His Christmas Countess

by Louise Allen

  ‘The fifteenth, my lady.’

  The old earl had died on Christmas Eve. They would travel back to London tomorrow and she must decide the best way to handle the anniversary for Charlie. Then there was Christmas to prepare for, which was also Anna’s birthday. When would Grant be back—and in what mood? No, this was definitely no time to have the vapours. Kate blew her nose briskly and found some paper and a pen. Lists were what she needed now. And my husband.

  *

  The clock struck midnight as Kate reached for the last sheet of paper and began to wrap up the pretty dress length and ribbons she had bought for Jeannie. All the presents had been bought in exhausting expeditions around the shops in the days after they got back from Southend.

  All that was left was to worry about Grant. The note had arrived this morning from, of all places, Newport Pagnell. What he was doing there she could not imagine, nor could she gauge his mood, for it had simply read:

  I will be there on the twenty-fourth. G.

  Something had been written beneath that scrawled initial, then crossed out. She had squinted at it, held it up to the light, to a candle flame, and all she could make out was a small circle. Or perhaps a heart.

  Now it was Christmas Eve. She had not dared hope, had hardly dared think about Grant and instead had plunged into planning, shopping and endless decision-making. The staff were not used to the family spending Christmas in London and seemed incapable of making the slightest decision without her. So footmen had been dispatched to enquire when evergreens would be available in Shepherd’s Market, Cook had been given guidance on two weeks’ worth of menus, decisions had been made on when the staff would have their Christmas meal, which carriages would be required for what church services and when a holly wreath should be hung on the front door.

  Now Kate just wanted to sleep and not be plagued by dreams about Grant vanishing into the mist. She gathered up the scissors and ribbon, brushed paper scraps off the bed and took off her robe. As she reached for the snuffer, there was a noise from Grant’s bedchamber, then another. Muffled, cautious sounds. Sounds of someone who did not want to be heard.

  When she snuffed the candle a thin line of light showed beneath his door. He was home.

  Kate reached for the wisp of negligee that lay at the end of the bed, then, with a shake of her head, fetched the old flannel wrapper. This was no time for seduction. Either this marriage would hold because of what was in their hearts and in their minds, or it would not.

  She made no effort to be quiet as she opened the connecting door. Grant was sitting on the side of the bed in the position she knew meant that he was contemplating pulling off his boots and was really too tired to bother, or to ring for Griffin. He looked up as she entered and she stopped, thinking wryly that when she had been rejecting thoughts of seduction she had not counted on the physical effect that her husband had on her. He looked saddle-weary, travel-stained and beyond tired. And he also looked magnificently male, strong and determined.

  ‘I am so glad you are home,’ she said simply. ‘Let me.’ And as she had once done before, when she had first come to Abbeywell, she straddled first one leg, then the other, and pulled off his boots.

  ‘Thank you.’ He waited until she turned and then reached out, put one hand on either side of her waist and drew her in to stand between his spread thighs. ‘I went to see Charlie first, woke him up. I wanted him to know I kept my promise to be back.’ He looked up at her, serious, watchful.

  ‘Of course.’ She resisted the urge to smooth his wind-tangled hair. Goodness knew what had happened to his hat. ‘Has he gone back to sleep or did he tell you the plans for tomorrow?’

  ‘He told me and went back to sleep. I had to promise to inspect all the decorations, right down to the very miniature yule log in the drawing room. You’ve done a magnificent job between the pair of you.’ He put his head slightly to one side as he studied her face. ‘Don’t you want to know where I’ve been?’

  ‘I don’t care, so long as you are back here.’ It was the truth. She trusted him to deal fairly with Henry and she knew he had not called Baybrook out. He would not risk killing Anna’s father. She gave in to the urge then and lifted her hands to cup his face. ‘I missed you.’

  ‘I lost my temper back there in the inn.’

  ‘I noticed.’ Was that the faintest curve of his lips? ‘You lose it so rarely that it is most impressive when you do.’

  ‘I swore.’ Yes, that is most definitely the beginning of a smile.

  ‘But not at me.’ He had her tight against him now and the old flannel wrapper seemed to be having no effect on his body’s responses.

