His Christmas Countess Read online

  So now he was feeling selfish for feeling disappointed when she was obviously self-conscious and uncomfortable. The decanters had been set out and he went to pour himself out a finger of brandy, shifting his shoulders under the heavy silk of his robe in an effort to ease the ache in the right one, which always complained when the weather turned cold and damp.

  He’d been short with Kate yesterday when she had asked a perfectly reasonable question about the scars. On an impulse he tossed back the brandy and strode to the door, stopping only to remove the key from its hiding place in the indented base of a Japanese bronze figure and to pick up a three-branch candlestick.

  It was over a year since he had been in the empty suite. The door swung open with a faint creak and the cold, stale air hardly moved the candle flames. He could still smell burning, he was convinced, even though all the fabrics and carpets had been torn out and destroyed, the walls and floor scrubbed. The seat of the fire was obvious from the heavy charring of the floorboards in front of the hearth and near the door where the edge of the rug had been was a dark patch. His blood.

  He made himself walk further into the room, telling himself that he could not hear the crackle of the fire, the screams, the child’s wailing cries. He could not smell the smoke, the burning brandy… But they were there, in his head, the memories mixed with the sounds and stench of the battlefield, the screams of the dying, and afterwards, those hideous pyres…

  Then he was through into the bedchamber. It was still furnished, for the door had been closed that night and the smoke and flame had not penetrated here. It smelt of dust and old polish and faintly, unmistakably, there was the scent of jasmine in the air.

  There were sounds here, too. A woman crying. Screaming. Sobs and reproaches. Pain and grief. To pull himself back into the present left him sick, but he made himself walk around the room checking coldly, methodically, for damage, signs of damp, of mice or mould. These chambers were spaces, that was all. They had no memory, no life of their own. The phantom sounds and smells were all in his head and he could overcome them, drive them out with the laughter of a son who was healthy and happy, the scent of a woman who found joy in his lovemaking, the smiles of a baby who reached out when she saw him. He had experienced no nightmares since he had returned to Abbeywell—he was healing, even if his lacerated shoulder never would.

  He walked back, locked the door behind him, returned to his room. Yes, he could sleep now.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Kate woke, blinking at the darkness. Something had roused her. A shout? All was quiet, but instinct made her get up and tiptoe to the dressing room door, which stood ajar. Anna was fast asleep and there was no sound from Jeannie, who slept in a small room just along the corridor.

  It must have been an owl, or a vixen’s strange cry. Then she heard it again, distinctly now, unmistakably a human voice.

  ‘Charlie!’ It was Grant and she ran to the connecting door, threw it open expecting to find some emergency—a sick child, sleepwalking, an accident—her mind ran through the possibilities. But the room was dark and still, except for the sound of muttering and movement from the bed.

  ‘Grant?’ There was no reply. A cold finger of unease moved down her spine. Kate backed away into her own chamber, found by touch the candle and tinderbox by the bed and, hands shaking, struck a light. ‘Grant?’ This time she could see him naked on the bed, the sheets a tangle around his legs, trapping him. He seemed to be trying to drag himself towards the edge of the bed.

  ‘Charlie. I’m coming. Charlie…’ He was deep in the throes of a nightmare.

  Kate bent over him, put her arms around his shoulders and tried to make him lie down, but he was too strong for her. ‘We have Charlie. He is safe, quite safe,’ she murmured, then repeated it loudly, but it did nothing to calm him.

  Then something in the tension of Grant’s body changed. ‘Dream,’ he muttered. ‘No.’

  He knew he was in a nightmare, Kate realised, and he was fighting against it, forcing it back with the strength of his mind as much as his body. She held on tightly, pulling the rigid body against hers, stroking down his back. When she touched the scarred shoulder she felt him flinch as though the wounds were raw.

  With a heave Grant threw off her restraining hands, fell back against the pillows. ‘Couldn’t help her,’ he muttered. ‘Charlie…’

  ‘He is here. You saved him. Charlie is safe.’

