A Countess for Christmas

by Christy McKellen

It had probably just been a moment of camaraderie to him after a long and stressful day. But that was all. It hadn’t meant anything more than that.

  Disappointment was doing something funny to her insides, but she squashed the feeling quickly.

  ‘Have a good day. I’ll see you later,’ Jack said, sliding his arms into his overcoat and giving her a tight smile.

  She nodded solemnly, not wanting to give away how disconcerted she felt about being left alone with the press still hanging around the front of the building. Not that she’d ever admit that to Jack. She didn’t want him thinking he had to mollycoddle her.

  ‘Are you sure you trust me to redecorate your house?’ she blurted in a moment of nervousness, belatedly adding a twinkle of mirth to her expression so he’d see she was only joking. The idea of being let loose on this place—to have such a fun project to get immersed in—filled her with utter joy.

  Flashing her a wry smile back, he leant his arm against the wall next to her and regarded her with a mock stern stare. ‘If I find you’ve kitted the whole house out in rubber and woodchip I will not be pleased. Other than that, go for your life. I’ll be interested to see what you do with the place. It’s crying out for a make over and you’ve always had great taste.’

  ‘You think so?’ she said, surprised by the out-of-left-field compliment.

  He shot her a grin. ‘You married me, didn’t you?’

  She couldn’t stop her mouth from twisting with amusement. ‘You just can’t help yourself, can you?’

  ‘I never could with you, my darling.’ He leaned in a bit closer to her, capturing her gaze, and the mood changed in a second, the air seeming to crackle between them, the quiet in the hallway suddenly sounding too loud, the colours around them too bright.

  Clearing his throat with a rough cough, Jack stepped back, snapping the mood, and Emma found she was digging her nails into her palms.

  ‘I’ll see you later,’ he said, turning on the spot and striding away to pull the door open, then slamming it shut behind him.

  The sound of him leaving reverberated around the hallway, making her suddenly feel very, very alone in the big empty house.

  * * *

  It took Emma a good twenty minutes to come down from her jittery high after Jack left.

  Crikey, it was going to be hard, living here with him and having to get through those moments when they both became uncomfortably aware of how happy they’d once been together, but how much had come between them since.

  Despite her body telling her she wanted him, more desperately than she could believe, she knew deep down that hoping things would get physical between them was foolish when their feelings about each other were so tangled. It would only make living together more problematic than it already was.

  Sighing, she made her way to the kitchen to put the kettle on for a much-needed cup of tea.

  At least throwing herself into redecorating the house would give her something to distract herself from thinking about him all the time.

  Her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of her phone ringing in her back pocket. Plucking it out, she was pleased to see Grace’s name flash up on the screen.

  ‘Hello, you, how’s it going?’

  ‘I was going to ask you the same thing. I hope you don’t mind, but Sophie filled me in on what happened after Jolyon’s party and I read about the rest of it in the papers. Nice photo of you and your husband on the Babbler website by the way.’

  ‘Er—thanks.’ Was the picture out already? She hadn’t expected it to appear for another few days. Thank goodness her mother never looked at the internet and was unlikely to see any of the news articles over in France.

  ‘Are you okay, Emma? You must be having a rough time with the press camped out on your doorstep,’ Grace asked in her usual no-nonsense manner.

  There was a long pause where Emma tried to form a coherent sentence about how she felt about it all.

  Where to begin?

  ‘Yes, I’m fine. It all feels like a dream, to be honest, but we’re handling it.’

  ‘So you really are married to an earl?’ There was a note of gleeful fascination in her friend’s voice now.

  ‘I am.’ She swallowed, feeling her earlier nervousness returning. ‘Although for how much longer I don’t know,’ she blurted.

  There was a pause on the line. ‘Really? Are things difficult between you?’

  Emma sighed, annoyed with herself for losing her cool like that. She didn’t want Grace to worry about her; her friend had enough on her plate. ‘No, no, it’s fine, ignore me. I’m just a bit stressed at the minute. I’m supposed to be interior designing the downstairs of the house we’re living in for a photo shoot a week on Friday and I have absolutely no idea where to start.’

  There was another small pause on the line before Grace spoke again. ‘You know, I worked in a lovely boutique hotel in Chelsea called Daphne’s a while ago. It has every bedroom decorated in a style from a different time period and the communal rooms are done out in a really cool and quirky way. It would be a great place to get some inspiration.’

  ‘Ooh, I think I know it,’ Emma said, feeling excitement begin to bubble in her stomach. ‘I read an article about it a while ago. I’ve been meaning to go and have a peek at it. It looked like a fascinating place.’

  ‘You should,’ Grace said. ‘I’m sure the manager would jump at the chance to show you around if you suggested that you were thinking about hiring the place for your vow-renewal ceremony.’

  Emma tried to ignore the twist of unease that the mention of renewing their vows provoked.

  ‘It would be great publicity for them if they could boast about having the famous Earl and Countess of Redminster as patrons,’ Grace added with a smile in her voice.

