His Christmas Countess

by Louise Allen

  Or perhaps he does not care enough, she thought in her darker moments. He must have had enough drama and emotion with Madeleine not to want to demand a confrontation with her. Surely now he wanted only a quiet life with a wife who satisfied him in bed and loved his children. But it is so lonely sometimes.

  ‘Why are you so reluctant to go to London?’ Grant asked.

  ‘Charlie will miss Christmas at home.’

  ‘The town house is familiar to him now—besides, this house at Christmastide can only hold bad memories for him. Let him have this year somewhere entirely different and then the following year the recollections will be dimmer, the house will be much changed and we can enjoy the festive season here.’

  That was perfectly, unarguably, reasonable. Kate tried another tack. ‘I’m shy of London. I won’t know how to go on there.’

  ‘Of course you will.’ Grant was beginning to look impatient now. ‘You are quite at ease with company in the neighbourhood, you are well informed on the issues of the day, you make excellent conversation and you dance very well and you’ll have fashionable gowns—there is nothing at all to be alarmed about.’

  ‘I can’t help it,’ she said. ‘I am.’

  He was puzzled now, she could tell, and in a moment he was going to move from puzzlement to suspicion. ‘Where is the courageous woman I found in that bothy?’

  There was nothing for it. Unless she developed a disfiguring rash or broke a leg, she was going to have to face London society. ‘Facing critical leaders of fashion is far more alarming than giving birth, believe me,’ Kate said with a laugh that she hoped rang true.

  Grant visibly relaxed. ‘I will be there by your side.’

  That is what I am afraid of. ‘Of course.’

  Chapter Seventeen

  Something was wrong with Kate. Grant paced along the terrace, welcoming the cold, rolling his shoulders to relax them after two hours of solid work in the study with his bailiff and secretary, sorting estate matters out so that he could safely go away for a few months. Was whatever had made her so wary of London related to the reserve that was always present just below the surface, however cheerful she seemed, however lost in the passion of their lovemaking?

  He wanted to trust her totally and yet, somehow, he could not. Was it the ghost of his first marriage haunting him, holding him back from that complete act of faith? He only wished she would tell him what it was that put the shadow in her eyes, those moments of constraint when he sensed she was holding back from telling him…something. It was hard not to think, Confess something. He told himself it was not jealousy that he felt, that she was not still pining for Anna’s father. After all, she had told him she had not loved the man, and besides, what did it matter if she had? Theirs was a practical, companionable marriage, not a love match. Kate was passionate and responsive in bed, and that was what a man needed, not some foolish romantic fantasy with moonlight and roses. And heartbreak.

  ‘My lord?’

  He turned to find Jeannie standing outside the long window to the drawing room, Anna in her arms. ‘Yes?’ He strolled across to tickle the baby under her chin and she laughed at him and held out her arms.

  ‘Could I leave Lady Anna with you a moment, my lord? I brought her down for an airing, but there’s much more of a nip in the air than I realised and I want another shawl for her.’

  ‘Of course. I’ll wait with her in the drawing room.’ He took Anna, who immediately fastened both chubby hands on his neckcloth and proceeded to demolish it as he carried her into the warmth.

  ‘You, madam, are a menace to any gentleman with pretentions to elegance,’ he chided and held her away while he went to examine the damage in the mirror. Not so bad, at least she hadn’t chewed it this time. Anna laughed up at him and he smiled back, then sobered as a thought struck him. What if Kate’s reluctance to go to London was a fear that a lack of resemblance between her husband and the child might be noticed? After all, Anna had reached the age when a proud mama might be expected to produce the child for a few minutes for morning callers to admire.

  Their local acquaintance had known Anna as she grew up and, presumably, were used to her and accepted her as Grant’s child without question. Now he shifted Anna until he could hold her up facing the mirror beside his own face and compared their features—straight brown hair in a shade nearer his dark tones than Kate’s lighter tresses. A face that would, he was sure, echo her mother’s as she grew out of babyhood and the promise of height that would fit well with both her assumed parents.

  And green eyes. He shifted her round again so he could study them more carefully. Several doting matrons had remarked on those eyes—‘Green, just like her papa’s!’ That was useful.

