Lords of Disgrace

Bachelors for life!

Friends since school, brothers in arms, bachelors for life!

At least that’s what The Four Disgraces—Alex Tempest, Grant Rivers, Cris de Feaux and Gabriel Stone—believe. But when they meet four feisty women who are more than a match for their wild ways these Lords are tempted to renounce bachelordom for good.

Don’t miss this dazzling new quartet by

Louise Allen

Read Alex Tempest’s story in

His Housekeeper’s Christmas Wish

And Grant Rivers’s story in

His Christmas Countess

Look out for Cris and Gabriel’s stories, coming soon!

Author Note

I have been exploring the world of four quite disgraceful lords who are each going to meet their match in the very unexpected love of their life.

This time it is the turn of Grant Rivers, a man with dark secrets he keeps close to his heart. He is a man in a hurry, for very pressing reasons, but even he can’t abandon someone in even more of a hurry than he is—a young woman giving birth in a ruined bothy on the wild Scottish Borders on Christmas Eve. Grant finds himself with more than he bargained for as a result of helping Kate Harding, and I hope you enjoy finding out as much as I did what happens when two people with secrets find themselves forced to learn to trust and rely on each other.

You can meet Grant before his encounter with Kate in His Housekeeper’s Christmas Wish, the story of the first Lord of Disgrace, Alex Tempest. The next two—Cris de Feaux and Gabriel Stone—are yet to come.

His Christmas Countess
Louise Allen

www.millsandboon.co.uk

LOUISE ALLEN loves immersing herself in history. She finds landscapes and places evoke the past powerfully. Venice, Burgundy and the Greek islands are favourite destinations. Louise lives on the Norfolk coast and spends her spare time gardening, researching family history or travelling in search of inspiration. Visit her at louiseallenregency.co.uk, @louiseregency and janeaustenslondon.com.

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Contents

Cover

Lords of Disgrace

Author Note

Title Page

About the Author

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Extract

Copyright

Chapter One

December 24, 1819—the Scottish Borders

Becoming pregnant had been so easy, so catastrophically simple. An unaccustomed glass of champagne, a little unfamiliar flattery, a night made for romance, a careless, innocent tumble from virtue to ruin.

Somehow that ease increased the shock of discovering just how hard giving birth to the baby was. It is because I’m alone, I’m cold, I’m frightened, Kate told herself. In a moment, when these pains stop, I will feel stronger, I’ll get up and light the fire. If I can get there, if there is any dry kindling, if I can strike a spark.

‘Stop it.’ She spoke aloud, her voice echoing in the chill space of the half-ruined bothy. ‘I will do it because I have to, because I must, for the baby.’ It was her fault her child would be born in a tumbledown cottage on a winter’s day, her miscalculation in leaving it so late to run away, her lack of attention that had allowed the pickpocket to slip her purse from her reticule in the inn yard, leaving her penniless. She should have gone to the workhouse rather than think she could walk on, hoping for some miracle and safe shelter at the end of the rough, muddy road.

Her mind seemed to have turned to mush these past few days. Only one message had been clear: get away before Henry can take my baby from me. And she would do anything, anything at all, for this child, to keep him or her safe from her brother’s clutches. Now was the time to move, while there was still some light left in the lowering sky. She tried to stand up from the heap of musty straw, but found she could not. ‘Pull yourself together, Catherine Harding. Women give birth every day and in far worse conditions than this.’ Beyond caring that she was reduced to a lumbering, clumsy creature, she managed to get on to her hands and knees and began to crawl towards the hearth and the broken remains of the fire grate.

The weakness caught her before she could move more than a few feet. It must be because she had eaten so little in the past day and night. Shaking, she dug her fingers into the dirt floor and hung on. She would gather a little strength in a moment, then she could crawl nearer to the cold hearth. Surely giving birth could not take much longer? Learning some basic facts of life would be far more useful to young women than the art of watercolours and playing the harp. Learning the wiles of hardened rakes and the consequences of a moonlit dalliance would be even more valuable. Most of all, learning that one could not trust anyone, not even your closest kin, was a lesson Kate had learned too late.

If the mother she could not remember had survived Henry’s birth... No. She caught herself up before the wishful thinking could weaken her, before the haunting fear of what her own fate might be overwhelmed her. She was still in the middle of the floor. How much time had passed since she had thought to light the fire? Hours? Only minutes, from the unchanging light. Kate inched closer to the hearth.