  ‘No. At me.’ The ghost of the smile flickered and was gone. ‘Kate, you have a very short-sighted husband who could not see what was under his nose, nor read what his heart was telling him.’

  It was suddenly very hard to breathe, let alone speak, so she leaned forward and kissed him lightly on the lips until the gentle returning pressure gave her courage. ‘You can read it now?’

  ‘Yes. And I love you, Kate. I think I have loved you for a long time and had no idea what it was. I should have realised in that moment in the receiving line at the Larminster reception that what I was feeling was something far more than happiness.’ His voice was harsh, but the green eyes locked with hers were tender and vulnerable and full of promises. ‘I puzzled over why I trusted you despite your deceptions, despite what I heard with my own ears, and then it hit me in the Ship Inn. And I had been cold and grudging. I made you tell me your secrets as though I was forcing a confession out of you, when I should have taken you in my arms and held you and protected you and trusted you without reservation, without you having to explain a thing.’

  ‘Oh, my love. You aren’t a saint.’ She tugged at his arms and he came to his feet, held her by the shoulders as he stared down into her face. ‘We could both have trusted more, risked more—if we were perfect, but we aren’t. We are human and we had both learned the pain of love betrayed.’

  ‘You called me… Kate, you can’t…’ How could the fact that this strong, articulate man was having trouble getting a simple question out make her so happy?

  ‘I can. And I do. I love you, Grant. I have loved you for months and I did not dare tell you.’

  ‘Did not dare?’

  ‘You would have been kind to me, wouldn’t you? You would have felt sorry for me. I could live with loving you without hope of that being returned, but I could not bear your pity.’

  ‘Oh, Kate. That must be the only thing you would not dare.’ Grant pulled her in close so that she was against the hard strength of him, safe and surrounded by love. By impossible, wonderful love. It didn’t matter that Grant smelt of leather and sweat and horse. It simply made this moment more real, more certain that it was not a dream. ‘I love you so very much.’

  ‘Come to bed,’ she said into the crumpled folds of his neckcloth. ‘Show me.’

  ‘I’m filthy,’ he protested half-heartedly, his fingers already on the buttons of his waistcoat.

  ‘Most of it is your clothes.’ Her fingers were as urgent, pushing the coat back from his shoulders, tearing a ribbon on her old robe as she threw it aside. ‘I don’t care. I just want you. Now, always.’

  There was no finesse left in either of them. They fell on to the bed in a tangle of limbs, of kisses, of desperate fingers, all impeded by Grant’s breeches, which he kicked off with a final heave before he rolled Kate over, covered her with his body and slid into her in one movement.

  Then he stilled, propped on his elbows, his hips cradled by her thighs, his forehead resting against her brow. ‘Home. Home at last.’

  His heart thudded over hers, his breathing was ragged, his fingers, always so sure, so controlled, shook as they sifted through her hair. The lack of control touched her as no skilled caresses could ever have done and she tipped her head to capture his lips, curled her legs around the slim hips and rocked him deeper.

  It became a blur, a mixture of passion a
nd love, of relief and joy and urgent need. Kate knew she was talking, broken phrases, words, his name. ‘I love you. I love you. Grant…’

  He stretched up above her on his hands, tightening the junction between their bodies so she could no longer tell where his pleasure ended and hers began. She looked up and saw he was watching her, even as he lost control and let the wave crash over him. ‘I love you. Kate. Now. Always. Kate.’

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  They went to church in the morning with Charlie and sat and thought about the old earl and then came home and spent the day talking about him. Grant told them tales about his own childhood and had Charlie alternately gasping and giggling about the tricks he used to play and the trouble he would get into.

  ‘Truly? You let all the hounds into the house while Great-Grandmama was having the Ladies’ Church Social and they ate all the cakes and peed on the Chinese rug? And you climbed all the way to the top of the great oak on the front lawn?’

  Kate rolled her eyes at Grant, who grinned and shrugged. ‘And fell out and broke my arm and spent a month learning to write left-handed so I could do all the lines my tutor set me as punishment.’

