The Inconvenient Elmswood Marriage

‘I’m not sure what you mean?’

‘I mean, where will we live and how will we survive? Our house is tied to your estate, as indeed is our income, save for a small legacy your father left in his will. Our circumstances would be severely straitened were you to appoint another estate manager. I don’t mind for my own sake, but Papa…’

‘There’s no need for that. You are currently acting as de facto estate manager. I see no reason for that situation to change. I will formalise the arrangement before I leave—you have my word. I came here with the intention of investing complete authority in your father to allow me to resume my foreign travels. Circumstances have changed, but now I shall invest my authority in you instead. You are clearly trustworthy—better still, you obviously cherish this place. I consider you a very safe pair of hands.’

Daniel smiled, looking as much relieved as pleased.

‘There, I hope that puts your mind at rest. So, let us turn our minds to what I need to do in order—’

‘I’m very sorry, but I’m afraid it won’t work.’

His smile faded. ‘You don’t want the position?’

‘I’m extremely flattered that you should offer it to me, and I can say, hand on heart, that I would do my very best to ensure that you would never have any cause to regret placing your faith in me. Believe me,’ Kate said earnestly, ‘if I thought for a moment it would work in practice I’d leap at the chance. It’s not that I can’t do the job—the accounts prove that—but the reality is I’m a female of modest background, and you would not be here to underpin my authority, or indeed be available to make important financial decisions. Though it pains me to admit it, that is a fatal combination. It would be doomed to failure.’

‘But what is the alternative? I don’t want to employ a stranger and throw you and your father out onto the street, and even though I don’t give a damn about this place, I don’t want to let it go any further down the road to rack and ruin.’

‘You could look to offload it. I’m sure you could find a willing purchaser.’

‘That would make your situation perilous.’ Daniel began to turn over the stone in his hand again, frowning down at it. ‘No, I need a caretaker I can trust implicitly. My sister in Ireland has a son. It seems to me that he is the obvious person to hand the place over to, when he comes of age. Lock stock and barrel, as they say. Of course I can’t pass on the title, but I see no reason why my nephew shouldn’t make use of that too.’

Kate’s mouth dropped. ‘You have a nephew!’

‘So I’ve been informed.’

His tone was one of insouciance, but he could not possibly be indifferent to such news. Or perhaps she’d misunderstood.

‘You didn’t know that your sister had a son? His birth is a recent event, then?’

‘I believe the boy is seven or eight, so it will be a good few years before I can hand the reins over to him.’

‘Seven or eight! Did your father know of his existence?’

‘I have no idea. There was no mention of the boy in his will.’

‘And your sister? What does she think of your plan?’

‘I don’t know. I haven’t discussed it with her,’ Daniel answered impatiently. ‘I am no more interested in her life than she is in mine, and I would be obliged to you, Miss Wilson, if you would resist asking the many questions I can see you are desperate to ask, because I have neither the time nor the inclination to discuss the matter further. I would rather my nephew did not inherit an encumbrance. You are the ideal person to ensure that he does not, and yet you’re telling me that, much as you’d like to take on the job, it’s impossible. We both want the same thing here. Surely there must be a way of making the impossible possible.’

There was, and she must speak now or for ever hold her peace, but her head was swimming with the revelations Daniel had so callously announced. But they were all grist to her mill, she reminded herself.

Her hands were clammy. She wiped them surreptitiously on her gown under the desk. She cleared her throat. ‘I do have a plan, as it happens, which will restore the fortunes of both this house and its lands, and make them a fit inheritance for your little nephew.’

Daniel set his turquoise stone down on the desk. He sat back, his hand curling around the crudely polished stone. He smiled suddenly. ‘What a very surprising young woman you are. What is this cunning plan of yours?’

His teeth were very white and even. When he smiled, his eyes lit up. It was a very infectious and unexpected smile. The kind that she suspected one would do a great deal to earn. It changed him, that smile, and it made her uncomfortably aware of him as a very attractive man.

Kate allowed herself a very prim smile in return, but now she was coming to the point her stomach was starting to churn again.

‘It’s a little radical.’ Perspiration prickled her back. ‘In fact it will take a bit of a leap of faith on both our parts.’