Something struck a stone outside, then the sound of footsteps muffled by the wet turf, the snort of a horse and a man’s voice.

‘This will have to do. You’re lame, I’m lost, it is going to snow and this is the first roof I’ve seen for the past ten miles.’ English, educated. Not an old man, not a youth. Hide.

She backed towards the heap of straw, animal instinct urging her to ungainly speed. A plank table had collapsed, two legs eaten through by rats or damp, and she burrowed behind it, her breath sobbing out of her lungs. Kate stuffed her clenched fist into her mouth and bit down.

* * *

‘At least water’s the one thing we’re not short of.’ Grant Rivers dug a broken-handled bucket from the rubbish heap outside the tumbledown cottage and scooped it into the small burn that rushed and chattered at the side of the track. His new horse, bought in Edinburgh, twitched an ear, apparently unused to forming part of a one-sided conversation.

Grant carried the bucket inside the part of the building that had once been a byre. The place was technically a but and ben, he supposed, one half for the beasts, one half for the family, the steaming animals helping them keep warm through the long Border winters. There was enough of the heather thatch to provide some shelter for the horse and the dwelling section had only a few holes in the roof, although the window and door had long gone. At least the solid wall turned its back on the prevailing wind. He could keep warm, rest up. He was enough of a doctor to know he should not ignore the headache and the occasional dizziness, the legacy of that near-fatal accident a week ago.

He lifted off the saddle, took off the bridle, used the reins as a tether and tipped the bag of oats from his saddlebag on to a dry patch of ground. ‘Don’t eat it all at once,’ he advised the chestnut gelding. ‘It’s all you are getting until we reach civilisation and I’ve half a mind to steal it to make myself porridge.’

There was sufficient light to see by to clean out the big hooves and find the angular stone that had wedged itself into the off-hind. It looked sore. He gave an apologetic rub to the soft muzzle that nudged at him. His fault for pressing on so hard even though he suspected he would be too late for his grandfather. At least he had been able to send a letter saying the things in his heart to the man who had brought him up, letting the old man know that only dire necessity kept him from his side at the end.

He must also get back to Abbeywell for Charlie’s sake. It was the last place he wanted to be, but the boy needed his father. And Grant needed his son, for that matter. Christmas was always going to be grim this year with his grandfather’s health failing, but he had not expected it to be this bad—him bedridden in Edinburgh with his head cracked open and Charlie left with his dying great-grandfather. Grant had planned to leave the city on the seventeenth, but that was the day a labourer, careless with a scaffolding plank in the New Town, had almost killed him. As soon as he had regained consciousness and realised he was incapable of walking across the room, let alone travelling, Grant had written the letter. The reply had arrived from the steward two days ago. His grandfather was not expected to last the night.

Grant had hoped to be with his son for Christmas Day. Now he might make it by that evening if the gelding was sound and the weather held. ‘We’ll rest up, let the bruising ease, stay the night if I can get a fire going.’ Talking to a horse might be a sign of concussion, but at least it made something to listen to beyond the wind whistling up this treeless Borders valley. Unless the direction of that wind changed, the makeshift stable was fairly sheltered and the horse was used to Scottish weather.

And for him the familiar cold of a Northumberland winter was no different from this. There was enough rubbish lying about the place to burn. He’d make a fire, pass the night with the food in his saddlebags and allow himself a dram from his brandy flask, or the illicit whisky James Whittaker had handed him as they’d parted yesterday in Edinburgh’s New Town.

Something in the air... Grant straightened, arms full of dry scraps of wood, nostrils flaring to catch that faint rumour of scent. Blood? Blood and fear. He knew the smell of both from those weeks in the summer of ’15. The killing days when he and his friends had volunteered to join the fight to see Napoleon finally defeated. The memory of them had saved his neck in more than a few dark alleyways before now.

A low moan made the horse shift uneasily. The wind or an animal? No, there had been something human in that faint wisp of sound. He did not believe in ghosts and that left someone hurt or in distress. Or a trap. The cottage would make a handy refuge for footpads. ‘Eat your oats,’ he said as he eased the knife from his left boot and tossed the armful of wood away.

He moved fast as the wood clattered into the far corner, then eased around the splintered jamb of the inner door to scan the single living room. It was shadowed and empty—a glance showed a broken chair, a scattered pile of mouldy straw, an overturned table, cobwebs and shadows. There was that soft, desperate sound again and the scent of fear was stronger here. Caution discarded, he took three strides across the earth floor and pulled away the table, the only hiding place.

