Contracted as His Countess Read online

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  ‘I thought it was strange to light a fire at this time of year.’ Richard stretched out a hand to the blaze on the hearth of the central fireplace in the Great Hall. ‘But this place seems to drink up the heat.’

  The staff had set up a smaller table in front of the fireplace, one that two people could dine at in comfort.

  ‘Dinner should be ready in a few minutes. Surely now you can tell me what you have found.’ Madelyn joined him beside the hearth, although, unless this was very good news indeed, she would need more than the blazing logs to warm her.

  ‘Your father bought an estate called Abberley, twenty miles to the east of here towards London. It has been terribly neglected, but it appears to have good farmland and what could be a very desirable house if it is restored. Mr Aylmer appears to have purchased it as an investment by means of mortgages—it is not linked to this estate in any way. Then he took out loans to carry out the work on it.’

  ‘And it was those I ordered to be paid off? I can sell it?’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  He had no chance to finish. Madelyn threw her arms around his neck with a gasp of delight. ‘Oh, Richard!’

  ‘Put my wife down.’

  Richard dropped her and they both staggered, clutching at each other for balance.

  The great double doors stood open and Jack was walking towards them, barefooted, dressed only in shirt and breeches, soaking wet with his hair slicked close to his head. He dragged the back of his hand across his eyes and flicked the water away with an impatient gesture.

  ‘Jack? How did you get in?’ It was the wrong thing to say, but his appearance had all the shock of a magic trick.

  ‘I swam the moat at the north-eastern corner. There is an opening about six feet up. I climbed to that. It should have a grille over it.’

  ‘It did, but it got blocked and Father had it removed while it was cleared out. Jack, that is a drain.’

  ‘I noticed.’

  ‘A small drain.’ There was blood on the shoulders of his shirt, she saw now he was closer. Blood and mud all down the front of him.

  ‘I wriggled.’

  ‘You are hurt,’ Madelyn started forward, but Richard caught her arm.

  ‘Not until I know he is not going to be violent.’

  ‘I would not lay a finger on Madelyn. You, on the other hand—’ Jack was very close now. Close, large, menacing—and then he turned from Richard and was looking at her as though...

  As though he loves me?

  She hardly dare hope. ‘Richard, ring for Carlton, we are going to need hot water for a bath and dressings for those scrapes. Jack, come nearer the fire or you’ll catch pneumonia.’

  Jack did not move, did not look at the other man. ‘Turner, leave that bell. Go. Now.’

  ‘Yes, please, Richard. It is all right.’ She held her breath, it seemed, until the door closed behind him, the sound echoing around the space. ‘Jack, I can explain.’

  ‘No. No, I do not want you to explain and it would make no difference.’

  She had been wrong. That had not been love in his eyes, not if he did not even want to hear her justification. ‘I see.’ Madelyn sat down on the nearest bench and felt the hope drain out of her as though it was blood from a severed vein.

  She sensed Jack moving, but she did not raise her head when she saw his bare feet right in front of her, water pooling on the flagstones.

  ‘Madelyn, look at me.’

  I must tell him how I feel. It doesn’t matter if he spurns me or thinks it is only an excuse.

  ‘Jack, I meant it when I said I love you.’

  ‘I love you,’ he said at the same moment. Then ‘Did you mean it? Madelyn.’ He was on his knees and she was held against him, the wet soaking through her gown, the thud of his heart against her breast. ‘I have been such a fool. I should have told you.’

  ‘I should have, too, but I was afraid,’ she confessed, wriggling so she could look into his face. ‘I couldn’t believe you could really love me for myself and I thought, if I told you how I felt, you would assume I was trying to deflect your anger over the money. And that is what you did think. I was sure that you only cared because of what I brought you in my dowry.’

  ‘And I thought I was simply a duty for you, a potential father for your children.’

  ‘It was good when we...when we made love,’ she murmured, rubbing her warm cheek against his cold one.

  ‘Perhaps we should have listened to what our bodies were telling us,’ Jack said, his arms tightening around her. ‘Why did you leave me? Were you frightened of me?’

  ‘I realised that something was wrong, that I had been naive in trusting Lansing so entirely, even if it was only to tell me the truth about matters, and I thought he was hiding something. I knew he would not let you or your people look at the Castle Beaupierre books. But he could not refuse me.

  ‘I needed an expert of my own, one I could trust, and I remembered Richard telling me about his work with the East India Company. He enjoys tracking down fraud and malpractice, errors and false accounting. I thought that if he could establish the facts then I could show you that my intentions had been good and then I could tell you that I loved you. Besides,’ she added ruefully, ‘I did not think you were in any mood to listen to me stumbling through half-formed hunches and wanting to involve a man you already had suspicions about.’

  ‘You are probably right,’ he admitted.

  ‘Jack, you are shivering. Sit by the fire.’

