His Christmas Countess Read online

  ‘Dr—’

  ‘Grant.’

  ‘You are very efficient.’ A contraction passed, easier than before. He was making her relax, just as he had said.

  ‘I had a short spell in the army. Even with a batman, one learns to shift for oneself. Now, then.’ He eyed her and she felt herself tense again. ‘Let’s get you into something more comfortable and on to this luxurious bed.’ It was getting darker and she could not read his expression. ‘Kate, I’m sorry I’m a man, I’m sorry I’m a complete stranger, but we have got to get you into a nightgown and I have got to examine you.’ He was brisk, verging on the impatient. ‘You’re a patient and just now you can’t afford to be shy or modest.’

  Think of the baby, she told herself. Think of Grant Rivers as a guardian angel. A Christmas angel, sexless, dispassionate. I have no choice but to trust him. ‘Very well.’

  He undressed her like a man who knew his way around the fastenings of women’s clothing. Not sexless, then. She was out of her stained, crumpled gown and underclothing before she had time to be embarrassed. He’d placed the nightgown so it had caught a little warmth from the fire and soon she was into that and on to the bed, sighing with relief at the simple comfort of it, before she had the chance to realise her nightgown was up around her waist.

  ‘There, we just place this so.’ Grant swung the greatcoat over her. ‘Now a light, something hot to drink. Lie back, concentrate on getting warm.’

  Kate watched from between slitted eyes as he built up the fire, brought in a bucket of water and set it by the hearth. He lit a small lantern, then dipped water into a mug, adding something from a flask balanced on a brick by the flames, and washed his hands in the bucket. His actions were rapid, yet smooth. Efficient was probably the word. A man who wanted to get things done and who wouldn’t waste time. A man who was forced to wait on this baby’s schedule. Both his efficiency and, strangely, his impatience were reassuring. She was seeing the essence of this man.

  ‘Where did the lantern come from?’

  ‘I carry one in my saddlebags. I’ll just find something else for water. We’ll need a fair bit before we’re done. Luckily the last occupants were fairly untidy and there’s a promising rubbish heap outside.’

  He ought to seem less than masculine, coping so handily with domestic tasks, but he merely appeared practical. Kate studied the broad shoulders and narrow hips, the easy movement, the tight buckskin breeches. She never expected to feel the slightest flutter of sensual need for a man again as long as she lived, but if she did, purely theoretically, of course, Grant Rivers was more than equipped to provoke it. He was definitely very— ‘Ooh!’

  ‘Hang on, I’ll be with you in a minute.’ He came back in carrying an assortment of pots, water sloshing out on to the floor. He held out his hands to the fire. ‘My fingers are cold again.’

  What has that got to do with…? Kate sucked in an outraged breath as, lantern in hand, he knelt at her feet and dived under the greatcoat tented over her knees.

  ‘It is remarkable how one can adapt to circumstances,’ she managed after five somewhat stressful minutes. Incredibly she sounded quite rational and not, as she felt, mildly hysterical.

  Grant emerged, tousled but composed, and sat back on his heels, shaking thick, dark brown hair back out of his eyes. He smiled, transforming a face she had thought pattern-book handsome into something approaching charming. ‘Childbirth tends to result in some unavoidable intimacies,’ he said. ‘But everything seems to be proceeding as it should.’ The smile vanished as he took a pocket watch from his waistcoat and studied it.

  ‘How much longer?’ She tried not to make it sound like a demand, but feared it had.

  ‘Hours, I should think. First babies tend to be slow.’ He was at the fire, washing his hands in yet another container of water, then pouring something from a flask into a battered kettle with no handle.

  ‘Hours?’

  ‘Drink this.’ He offered the brew in a horn beaker, another of the seemingly inexhaustible contents of his saddlebags. ‘I’ll get some food in a minute. When did you last eat?’

  That needed some thought. ‘Yesterday. I had breakfast at an inn.’

  Grant made no reply, but when he brought her bread and cheese made into a rough sandwich, she noticed he ate nothing. ‘What are you going to eat? This is all the food you have with you, isn’t it?’