It did not take several years of medical training to tell him that he was looking at a woman in labour and a desperate one at that. Of all the medical emergencies he might have confronted, this was the one from his nightmares. Literally. Her gaze flickered from his face to the knife in his hand as she scrabbled back into the straw.

‘Go away.’ Her voice was thready, defiant, and there was blood around her mouth and on the back of the hand resting protectively on the mound of her belly. She had bitten her fist in an attempt to muffle her cries. His stomach lurched at the sight. ‘One step more and I’ll—’

‘Deposit a baby on my boots?’ He slid the knife back into its sheath, made himself smile and saw her relax infinitesimally at his light tone. When he tossed his low-crowned hat on to the chair, exposing the rakish bandage across his forehead, she tensed again.

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ Her voice was English, educated, out of place in this hovel. She closed her eyes for a moment and when she opened them again the effort to stay focused and alert was palpable. ‘This baby is never coming out.’

‘First one?’ Grant knelt beside her. ‘I’m a doctor, it is going to be all right, trust me.’ There’s two lies to begin with—how many more will I need? I’m not qualified, I’ve never delivered a baby and I have no idea whether anything is going to be all right. He had, however, delivered any number of foals. Between theoretical knowledge, practical experience of female anatomy and years of managing a breeding stables, he would be better than nothing. But this child had better hurry up and get born, because he was trapped here until it was.

* * *

He was big, he was male, he seemed to fill the space and the bandage made him look like a brigand, despite the well-made clothes. But his quiet confidence and deep, calm voice seeped through Kate’s cramped body like a dose of laudanum. A doctor. The answer to her incoherent prayers. There were miracles after all.

‘Yes, this is my first child.’ And my last. No amount of pleasure is worth this.

‘Then let’s get this place warm.’ He shrugged out of his greatcoat and laid it over her. It smelt of horse, leather and man, all strangely soothing. ‘We’ll make you more comfortable when the fire’s lit.’

‘Dr...?’

‘Grantham Rivers, at your service. Call me Grant.’ He poked at the grate, went into the stable and came back with wood. His voice was pleasant, his expression, what she could see of it, unruffled, but she could sense he was not happy about this situation. For all the easy movement, the calm voice, he was on edge.

‘Grantham?’ Incredible the effect of a little warmth and a lot of reassurance, even if she was all too aware that her rescuer wished he was somewhere else entirely.

‘I was conceived there, apparently, in the course of a passionate wedding night at the Bull Inn.’ He was striking a flint on a steel cupped in his palm and surrounded by some sort of tinder. It flared up and he eased it into the wood, nursing the flame with steady, competent hands. ‘It could have been worse. It might have been Biggleswade.’

She had never imagined laughing again, ever, at anything. Her snort of amusement turned into a moan as the contraction hit her.

‘Breathe,’ he said, still tending the fire. ‘Breathe and relax.’

‘Relax? Are you mad?’ Kate lay back, panting. Breathing was hard enough.

‘No, just male and therefore designed to be unsatisfactory at times like this.’ His mouth curved into a smile that she could have sworn was bitter, but it had gone too fast to be certain. ‘What is your name?’

Caution resurfaced. She was at his mercy now. If he were not the good man he appeared to be, then there was nothing she could do about it. Her instincts, sharpened by the desperate need to protect her baby, told her to gamble and trust him. But with her life, not with her secrets. Should she lie about her name? But that would serve no purpose. ‘Catherine Harding. Miss,’ she added as an afterthought. Might as well be clear about that. ‘My friends call me Kate.’

Dr Rivers began to break the legs off the table and heap the pieces by the fire. Either it was very rotten or he was very strong. She studied the broad shoulders flexing as he worked and decided it was the latter.

‘Where’s the baby’s father?’ He did not seem too shocked by her situation, but doctors must be used to maintaining a neutral front, whatever their patients’ embarrassing predicaments.

‘Dead.’ That was a lie and it came without the need for thought. Then, hard on the heels of the single word, the wariness resurfaced. This man seemed kind and promised to help her, but he could still betray her if he knew who she was. And, almost certainly, if he knew what she had been part of. He was a gentleman from his voice, his clothes, his manner. And gentlemen not only helped ladies in distress—or she hoped they did—but they also stuck together, protected each other against criminal conspiracies.