‘Now I am thoroughly intrigued. Take a deep breath and spit it out.’

‘Very well. What I’m proposing resolves both our dilemmas—your desire to live abroad unencumbered by responsibility, and my desire to live here with Papa while he is still with me. It would provide me with the natural authority to make whatever significant decisions need to be made without referring to you, including financial ones. It would allow me not only to maintain your lands but to improve them, and to restore the house and gardens too, while you’d have nothing to do save return to your life in darkest Africa, or wherever it is. And then when the time came, you could make the lands over to your nephew and I could—well, I don’t know what I’d do, but we can worry about that when the time comes. What do you think?’

‘To be honest, I think it sounds too good to be true. And when something sounds too good to be true, it is my experience that it usually is.’

Kate shuffled her feet under the desk. She picked up the polished stone, turning it over in her hands as Daniel had done. It was elliptical in shape, smooth and not quite flat, and had a very soothing effect. ‘Is this turquoise?’

‘Yes, it is, Miss Wilson.’

He held out his hand. Embarrassed, she surrendered it. ‘Kate. You may as well call me Kate, since—if we are to—and after all I’m already calling you Daniel.’

‘You’ve come this far without equivocating. Don’t falter now. What is your devilishly clever plan, Kate, and what is the catch? For there must be one.’

‘I suppose you might say I am.’

‘You really have lost me now.’

She took a deep breath. ‘I think we should get married.’

He looked as if he wasn’t sure whether to laugh or have her committed to a Bedlam. ‘Right! Anything else I should know?’

‘There is, as it happens,’ she said breezily. ‘In order to protect my father’s pride, I’m afraid it has to be your idea.’

Chapter One

Elmswood Manor, June 1831

With a heavy sigh, Kate pushed aside the letter she had been attempting to compose to Eloise. Her husband’s eldest niece, she had just learned, had given birth to a daughter. She had, it seemed, embraced motherhood with an enthusiasm that was staggering, considering that she had originally wed Alexander with no intentions of consummating the marriage, far less of conceiving a child. But Eloise’s marriage of convenience had turned into a true love match.

Her obvious happiness leapt off the page of the letter Kate had just received, and she was desperate to accept the invitation to her home in Lancashire to meet baby Tilda for herself. For the moment, however, that was sadly completely out of the question.

She had missed so much while she’d been away. How long would this very strange state of affairs continue?

Pushing her chair back from the desk, Kate prowled restlessly over to the window. The morning room faced out to the back of the house. The expanse of lawn had been neatly mown and trimmed, revealing a vast swathe of verdant green. Leaves covered the huge, ancient oak which Eloise had been so fond of climbing when she’d first come to live at Elmswood. On the still waters of the lake a pair of swans were gliding effortlessly.

Had it really been last October when those two distinguished gentlemen had turned up unannounced on her doorstep? ‘Colleagues of her husband’, was how they’d introduced themselves, and she’d thought they were bringing her some long overdue letters. She’d served them tea and cake, and they’d talked about the weather, and the shocking state of the roads, and there had been mention of them having met Eloise socially, she recalled, before they had revealed the real purpose of their visit by informing her that Daniel’s wellbeing was a matter of grave concern.

She’d still been wondering what connection the pair of them might have with Eloise, and why Eloise had never mentioned it, when she realised that their polite smiles had been replaced with another expression entirely.

Then the interrogation had started, with questions being flung at her one after the other in rapid succession, until finally she’d startled them by demanding that they stop bombarding her with demands for information and start providing her with answers. What they told her and what they had proposed had sent her reeling.

They’d given her no time to recover her composure before the younger of the two, Sir Marcus, had started issuing her with a series of concise instructions, including what she was permitted to say to Estelle, whom she’d had no choice but to press-gang into holding the fort. Within three hours of their arrival they had been gone, taking Kate with them, on the start of a journey that had taken her through the end of one year and well into the next.

In the end, she’d been abroad for all of winter and spring, arriving home yesterday with the beginning of summer.

Looking around her now, smelling the sweet perfume of the rose she’d picked only an hour ago, Kate had to remind herself that she really was home, for Elmswood Manor didn’t feel in the least bit familiar. The Elmswood Coven was no more.