His Christmas Countess

‘Why did you marry me, if you will not allow me to help you?’ Kate sat down opposite him, her eyes on the long-fingered, bruised hands lying lax on the litter of papers. They flexed, then were still. Beautiful hands, capable and clever. She had put those discoloured patches on the left one. She had a sudden vision of them on her skin, gently caressing. Not a doctor’s hands any longer, but a lover’s, a husband’s. Could he see her blush? She hated the way she coloured up so easily, was always consumed with envy for those porcelain-fair damsels who could hide their emotions with ease.

‘You felt sorry for me, I can see that. It was a very generous act of mercy, for me and my child,’ she went on, thinking aloud when he did not answer. ‘And, for some reason, your grandfather was anxious to see you married again and you would do anything to make him happy.’ Still silence. Perhaps he had fallen asleep. ‘But I cannot sit upstairs in my suite for the rest of my days.’

‘Not for ever, no. But for now you are still a new mother. You also require rest. Is there anything you need?’ he asked.

At least he was not sleeping where he sat. Kate did not wish to bother him with trivial matters, but he was talking to her, maybe she could distract him enough to consider sleep... ‘I have no clothes.’ His expressive fingers moved, curled across a virgin sheet of paper. ‘Other than two gowns in a sad state and a few changes of linen,’ she added repressively. ‘I need mourning.’

‘It can wait.’ The words dropped like small stones into the silence, not expecting an answer.

At least he was not sleeping where he sat. If she could rouse him enough, she might persuade him to get up and go to his bed. ‘Not for much longer. I cannot appear like this, even if it is only in front of the servants.’

He focused on her problem with a visible effort. ‘The turnpike is clear. Tomorrow, if the snow holds off, Wilson can go into Hexham and purchase enough to tide you over until you are strong enough for a trip into Newcastle.’

‘Thank you.’ Kate folded her own hands in her lap and settled back in the chair. If he thought he could send her back to her room with that, he was mistaken. The silence dragged on, filled with the child’s breathing, the soft collapse of a log into ash, her own pulse.

‘Are you going to sit there for the rest of the afternoon and evening?’ Grant enquired evenly when another log fell into the heart of the fire.

‘Yes, if you will not go and rest.’ She kept her tone as reasonable as his. ‘You will be no good to Charlie if you make yourself ill with exhaustion.’

‘So wise a parent after so few days?’ There was an edge there now.

‘One needs no expertise, only to be a human being, to know that the boy will need your attention, your presence, while he grieves. You are in no fit state for anything now, after so many days without proper rest. And you cannot deal with your own grief by drugging yourself with tiredness.’

‘How very astringent you are, my dear.’ Grant moved suddenly, sat up in his chair and gathered together the papers in front of him. ‘No soft feminine wiles to lure me upstairs, no soft words, only common-sense advice?’

‘If you wanted the sort of wife who deals with a crisis by feminine fluttering, who feels it necessary to coax and wheedle, then you have married the wrong woman, my lord.’ She kept her voice low, conscious of Charlie so close. But she could not rein in the anger entirely and she knew it showed. ‘I do not know what your first wife was like, although I am sure she was raised to be a far more satisfactory countess than I will be, I am afraid. But I will try to enact little scenes of wifely devotion for you from time to time, as you obviously seem to expect them.’ His first wife was a disaster, Dr Meldreth said. I will be one, too, although a very different kind of disaster.

‘Demonstrations of wifely devotion would certainly be a novelty. However, if you can refrain from enacting scenes of any kind, I would be most grateful.’ Grant pushed back his chair, went to lift Charlie in his arms and murmured, ‘If I could trouble you for the door?’

I must make allowances for his exhaustion, for his bereavement, Kate told herself as she followed the tall figure through the hallway and up the stairs. Giles the footman was lurking in the shadows and she beckoned him over. ‘His lordship is going to rest. Please let the rest of the household know that he is not to be disturbed until he rings. It may well be that this disrupts mealtimes, so please pass my apologies to Cook if that is the case. Perhaps she can be ready to provide something light but sustaining at short notice?’

