His Christmas Countess Page 15

‘Oh, yes,’ Grant agreed. ‘Most definitely.’

  Chapter Fifteen

  Kate accepted a shelled walnut from Cris de Feaux, who was cracking them with one hand while moving the cruets around the table to demonstrate some obscure point about the Schleswig-Holstein question that her husband and Gabriel were arguing about.

  ‘Thank you,’ she murmured, too engaged with the argument to feel shy with him any more. He was beginning to intrigue her, with his sharp intelligence and sardonic observations. But he was unhappy, she sensed. It was hard to tell with such a controlled, contained man, but she thought he was acting, putting on a false front of normality for his friends. She wondered whether he resented the fact that two of them had married and there was certainly something in his eyes when he looked at Alex and Tess, but she thought it was pain rather than resentment or jealousy.

  ‘The convolutions in a walnut are as nothing compared to Gabriel’s mental processes,’ Cris observed, breaking into her musings. ‘Of course the Danes have a good claim to the territory,’ he added as Alex joined in the argument. ‘But the German states…’

  Kate met Tess’s eyes and smiled. She had been pleased with herself for remembering to rise and nod to Tess when everyone had finished dessert and she had been taken aback when the other woman said airily, ‘Must we? It is only us after all.’

  ‘Why, no, I would be happy to stay if the gentlemen are not inhibited by our presence.’ They certainly would not be removing a chamber pot from the sideboard to relieve themselves, as she knew Henry and his male guests did as soon as the ladies were out of the way, because her wary inspection had revealed that was not done in this household. On the other hand she had always assumed that the men liked the freedom to discuss sport, politics and women.

  ‘I would wager that you and I know quite enough about politics to keep our end up in a discussion,’ Tess had announced. ‘And if they want to talk about bare-knuckle boxing or duels, then I am all agog to hear about them, too.’

  ‘But that means we won’t be able to discuss opera dancers or our latest flirts,’ Alex Tempest said plaintively and was punished with a well-aimed walnut thrown by his wife.

  But, despite the teasing, the arguments were anything but frivolous. From her hours of lonely reading Kate realised that they were all travellers who knew the Continent well—and that included Grant, although she knew he had not been abroad since their marriage and she had no idea why he would be travelling across the Channel in any case.

  ‘After the way we treated Denmark during the war, I am surprised they are a friendly nation now,’ she remarked, making herself join in the discussion and not spend the evening silently puzzling over her husband.

  ‘The fact that we bombarded Copenhagen twice?’ Grant asked. ‘Things in that part of the world are so complicated, even after the Treaty of Vienna, that they are probably grateful for a friendly trading partner who doesn’t want to realign their boundaries.’

  ‘You’ve never had any problem buying horses in Holstein, have you?’ Gabriel Stone reached for the decanter and refilled all the glasses within reach.

  ‘None. You’ll have to come down to the stables and look at my latest crosses with Yorkshire coach horses. They are going to be the carriage horse of choice if I have anything to do with it.’

  So that was what the handsome bay horses down at the stables were. They were not riding horses, she knew that, but not being a good horsewoman herself, she had never been curious enough to ask about them. Now it seemed that Grant was enthusiastic about horse breeding and she’d had no idea. Another side of her husband that was unknown.

  The men got up, lost in an intense argument about something new that had escaped Kate’s notice whilst she was brooding. ‘Come and look at the atlas,’ Grant was suggesting as he headed towards the door. ‘It should be clear on a large-scale map.’

  She and Tess were alone, one at each end of the table. ‘That’s done it,’ Lady Weybourn remarked. ‘They are off on the subject of Waterloo and we probably won’t see them until breakfast time now. I shudder with relief every time I remember they were all four in that hell and none of them was wounded.’

  ‘Shall we go into the drawing room?’ Kate suggested and was surprised, and pleased, when the other woman took her arm in a companionable manner.

  ‘Is Grant better now? He looks it.’ Tess kicked off her shoes and curled up in an armchair in a scandalously casual manner.