  ‘Tell me again about Great-Grandpapa and the bishop and the bull at the church fête.’

  Kate curled up in her armchair and indulged herself by watching Grant, relaxed and happy, sprawled on the hearthrug with his son. The day that could have been so sad, the anniversary of a loss where they could not be together, was turning into a happy time and, she suspected, the beginning of a family tradition. She and Charlie had planned it together, both of them, she was certain, convinced that this time Grant would be home in time.

  *

  After luncheon Charlie announced that he was going to write down the stories in case he forgot any. ‘And I’ll add my stories, too,’ he added, marching off to the desk by the window.

  Grant put his arm around Kate and pulled her down beside him on the sofa at the other end of the room. ‘I must tell you where I have been these past days.’

  ‘I confess I am consumed with curiosity about Newport Pagnell.’ She curled into the crook of his arm and played with the curling ends of hair around his ears. It was bliss to be able to touch Grant without wariness, without being afraid that her gestures would be read, quite correctly, as signs of love.

  ‘I took your sister-in-law there. When I left you I went back to Belchamps Hall, riding a positive tidal wave of anger with your brother. She overheard our discussion and delivered a bombshell to dear Henry by announcing that if he was paying off his debt to Baybrook, he could pay her an allowance and she was going to live with her sister.’

  ‘So Henry is going to repay the money? I would have thought that was like wringing blood out of a stone.’

  ‘Apparently I look forbidding enough for him to believe my threats about the navy or India. One of the brightest clerks in my banker’s office is going down there to do a complete audit and Henry’s about to acquire a new bailiff in the form of Grimswade’s nephew, who is as tough as his uncle and has been cutting his teeth as my farm manager.’

  ‘You are brilliant, Grant.’ She kissed his ear.

  He broke off in an attempt to capture her lips. ‘Temptress.’

  ‘Grant! Not in front of the children.’

  ‘Anna’s fast asleep and Charlie’s lost in composition. Oh, very well, I’ll behave, but that gown is devilishly provoking.’ When she escaped to the other end of the sofa he growled, but carried on with his story. ‘I made arrangements with Henry, sent off all the necessary letters, conveyed Lady Harding, bag and baggage, to Newport Pagnell and got back to town late yesterday afternoon. Then I tracked Baybrook down—’

  ‘You didn’t hit him or call him out or anything dreadful?’

  ‘No. I managed to convince him that I intended to give him money, not demand it, and we ended up having a very civilised dinner at his club. He’s not the scoundrel I thought him to be. Or perhaps I should say that he isn’t now. He seems to be genuinely fond of his little heiress and he doesn’t want to hurt her, at least as much as he doesn’t want her father finding out about his sins. He’s more than grateful about the return of the money and he accepts that it was not your doing.’ He looked at her quizzically. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Men are so strange. You were breathing fire and brimstone, you were ready to call him out just for insulting me in the park and now there you are dining with him.’

  Grant shrugged. ‘He gave us Anna, didn’t he?’

  ‘Yes, so he did. And Madeleine gave us Charlie.’

  He pulled her close again and they sat in silence, watching the children as the winter daylight ebbed into darkness and the candlelight glowed off holly berries and swags of evergreens and the fire burned bright in the grate.

  Kate had thought of the same night one year before as she’d carried Anna up to her cot and Grant and Charlie went to change for the grown-up dinner they had promised the boy so that he could make the toast to his great-grandfather’s memory. A year ago she had been cold, desperate and in pain with no hope for the future, only a desperate will to make it through somehow.

  I wonder if I can be any happier than this? she thought, watching Grant bend to kiss Anna goodnight. Perhaps, when I tell Grant the final secret I am keeping.

  *

  Christmas morning dawned bright and, to Charlie’s huge delight, snowy. ‘May we make a snowman?’ he asked at breakfast. ‘There’s all that snow in the back garden. Or…’ His eyes grew wide. ‘The park! We could build dozens of snowmen, an army of snowmen!’

  ‘This afternoon,’ Grant promised. ‘Presents first. Anna’s birthday, then the staff, then our Christmas presents.’