  He stood and allowed himself to be pressed down to sit on the fender, but he was tense now under her hands. ‘Tell me what was going on when I came in.’

  ‘Richard had found something out. I am not certain what, exactly, because you came in as he was explaining, but enough to prove that Lansing was doing something illegal and that there is money after all.’ Madelyn stood up, still only half-believing that this was real, that Jack loved and trusted her. ‘I am going to ring for a hot bath for you. Between my father’s old wardrobe and what Richard brought with him, we ought to be able to find you dry clothes.’

  She tugged the bell pull and the doors opened so quickly that she suspected Carlton had been poised ready.

  ‘Hot water is being taken up to your rooms, my lady. Cook has put dinner back.’

  It was hard to let go of him. ‘I will come up, too, my gown is soaked through. And besides, those scrapes must be cleaned and dressed.’

  ‘Very wifely,’ Jack murmured as he took her hand.

  There was amusement there and deep affection as well as a low vibration of something physical and exciting that resonated down to her toes by way of parts of her that responded eagerly.

  * * *

  Two of the maids were setting out towels and Madelyn sent one of them for salves and bandages, then firmly closed the door on the pair of them.

  Jack was prowling around the large tub. ‘That is enormous. What is it? A tun cut down?’ Water was steaming from the surface and white sheets hung over the edges to protect the bather.

  ‘Yes, cut just below the mid-point to make it easier to get in. There is a stool here and another inside.’

  Jack shrugged out of his shirt, wincing as it slid over his abraded shoulders, peeled off the sodden breeches, then climbed into the tub, hissing as the hot water sluiced over his chilled body.

  Madelyn picked up another stool, leaned in and dropped it in beside him before she stripped off her gown and joined him. ‘You see, the Middle Ages have some benefits.’ She took a sponge. ‘Turn around so I can clean your back.’

  This was Jack, literally stripped to his essence under her hands, his head bent, exposing the vulnerable nape of his neck. She steadied herself with one hand on his upper right arm, felt the muscle flex as though in welcome to her touch and closed her fingers more tightly.

  I am here. I
am yours.

  The scrapes were nasty, but his shirt had given some protection and only one deeper gouge marked where a piece of metal or rough rock had caught him. She tried to imagine crawling through that tight, stinking tunnel, not knowing if there was a way out at the other end or whether it would be necessary to fight his way back, perhaps trapped like a fish in a net.

  When there was no more mud or grit left she rested her forehead against the bump of vertebrae at the base of his neck and wrapped her arms around his body. ‘I do love you.’

  ‘Even after I made such a mess of apologising to you for my reaction?’ he asked. ‘I was trying to tell you that I would trust you whatever the evidence said, but I am not used to apologising or to expressing emotion. Not emotions as important as that.’

  ‘I thought you were simply making the best of things because you had married me and were tied to me. I feared that if I told you that I loved you then you would assume I was trying to deflect your anger.’ Against her cheek his skin was smooth, warm now. Madelyn licked a long, slow stroke of her tongue over it, savouring the taste of him and her own happiness.

  Jack sat up straight, twisted on the stool and caught her against him. ‘I approve of this bath. We will have them in all our homes so I can do this... And this and...’

  Movement in the tub, even such a large one, was slow and deliberate and Jack did not seem to be in the mood to be rushed. He kissed and caressed and lifted her and Madelyn settled with a sigh, the length of him sliding home with a delicious deliberation.

  ‘Careful,’ he murmured as she gasped and clung to him. ‘Gently or there will be tidal waves.’

  ‘I don’t care,’ Madelyn managed to say before he took her mouth and urged her up to sink and rise, clasped around him, holding her still as she rose so he could lavish kisses on her breasts, keeping her tight as she sank down on him.

  ‘I love you, my lady of the castle,’ Jack said against her neck. ‘Show me what you want, how you feel.’

  * * *

  ‘The water is becoming cold,’ Madelyn said after what might have been an hour or perhaps just ten tumultuous minutes. ‘And the floor is a small lake.’

  Jack chuckled and lifted her out of the tub on to the footstool. ‘Wade to high ground, my love.’

  They dried themselves and each other, breaking off to smile and to touch as though each was a newly discovered treasure, Madelyn thought.

  * * *

  When they made their way downstairs at last they found Richard reading in a chair before the fire, a carafe of wine at his elbow.

  ‘Is dinner quite ruined? I am so sorry,’ Madelyn said, trying not to blush.

  ‘Your admirable cook sent up a few minutes ago to say that all is under control and dinner will be served as soon as you ring. The soup course, apparently, will allow time for everything else to be presented in good order.’

  Madelyn rang and they took their places at the table. ‘Finish the story of what Mr Lansing has been doing,’ she said. ‘Then we can forget about him.’