  Kate remembered something that Grant had said about Alex’s wife being born on the wrong side of the blanket and never having a come-out. Despite that, she seemed relaxed enough about her place in society, which was encouraging. If she could do it, so could Kate. And then she remembered that she would have to negotiate London society while avoiding one particular aristocrat and it all seemed impossibly difficult again.

  ‘Grant is much better, I think.’

  ‘Had you had a row?’ Tess asked with a cheerful lack of restraint. ‘I thought you both looked positively stony with each other when we arrived, but of course that might have been his headache and your nerves at the thought of us all descending on you.’

  ‘A row?’ Kate temporised. She was not going to be indiscreet about Grant, but she did wish she had someone to confide in, at least about her husband.

  ‘He’s not like Alex. We have rows at least once a week and no one’s any the worse for it and we usually end up laughing our heads off, or in bed. Or both,’ she added with a wicked smile, apparently not noticing Kate’s flushed cheeks. ‘But Grant is so self-contained. Alex says he virtually never loses his temper—not to show, in any case. But you are obviously doing him good.’

  ‘I am?’ Kate murmured, lost in the face of so much frankness.

  ‘When I first met him I had sprained my ankle and he was very kind to me, but his eyes held so much sadness, even when he was smiling. That’s gone now.’

  There was the fleeting memory of that look in his eyes when they were in the bothy and, afterwards, when they reached Abbeywell. She had thought that the haunting sadness had gone because he was home again, and with Charlie, but Tess implied that it had been there for longer than just that difficult journey from Scotland. ‘I know the look you mean. And you are right, it isn’t there now.’

  ‘That’s love for you,’ Tess said, her smile tender and secret.

  ‘But it isn’t,’ Kate protested. ‘We’re not in love. Surely Grant told you all in London about how we met, why he married me? This is not a romance, this is a marriage of practicality.’

  ‘Well, yes.’ Tess sat up straighter, the smile gone. ‘But he did not have to marry you to get you out of the fix you were in. There were all sorts of things he could have done to help you. He must have been attracted to you right from the beginning. And the way you look at him…’

  ‘He needed a stepmother for Charlie,’ Kate said stiffly. ‘I needed a father for Anna and there was no time to discuss all the options, she was about to be born. And I don’t love him.’ Do I? Tess arched one dark brow. ‘And Grant does not love me,’ she added with rather more certainty.

  ‘I am sure you know better than I,’ Tess said, but the smile was back.

  ‘Knows better than you about what, my darling?’ The men were back in the room before Kate could answer that sly remark. ‘Surely no one knows better than you about anything,’ Alex Tempest added.

  ‘Wretch.’ Tess tilted her head back to look up at her husband. ‘Have you men finished fighting the battle again to your own satisfaction? Because if Kate will excuse me, I am for my bed. It has been a long day.’ She paused as she passed Kate. ‘But I am right, you know, about at least one of you.’

  Tess’s departure broke the party up. Alex, it seemed, was not prepared to let her go up to bed without him, Gabriel suggested that Lord Avenmore come up with him so he could lend him a book he had just finished and, with the departure of her guests, Kate wanted nothing more than to get Grant alone upstairs.

  ‘My chamber or yours?’ he asked as they climbed
the stairs.

  ‘Yours.’ He would be more relaxed there, she sensed. I don’t love him, I am not in love. I like him, I desire him, I am so very grateful to him, but…love? I still hardly know him and, anyway, I am not very good at recognising love.

  ‘I like your friends,’ Kate said and went to help him out of his coat when he dismissed the waiting valet. ‘Let me untie your neckcloth.’ She enjoyed the closeness of standing toe to toe, unwinding the body-warmed muslin from around his neck, exposing a glimpse of skin beneath.

  ‘Good.’ Grant bent to nuzzle her temple as she stood folding the cloth. ‘They like you, but then I knew they would, all being men of taste and discrimination.’