  ‘I know,’ he answered her rationally, irritably, even though he was asleep. ‘Damned dreams…’ And then he was still, relaxed, deeply asleep.

  Shaken, Kate backed away from the bed, the candle flame wavering. She put up a hand to shield it and realised it was her own panting breath that made it move. Grant had been dreaming about the fire that killed his wife, she was certain. Dr Meldreth had said something about Grant being injured during the fire, but the only scars she could see on his body were the slashes on his shoulder and they were not burns. How could a fire cause those? But a weapon could, a broken bottle could.

  None of it made sense. Kate stood watching her sleeping husband, then, once she was certain he was deeply unconscious, she pulled the covers up over him. Should she stay? No, she decided, staring down at his profile, stark against the white of the pillows. He had dragged himself out of that nightmare by sheer willpower, as far as she could tell. He would hate to know she had been watching his struggles against it.

  But what had triggered it? she wondered as she turned away. She had seen no sign of bad dreams when they had slept together. The candlelight caught a glint of something metallic on the little table by the door and, curious, she went to see what it was. A key. A door key very much in the style of those for all of the bedchambers on this floor. It was in her hand before she realised that she had moved to pick it up. It was not the key to this room, that was protruding from the lock right in front of her, Charlie’s room was never locked, in case of accidents. Hers, too, was unlocked.

  Madeleine’s suite. It had to be. Kate hesitated for perhaps ten seconds. Grant did not want her, or anyone, in those rooms. But whatever had happened there had scarred him, mentally and perhaps physically. It was giving him nightmares and the experience had been so bad he could not tolerate any mention of it. How could she help him if she did not understand?

  The door opened with a faint creak like the protest of her conscience, but Kate kept going. This was the lesser of two evils and Grant need never know she had been in the rooms, she told herself.

  The forbidden door opened easily and she stepped on to bare boards. The air was cold and dry and, stripped of its furniture, the room seemed enormous and overscale, like something from a fairy tale. Bluebeard’s chamber. The light of the single candle that she held created deep pools of shadow in the corners, the edges swaying as her hand trembled. Something dark spilled like a puddle in front of the hearth and for a moment Kate thought it was a body fallen there, draped in a black velvet cloak.

  ‘Nonsense,’ she muttered and shook off the superstitious dread. ‘Too many Gothic novels, you will be seeing ghosts next.’ Even so, it took resolution to walk towards the pool of blackness. She stopped, her toes at the edge, and saw that the boards at her feet were charred by the heat of an intense fire. Instinctively she stepped back, repelled by the thought of her bare skin touching the blackness. There was another patch of darkness by the door and she made herself walk to that. There was no charring here, the boards were intact, although scrubbed until the grain showed. She had the cold certainty that this was blood, but there was no way of telling in the dim light.

  The bedchamber door was closed. It yielded to her cautious push and Kate stepped into Madeleine Rivers’s most intimate world. The room was feminine, exquisite in every detail, decorated in shades of blue with touches of silver, tarnished now, but still catching the light from the candle flame.

  The dressing table held its array of bottles and jars, a silver-backed hairbrush and hand mirror. There was just the lightest film of dust, so whatever Grimswad
e said, one of the servants was coming in to keep the rooms clean. Then Kate saw a single line, fresh-traced through the dust. She held the candle flame close. It looked like the mark of a fingertip that had come close to one perfume flask. Essence de Jasmine.

  There was a large mirror on a stand and Kate looked up to see herself reflected in it—pale-faced, pretty enough, dressed for warmth and comfort in a sensible nightgown, bare feet showing beneath the hem. The woman whose room this was would have scorned to look like this, she sensed. She glanced at the dressing room door, but did not try to open it. The thought of prying into the other woman’s clothes was abhorrent.

  Slowly, forcing herself not to run, Kate closed the door, crossed the sitting room and let herself out into the familiar world again. She turned the key in the lock and tiptoed back to Grant’s bedchamber, laid the key down where she had found it and retreated to her own room.