  He shrugged and took a mouthful of the liquid in the horn beaker. ‘You need the energy. I can live on my fat.’

  He rested his head against the rough stone wall behind him and closed his eyes. What fat? With a less straightforward man she might have suspected he was fishing for compliments, but it did not seem to be Grant Rivers’s style.

  What was he doing as a doctor? She puzzled over him, beginning to slip into a doze now the food was warm in her stomach. He was educated, he had been in the army. There was no wedding ring on his finger—not that there was anything to be deduced from that—and there was an engraved signet on his left hand. His clothes were good. And yet he was riding over the Marches without a servant and prepared for a night of rough living.

  A piece of wood slipped into the fire with a crackle, jerking her fully awake again. ‘How did you hurt your head?’ Was he fleeing from something?

  ‘A stupid accident in Edinburgh. I’d been staying with a friend in the New Town and the place is covered in building sites. Some fool of a labourer dropped a plank on me. I was out cold for a couple of days and in no state to move much after that, but there’s nothing broken.’

  He closed his eyes and she did the same. She let herself drift off, reassured. She was safe while he was there.

  Chapter Two

  The night passed with intervals of sleep interrupted by increasing waves of contractions. At some point Kate was conscious of simply abandoning herself to Grant Rivers, to the competent hands, the confident, reassuring voice, the strength of the man. There was no choice now, but her instincts told her this was a good man, and if she was mistaken, there was nothing she could do about it. As time passed, on leaden feet, her trust grew.

  She held on to his fingers, squeezing until she felt his bones shift under her grip, but he never complained. He was going to deliver her baby, he was going to save her so she could hold her child in her arms. He was her miracle. She was tired beyond anything she had ever experienced, this was more difficult than she could have imagined and she seemed to have been in this place for years. But it would be all right. Grant Rivers would make it all right.

  *

  It was taking too long. Kate was exhausted, the light was dreadful and he had no instruments. He knew full well that if there were complications, he did not have the knowledge to deal with them.

  As dawn light filtered through the cobwebbed windows, Grant took a gulp of the neat whisky, scrubbed his hands over his face and faced down the fear. She was not going to die, nor was the baby. This time, at this crisis, he could save both mother and child. There was no decision to be made about it, no choice. He had only to hold his nerve, use his brain, and he would cheat death. This time. He stretched, went out to check on the horse, then saw the tree growing at the back of the bothy and smiled.

  ‘Talk to me, Kate. Where do you come from, why are you here, alone on Christmas morning?’

  ‘Not alone.’ She opened her eyes. ‘You’re here, too. Is it really Christmas?’

  ‘Yes. The season’s greetings to you.’ He showed her the little bunch of berried holly he had plucked from the stunted tree and was rewarded with a smile. Hell, but she looks dreadful. Her face was white and lined with strain, her hair was lank and tangled, her eyes bloodshot. She was too thin and had been for some time, he suspected, but she was a fighter.

  ‘How old are you?’

  ‘Twenty-three.’

  ‘Talk to me,’ he repeated. ‘Where are you from? I live just over the Border in Northumberland.’

  ‘I’m from—’ She grimaced and clutched at his bruised hand. ‘Suffolk. My brother is
a…a country squire. My mother died when he was born, my father was killed in a hunting accident a few years ago. He was a real countryman and didn’t care for London. Henry’s different, but he’s not important or rich or well connected, although he wishes he was. He wanted me to marry well.’

  A gentlewoman, then, as he had thought. ‘You’re of age.’ Grant wiped her face with a damp cloth and gave her some more of the warm watered brandy to sip. It should be hot sweet tea, but this was all he had.

  She was silent and he guessed she was deciding how much to tell him, how much she trusted him. ‘He controls all my money until I marry with his blessing. I fell in love and I was reckless. Naive. I suppose I had a very quiet, sheltered country life until I met Jonathan.’ She gave a twisted shrug. ‘Jonathan’s…dead. Henry said that until I had the baby I must stay at the lodge near Edinburgh that he inherited from an uncle, and then he would… He said he would find a good home. But I don’t trust him. He’ll leave my child at a workhouse or give her to some family who won’t love her…’ Her voice trailed away. ‘I don’t trust him.’