The footman’s gaze flickered to Grant’s unresponsive back. Kate waited, eyebrows raised as though she found it hard to understand his hesitation. She had never had to deal with superior domestic staff of this calibre and she suspected he knew it. The way she looked wouldn’t help. But, like it or not, it seemed she was mistress of this household now and she must exert some authority or she would never regain it.

‘My lady.’

‘Thank you, Giles.’ She nodded as though never doubting his obedience for a moment and climbed the stairs. By the time she reached the landing Grant had turned off down a side passage. She followed him to the doorway of what must be the boy’s bedchamber. A tall, fair-haired young man came out of an inner doorway and turned down the covers. Between them they got the child out of most of his clothes and into bed, exchanged a few words, and then Grant came out.

‘That’s his tutor, Gough. He’ll sleep in the side chamber in case Charlie wakes.’ Grant kept going into his own rooms. Without conscious thought Kate followed him. ‘I do not require tucking up in bed, Kate.’

‘I do not know what you require, my lord.’ She turned abruptly, in a way that should have sent her skirts whirling in a dramatic statement of just how strained her nerves felt. They flopped limply about her ankles, adding to her sense of drabness. ‘Your son has both more sense and better manners, from what I can see.’

She reached the jib door to her room, pulled it open, and a hand caught the edge of it, pushed it back closed. Grant frowned down at her. ‘What is wrong?’

‘Wrong?’ Would the man never give up and just lie down and sleep? Kate turned back, raised one hand and began to count off on her fingers. ‘Let me see. You do not tell me you had just inherited an earldom. You do not tell me you are a widower with a son. You drive yourself to the brink of collapse trying to do everything yourself. I find myself mistress of a great house, but the servants do not appear to expect me to give them orders...’ I need to hide and I find myself a member of the aristocracy.

‘You have just given birth, you should be resting.’ Grant pushed the hair out of his eyes with one hand, the other still splayed on the door. She rather suspected he was holding himself up.

‘I am quite well and I have a personal maid and an excellent nursery maid. I do not expect to talk about all those things now, but I do expect my husband to go and rest so we can discuss them sensibly in the morning.’

‘Very well.’ He turned back through the door with all the focus of a man who was very, very drunk with lack of sleep. He walked to the bed. Kate followed him and watched as he sat down and just stared at his boots as though he was not certain what they were.

‘Let me.’ Without waiting she straddled his left leg with her back to him and drew off the boot. Then switched to the other leg. ‘Now your coat.’

Grant’s mouth twitched into the first sign she had seen of a smile for days. ‘Undressing me, wife? I warn you, it is a waste of effort just now.’

Is he flirting again? Impossible. She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror, a drab creature with a lumpy figure, a blotchy complexion and a frightful gown, next to Grant’s elegant good looks. Mocking her was more likely. ‘Stand up. I am not going to clamber about on the bed.’

He stood, meekly enough, while she reached up to push the coat from his shoulders. She was slightly above average height for a woman, but he was larger than she had realised, now she was standing so close. No wonder he had lifted her so easily. She found herself a little breathless. Fortunately the coat, like the boots, was comfortable country wear and did not require a shoehorn to lever off. The fine white linen of his shirt clung to his arms, defining the musculature. He had stripped off his coat in the bothy, she recalled vaguely. Doubtless the other things she had to focus on had stopped her noticing those muscles. Ridiculously she felt the heat of a rising blush. Kate unbuttoned his waistcoat, pushed that off, then reached for his neckcloth.

Grant’s hand came up and covered her fingers as she struggled with the knot. She looked up and met his gaze, heavy-lidded, intent. ‘You have very lovely blue eyes,’ he murmured. ‘Why haven’t I noticed before?’

He was, it seemed, awake. Or part of him was, a sensual, masculine part she was not ready to consider, although something fundamentally feminine in her was certainly paying attention.