  ‘Madelyn’s father bought an estate called Abberley, an expensive purchase intended for restoration and a profitable resale,’ Richard told Jack. ‘When he died I suppose Lansing was going to hand over the papers along with the Dersington estate documents, but then Madelyn told him to pay off all the debts and loans. He must have suddenly realised that, with Aylmer dead, no one else knew anything about that land. Instead of explaining to her about the plans for Abberley he cleared everything on that property using all the liquid assets and kept quiet, protected from your agents’ scrutiny by the trust on the Beaupierre lands. He was in the process of creating a duplicate set of ledgers for the period with no references to Abberley at all—and that property had its deeds altered to make him the owner. Between the two separate estates he must have thought that no one would realise where the money had been used.’

  ‘And I suppose he had made the purchase as Aylmer’s agent so his name was on many of the records of sale and very little forgery was needed,’ Jack said. ‘Madelyn, we will have to involve your trustees in this now. There will be a full audit—goodness knows how much he has defrauded the estate out of over the years.’

  They waited while the soup was served and the footmen had left them alone again.

  ‘We will have to send for the magistrate in the morning,’ she said with a sigh. ‘What a horrible mess. It will cause talk, but we cannot let him loose to prey on someone else. But the Abberley estate is mine to do with as I wish and we can raise a new mortgage on it, restore it and sell it on, just as my father intended.’

  ‘Unless Mr Aylmer was very much mistaken you will get a very good return, enough to restore your finances to a healthy state.’

  The soup was followed by a fricassee of chicken with peas and a raised pie and the three of them, by unspoken consent, turned the conversation from finance to Richard’s tales of India.

  When the footmen brought in fruit and dishes of almond custard he excused himself. ‘I am for my bed—my head is spinning with figures. I’ll make sure Mr Lansing is secure and has been fed—you’ll not want to be troubled with him tonight.’

  ‘I like Turner,’ Jack said when they were alone. ‘But I am glad you did not marry him.’

  ‘So am I. Whatever it was between us is no longer there. I felt it at the masquerade. Liking, yes. Love, no. That faded away over time.’

  ‘Ours will not,’ Jack said. He stood up, took a tray from the sideboard and loaded it with grapes and two glasses of sweet wine. ‘Shall we have our dessert in your garden under the stars? It should be warm enough in the shelter of the walls.’

  The enclosed space had caught and held the heat of the day and the night-scented tobacco plants and the lilies were flooding the garden with their perfume. Jack set the tray down on one of the turf seats by the fountain and glanced around, up at the unlit windows in the high walls. ‘Are we overlooked?’

  ‘No. Those two wings are unoccupied, that side has no windows and our own chambers are over the Great Hall. If they are dark, then the staff must have tidied them and left. Why?’

  ‘I have a strong desire to see you naked in the starlight and to make love to you on this seat here.’

  ‘The one you fell asleep on that first day we met? The day I summoned my knight in shining armour and he came to rescue me from my imprisonment?’ The gown was easy to unfasten and it slipped from her shoulders, caught at the tight wrists then fell to the ground, a dark pool on the pale stone of the path around the fountain. Under it she was quite naked.

  ‘The day you stole my heart and enchanted me, although I did not realise it then.’ Jack dragged his shirt over his head and tossed it onto a lavender bush. ‘I was too blinded by pride and anger to see the treasure I had been offered.’ He held her gaze as he stripped, an antique statue in the garden, a creature of shadows and strong, beautiful lines.

  ‘All the bad things that happened—my father’s refusal to let me marry Richard, his obsession with this castle above his feelings for family, your father’s behaviour and the loss of your lands—all of them have come together to give us this, our happiness.’

  ‘I was not a believer in destiny before, my love, my wise lady of the white towers, but you have made me one.’

  Madelyn laid down on the cool turf and held out her arms to him, her lover, her husband, and he came down over her, sheltering her with his body and bent to take her lips.

  * * *

  A while later he raised himself on one elbow and looked up as an owl hooted, drifting above them, then down to see a dark moth settle on the white-blonde spill of Madelyn’s hair.

  ‘I did not believe in magic either, but you have spun it here. I was afraid of love, afraid of its power to wound, but you have given me the courage to love.’

  ‘We have both found that,’ she whispered, pulling him down to lie against her breast once more. ‘It was our
destiny.’

  * * *

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  Miss Amelia’s Mistletoe Marquess

  by Jenni Fletcher

  Chapter One

  December 1842

  Forty-five minutes!

  Millie Fairclough stared at the enamelled bronze carriage clock above the fireplace in astonishment.She would never have imagined such a feat of verbosity were possible, but apparently it was. Lady Fentree and her five middle-aged companions really had been talking about bonnets for forty-five minutes. Not to mention fifteen before that on hemlines and almost a full hour on sleeves!

  ‘Personally...’ Lady Fentree intoned with the air of a woman about to make some momentous pronouncement ‘...I favour a wide peak. Poke bonnets are far too restrictive. I tried on one of Vanessa’s the other day and I could barely turn my head!’