  It wasn’t the entire story. Kate, he was certain, was editing it as she went along. He couldn’t blame her. This probably happened all the time, well-bred young women finding themselves in a difficult situation and the family stepping in to deal with the embarrassment, hoping they could find her an unsuspecting husband to take her off their hands later. It was a pity in this case, because Kate, with her fierce determination, would make a good mother, he was sure of that.

  He settled back against the wall, her hand in his so he would know when another contraction came, even if he drifted off. He was tired enough to sleep without even the usual nightmares waking him, but Kate’s fierce grip would rouse him. How much time was this going to add to his journey? Charlie knew he was coming and he was a sensible boy for his age, but he’d been through too much and he needed his father. He needs a mother, too.

  There was nothing he could do to hasten things now. He shifted, trying to find a smooth place on the craggy wall, and prodded at the other weight on his conscience, the one he could do nothing about now. Grant had disappointed his grandfather. Not in himself, but in his reluctance to remarry. Over and over again as he grew frailer the old man had repeated his desire to see Grant married. The boy’s a fine lad, he’d say. But he needs brothers, he needs a mother… You need a wife.

  Time and time again Grant had repeated the same weary excuses. He needed more time, he had to find the right woman, to get it right this time. He just needed time. To do what? Somehow learn to read the character of the pretty young things paraded on the marriage mart? Discover insights he hadn’t possessed before, so he didn’t make another disastrous mistake? His own happiness didn’t matter, not any more, but he couldn’t risk Charlie. I promise, he had said the last time he parted from his grandfather. I promise I will find someone. And he had left for the Continent, yet again.

  He neither needed nor wanted a wife, not for himself, but Abbeywell needed a chatelaine and Charlie needed a woman’s care.

  ‘What will you do when the baby is born?’ he asked, focusing on the exhausted woman beside him.

  ‘Do next? I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I can’t think beyond this. There is no one. But I’ll manage…somehow.’

  She’s not a conventional beauty, but she’s got courage, she’s maternal. Time seemed to have collapsed, the past and the present ran together. Two women in childbed, one infant he could not help, one perhaps he would save. But even if he did, nothing would prevent this child being born illegitimate, with all the penalties that imposed.

  The germ of an idea stirred. Kate needed shelter, security for her child. Would she make a good governess for Charlie? He pursued the idea around. Charlie had a tutor, he did not need someone with the ability or knowledge to teach him academic studies. But he did need the softer things. Grant remembered his own mother, who had died, along with his father, of a summer fever when he had not been much older than his own son was now. She had instilled ideas about kindliness and beauty, she had been there with a swift hug and a kiss when male discipline and bracing advice was just that bit too harsh.

  A mother’s touch, a mother’s instinct. Kate was not a mother yet, but he sensed that nurturing disposition in her. Charlie didn’t need a governess, he needed a mother. Logic said…marry her.

  What was he thinking? I’m too tired to think straight, my brain’s still scrambled.

  In the stable the gelding snorted, gave a piercing whinny. Grant got to his feet, went to the outer door and peered through the faint mist the drizzle had left behind it. A couple of men, agricultural workers by the looks of them, were plodding along the track beside a donkey cart. He went back inside and Kate looked up at him. Her smile was faint, but it was there. Brave girl. Are you wishing for the impossible? Because I think it is walking towards us now.

  ‘We’re still in Scotland,’ he said, realising that his mad idea was possible to achieve. Am I insane? Or are those strangers out there, appearing right on the heels of that wild thought, some kind of sign? ‘There are two men, farmers, coming along the track.’ Witnesses. ‘Kate—marry me.’

  *

  ‘Marry you?’

  It was hard to concentrate on anything except what was happening to her, anything beyond the life inside that was struggling to be free. Kate dragged her mind back from its desperate focus on breathing, on the baby, on keeping them both alive. She remembered the mix of truth and lies she had told him and stared at Grant.

