Читать книгу Regency Christmas Courtship - Louise Allen - Страница 14

Hunger woke Grant. One minute he had been fathoms down, the next, awake, alert, conscious of an empty stomach and silence. Gradually the soft sounds of the household began to penetrate. The subdued crackle of the fire, someone trudging past in the snow, the distant sound of light, racing feet and the heavier tread of an adult in pursuit. Charlie exercising his long-suffering tutor, no doubt. Close at hand an infant began to cry, then stopped. Anna. I have a daughter. And a wife.

There was daylight between the gap in the curtains, falling in a bright snow-reflecting bar across the blanket someone had draped over his legs. Grant pushed the hair out of his eyes, winced and sat up, too relaxed to tug the bell pull and summon food and hot water.

Now, today, he must take up the reins of the earldom. That was perhaps the least of the duties looming before him. He had known for nearly twenty years, ever since his father died, that he would inherit. His grandfather had run a tight ship, but had taught Grant, shared decisions as he grew older, explained his thinking, given him increasing responsibilities. There were no mysteries to discover about the estates, the investments or the tenants and he had inherited an excellent bailiff and solicitor along with the title.

Charlie was going to be all right, given time and loving attention. Which left Kate. His new wife. What had he been thinking of, to marry her out of hand like that? She was certainly in deep trouble, all alone with a new baby and no means of support, but he could have found her a cottage somewhere on one of the estates, settled some money on her. Forgotten her.

His grandfather had been fretting himself into a state over Grant’s first marriage. Blaming himself for ever introducing Grant to Madeleine Ellmont, worrying that Grant was lonely, that Charlie had no mother, that the future of the earldom relied on a healthy quiverful of children. So much so that Grant had come to hate the house that had always been his home. But he could have lied to him, made up a charming and eligible young woman whom he was about to propose to, settled the old man’s worries that way.

What had prompted that impetuous proposal when he already knew his grandfather must be beyond caring about his marital state? Something about Kate had told him he could trust her, that she was somehow right. He had glimpsed it again yesterday when he had looked into her eyes and seen a spark there that had caught his breath for an instant.

A clock struck ten. Lord, he’d slept more than twelve hours. Grant leaned out of bed and yanked the bell pull. He had to somehow get everything right with Kate. She was unsettled to discover she was a countess with a stepson and that was understandable. He had an edgy feeling that he had disconcerted her when she was helping him to undress. He kept forgetting that while she might be a mother she seemed quite sheltered, not very experienced. What had he said? Nothing out of line, he hoped. For the first time he wondered about Anna’s father and just what that love affair had been—a sudden moment of madness, a lengthy, illicit relationship, or…

‘You rang, my lord?’ said Giles the footman.

Grant frowned at him for a second. It took some getting used to, being my lord now. ‘Hot water, coffee. Ask Cook to send up some bacon, sausage… Everything. She’ll know.’

When the water came he washed and then shaved himself while Giles found him clean linen and laid out plain, dark clothes. That was something else to add to the list, a valet.

When he tapped on the jib door and went through into Kate’s suite he found her in the sitting room, the baby in the crib by her side, her hands full of a tangle of fine wool. She was muttering what sounded like curses under her breath.

‘Good morning. Cat’s cradles?’

‘Oh!’ She dropped the wool and two needles fell out of it. ‘Mrs Havers, the housekeeper, brought me this wool and the knitting needles. She thought I might like to make a cot blanket, which was very thoughtful of her. I didn’t like to tell her I haven’t tried to knit since I was six.’ She grimaced at the tangle. ‘And tried was the correct word, even then. Did you need me, my lord?’

‘Grant, please. I came to see how you are and to thank you for persuading me into bed yesterday. I had gone beyond being entirely rational on the subject.’ There was colour up over her cheeks and he remembered making some insinuating comment about luring him into bed. Damn.