  What had that taught her? Nothing, she concluded as she climbed into bed and pulled the covers up tight to her chin, although the room was not cold. There were marks of a fire, possibly of blood. But she had known that already. She had intruded into Grant’s private nightmare, against his wishes, and she had discovered nothing that might help.

  Let that be a lesson to you, she would have said to Charlie if she had caught him prying. Now she had a guilty conscience, a definite case of the shivers and another secret to keep from Grant.

  May 20—Abbeywell Grange

  Grant strolled through the rooms of his home and shook his head with bemused pleasure. Kate had seemed understandably nervous when he had first come home, not just of him, but at the thought of making any changes to the house. With the confirmation of the house party all that reserve seemed to have been swept away, although he worried that she was overdoing things. It was almost as though she had flung herself into the preparations as a way of burying her nerves.

  After he had visited Madeleine’s rooms the nightmare had resulted in the inevitable headache and bad dreams every night afterwards. He fought both nightmares and the pain as he always had, but the relief when Kate shyly asked him back to her bed was acute. Somehow making love to his wife kept the demons at bay and he had not dreamed again.

  But Kate was working too hard and he worried about that. When he waylaid her in the corridor and swept her into either his or her bedchamber, lists and note tablets would scatter along with her stockings and petticoats as he undressed her. Whichever room he walked into appeared to have a member of staff—some of them unfamiliar to him—working away. The billiard table was brushed to a perfect nap, while new blocks of chalk stood aligned under the racks of cues. His study acquired three more comfortable leather armchairs.

  Grimswade was found in solemn consultation with his mistress on the correct number of packs of cards to order and brand-new umbrellas were set in stands by all the outer doors, along with every walking stick the house could muster. When Grant caught his wife emerging from the backstairs and kissed her, she tasted of sugar and cinnamon, but when he began to kiss with more enthusiasm, and the intention of licking it all off, she batted him away and scurried off muttering, ‘New recipes!’

  Charlie entertained them before his bedtime every evening with an entire repertoire of poems and recitations, Anna acquired at least half a dozen new dresses and the small drawing room was declared out of bounds to men as it was transformed into a ladies’ boudoir.

  ‘Grant! Oh, there you are.’ Kate hurried in, seized his hand and began to pull him towards the door. ‘I need you to come upstairs immediately.’

  ‘An admirable idea,’ he agreed, allowing himself to be steered towards the stairs. ‘But have we time? I expect they will begin arriving in about an hour or so, and your hair looks dashed complicated to fix if it comes down.’ As it would, if what he had in mind—

  ‘Grant. I want you to look at the guest bedchambers, not to…well, not to do anything else.’

  He loved the way he could make her blush, while at the same time she threw herself into whatever amorous idea he had in the most enthusiastic way. And she was beginning to have ideas of her own. Grant paused on the landing, happily recalling the uses to which a set of library steps could be put, and was ruthlessly tugged to the first set of rooms.

  ‘Is this all right for Lord Avenmore? He is the one I am most worried about. Lord and Lady Weybourn are newlyweds, so I thought what we would like and arranged their suite accordingly.’ That produced an intriguing pink glow over her cheeks. Grant thought again how satisfying it was that he could make Kate blush. It made him think about making love to her…

  ‘Grant, are you attending?’

  ‘Yes, my dear.’ It was his best husbandly voice and it usually worked whenever he had lost track of the conversation in erotic daydreams.

  Kate gave him a decidedly old-fashioned look. ‘And by the sound of it, Lord Edenbridge values comfort and informality, so his rooms were easy. But Lord Avenmore…’

  Grant surveyed the room. It had always been an elegant chamber, but now it was decidedly masculine, with the landscapes replaced with large architectural engravings and all the Dresden china swept away to be replaced by Chinese blue-and-white export porcelain. It would suit Cris de Feaux’s austere tastes very well and he said so.