  Anna was predictably more enchanted by the silver paper, the flicker of candlelight and the trailing scarlet ribbons than she was by her presents, but, as Kate pointed out to Grant, he was going to get far more fun out of her presents than she was.

  ‘I know. I want to spoil her, to make up for that first birthday, that first Christmas,’ he said, smiling at the dolls, the pretty dresses, the stuffed rabbit and the little horse on wheels.

  ‘You gave her that first Christmas,’ Kate whispered in his ear and then found she had to blow her nose very inelegantly.

  They lit the yule log together, played with Anna, listened to the sounds of fiddle music, singing and laughter wafting up from below stairs. It seemed the staff were having a good time getting ready for their Christmas meal. Charlie, bursting with pride, led Kate and Grant, with Anna fast asleep in Grant’s arms, downstairs to deliver the family’s Christmas good wishes and thanks for all their hard work during the year.

  ‘He is growing up so fast,’ Kate whispered as Cook gathered Charlie to her capacious bosom and gave him a hug that turned his ears scarlet. Then they trooped back upstairs, collecting Mr Gough as they went, and shared out Christmas presents.

  My family, Kate thought as she watched them, the love filling her heart as softly as the snowflakes swirling down outside the window. Charlie was thrilled with a new saddle and a pair of ice skates. Grant peacocked around the room in the heavy silk robe Kate had found for him and winked at her to show he knew exactly how she imagined him wearing it, with nothing underneath. The tutor was delighted with a subscription to a circulating library and Charlie presented his parents with two pairs of handsome, and only slightly lopsided, bookends that, he confided, he had made with the assistance of the estate carpenter.

  Kate was trying not to crane her neck and see if there was anything left in the litter of paper for her when Grant announced, ‘We are going out for a walk.’

  ‘We are?’ Kate almost protested that it was too cold, too snowy, and that she wanted to spend as much time as possible with Anna on her first birthday. But there was something about Grant’s expression that was both serious and yet happy. He had a surprise for her and she was not going to spoil it for him.

  ‘Yes, and I have a new bonnet for you to wear.’ He lifted a hatbox, white with bright re
d ribbons, from beside his chair.

  Kate took the box and opened it. The bonnet nestled in tissue paper, a confection of white velvet with a wide brim to frame her face and a delicate pale blue gauze veil with deeper blue silk ribbons, the colour of her eyes. ‘Grant, it is lovely. It is almost—’ Bridal.

  ‘You did not have anything pretty a year ago,’ he said. ‘Shall we go out now? We’ll be back in time to build a small snowman, Charlie.’

  Kate took Grant’s arm and allowed herself to be led through the snowy streets, along narrow ways she had not known existed, up to the door of one of the little chapels of ease that had been built to serve the expanding neighbourhood north of Oxford Street. It was not one they had ever used and, when they entered, it was obvious from its plain furnishings and lack of memorials that it was not a fashionable church.

  Grant had been carrying something in a straw basket, the kind that a goose would be brought home from market in, and Kate had been vastly curious to see what it held. He set it down on the porch and took out a posy. Trailing ivy, the red of holly berries, the pearl glow of mistletoe, crimson ribbons.

  ‘It was rather a plain wedding, was it not?’ Grant said and handed her the bouquet. ‘One sprig of holly, if I remember rightly. I think we should do it again, don’t you?’

  ‘It made me very happy, that first ceremony,’ Kate said, wondering how it was possible to want to cry, even as she smiled. ‘But I would like very much to marry the man I love, all over again.’

  ‘Shall we?’ He crooked his arm for her and together they walked down the aisle. She saw a clergyman waiting in a side chapel, two chairs set before him.

  ‘Welcome.’ He came forward, shook hands, ushered them to the seats. ‘I have never blessed a marriage on Christmas morning before,’ he confessed. ‘Weddings, yes. So many working people take advantage of the holiday. But this is rather special, is it not?’

  So special. ‘Grant, thank you,’ she whispered and did not realise she was crying until he took off his gloves and gently wiped away the tears with his thumb. He was giving her the one thing their marriage lacked, the one thing she had not thought important until that moment—a romantic wedding day.