‘I hope you feel better this morning.’ She bent her head over the knitting once more, catching up the dropped stitches. ‘Charlie was up and about quite early, testing the bounds of his tutor’s patience. He seems a pleasant young man, Mr Gough.’

‘He’s the younger brother of a friend from university. I thought he would be a good choice as a first tutor—he has plenty of energy and Charlie seems to have taken to him.’

Kate picked up the wool and began to wind it back into a ball, her gaze fixed on her hands. ‘You slept well?’

‘Yes, excellently. How is Anna this morning?’

Grant sat down and retrieved a knitting needle from the floor as Kate answered. He might as well order the teapot to be brought and some fancy biscuits—this seemed like a morning call, complete with stilted, meaningless polite chat, achieving nothing.

‘Tomorrow, I intend going down to London. I must present myself at the House of Lords, the College of Heralds and at Court.’ He was escaping.

‘Oh.’ She set down the wool and sat up in the chair as though bracing herself. ‘I am sorry, I had not realised we would be leaving so soon. I am not certain I feel up to the journey yet.’

Surely that was not panic he saw in her eyes? He shook his head and realised Kate had taken that as a refusal to listen to her objection.

‘But…if we must, may we stop in Newcastle on the way? Then I can buy a respectable gown or two to tide me over.’ She looked around, determined, it seemed, to obey his wishes. ‘Where have Jeannie and Wilson got to? I am sure we can be ready in time.’

‘There is no need for you to disturb yourself. I had no intention of dragging you away. I will take Charlie and Gough with me, I don’t want to leave the boy without me yet. They can come back on the mail after a few weeks, once I am certain he is all right.’ Kate closed her eyes for a moment and he felt a jab of conscience at not realising how exhausted she must be. ‘When you feel up to it you will find Newcastle will serve for all your needs while you require only mourning clothes.’

‘Very well. As you wish, my lord.’ Kate picked up the wool and needles again with a polite smile that seemed to mask something deeper than relief. ‘And you will send Charlie back, you say?’

‘The moment I am certain he doesn’t need me. In the longer term I will be too occupied with business to give him the company he needs and the house and servants will be unfamiliar to him. He will be better here, where he feels secure. I will send for him again after a month or two—travelling long distances will be no hardship for him, he’ll find it an adventure—but I want him based here.’

‘Of course. As you think best. I can see that London might not be a good place for a small boy in the longer term if you cannot be with him most of the time.’

Grant told himself he should be pleased to have such a conformable wife, such an untemperamental, obliging one. Perversely, he felt decidedly put out. Through yesterday’s fog of tiredness he seemed to recall the sparkle that temper had put in Kate’s eyes, the flush on her cheeks, the stimulus of a clash of wills. Women were moody after childbirth, he knew that. This placidity was obviously Kate’s natural character.

‘Grant?’ She was biting her lip now. ‘Grant, will you put a notice about the marriage in the newspapers? Only, I wish you would not. I feel so awkward about things…’

Newspaper announcements had been the last thing on his mind, but he could see she was embarrassed. ‘No, I won’t. An announcement of the birth, yes, but it will give no indication of the date of the marriage. “To the Countess of Allundale, a daughter.” All right?’ Kate nodded and he hesitated, concerned at how pale she had gone. Then she smiled and he told himself he was imagining things. ‘If you’ll excuse me, my dear, I have a great deal to do.’ She would no doubt be delighted to see the back of him—and why should it be otherwise?

May 5, 1820

Home. Warmth on his back, clean air in his lungs, the sun bathing the green slopes of the Tyne Valley spread out before him. Grant stood in his stirrups to stretch, relishing the ache of well-exercised muscles. However ambiguous his feelings about Abbeywell, he had been happy here once and perhaps he could be again, if only he could blank out his memories and find some sort of peace with his new wife.

His staff had obviously thought he was out of his mind to decide to ride from London to Northumberland instead of taking a post-chaise, but he knew exactly what had motivated him. This had been a holiday from responsibility, from meetings and parties, from political negotiating and social duty. And a buffer between the realities and reason of London and the ghosts that haunted this place.

