The Inconvenient Elmswood Marriage

For the first time since her husband’s nieces had arrived, more than nine years ago, she was alone, all her beloved wards gone, embracing their own lives without any further need of her.

Eloise had a husband and now a child. Phoebe had not only opened a restaurant in London while Kate had been away, but also married a man Kate had never heard of, never mind met. A man she would not meet for the foreseeable future, and a restaurant she wouldn’t be able to visit, no matter how much she longed to.

For this next, wholly unexpected and hopefully brief stage of her life she would be without the company of any of her husband’s nieces, for even dear Estelle, who had stepped into the breach and held the fort at Elmswood for nine long months, had been obliged to leave.

Not that she’d objected, thank goodness. Quite the contrary, in fact. She’d embraced her freedom and the chance to embark on a long-planned Continental trip, loyally refraining from asking awkward questions or from making what in Kate’s opinion would have been perfectly reasonable demands under the circumstances.

And what circumstances!

Kate sank onto one of the chairs, leaning her head back and closing her eyes. Had the last nine months really happened? She had told the girls only the bare bones. Not the story that Sir Marcus had constructed for public consumption but the truth—or a fraction of it. What they truly made of it she couldn’t begin to imagine, but they were fiercely loyal, and she knew that if they talked it would only be amongst themselves.

Now it was over, and it felt like a dream—or should that be nightmare?

However she chose to describe it, it wasn’t over yet. Upstairs, in one of the guest bedrooms, was a very real, lurking reminder of that fact—a simmering volcano which could erupt at any time.

Daniel, her husband of eleven years. The girls’ nearest living relative. A man Kate barely knew and whom his nieces had never met.

The sound of the handle of the morning room door being turned made Kate’s eyes fly open. She was on her feet when the man in question appeared, larger than life and, if not actually bursting with health, very far from death’s door and most certainly not a figment of her imagination.

‘So this is where you hide yourself away.’

‘Daniel!’

Instinctively, Kate rushed to help him, but the fierce frown she received made her sit straight back down again. He was dressed oddly, in a somewhat exotic-looking tunic and loose pantaloons, over which he had donned a rather magnificent crimson silk dressing gown emblazoned with gold dragons and tied with a gold cord. A matching pair of slippers covered his bare feet.

‘Chinese,’ he enlightened her, noting her stare. ‘It seems the powers that be managed to get my luggage back to England ahead of me. Considerate of them, don’t you think? That they moved heaven and earth to make sure my effects were delivered? A small consolation for you, dear wife, in the event that you’d been forced to return here alone.’

‘Don’t say that!’

To her horror, tears welled up in her eyes. Kate blinked them away. There had been more than enough opportunities in the last nine months to shed tears, but she’d rarely taken them.

‘Well, at least you’ll have something to wear, then,’ she said, forcing a smile. ‘I don’t know how long it would take to send to London for a new wardrobe of clothes, and you’d struggle to find anything more sartorial than a fleece shirt and brogues in the village. There’s your father’s clothes, of course, they are packed up in the attic, but—’

‘I would rather dress as a farmhand,’ he snapped.

There were so many questions raised by that one sentence—questions she’d asked herself over the years since they had married—but now was hardly the time. Perhaps there would never be a time.

The last time he’d been home, eleven years ago, Daniel had remained at Elmswood barely long enough for her to promise to love, honour and obey him. They’d married by special licence, because technically, he’d been was in mourning, though she had known he hadn’t been able to bear the thought of waiting another six weeks for the banns to be read.

This time she hadn’t exactly dragged him back to England kicking and screaming, but if he’d been strong enough to do more than protest weakly then she doubted he’d be here—despite the orders he’d received.

How long would he remain? Lord, look at him—he was hardly in a state to go anywhere. The florid dressing gown was far too large for him. He had, she suspected, put it on in an attempt to disguise his loss of weight, not realising that it merely drew attention to the fact. He had shaved too. She wasn’t surprised. As she had tended to him on their protracted journey from Cyprus to Crete, then on to Malta and Gibraltar, Lisbon, Portsmouth and finally home, one of his biggest bugbears, in the intervals when he had been lucid enough to have bugbears, had been his unkempt beard.