  Anna was watching him now, eyes wide, and he realised that her eyes were not like his after all. They were a paler, clearer green with gold flecks and a dark rim around the iris. The effect was beautiful and unusual and when she grew up he imagined they would give her a unique charm. He checked his own eyes in the mirror—a darker green that verged towards hazel when he was tired or angry, so he’d been told. No gold flecks, no dark ring. But that was not a problem, Anna was like enough in various characteristics to both of them not to raise the slightest suspicions. It might be a different matter if she was a redhead or a pale blonde. He was conscious of disappointment that he had not found the reason for Kate’s anxiety.

  ‘Here we are, my lord, her warmest shawl. I’ll take her now, shall I?’

  Jeannie bore Anna away to the terrace, leaving Grant frowning at his own reflection in the mirror. Kate was perfectly competent socially, she was intelligent enough to learn and adapt quickly and she was usually confident enough to be aware of that. Could it be that she feared encountering her brother? He knew he should have insisted on making contact with the shadowy Mr Harding of somewhere in Suffolk, but he had managed to forget all about Kate’s brother and she had done nothing to remind him. He should confront her about all of these things, but he sensed that if he did he would destroy the happiness they now had, perhaps simply for a phantom of his own imagination. He would watch and think and see how she took to London, see what clues he could discover.

  He strode out of the drawing room and along to the little room Kate had claimed as her writing room, tapped and went in. ‘Kate.’

  She jumped, blotted her page and tutted irritably at him. Sometimes he made her cross simply because it was so rare to see her lose her self-control and he wanted to see the real woman that she kept so carefully hidden behind the facade of the good wife and mother. She revealed that face in bed, when she lost all inhibition with him, and she had shown it when she had helped him fight his demons over Madeleine, but there were times when he thought she was moving further and further away from him.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ He moved to stand behind her and ran the back of one finger down the exposed nape of her neck, enjoying the sensual little shiver she gave. ‘Were you writing poetry? I am sorry if I have made you blot the final stanza.’

  Kate gave a little snort of laughter, the irritation vanishing as fast as it always seemed to. ‘No, I am not writing poetry. This is a shopping list for the linen warehouse. There hardly seems to be a decent sheet left in the house.’ She twisted round to look up at him and he kept his hand where it was so that his fingers trailed round her neck as she moved. ‘Do you think I should be writing odes to my husband’s eyelashes?’

  ‘Are they so worthy of praise?’ He felt absurdly anxious that she should say so.

  ‘They are indecently long and thick.’

  ‘Are they indeed? Indecent, eh? All the better to tickle you with.’ The confrontation he had come for was less interesting than the possibilities presented by a flustered wife, a comfortable chaise longue and the thought of how his eyelashes might be employed.

  ‘Grant!’ It was accompanied by a most encouraging blush. He turned the key in the lock, twitched the nearest curtain across the window and advanced on the desk.

  ‘Grant—only half
the window is covered.’

  ‘If anyone is standing in the middle of the flower bed, on a box, contorting their neck in an effort to see in through the uncovered area of the window, all I can say is that we have more flexible staff than I imagined.’ He stripped off his coat and waistcoat as he advanced. ‘Am I going to have to chase you round the desk?’

  ‘Do you want to?’ Kate slipped off the chair and retreated to the far side. ‘I warn you, I have a quill and I know how to use it.’

  Grant hopped on one foot, then the other as he tugged off his boots. Kate was not making much of an effort to escape, which was interesting. He had never tried to make love to her downstairs and he had expected her to be shy of doing so in broad daylight. When he emerged from the folds of his shirt and prowled towards her clad only in his breeches she edged away around the desk, then, when he was within arm’s reach, extended the quill like a rapier and flicked his right nipple with the point of the feather.

  ‘Touché,’ Grant conceded, moved his right hand and, when her eyes flickered to follow the movement, lunged, caught Kate around the waist and bore her off to the chaise. She tried to bounce up. He flipped her skirts up over her head and, as she struggled to extricate herself, pressed a kiss into the exposed triangle of curls at the junction of her thighs.