  They undressed slowly, helping each other, pausing between garments for a lingering caress, a kiss. But without any spoken agreement Grant reached for his heavy silk robe when they were naked, while Kate retrieved her own robe from her room. She sat down facing him across the width of the hearth, studying the austere profile, the straight nose and firm mouth. He was a handsome man, her husband, and, yes, she looked at him and enjoyed doing so, just as Tess had observed. That did not mean she was in love with him.

  ‘I married very suitably and far too young,’ Grant said without preamble. ‘We were both too young and I had very little experience of well-bred young ladies beyond the ballroom. I was disappointed that Madeleine seemed so cool, but she had seemed willing enough to marry me, and neither of us had been brought up to expect some passionate love match. We rubbed along well enough until Charlie was born and, naturally, I would not have dreamed of returning to the bedchamber for quite a while after that.’

  ‘It sounds like a very lonely marriage,’ Kate ventured.

  Grant’s shoulders moved in the ghost of a shrug. ‘It is what we both expected, what I had grown up with. Then I visited her room one night and was told that she had done her duty by bearing me an heir and surely, if I wanted to indulge my male lusts, I could set up a mistress. I pointed out that sex within marriage was not a question of lust, and besides, I wanted more children and surely she did, too.’

  He turned his head against the back of the chair until he was staring into the cold grate. ‘I asked myself if I had been clumsy or insensitive in bed, I thought about Charlie’s birth. I wondered, even, if there was another man she loved, had loved all the time we had been married. But she denied there was anything. Sex, she thought, was squalid and animal. Childbirth was horrid, especially as she really had little interest in children. Of course there was no one else—she had been reared to do her duty and she thought she was doing it. But if I felt she was not, then, naturally, she would resign herself.’

  ‘Not very encouraging,’ Kate murmured, secretly appalled. She could understand Madeleine’s fears about childbirth, but why hadn’t she confided in Grant, talked about it, rather than erected that wall of icy rejection between them? And her husband might have acquired a little more experience since his first marriage, but surely his lovemaking could not have changed that much? Perhaps, she mused, some women simply did not enjoy the physical side of marriage.

  ‘No, and in retrospect I can understand her. She had been raised with no expectations of marriage beyond status—that was how she measured a successful match. A good wife gave her husband an heir, and, she reluctantly accepted, a spare. Her mother had instilled in her the belief that men were essentially bestial in their desires and that a lady endured their attentions out of duty. From the beginning she was expecting it to be a painful, distasteful, messy business. But the rest of her duty came easily to her. She knew how to behave impeccably in public, she enjoyed enhancing my standing, and with it her own. She loved to spend my money to make herself a decorative and fitting accessory at my side. But I failed to see all that. I thought another child would kindle warmer feelings, both for it and for me. Madeleine became pregnant within months and the birth was complicated. She lost the baby.’

  ‘I am so sorry.’ And he had lost a child, too, although she doubted anyone had comforted him about that.

  ‘After that she became…difficult. She began to drink, to behave wildly. In public she was as impeccable as always, but in private it was a nightmare. The staff tried to keep drink from her, but she would find it. I never left her alone with Charlie and I certainly did not go to her bedchamber again. Grandfather would lecture her on her duty and she consigned duty to the devil.’

  ‘You must have been tempted to have her committed to some form of care.’

  ‘She was my wife so I did my best to look after her. I blame myself for getting her with child too soon, for not being able to save the baby.’ He closed his eyes as though trying to block a vivid memory. ‘I worked with Meldreth, did what I could, but he had to try to turn the baby and they were both so exhausted, mother and child. It was a miracle Madeleine lived. She was so angry with me for getting her pregnant again, it was as though she was fighting me. Every time she cried out it felt as though I had just, that moment, inflicted the pain on her. I still do not know whether it would have been better to have left the room, got out of her sight. Was I there because of my conscience, flagellating myself, or was I doing the right thing? I still do not know.’

  His expression was so bleak it was hard to speak. Kate reached for the right words. ‘Of course it was the right thing to do. You had some medical training, Dr Meldreth needed your help, your strength. But how could you be expected to have succeeded when an experienced practitioner could not?’ She remembered the strain on his face, the shadows in his eyes as he worked to save Anna through that long night in the bothy. ‘It must have been so hard for you to help me as you did.’