If he was honest, it had also been a way of delaying his return to his new wife and facing up to exactly what his impulse on that cold Christmas Day had led to.

‘I like her,’ Charlie had pronounced on being questioned when he came on a month’s visit to the London house in March. But he was too overexcited from his adventurous trip on the mail coach with Mr Gough to focus on things back in Northumberland. He wanted to talk to his papa, to go with him to the menagerie, to see the soldiers and the Tower. And Astley’s again, and…

‘You get on together all right?’ Grant had prompted.

‘Of course. She doesn’t fuss and she lets me play with Anna, who is nice, although she’s not much fun yet. May we go to Tatt’s? Papa, please?’

Doesn’t fuss. Well, that would seem to accord with Kate’s letters. One a week, each precisely three pages long in a small, neat hand. Each contained a scrupulous report on Charlie’s health and scholastic progress, a paragraph about Anna—she can hold her head up, she can copy sounds, she can throw her little knitted bunny—and a few facts about the house and estate. Millie in the kitchen has broken her ankle, the stable cat caught the biggest rat anyone had seen and brought it into the kitchen on Sunday morning and Cook dropped the roast, it has rained for a week solidly…

They were always signed Your obedient wife, Catherine Rivers, each almost as formalised and lacking in emotion as Gough’s reports on Charlie or his bailiff’s lengthy letters about estate business. And never once did she ask to come to London or reproach him for leaving her alone.

He replied, of course, sending a package north weekly, with a long letter for Charlie, a note for Gough, answers to Wilkinson’s estate queries. And there would always be a letter one page long for Kate, with the kind of gossip that Madeleine, his first wife, had expected. What the royal family were doing, what the latest society scandal was—omitting the crim. con. cases, naturally—the latest fads in hem lengths and bonnets as observed in Hyde Park. Signed Your affct. husband, Grantham Rivers.

The parkland rolled before him like a welcome carpet and the road forked, the right hand to the house, the left to the rise crowned with the mausoleum his great-grandfather had built in the 1750s. The chestnut gelding was trotting along the left-hand way before Grant was conscious of applying the reins. No rush, it was only just noon, no one was expecting him to arrive on any particular day.

The classical monument sat perfectly on its hillock, turning the view into a scene in an Arcadian painting. It was a Greek temple with its portico facing south, its basement full of the ancestors his great-grandfather had removed from the church vault, its inner walls made with niches for the future generations of Rivers. ‘So we can admire the view,’ the first earl had reportedly announced. ‘I’m damned if I’m spending eternity in that damp vault with some dullard of a preacher sermonising on top of me.’ The countess of the day had had mild hysterics at the sentiment and had been ignored and now she, too, shared the prospect.

Grant tied the gelding to a ring on the rear wall of the building and strolled round to the front. There were stone benches set under the portico and it would be good to rest there awhile and think about his grandfather.

The sound of laughter stopped him in mid-stride. He recognised Charlie’s uninhibited shrieks, but there was a light, happy laugh he did not recognise at all. He walked on, his boots silent on the sheep-cropped turf, and stopped again at the corner.

A rug was spread out on the grassy flat area in front of the temple steps and a woman in a dark grey gown was sitting on it, her arms wrapped around her knees, her eyes shaded by a wide straw hat as she watched Charlie chasing a ball. An open parasol was lying by her side.

‘Maman, look!’ Charlie hurled the ball high, then flung himself full length to catch it.

The woman clapped, the enthusiasm of her applause tipping her hat back off her head to roll away down the slope. Long brown hair, the colour of milky coffee, glossy in the sunlight, tumbled free from the confining pins and she laughed. ‘Catch my hat, Charlie!’

Maman? Grant started forward as Charlie caught the hat, turned and saw him. He rushed uphill shrieking, ‘Papa! Papa! Look, Maman—Papa’s home.’

