The Inconvenient Elmswood Marriage

‘You care a great deal for them. You think it’s in their interests to know me. I’m telling you it’s not. You need to trust me to know best.’

Her throat worked as she mulled this over. ‘Your work is a great deal more dangerous than you ever led me to believe, isn’t it?’

Until the recent debacle, from which he was still recovering, Daniel had never considered his own mortality, but he wasn’t a man who needed to be taught anything twice. He had come close to death. The next time—and he was bloody well determined to be given the chance of a next time—he might not be so lucky.

Which reminded him—whatever else he did while he was in England he must sort out the provisions of his last will and testament. Now that he no longer had a nephew to inherit Elmswood, he had no clue as to who would currently be his next of kin. Some distant cousin, no doubt. But he was damned if Elmswood would be taken from Kate if he had anything to do with it.

‘Kate…’

‘Was it always dangerous? Even when we first married?’

‘Kate, I can’t—’

‘Can’t answer that. Except you already have. I wonder that you suggest we get to know one another better. You’re not afraid that I’ll become too attached, I take it? Are you imagining that I’m longing to be a merry widow?’

‘I think the last nine months have proved rather conclusively otherwise, don’t you?’

She sighed, her shoulders sagging. ‘I’m not usually such a shrew, you know. I’m sorry you don’t want to meet the girls, for their sake, but I can’t force you, and I do understand, though I’m not looking forward to explaining it to them.’

‘I’ll likely be gone before you see them.’

She got to her feet. ‘Then I suggest you utilise the time you have to recuperate. I’m heading over to the Estate Office to make a start on catching up. I’ll have Cook send up some soup for you—or is there something else you’d prefer? What do you like to eat?’

‘It doesn’t matter. I’m not hungry.’

‘You should go to bed and rest. No…what I should say is don’t go to bed, I suppose, and then you will.’

He surprised them both by taking her hand in his. ‘This situation is as strange and awkward for me as it is for you.’

‘But, as you have pointed out several times, at least I’m on home turf and, unlike you, happy to be here,’ she said with a wry smile. ‘Your hand is freezing. I really do think you should go back to bed and try to get some rest, Daniel.’

And get out of her way. She was right. There was as little point in him getting to know his wife as his nieces. Yet he was strangely reluctant to let her hand go.

‘I’d better not detain you any longer.’

She hesitated, her wide-spaced blue eyes scanning his face as if she was trying to read his mind, before giving him a brief nod, disentangling her hand, and quitting the room.

He listened out for the oddly familiar scrape of the front door on the flagstones—one thing in the house she hadn’t remedied—before sinking back into the fireside chair, closing his eyes, and falling into a sudden deep sleep.

Chapter Two

Alone in the Estate Office, Kate found it impossible to settle. Just over eleven years ago she had proposed to Daniel here. She’d been twenty-two years old and the future, as far as she had been concerned then, had stretched a year into the distance, two years at most.

She’d been far more interested in the present, eking out every available moment with dear Papa and, when he’d finally passed away, hurling herself into planning the modernisation of the estates and the renovation of the house and gardens.

Then had come the unexpected arrival of the girls into her already busy life and the years had sped by, leaving her no time to worry about what lay ahead.

But now Elmswood Manor and the grounds were fully restored, the estate was a model of modern farming, and the girls had flown the nest. Kate was thirty-three years old and the future loomed—a vast, unpopulated space that she had no idea how she was going to fill. Eleven years ago thirty-three had seemed to her the age of an old crone, but now, despite her newly acquired lines, she felt every bit as young and untested as she had done when sitting here watching the clock all those years ago, waiting for Daniel to arrive.

Of course that was nonsense. The girls—young women! She really must stop thinking of them as ‘the girls’!—would testify to the passing years, as would Elmswood Manor itself. She allowed herself a mocking smile. Both had blossomed under her care. But while she’d been tending to her husband’s nieces, and Elmswood’s gardens, she’d neglected herself.

Who was Kate Fairfax?

The last nine months had taught her that she was more intrepid than she’d imagined. Until Daniel’s masters had called on her she’d always thought Elmswood the beginning and the end of her world, but having perforce seen a great deal more of the world since then, she would now like to see still more—though under more auspicious circumstances!