  ‘That’s a fantastic idea,’ Emma said, feeling a real buzz of excitement now. It was exactly what she needed today: a chance to escape from the house and take her mind off Jack for a while.

  ‘I don’t suppose you’re free today to come with me, are you?’ she asked her friend. ‘We could go for a coffee afterwards.’

  It would be lovely to spend some time in Grace’s easy company. She desperately needed to do something normal feeling after the craziness of the last couple of days.

  ‘I’d love to,’ Grace said. ‘I’ve just finished work so I can meet you there in half an hour.’

  ‘Fantastic,’ Emma said with a grateful sigh. ‘I’ll see you there.’

  * * *

  They spent a happy half-hour looking around the hotel, with Emma making copious notes on things that inspired her, then chatting it all over with Grace over large mugs of cream-topped hot chocolate in a nearby café afterwards, sitting next to a large Scandinavian-style Christmas tree hung with silvery white snowflakes, quirky wooden reindeer and red felt hearts.

  It was lovely spending time with just Grace on her own for once and they discovered to their delight just how much their tastes aligned. It turned out Grace wasn’t a fan of the pure white and chrome interior look that Emma had teased Jack about either.

  ‘That must be tough,’ she said, as her friend finished a diatribe about the hotel where she was currently working, which felt so clinical she was continually transported back to the months she’d spent visiting her grandmother in hospital before cancer finally took her from her.

  ‘Your house is going to look wonderful when you’re finished,’ Grace said, changing the subject and shaking off the air of sadness that had fallen over her at the mention of her beloved grandmother—the woman, Emma knew, who had been more like a mother to Grace.

  She was perpetually impressed by the strength and tenacity that Grace showed to the world, despite having had such a tough start in life.

  ‘What a fantastic opportunity to showcase your skills as a designer too,’ her friend said. ‘He
y, do you think it’s something you’d be interested in pursuing as a career?’

  Giving Grace a smile, she shrugged non-committally, but felt a tug of something akin to excitement deep in her belly. She’d always loved art and design at school and had done both a graphic design and business night class recently in the hope she’d be able to apply her artistic bent to a job in the future. Fortuitously, the classes had given her a set of skills to be able to make up mood boards on a computer, put together cost sheets and even do some technical drawing, which would no doubt prove very useful for this project.

  While she’d been paying off her father’s debts she hadn’t allowed herself to think about what else she could be doing with her life, but now she was getting so close to reconciling them it really was time to think about the next steps. As much as she loved working for Clio at the Maids in Chelsea agency, she’d be very happy for her long-term career to take another direction. One that didn’t involve toadying to people who made an art form of peering down their noses at the hired help. She’d probably have to go to college and get proper qualifications if she wanted to pursue something like interior design, which she’d need to save up for, but it was a worthy goal to aim for.

  It would be a good way to safeguard a more settled future for herself.

  After losing everything she had once already, she never wanted to be in a position where she was at risk of that happening again. No way was she going to rely on someone else to keep her afloat.

  Pushing away a concern about how this fed into her muddled feelings regarding her relationship with Jack, she turned her attention back to her friend.

  ‘Thanks so much for today, Grace, it’s been really useful. Now all I have to do is get out there and make it happen.’

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  TO HER DISAPPOINTMENT, Emma didn’t see much of Jack over the next ten days. For the first couple of them his work took him into his office in the City at a totally unreasonable hour in the morning and kept him there until well after Emma had dragged herself to bed in the evenings. Though to be fair, she was crashing out early after long, intense days of researching and planning the new design scheme for the downstairs of the house.

  On the odd occasion when she did see him their conversations were stilted and tended to focus on the practicalities of living together, with him excusing himself before she had chance to ask him anything of a personal nature.

  Seeing the place in total disarray on Friday night when he returned from work, Jack had then suddenly announced he was flying off to Italy for a few days to meet with a business acquaintance, though she suspected he was deliberately making himself scarce—partly to avoid having to live in what felt very much like a building site, but mostly to avoid having to be around her all weekend.

  This thought made her stomach twist with a mixture of sadness and dejection. She’d really hoped that her confession in the pub garden would bring them closer, but instead it seemed to have driven even more of a wedge between them, crushing any hope she’d once had of a reconciliation.

  So it was actually a relief in a way to have this huge project to take her mind off things.

  With the contacts that she and her friends from the agency had managed to scrape together between them, she’d hired a talented, hard-working team and less than two weeks on she barely recognised the place. Luckily it had only needed cosmetic changes—though old, the house had been kept in good condition—and they’d been achieved with the minimum of fuss.

  She’d not had so much fun at work in a very long time.

  The new furniture was sourced from a couple of funky little independent shops on Columbia Road, which suited the brighter, more contemporary palette of colours she’d chosen for the walls and flooring. While it wasn’t up to Daphne’s standards of wow factor, she was delighted with the end result.

  It was a much more relaxing, comfortable place to hang out in now.

  When Jack returned a couple of days before they were due to do the interview with Perdita she stood nervously in the living room with him, crossing her fingers as he stared around him with an expression of pure amazement on his face.

