The Inconvenient Elmswood Marriage

‘And I’m guessing they didn’t give you time to ask too many questions?’

‘No, they did not. They spent their time very effectively emotionally blackmailing me. I was left with the impression that if I did not co-operate you might well perish. They barely gave me time to pack and to offload Elmswood onto poor Estelle. It was only later that I began to think a little more rationally, and by then I was on my way to Portsmouth, under escort. The escort simply gazed at me blankly, no matter what I asked. I couldn’t understand the need for so much subterfuge and secrecy… Daniel, are you a spy?’

He gave a bark of laughter. ‘That’s a wildly romantic term for it. Not one, I’ll wager, that Sir Marcus used?’

‘No. He said that you’d got yourself into a “tricky situation” while assisting the government with some “sensitive business”. He said that they weren’t quite sure of your whereabouts, but that they planned to “extract you”—I am pretty sure those were his exact words—and they needed me to escort you home. I couldn’t make sense of it at first. Why had he used such language? Why couldn’t he simply have said that you were in gaol and they were going to get you out? But I reckon Sir Marcus would cut his tongue out rather than talk in such simple terms.’

‘Oh, believe me, he can call a spade a spade when required,’ Daniel said grimly. ‘What else did they hint at?’

‘They did say that you would be in a bad way when they brought you to me—though they did not say quite how bad.’ Kate shuddered. ‘I barely recognised you. You were so thin, and that beard you had…and your hair!’

‘To say nothing of the lice that were living in it. Did I look like some sort of cave man? I wonder if I’ll ever be able to bring myself to grow my hair again.’

‘I like it short. You have excellent bone structure.’

‘Thank you kindly, ma’am. Go on—what else?’

‘Their biggest worry was that once they had extracted you it might trigger some sort of diplomatic incident. In fact they seemed very concerned about that, and about your being recaptured too—because, they said, whatever you’d been involved in was in a very “warm” part of the world. I thought at first they meant the weather,’ Kate admitted ruefully.

‘Ha!’ Daniel shook his head. ‘Volatile is the word I’d have used, but I’m no diplomat.’

‘No, but you must have been very valuable to them for them to have risked so much to extricate you.’

Kate waited, but Daniel, unsurprisingly, had nothing to say to this.

‘So they didn’t want to lose you again, and they didn’t want anyone to know where you were,’ she continued. ‘It was important to get you home safely unnoticed, which is why they needed me. I mean, they knew you’d need nursing, and they were concerned that you might be indiscreet in your fevered state, so were reluctant to send a regular doctor. But the main point of my being there was to play Lady Elmswood, the dutiful wife, bringing home her sick explorer husband.’

‘So I was playing the Earl, was I?’ Daniel said, his lip curling. ‘I’m glad I was blissfully unaware of that.’

‘Well, it was a first for me to play the Countess, and though it wasn’t a role I thought I’d relish, any more than you, it did ease the journey considerably. I think I became rather good at it.’

Daniel laughed. ‘I can just see you, all five foot nothing of you, looking down that very nice little nose of yours and demanding service now!’

‘Well, that’s what I did,’ Kate said, willing her cheeks not to flush—because it was a very small compliment, really, and she was thirty-three, and thirty-three-year-old women did not blush. ‘I arrived in Cyprus via Paris, Marseilles, Lisbon, Naples and Athens—as I think I’ve told you, though you might have forgotten.’

‘I remember. Lady Elmswood’s lightning tour of Europe’s ports.’

‘They are also, with the exception of Marseilles, very popular with English travellers who would, if required, be able to testify that they’d seen Lady Elmswood on her European tour which was rudely interrupted by her explorer husband having been taken ill while investigating an ancient site on Cyprus. Personally, I thought it a quite unnecessary embellishment.’

‘That would have been Sir Marcus’s idea—he loves that sort of subterfuge.’

‘If I hadn’t been so wrought with worry I’d have enjoyed it. When I set sail from Portsmouth, though, I had no idea I’d be away for so long. I thought they would extricate you immediately, but when I arrived in Cyprus in February it was another two weeks before they finally brought you to me. Why did it take so long?’

Daniel shifted uncomfortably on the bench, refusing to meet Kate’s steady gaze. ‘I imagine they were obliged to bring me out by a circuitous route. But it doesn’t matter how I made it out. I made it. And you were waiting. And now I’m here. And I’m to remain here until I accept the error of my ways in disobeying protocol, and until the fuss over my last assignment has died down, and they’ve decided I’m fit enough to be put to use again.’

Or at least that was what he bloody well hoped. Sir Marcus had, dismayingly, been vague on the subject, committing only to a review. But he’d persuade them when the time came—he knew he would. He was good, one of the best they had, and they knew it.

‘I think,’ Daniel said, ‘we should concentrate on the present and not worry too much about the future. I have no choice but to remain here for now. Sir Marcus, being extremely attached to the cover story he has concocted, insists that I cannot recuperate elsewhere. Though who he imagines will be checking up on me—But there’s no point in going over that. I am obliged to stay here, so we’re going to have to find a way of brushing along together for the next three months without murdering each other.’

Kate smiled uncertainly. ‘I’m sure it won’t come to that. Despite what you think, I’m a very easy-going type.’

‘Are you? I’m not. I’m used to living on my own, on having everything my way and, more importantly, not allowing anyone else a say.’

‘Good grief—and you call me a despot!’

Daniel grinned. ‘I prefer to think of myself as self-sufficient.’

‘I prefer to think of myself as practical and pragmatic.’

‘Now, that I know to be true, for I’ve seen you in action. You managed to keep me fed and watered and washed on ships where I’m pretty sure the crew were living off ship’s biscuit and had not seen a change of clothes, let alone a change of bedsheet, in weeks.’