It is my imagination. He is beyond exhausted, too tired to be flirting. Certainly not flirting with me. Kate shot another glance at the mirror and resisted the urge to retort that at least there was something about her that he approved of.

‘I was quite right about you.’

‘What?’ she demanded ungrammatically as she tugged the neckcloth off with rather more force than necessary, pulling the shirt button free. The neck gaped open, revealing a vee of skin, a curl of dark hair. It looked...silky.

‘You have courage and determination.’

Kate began to fold up the length of muslin with concentration. ‘I am trying to get you to rest. What about that requires courage?’

‘You don’t know me.’ He sat down. ‘I might have a vicious temper. I might hit out at a wife who provoked me.’

‘I think I am a reasonable judge of character.’ She had wound the neckcloth into a tight knot around her own hand. Patiently, so she did not have to look at him, Kate began to unravel it. This close she could smell his skin, the herbal, astringent soap he used, the tang of ink on his hands, the faint musk that she recognised as male. But Grant smelt different, smelt of himself.

She walked to the dresser and placed the neckcloth on the top, distancing herself from the sudden, insane urge to step in close, lay her head on his chest, wrap her arms around the lean, weary body. Why? To comfort him perhaps, or because she wanted comfort herself, or perhaps a mixture of the two.

When she turned back Grant was lying down on top of the covers, still in shirt and breeches. He was deep, deep asleep. She stood looking down at him for a moment, studied the fine-drawn face relaxed into a vulnerability that took years off his age. How old was he? Not thirty-two or -three, as she had thought. Twenty-eight, perhaps. His hair flopped across his forehead, just as Charlie’s did, but she resisted the temptation to brush it back from the bruised skin. The long body did not stir when she laid a light blanket over him, nor when she drew the curtains closed slowly to muffle the rattle of the rings, nor when she made up the fire and drew the guard around it.

My husband is a disturbingly attractive man, she thought as she closed the jib door carefully behind her. Anna was crying in the dressing room, she could hear Jeannie soothing her.

‘Mama will be back soon, little one. Yes, she will, now don’t you fret.’

A husband, a stepson, a baby. Her family. She had a family when just days before all she had was a scheming brother who had always seen her as wilful and difficult and the babe inside her, loved already, but unknown.

Anna, Charlie, Grant. When her husband woke, refreshed, he would see her differently, realise he had a partner he could rely on. She owed him that, she owed Anna the opportunity to grow up happily here. The anxiety and the exhaustion had made her nervy, angry, but she must try to learn this new life, learn to fit in. As the pain of the funeral eased, she would be there for them all. Charlie would learn to like her, perhaps one day to love her. And somehow she would learn how to be a countess. She shivered. How could a countess stay out of the public eye?

When tomorrow comes, it will not seem so overwhelming, I’ll think of something. ‘Is that a hungry little girl I can hear? Mama’s coming.’

Chapter Six (#ulink_c565f709-0740-5102-975a-9aa1acec30ca)

Hunger woke Grant. One minute he had been fathoms down, the next, awake, alert, conscious of an empty stomach and silence. Gradually the soft sounds of the household began to penetrate. The subdued crackle of the fire, someone trudging past in the snow, the distant sound of light, racing feet and the heavier tread of an adult in pursuit. Charlie exercising his long-suffering tutor, no doubt. Close at hand an infant began to cry, then stopped. Anna. I have a daughter. And a wife.

There was daylight between the gap in the curtains, falling in a bright snow-reflecting bar across the blanket someone had draped over his legs. Grant pushed the hair out of his eyes, winced and sat up, too relaxed to tug the bell pull and summon food and hot water.

Now, today, he must take up the reins of the earldom. That was perhaps the least of the duties looming before him. He had known for nearly twenty years, ever since his father died, that he would inherit. His grandfather had run a tight ship, but had taught Grant, shared decisions as he grew older, explained his thinking, given him increasing responsibilities. There were no mysteries to discover about the estates, the investments or the tenants and he had inherited an excellent bailiff and solicitor along with the title.