  ‘I didn’t know what to do about books, so I have selected a mixture for all of the rooms. But I think we should consider redecorating some more suites very soon, because the rooms I have allocated to Lord Edenbridge are really almost shabby, and if you want to entertain larger parties in the future, it will be difficult. There are your grandfather’s rooms, of course—but I hardly like to suggest making changes there if you would find that upsetting.’

  ‘No, you are quite right. They would turn into three respectable guest rooms. I’ll have the personal items moved to my rooms and the study. The study and the library are the places that remind me most of him anyway. I have no sentimental attachments to the bedroom suite.’

  He was rewarded by a warm smile and glanced at the clock on the overmantel. Perhaps there was just time.

  ‘And then there is the suite next to yours,’ Kate said with the air of a woman steeling herself. ‘The one with the locked door.’

  ‘No!’ He swung round away from her, his vision blurred by the smoke, his ears full of the obscene crackling laughter of the fire, the screams…the screams and the air full of the smell of brandy and burning and the pain in his shoulder and head so bad he could not focus, could not make that hellish decision…

  ‘I realise there are sentimental reasons why it would be difficult, but it is a large suite, and if we were thoughtful with the decoration and furnishing, there need be nothing to remind you,’ Kate continued. The sensible, slightly nervous voice flowed on, the remarks perfectly reasonable. Grant hauled himself back from the edge of his waking nightmare and made himself stand still, listen to her.

  ‘How do you know it is a large suite? Have you been in there? I told the servants that the door was never to be opened except for a monthly cleaning.’

  ‘I know.’ He realised that Kate was standing her ground with an effort of will, that he was probably frightening her. He made himself step back, widening the space between them, and saw her make the effort to relax her hands from their tight grip on her skirts. ‘But…I assumed, from the space I have been given for my suite. And it is obvious the areas that those rooms occupy, one only has to look at the adjoining rooms.’

  ‘No,’ Grant said. ‘No, it is not obvious.’ The angle of the external walls was deceptive at that point, the arrangement of the inner rooms, confusing.

  Kate was not blushing now. She was pale and stammering, the picture of guilt. She made no attempt to deny that she had entered the suite. ‘But…sooner or later Charlie is going to wonder why that door is locked. What will you tell him? Do you want to make it into some s-secret chamber of horrors to give him nightmares?’ Kate was regaining her confidence now, he saw, driven by the force of her argument. She took two rapid steps forward, caught
his hands in hers. ‘Grant—’

  ‘That room is a chamber of horrors,’ he said between lips that seemed frozen. ‘And it gives me nightmares. You’ve been in there, I don’t know how, but you have been, against my expressed wishes. Now, do you want to probe any more? Do you want to dig out secrets that don’t concern you, pry into my feelings and thoughts? Because the answer will be no, I tell you now.’ He flung his hands apart, dislodging hers. ‘You had no right, have—’

  Grant broke off at the sound of a very heavy footstep outside the door. As he turned, Grimswade appeared in the opening. Somehow he bit back the demand that the butler go to the devil. ‘Yes?’

  ‘A carriage is approaching, my lord. I believe it is Lord Weybourn’s conveyance.’

  ‘Thank you. We will be down directly.’ He followed Grimswade along the corridor without turning to see if Kate was following him, without a word to her. He was dimly aware, through the crashing headache that had descended as he lost his temper, that he should go back, apologise to her. Try to forgive her, if he could, for that intrusion. He kept going, down the curves of the front stairs, across the marble floor, the percussion of his boot heels on the stone like daggers stabbing behind his eyes.

  Footmen flung back the double doors as he approached and sunlight streamed in, blinding him. Instinct took him out on to the top step, the swirling lights that distorted his vision revealing the shape of the approaching carriage like an image that had been torn across and reassembled out of true.

  He was conscious of a presence at his side, of Kate’s delicate scent. She made no move to touch him. Then the shape that was the carriage stopped. Footmen hurried down the steps, Grant fixed a smile of welcome on his lips. His vision was failing as the circle of broken, dancing lights enclosing nothing but blackness moved inexorably outwards. In a moment he would be blind.