  Kate went very still, but did not resist as he eased her knees apart, settled his shoulders between them, bent his head and brushed his lashes up the inside of her thigh, over the white, soft skin. There was a sudden heave and the skirts settled over his head plunging him into semi-darkness as he shifted the subtle caress to her other thigh.

  That convulsive movement was all the resistance she gave as he worked his way up, fraction by fraction, towards his goal. She was aroused, there was no mistaking that. Grant parted the delicate folds, touched once with his tongue, and Kate came apart in his hands. He used his lips and mouth in a long, demanding kiss that had her writhing on the couch before he shook off the folds of her gown, pulled down his breeches and sheathed himself in her pulsing, hot body in one hard movement.

  ‘Grant.’ Her face was buried in the angle of his neck, her arms locked around his shoulders as he thrust. ‘Grant, I—’

  ‘Come again,’ he demanded, controlling, somehow, his own need. ‘Come for me again. Now.’

  And she did, pulling him with her into the maelstrom.

  *

  I almost told him I loved him, Kate thought as she cradled her husband in her arms in blissful discomfort. The sofa cushion, a hard, cylindrical bolster, dug into the base of her spine, her corset was doing its best to stop her breathing and Grant, though without any spare flesh on him, was a significant dead weight on top of her. Thank goodness I didn’t.

  ‘Kate.’ Grant’s voice was muffled and he heaved himself up until he was sitting on the end of the chaise. ‘You were trying to say something just then.’

  ‘Probably more, or again,’ she temporised. ‘Goodness, after that, how do you expect me to recall my own name?’

  He grinned. ‘Flatterer. Kate…’ That change of tone from teasing to serious within the space of two words was ominous. She braced herself. ‘Is the problem about going to London because you fear coming across your brother? I know you haven’t written to him. Perhaps we should make contact now, before we go.’

  ‘No.’ She pushed down her skirts and scrambled to sit upright at the end of the chaise. ‘Please, Grant. It will be too awkward. I cannot forgive him for how he behaved and he will not forgive me. Let sleeping dogs lie.’ He still looked unconvinced as he refastened his breeches. ‘It isn’t as though my parents are alive, or that I have other siblings.’ Which was true. She had cousins, but they were even more country mice than she was.

  ‘If it upsets you so much, I will not insist.’ Grant pushed his fingers through his hair, the habitual giveaway that he was frustrated. He would circle round, come back to this, she knew.

  ‘And Henry would be a most unsuitable uncle for Charlie, a really bad influence.’ That went home, she saw. ‘May I have the carriage tomorrow? I need to go into Newcastle to have my hair done.’

  ‘Surely the coiffeur will come here, or it can wait until you get to London?’

  ‘Oh, did I not tell you?’ She had not, quite deliberately. ‘I saw an advertisement in the Newcastle Courier that Monsieur Ducasse, late of Monsieur Maurice’s establishment in Bond Street, has set up in Newcastle. And Monsieur Maurice advertises in all the best journals—La Belle Assemblée and so on. I would feel so much more comfortable with a fashionable style. I wrote to reserve a private parlour at the King’s Head and he will attend me there.’ Grant opened his mouth and she said hastily, ‘Wilson will accompany me, of course.’

  ‘Then of course you may have the carriage.’ Grant got to his feet and lifted her hand to kiss the tips of her fingers. ‘Not that you need any changes to make you look quite delightful, my dear.’

  ‘Flatterer.’ She laughed up at him and pulled his hand back to rest fleetingly against her own lips. I love you and now I will lie and deceive and do whatever it takes to get through this ordeal without you ever discovering who the woman you married really is.

  *

  ‘Kate?’ Grant stopped dead in the hallway, then advanced slowly, like a cat who has seen something that may be prey, or may be something alien and dangerous. ‘What have you done?’ he demanded as he completed the circle.

  Grimswade, who had appeared the moment the carriage drew up, effaced himself, closely followed by Wilson clutching Kate’s bonnet, pelisse and reticule.

  ‘Monsieur Ducasse gave me a new style.’ She smiled brightly at him and fluffed the soft curls that framed her face. ‘I think it’s very dashing.’

  ‘He’s cut it.’ Grant’s green eyes were narrowed as he studied the effect.