  ‘No. That was a blessing, something I could do. There was no one else, I could hardly make things worse and I might make things better. And once she was born and I knew it would be all right, then it felt so good, as though I had been given a second chance. Up to that point, I admit, it was difficult to push the fears away.’

  ‘But you kept on trying, you kept my spirits up and never let me see you were afraid of the outcome.’ He smiled at that and she sensed it was a comfort. ‘In the end, what happened?’ she prompted when Grant fell silent.

  ‘Come to her rooms.’ Grant stood, took a key she recognised from his pocket and led the way the short distance along the passage. Kate saw his hands were steady as the key turned and the door swung open. They both carried branches of candles and she set hers on the hearth, while Grant placed his near the door.

  ‘My wife died in this room,’ he said, his face stark, his voice harsh. ‘She died in front of my eyes and I did nothing to save her.’

  ‘And that is only half the story,’ Kate said when she could speak again. ‘I know there is more to it than that, there has to be. Tell me.’

  ‘I came home one night from dinner at a neighbour’s house. Grandfather was beginning to fret because it was late and Madeleine had Charlie with her and when the nursemaid went to take him to bed she wouldn’t let the girl in. I knew then there was something very wrong, because she hardly ever kept him with her or spent any time playing with him. The door was locked. I could hear him crying, so I broke it open.’

  Grant walked into the room, towards the cold, empty hearth, where Kate waited, silent. ‘It was hot, the fire was roaring in the chimney. Charlie was crying on the sofa that was over there, but it was angled away from me so I couldn’t see him.’ He gestured towards the side of the room away from the chimney. ‘He sounded fretful and hungry, but not frightened.

  ‘Madeleine was standing there, just where you are. The tray with the spirits was turned over at her feet, the liquid soaking the carpet. She had a cut-glass decanter in her hand.’ He closed his eyes again and spoke without opening them. ‘I think she had been drinking directly from it. She was certainly drunk. I walked across.’ He moved as he spoke, blind, lost in the memory. ‘I tried to take the decanter from her and she swung it at me. It hit the side of my head and smashed.’ His left hand, fingers spread, speared into his hair. ‘And then
she must have panicked, I think. I tried not to hurt her, to take it from her gently, but I was half stunned. She swung it again and it hit my shoulder, cut down through my coat to the skin, and I fell.’

  Kate glanced at the dark patch on the boards that endless scrubbing had not removed. She had been right. It was blood. Grant was still speaking, eyes still closed.

  ‘I think I was knocked out for a moment. When I came to there was blood everywhere and there was screaming and Charlie crying. For a moment I was back on the battlefield with the noise and the smoke and the dreadful smells…’ He stopped and opened his eyes. ‘You do not need to hear it all. The brandy had splashed all down Madeleine’s muslin gown, the carpet was already soaked. She must have staggered back towards the fire and her skirts caught. The carpet was ablaze. I crawled across, got Charlie and dragged him back. The door burst open and help was there, but it was too late for her.’

  What to say? How terrible. How tragic. Poor woman. All so obvious and so meaningless. She would say what she thought, what concerned her, even if it was not the comforting platitudes that convention expected. ‘You know you did the right thing, don’t you? To go to Charlie and not to try to save Madeleine?’

  ‘Yes.’ Grant almost smiled at her. ‘Yes, I know. I only had so much strength, I was bleeding like a stuck pig and she was probably beyond saving, even if I had gone directly to her. I had to get the child to safety.’

  ‘Then, if you know that, accept it—’

  ‘What is the problem? The problem, my dear, is that while my rational brain accepts it while I’m awake, my dreaming mind does not, it seems. A policy of out of sight, out of mind has worked to an extent so far, but you are right, I cannot continue like that, ignoring the existence of this room, ignoring that night.’

  He stood up and held out his hand to her. ‘Come, sweetheart. Let us go to bed, lock this door on the horrors of this room for another night.’

  Chapter Sixteen