He had not permitted Kate to wield his razor for him, and she had not allowed him to try to use it himself, having visions of him accidentally slitting his own throat, so she had been forced to beg the services of a weird and wonderful assortment of stand-in barbers on his behalf.

‘What? Have I nicked myself?’ he asked her now.

She realised she’d been staring and shook her head.

‘Then you’re thinking that I look like death warmed up.’

‘I’m thinking that you look remarkably well, all things considered.’

Which was true, and if anything an understatement. He looked gaunt, and there were shadows under his eyes, new lines on his brow, but somehow they suited him. It was unfair, for the lines she’d acquired in the last few months simply aged her, while with Daniel the changes served to accentuate the fact that he was a lethally attractive man. Dammit!

‘I didn’t expect to see you up and about so soon,’ Kate said, her tone made acerbic not by his presence but by her reaction to it.

‘You can’t keep me secreted away in my bedchamber, no matter how much you’d like to.’

As he closed the door behind him and made his way carefully over to the chair opposite hers by the empty grate Kate remembered that behind the attractive façade there was an extremely infuriating man, and gritted her teeth.

‘I don’t know why you are so convinced that I want to imprison you here.’

‘Not you—them.’ He showed his teeth. ‘The irony is not lost on me that I’ve been sprung from one gaol only to be forced into another. I will concede that you are a reluctant warder, but you are charged with keeping me here nonetheless.’

‘I trust you won’t put me to the test. Having travelled halfway across the world to bring you home, I’d rather not chase you halfway across Shropshire to drag you back.’

‘Would you really do that?’ He grinned. ‘I’d rather like to see you try.’

‘I won’t have to,’ Kate replied tartly. ‘Go on—why don’t you leave right now? Walk down to the village…hire a post chaise.’

‘I have no need to do any such thing. I have horses and a post chaise of my own.’

‘Actually, you don’t. There’s a carriage, but it’s not been used in heaven knows how long, and aside from my mount, and the pony who pulls the trap, and the farm horses, the stables are empty. So you’ll just have to walk. Please, don’t let me stop you.’ She smiled sweetly at him.

For a moment she thought he might actually call her bluff, but then he gave an exasperated sigh.

‘You know as well as I do that I’m under orders to remain here. Hopefully it won’t be for long, for the terms of our marriage did not anticipate any form of cohabitation. I’m sure you don’t want me here, getting under your feet and treading on your toes, and I assure you that I have no intention of doing so. This is your domain, not mine.’

‘This is your home, Daniel.’

‘No, it’s your home and my gaol, albeit a considerably more comfortable one than the last. I wish to hell they hadn’t embroiled you in this diplomatic mess.’

‘I’m your wife,’ Kate said tightly, ‘the most obvious person to become embroiled, as you put it.’

‘My wife in name only. I married you to look after Elmswood, not me.’

‘You were at death’s door, for heaven’s sake!’

Kate gazed down at her hands, counting slowly to ten. It was the same refrain he’d uttered on and off since he’d first recovered consciousness in Cyprus almost two months ago, and it was beginning to grate. Seriously grate.

‘I won’t apologise for doing what was asked of me. You’re my husband, and it’s my duty to take care of you to the best of my ability. That’s what I did, and as a result you are alive to berate me for it. If that is the price I must pay for what I did, then so be it.’

A tense silence followed, in which they both glowered at each other, and then, to her surprise and relief, Daniel laughed. ‘I’ve married a despot! And I should know—I’ve met a few!’

She didn’t know what to make of that, so instead said, ‘If you would be a little more co-operative and conciliatory then I wouldn’t have to fight you every step of the way.’

‘Ah! So you admit that you have been imposing your will on me? In my book, that’s a despot. Or a tyrant, if you prefer.’