  In the gloom of early-morning light he did not appear to have lost his mind, despite the blow to the head. He still looked as much like a respectable, handsome English gentleman as might be expected after a sleepless night in a hovel tending to a woman in childbed.

  ‘I am not married, I am not promised to another. I can support a wife, I can support the baby. And if you marry me before the child is born, then it will be legitimate.’ His voice was urgent, his expression in the morning light intent. He smiled, as though to reassure her, but the warmth did not reach his eyes.

  ‘Legitimate.’ Legitimate. Her child would have a name, a future, respectability. They would both be safe and Grant could protect her from the results of Henry’s scheming. Probably. Kate rode out another contraction, tried to think beyond the moment, recall why she couldn’t simply solve this problem by marrying a complete stranger. He could certainly hide her, even if unwittingly. She would have a new name, a new home, and that was all that mattered for the baby.

  She was so very tired now, nothing else except her child seemed important. Grant was a doctor living in the wilds of Northumberland, hundreds of miles from London. That should be safe enough. But why would he? Why would he want her and her baby, another man’s child? Legitimate. We would be hidden. The tempting words swirled through her tired brain, caution fighting desperation and instinct. ‘But there’s no time.’

  ‘This is Scotland,’ Grant said. ‘All we have to do is to declare ourselves married before witnesses—and two are heading this way. Say yes, Kate, and I’ll fetch them and it will be done.’

  ‘Yes.’ He was gone before she could call the words back. She heard his voice raised to hail someone. Yes, I will do it. Another miracle to go with my good angel of a doctor. A Christmas miracle. He never need find out the truth, so it can’t hurt him. What is the term? An accessory after the fact. But if he doesn’t know…

  ‘Aye, we’ll help you and gladly, at that. I’m Tam Johnson of the Red House up yonder and this is my eldest son, Willie.’ The accent was broad Border Scots. ‘You’re lucky to catch us. We’re only going this way to do a favour for a neighbour.’

  There was the sound of shuffling feet outside and Grant ducked back in. ‘May they come through now?’ Kate nodded and he stood aside for two short, burly, black-haired men to enter.

  They seemed to fill the space and brought with them the smell of wet sheep and heather and peat smoke. ‘Good morning to you, mistress.’ The elder stood there, stolid
and placid. Perhaps he attended marriages in tumbledown cottages every day of the week. Beside him the younger one twisted his cap in his hands, less at ease than the man who was obviously his father.

  ‘Good day,’ she managed, beyond embarrassment or social awkwardness now.

  Grant produced a notebook, presumably from his capacious saddlebags. She wondered vaguely if he had a packhorse out there. ‘I assume we need a written record that you can sign?’

  ‘Aye, that’ll be best. You’ll be English, then? All you both need to do is declare yourselves married. To each other, that is.’ The older Mr Johnson gave a snort of amusement at his own wit.

  ‘Right.’ Grant crossed the small distance and knelt beside her, took her hand in his. ‘I, Grantham Phillip Hale Rivers, declare before these witnesses that I take you, Catherine—’

  ‘Jane Penelope Harding,’ she whispered. He was only a doctor. They did not put announcements of their marriages in London newspapers.

  ‘Catherine Jane Penelope Harding, as my wife.’

  Another contraction was coming. She gritted her teeth and managed, ‘Before these witnesses, I, Catherine Jane Penelope Harding, declare that I take you, Grantham Phillip…Hale Rivers, to be my husband.’

  ‘We’ll write the record outside, I think.’

  She was vaguely conscious of Grant standing, moving the Johnsons out of the room, then her awareness shrank to the pain and the effort. Something was happening, something different…

  Where was Grant? She listened and heard him, still in the stable.

  ‘Thank you, gentlemen.’ There was the chink of coins. ‘I hope you’ll drink to our health. You’ll bring the donkey cart back down here after noon?’

  ‘Aye, we will, no trouble at all.’ That was the older man, Tam Johnson. ‘You’ll not find it far to Jedburgh now the rain’s stopped. You’ll be there by nightfall. Thank you kindly, sir, and blessings on your wife and bairn.’