  ‘Well, Em, I think you’ve found your calling. This is fantastic!’ he said finally, turning to give her a wide, genuine smile.

  Her heart lurched at the sight of his pleasure, the tension in her shoulders fading away.

  ‘Not a woodchip to be seen,’ she joked, feeling her tummy flip when he grinned back at her.

  ‘You’ve done an amazing job, thank you,’ he said, walking over to where she stood.

  Seeing him here again, with his hair dishevelled and dark smudges under his eyes, had sent her senses into overdrive and she was having a hard time keeping her nerves under wraps.

  ‘I’m glad you like it. I had a real blast working on it,’ she said, having to force herself to maintain eye contact so he wouldn’t see how jittery she was feeling in his charismatic presence.

  ‘I can tell. It shows,’ he said, looking at her with a strange expression now. Was that pride she could see in his eyes?

  Prickly heat rushed over her skin as they both stared at each other for a long, tension-filled moment.

  Jack broke the atmosphere by clearing his throat. ‘Well, I’m going to go and check in with the US office then head off to bed,’ he said, running a hand over his tousled hair. He looked so exhausted she had a mad urge to spring into full-on wife mode and start fussing around him, telling him not to bother with work, but to go straight to bed and get some rest.

  She didn’t though.

  Because she knew that it wasn’t her place to do that. She was only his wife in name after all.

  Sadness swamped her as she accepted the painful reality that she’d forfeited the right to have a say in how he lived his life six years ago.

  He wasn’t hers to care for any more.

  * * *

  The next morning, just one day before Perdita and her crew were due to sweep in and dissect their lives for the entertainment of the general public like some kind of twisted anthropology project, she was surprised to see Jack striding into the kitchen at nine o’clock in the morning.

  She was in the process of stuffing her mouth with a croissant she’d rewarded herself with for all her hard work over the last few days, so it took her a moment to comment on his remarkable appearance.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ she muttered through a mouthful of buttery pastry, her heart racing at the sight of him looking all fresh and clean from the shower and, oh, so strikingly handsome in a dark grey, sharply tailored Italian suit.

  ‘I happen to live here,’ he replied, with one eyebrow raised.

  ‘I know that. I’m just surprised to see you here so late in the day. You’ve always been up and out with the lark before now.’

  ‘Some of us don’t have the good fortune of having regular lie-ins,’ he said, the twinkle in his eye letting her know he was only teasing her.

  She turned back to her plate and chewed the last of the croissant hard, feeling heat rise to her cheeks. She hadn’t even brushed her hair this morning and was still in her scruffy old brushed-cotton pyjamas, assuming he’d already left for the office when she’d got up to a quiet house.

  Hearing the kettle begin to boil, she turned to look towards where he now stood, dropping a teabag into a mug. The ends of his hair were curling around the collar of his pristine white shirt and without thinking she said, ‘You need a haircut.’

  Swivelling to face her, he shot her an amused grin. ‘Are you nagging me, wife?’

  The heat in her cheeks increased. ‘No!’ She cleared her throat, distracted by the sudden lump she found there. ‘I don’t know why I said that. I just noticed, that’s all.’

  Turning back to her croissant again, she tried to ignore his rueful chuckle and the clinking and clanking noises as he made h
is breakfast. Grace and economy of movement had never been his more dominant traits.

  He sat down opposite her, bringing with him his fresh, clean scent, and her stomach did a little dance.

  Trying to smooth out some of the tangles in her hair, she gave him a sheepish smile.

  Not that she should worry about what Jack thought of her looking such a mess. He’d always liked seeing her in disarray and had often commented on how sexy he found it after they’d made love in the good old days.

  The rogue memory of it only made her face flame even hotter.

  ‘How come you’re not in the office already?’ she asked, concentrating on brushing her fingers together to knock off the remaining flaky crumbs so she didn’t have to look him in the eye.

  ‘I have a meeting in Chelsea at nine-thirty so I’m having a slow start to the morning for once.’ He shifted in his chair so he could pick up his mug of tea and take a swig from it, peering at her from over the top of the rim.

  ‘And I have a favour to ask of you,’ he said, once he’d had a good swallow of tea.

  She looked at him in surprise. ‘A favour?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What is it?’

  He shifted in his chair again, only this time looking a little discomfited.

  ‘We’ve been invited to a party tonight, by a business acquaintance of mine. I could do with turning up and doing some schmoozing. The guy might be interested in having me buy out his company and I wanted to work on him in a more relaxed environment.’

  ‘Okay,’ she said slowly, her pulse picking up at the thought of spending the evening at his side. ‘This is tonight, did you say?’

  ‘Yes. It’s in a house a couple of streets away.’

  ‘And you want me to go with you as your wife?’ Saying the words made her ache a little inside.

  ‘You’ve got it in one.’ He flashed her a grin, which she struggled to return.

  Splaying his hands on the table, he looked her directly in the eye now. ‘Look, I know it’s probably the last thing you feel like doing, what with our lives and relationship being so complicated at the moment, but I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t really important.’