She was naïve, she was far from worldly-wise, but years of managing the estates had given her a confidence and a shrewdness that had helped her navigate many potentially daunting aspects of foreign travel. If she was honest, she envied Estelle her freedom now. It wasn’t that Elmswood was a burden, exactly, but it was no longer a challenge.

Kate closed the ledger, where the numbers had been dancing about in front of her eyes, and got to her feet to gaze out of the window. Time to put her pragmatic head on again. Why worry about the future when she had the present to deal with?

She had never forgotten that she was married, but her experience of marriage had been husband-free. Until now. She had been too impatient with Daniel. It wasn’t like her to be so easily riled, but there was something about him that set her on edge.

It had been different when he was ill—easier, in a sense—for she had known how to care for him, had been clear about her role as his nurse. And while he had not been lucid,—which had been most of the time—she had been able to tend to him without embarrassment, thinking of him simply as a patient in need of care.

Only when he had become conscious had she become self-conscious, aware of him as a man.

A very attractive man. There, she could admit that. She’d always found him attractive. Yes, but from afar. Nursing him had brought her into intimate contact with him, and though at the time she’d thought herself detached, later—yes, later—there had been aspects of her nursing that had made her decidedly uncomfortable.

The feel of his skin as she’d washed him, the smoothness of his shoulders, the rough hair on his chest, the ripple of muscle that his illness had not wholly wasted when he moved. His hair was soft, despite years in the sun. He was deeply tanned in places, pale in others. And there were some places where modesty had prevailed, from which she had looked away when she’d washed him, but she’d touched them, all the same. Places which her imagination had lingered on as she’d lain sleepless, listening to his harsh breathing.

Did he remember? She sincerely hoped he did not.

It was bad enough, the effect those memories had on her, arousing all sorts of unwelcome feelings, stirring desires she’d always repressed so easily before. Eleven years of celibate marriage hadn’t been endured without vague longings, but now her longings were not vague—they were quite specific.

Was this what Eloise felt when she looked at her husband? And Phoebe? Was her marriage passionate? In the sphere of intimacy they had so much more experience than her, and they always would, for no matter what the future held Kate was married to Daniel very much in name only.

Though if he remained here at Elmswood to recuperate, what then? They were husband and wife—a man and a woman past the first blush of youth and beyond any of the silliness of fluttering hearts and fevered longing. Daniel was a very attractive man, and she wasn’t yet an old crone—in fact, she had every reason to believe that he found her attractive, for there had been times when she’d been nursing him… Though of course he’d had no idea who she was.

She was being foolish—very foolish—to be considering an affaire with her own husband. A very temporary affaire. That no one would know about. An affaire that might be her one and only chance to discover what it was she was missing out on.

Though how on earth she thought to propose it to Daniel…

Daniel was an invalid, for goodness’ sake! A very cranky invalid. Though the way he’d looked at her earlier, when they had been drinking coffee, hadn’t been cranky. If she did suggest they indulged in an affaire, then she doubted he’d turn her down. Not that she would dream of doing such a thing.

The sound of a carriage on the driveway made her jump to her feet. Four horses, attached to a very smart, if dusty post-chaise. Surely they had not come for him already? Her stomach sank.

With a start, she realised that was the last thing she wanted. Purely, she told herself as she sped out of the office and across the lawn, which was the quickest route to the house, because Daniel was far from well, and not at all because, despite the fact that he was infuriating, she wanted very much to get to know her husband better.

Mrs Chester, of all people, had emerged from the kitchen to answer the front doorbell herself by the time Kate arrived, breathless.

‘We’re a bit short-handed,’ she explained, ‘for I have sent Sylvia off to the village for provisions, and Mary is up to her neck in suds, it being laundry day.’

‘And I can see that you are making pies,’ Kate said, eyeing the cook’s floury hands and apron with amusement. The doorbell clanged again. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll get this.’

‘Can’t imagine who it will be. Someone for the master, no doubt? Shall I call him?’

‘No need.’

Daniel appeared at the top of the staircase. He had changed into country dress of breeches and boots, and was shrugging himself into a coat, looking decidedly heavy-eyed.