain the scars, then he would.

  ‘And then you married?’ she asked as though her questions had not interrupted the story of his life.

  ‘Yes.’ There was no change in Grant’s tone, but he sat up and reached for his clothes. The affirmative had been as flat as the negative and just as clear a warning. No trespassing. ‘You are getting chilled, best to get dressed before the gardeners decide to scythe the back lawns, as well.’

  He helped Kate with laces and pins, exhibiting the facility with feminine garments that she had noticed back in the bothy. If she had felt a little more confident, she might have twitted him gently on the subject, but she had strayed far enough into dangerous waters with that question about his first marriage.

  ‘We need a summer house, you know.’ Grant sat on a tree stump to pull on his boots. He pointed at a flat area in the centre of the clearing. ‘If we built one there, it would have a view down to your new water gardens.’ He stood and stamped his feet firmly into the battered old boots. ‘Then we can be frivolous whatever the weather and with less chance of scandalising our innocent staff and the not-so-innocent poachers.’

  ‘Classical or rustic?’ Kate laced her half-boots, determined to be as sophisticated about the prospect of future al fresco lovemaking as Grant was. The prospect was delicious in itself, but most of all she treasured the fact that he was becoming so relaxed with her. Surely, soon, the scars from his unhappy first marriage would fade?

  ‘Classical,’ Grant said. ‘A little temple in the woods. It will have a fireplace and an inner chamber we can lock and a room for picnics on warm rainy days.’

  They strolled back up to the parterre, hand in hand, bickering gently about how a chimney could be incorporated into a classical temple, and were met by Charlie, his tutor at his heels.

  ‘There you are, Papa! Have you fallen off your horse? Your hair is on end and your hat has gone. And, Maman, did you know your cloak is inside out?’

  ‘Lord Brooke, we have discussed the fact that a gentleman does not pass personal comments on the appearance of others, have we not?’ Mr Gough was so straight-faced that Kate was certain he had a very good idea of just what his employers had been doing.

  Charlie grimaced at the formal address, the signal that he was in the wrong. ‘I am sorry, Maman, Papa. Only, I was looking for you. The post has come and there are letters with Uncle Alex’s seal on, and Uncle Cris’s and a very splodgy one that must be from Uncle Gabriel, I think, because he told me he had lost his signet ring whilst dicing with a German count and—’

  Mr Gough cast up his gaze as though in search of heavenly assistance. ‘Lord Brooke, we will return to the schoolroom and you will translate I must not speculate on other people’s business into Latin and then write it out twenty times in a fair hand.’

  ‘Ouch,’ Grant remarked when his son had departed with the air of a condemned man heading for the gallows. ‘I am not certain I could translate that with any elegance these days.’ He ran a hand through his tousled hair, twitched off Kate’s cloak, shook it out, draped it over his arm and opened the door for her. ‘Those letters, I hope, are the replies to my invitations to our first house party.’

  Kate was conscious that he was watching her for a reaction. Did he fear she would be unable to manage a small, informal gathering, or was it his guests’ reactions to her that gave him more concern? No man would want his closest friends to think he had made a poor marriage, that his wife was not good enough for him.

  I am good enough, she told herself. Good enough for him and for his friends. And I can manage a country house party more easily than he thinks. The thought of confounding Grant with her ability gave her an inner glow of unworthy satisfaction, even if it was only a small thing. Henry liked to entertain his friends and his wife, Jane, uncomfortable with country gentlemen and their hearty manners and unsophisticated pleasures, had been more than happy to unload the burden of organisation on to Kate.

  If truth be told, it was the thought of female guests that gave her the most apprehension. Men, if they were comfortable, well fed and provided with plenty of sport, tended to be uncritical of their hostess. Ladies, on the other hand, were not. Polite, charming—and if they sensed a weakness, as relentless as a flock of pigeons pecking away at a pile of wheat grains until there was nothing left but the husks.

  ‘Let’s hurry and open them,’ she said and was through the doorway into the shadowed hall with, surely, enough enthusiasm to convince Grant that she was not nervous in the slightest.

  ‘Alex and his wife can come,’ he said, studying the first letter. He opened the others. ‘So can Cris and Gabriel. But they both say they will not be accompanied by their sisters. Gabe, in language I will not use to my respectable wife, assures me he will inflict neither his latest chère amie upon us, nor a respectable fiancée—which it is unimaginable that he will ever have, by the way—and certainly not his unmarried sister.’ Grant folded the sheet with its sprawling black handwriting and grimaced. ‘Now I come to think about my last encounter with her, that is probably a good thing. She can talk the hind leg off a donkey and needs diluting with a very large pool of other guests. Cris merely thanks me most properly for the suggestion, but tells me that he will be unaccompanied, as his sister is newly betrothed and will be staying with her future
in-laws.’

  Grant handed her that letter and Kate scanned the elegantly written page. ‘He sounds somewhat cool,’ she ventured. ‘Is it the prospect of meeting me?’

  ‘He always sounds cool, although this does seem more detached than usual.’ Grant took the letter back and read it again. ‘It isn’t us, it is him. Something’s wrong, I think. He’s been in Russia or Denmark or somewhere in that direction, doing a vaguely diplomatic job for the Foreign Office.’

  ‘Not as an ambassador?’

  ‘No, far more undefined than that.’ Grant looked thoughtful and Kate did not probe. If his friend was engaged in espionage, he certainly would not want to speak of it. The poor man probably needed some peace and quiet and homely comforts after the stress of a foreign court.

  ‘I suggested May 20 and they all say they can make that. Is it convenient for you?’

  Two weeks? ‘Certainly,’ Kate said with a sense of fizzing excitement. Her first house party as mistress of Abbeywell and the chance to understand Grant much better through his friends. She could hardly wait. ‘That will be no problem at all.’

  *

  The house was quiet, finally. Grant leaned back against the door of his bedroom and yawned. Charlie, still overexcited from the day before at the prospect of all his favourite honorary uncles arriving at the same time, had been difficult to get to bed. Anna, with the knack of small children for knowing when adults were tired and distracted, decided to wail endlessly and Kate had been absent-minded throughout dinner. And, to put the cap on a wearisome evening, she had indicated in an embarrassed murmur that it would not be a good time for him to visit her bedchamber.