The woman swung round on the rug as Charlie thudded into Grant, his hard little head butting into his stomach. He scooped him up, tucked him under his arm and strode down to her. She tilted her head back, sending the waves of hair slithering like unfolding silk and giving him an unimpeded view of an oval face, blue eyes, a decided chin and pink lips open in surprise.

‘My…my lord, we did not expect to see you for another day at least.’ Her face lost its colour, her relaxed body seemed to tighten in on itself.

Kate? Of course it is Kate, but… He did something about his own dropped jaw, gave himself a mental shake and managed to utter a coherent sentence. ‘I made good time.’ He set Charlie on his feet. ‘Maman?’

‘Stepmamas are in fairy stories and they are always wicked. So I asked Mr Gough for the words for mama in lots of languages and we looked them up and I chose maman. Maman likes it,’ his son assured Grant earnestly. ‘She said it was elegant.’

‘Will you not sit down?’ It was extraordinary how it was possible to sound quite calm outwardly when her insides were in a jumble of feelings, the overriding one of which was confusion. Kate gestured towards the open basket and managed what she hoped was a welcoming smile. ‘Do have some luncheon. We have enough food to withstand a siege. Charlie, as always, assured Cook that we might be lost in the woods for days. We never are, but Cook does not like to take the risk.’

When in doubt when dealing with a man, feed the beast, her mother had always said with a chuckle. Kate kept her tone serious and was rewarded by the slight upward tilt of one corner of Grant’s mouth. He had a sense of humour, then. It had not been possible to detect it in his dutiful letters, which had not been made any less dry by the fact they contained nothing but gossip. Presumably that was all wives were supposed to be interested in.

Wives, of course, were perfectly capable of reading the news-sheets and keeping informed that way, although that simple fact did not seem to occur to men. Her brother, Henry, had always been amazed when she revealed an opinion on anything from income tax to child labour and he firmly believed that thinking led to weakening of the feminine brain. Kate pushed away the resentment and watched her husband as he moved round to drop to the rug at her side and discovered Anna lying under the parasol, kicking her legs and chewing on a bone ring.

Grant reached over and tickled her and the resentment retreated some more. He was good with the children, she must remember that.

‘She has grown and she looks to be thriving. As do you,’ he added. ‘I scarcely recognised you.’

From the way Grant shut his mouth with a snap he realised that was a less than tactful remark. Instead of saying so Kate wrestled her hair into a twist and jammed the hat back on top. ‘Babies tend to grow in the natural course of things. But she is very well, as am I.’ She sent him a considering, sideways glance, making sure he saw it. ‘You look much better than I remembered.’

That very forward remark obviously caught him by surprise. Grant tossed his low-crowned hat aside and shifted round to look directly at her, eyes narrowing. ‘Thank you. I think.’

She had known him to be a good-looking man when she married him, but not this attractive, with a London gloss on his hair and clothes, his face tanned from his long ride north. ‘In December you looked haggard, bruised and exhausted. You were recovering from a blow to the head and you were grieving,’ Kate said with a slight shrug. His eyes moved down to her breasts as she moved and she caught her breath at the answering flare of heat in her belly. The fact that she had a figure obviously interested him. No doubt it was the transformation of her bosom; men could be very predictable.

It was nearly five months since Anna’s birth now. She had passed through exhaustion to a conviction that when she felt stronger she never wanted a man to touch her again. After all, her first, and only, experience had not been so pleasurable as to have her yearning for more.

And that comfortable state had lasted for three months until the moment when she had looked up from the dinner table to see Grant’s portrait hanging on the opposite wall, just as it had since the day she arrived. It had been part of the decoration of the house, hardly regarded, but that evening she had felt a startling stab of attraction as she met the direct green gaze. The feeling had been so visceral, so unashamedly physical, that she’d choked on her fish terrine and Mr Gough had rushed round the table to offer her water.

Since the arrival of Grant’s letter announcing his return she had been in an unseemly state of confusion, alarm and anticipation. This was her husband—and husbands expected their rights.