‘I’m sorry about that.’ Grant Rivers laid the tabletop on the earth floor, heaping up the drier straw on it. He was asking her something. She jerked her mind back to dealing with the present. ‘Have you any linen with you? Shifts, petticoats?’

‘In my portmanteau. There isn’t much.’ It had been all she could carry.

He dug into it, efficiently sorting through. A nightgown went on one side, then he began to spread linen over the straw, rolling her two gowns into a pillow.

‘Dr—’

‘Grant.’

‘You are very efficient.’ A contraction passed, easier than before. He was making her relax, just as he had said.

‘I had a short spell in the army. Even with a batman, one learns to shift for oneself. Now, then.’ He eyed her and she felt herself tense again. ‘Let’s get you into something more comfortable and on to this luxurious bed.’ It was getting darker and she could not read his expression. ‘Kate, I’m sorry I’m a man, I’m sorry I’m a complete stranger, but we have got to get you into a nightgown and I have got to examine you.’ He was brisk, verging on the impatient. ‘You’re a patient and just now you can’t afford to be shy or modest.’

Think of the baby, she told herself. Think of Grant Rivers as a guardian angel. A Christmas angel, sexless, dispassionate. I have no choice but to trust him. ‘Very well.’

He undressed her like a man who knew his way around the fastenings of women’s clothing. Not sexless, then. She was out of her stained, crumpled gown and underclothing before she had time to be embarrassed. He’d placed the nightgown so it had caught a little warmth from the fire and soon she was into that and on to the bed, sighing with relief at the simple comfort of it, before she had the chance to realise her nightgown was up around her waist.

‘There, we just place this so.’ Grant swung the greatcoat over her. ‘Now a light, something hot to drink. Lie back, concentrate on getting warm.’

Kate watched from between slitted eyes as he built up the fire, brought in a bucket of water and set it by the hearth. He lit a small lantern, then dipped water into a mug, adding something from a flask balanced on a brick by the flames, and washed his hands in the bucket. His actions were rapid, yet smooth. Efficient was probably the word. A man who wanted to get things done and who wouldn’t waste time. A man who was forced to wait on this baby’s schedule. Both his efficiency and, strangely, his impatience were reassuring. She was seeing the essence of this man.

‘Where did the lantern come from?’

‘I carry one in my saddlebags. I’ll just find something else for water. We’ll need a fair bit before we’re done. Luckily the last occupants were fairly untidy and there’s a promising rubbish heap outside.’

He ought to seem less than masculine, coping so handily with domestic tasks, but he merely appeared practical. Kate studied the broad shoulders and narrow hips, the easy movement, the tight buckskin breeches. She never expected to feel the slightest flutter of sensual need for a man again as long as she lived, but if she did, purely theoretically, of course, Grant Rivers was more than equipped to provoke it. He was definitely very— ‘Ooh!’

‘Hang on, I’ll be with you in a minute.’ He came back in carrying an assortment of pots, water sloshing out on to the floor. He held out his hands to the fire. ‘My fingers are cold again.’

What has that got to do with...? Kate sucked in an outraged breath as, lantern in hand, he knelt at her feet and dived under the greatcoat tented over her knees.

‘It is remarkable how one can adapt to circumstances,’ she managed after five somewhat stressful minutes. Incredibly she sounded quite rational and not, as she felt, mildly hysterical.

Grant emerged, tousled but composed, and sat back on his heels, shaking thick, dark brown hair back out of his eyes. He smiled, transforming a face she had thought pattern-book handsome into something approaching charming. ‘Childbirth tends to result in some unavoidable intimacies,’ he said. ‘But everything seems to be proceeding as it should.’ The smile vanished as he took a pocket watch from his waistcoat and studied it.

‘How much longer?’ She tried not to make it sound like a demand, but feared it had.

‘Hours, I should think. First babies tend to be slow.’ He was at the fire, washing his hands in yet another container of water, then pouring something from a flask into a battered kettle with no handle.

‘Hours?’

‘Drink this.’ He offered the brew in a horn beaker, another of the seemingly inexhaustible contents of his saddlebags. ‘I’ll get some food in a minute. When did you last eat?’

That needed some thought. ‘Yesterday. I had breakfast at an inn.’

Grant made no reply, but when he brought her bread and cheese made into a rough sandwich, she noticed he ate nothing. ‘What are you going to eat? This is all the food you have with you, isn’t it?’

He shrugged and took a mouthful of the liquid in the horn beaker. ‘You need the energy. I can live on my fat.’