  ‘Just the front. I knew it would curl if he did that. The back is still long, so it can be put up. You see?’ Kate turned right round, skirts belling out.

  ‘It changes the shape of your face.’

  She still couldn’t work out whether he liked it or not, or whether he realised that she had plucked her eyebrows into a finer arch. ‘I think it shows off my cheekbones. I didn’t know I had any before.’

  ‘And the colour…’ Grant was prowling again.

  ‘Just a shade darker. Monsieur Ducasse said it would make my eyes look bigger.’ He came to a halt in front of her and she widened her eyes at him. ‘And bluer.’ And he had stained her eyebrows to match. Wilson had the little brush and bottle safely tucked away.

  ‘You look more sophisticated,’ Grant said at last, when she thought she would go dizzy from holding her breath.

  ‘Is that code for older?’ She hoped it was. She wanted to look as different as possible from that wide-eyed, unsophisticated girl who had been the bait to catch a lord in a blackmailer’s snare.

  ‘Just a trifle.’ Grant seemed to have relaxed, lids heavy over his green eyes. ‘It certainly makes you look more…experienced.’ There was a wealth of hidden meaning in the one, drawled, word.

  He likes it. That was a relief.

  ‘Maman!’ Charlie appeared, at the run as usual, skidded to a halt and stared. Then he circled her, just as his father had done, but with his mouth open.

  Grant laughed. ‘Your maman has had a haircut. Fancy, isn’t it?’

  ‘It’s prime!’ Charlie approved. ‘Is it for London?’

  ‘It is.’ Grant’s gaze met hers over the boy’s head. ‘I’m glad you are getting into the spirit of the London expedition, Kate. It is past your bedtime, Charlie, off you go.’

  ‘I’m doing my best.’ She bent to kiss the boy before he ran off to the stairs, then slid her hand through the crook of her husband’s elbow and leaned in a little, enjoying the smell of leather and the hint of coffee and the familiar, beloved scent that was simply Grant. She had been away all day and she had missed him, even for those few hours.

  He turned his head from watching Charlie’s retreating form, looked down at her and became ver
y still. His eyes, which were usually green, darkened to hazel, as they did when he was tired, or angry or aroused. And this was definitely arousal, reacting to something he saw in her expression. ‘Kate.’

  Her chest was so tight that her lungs felt hollow. He was going to kiss her, here and now in the hallway, and she was going to say it, tell him she loved him, and she could not, must not. Not when she was lying to him, deceiving him. ‘Of course, it will mean a great strain on my dress allowance and my pin money.’ She fluttered her eyelashes outrageously. ‘Will you increase it, or will you be mean and beat me if I overspend?’

  ‘I might do both,’ Grant said, low-voiced. ‘I might increase it so you may buy outrageous garments and then spank you just for the hell of it.’ His expression promised considerably more pleasure than pain and she knew he was not a man who would raise a hand to a woman in anger. Was spanking another of those erotic games he was beginning to show her?

  ‘That sounds interesting,’ Kate murmured. ‘But you’d have to chase me first.’

  ‘That can be arranged.’ Grant looked up. ‘Yes, Grimswade, what is it?’

  ‘Should I tell the kitchen to put dinner back, my lady, seeing as you have only just got in?’

  ‘Goodness, is that the time?’ For a moment she had thought the butler had overheard Grant and was suggesting delaying dinner while she was pursued around the bedchamber by a playful husband. Really, she must get a grip on her imagination! ‘I’ll go straight up now. Don’t inconvenience Cook, thank you, Grimswade.’

  ‘Thank you, my lady.’

  ‘Coward,’ Grant whispered in her ear as she passed him.

  If only you knew, my love. Pray heaven that you never do.

  Chapter Eighteen

  December 15—Grosvenor Street, London

  ‘More treasures?’

  Kate nodded to Wilson and waited until the maid closed the bedchamber door behind her before she answered. Grant was standing at the foot of the bed and eyeing the heap of packets and bandboxes that the footmen had just brought up. She rather thought he was on the verge of smiling, but she could not be certain—after all, she had spent almost a week doing nothing else but shop.