He rested his head against the rough stone wall behind him and closed his eyes. What fat? With a less straightforward man she might have suspected he was fishing for compliments, but it did not seem to be Grant Rivers’s style.

What was he doing as a doctor? She puzzled over him, beginning to slip into a doze now the food was warm in her stomach. He was educated, he had been in the army. There was no wedding ring on his finger—not that there was anything to be deduced from that—and there was an engraved signet on his left hand. His clothes were good. And yet he was riding over the Marches without a servant and prepared for a night of rough living.

A piece of wood slipped into the fire with a crackle, jerking her fully awake again. ‘How did you hurt your head?’ Was he fleeing from something?

‘A stupid accident in Edinburgh. I’d been staying with a friend in the New Town and the place is covered in building sites. Some fool of a labourer dropped a plank on me. I was out cold for a couple of days and in no state to move much after that, but there’s nothing broken.’

He closed his eyes and she did the same. She let herself drift off, reassured. She was safe while he was there.

Chapter Two

The night passed with intervals of sleep interrupted by increasing waves of contractions. At some point Kate was conscious of simply abandoning herself to Grant Rivers, to the competent hands, the confident, reassuring voice, the strength of the man. There was no choice now, but her instincts told her this was a good man, and if she was mistaken, there was nothing she could do about it. As time passed, on leaden feet, her trust grew.

She held on to his fingers, squeezing until she felt his bones shift under her grip, but he never complained. He was going to deliver her baby, he was going to save her so she could hold her child in her arms. He was her miracle. She was tired beyond anything she had ever experienced, this was more difficult than she could have imagined and she seemed to have been in this place for years. But it would be all right. Grant Rivers would make it all right.

* * *

It was taking too long. Kate was exhausted, the light was dreadful and he had no instruments. He knew full well that if there were complications, he did not have the knowledge to deal with them.

As dawn light filtered through the cobwebbed windows, Grant took a gulp of the neat whisky, scrubbed his hands over his face and faced down the fear. She was not going to die, nor was the baby. This time, at this crisis, he could save both mother and child. There was no decision to be made about it, no choice. He had only to hold his nerve, use his brain, and he would cheat death. This time. He stretched, went out to check on the horse, then saw the tree growing at the back of the bothy and smiled.

‘Talk to me, Kate. Where do you come from, why are you here, alone on Christmas morning?’

‘Not alone.’ She opened her eyes. ‘You’re here, too. Is it really Christmas?’

‘Yes. The season’s greetings to you.’ He showed her the little bunch of berried holly he had plucked from the stunted tree and was rewarded with a smile. Hell, but she looks dreadful. Her face was white and lined with strain, her hair was lank and tangled, her eyes bloodshot. She was too thin and had been for some time, he suspected, but she was a fighter.

‘How old are you?’

‘Twenty-three.’

‘Talk to me,’ he repeated. ‘Where are you from? I live just over the Border in Northumberland.’

‘I’m from—’ She grimaced and clutched at his bruised hand. ‘Suffolk. My brother is a...a country squire. My mother died when he was born, my father was killed in a hunting accident a few years ago. He was a real countryman and didn’t care for London. Henry’s different, but he’s not important or rich or well connected, although he wishes he was. He wanted me to marry well.’

A gentlewoman, then, as he had thought. ‘You’re of age.’ Grant wiped her face with a damp cloth and gave her some more of the warm watered brandy to sip. It should be hot sweet tea, but this was all he had.

She was silent and he guessed she was deciding how much to tell him, how much she trusted him. ‘He controls all my money until I marry with his blessing. I fell in love and I was reckless. Naive. I suppose I had a very quiet, sheltered country life until I met Jonathan.’ She gave a twisted shrug. ‘Jonathan’s...dead. Henry said that until I had the baby I must stay at the lodge near Edinburgh that he inherited from an uncle, and then he would... He said he would find a good home. But I don’t trust him. He’ll leave my child at a workhouse or give her to some family who won’t love her...’ Her voice trailed away. ‘I don’t trust him.’

It wasn’t the entire story. Kate, he was certain, was editing it as she went along. He couldn’t blame her. This probably happened all the time, well-bred young women finding themselves in a difficult situation and the family stepping in to deal with the embarrassment, hoping they could find her an unsuspecting husband to take her off their hands later. It was a pity in this case, because Kate, with her fierce determination, would make a good mother, he was sure of that.

He settled back against the wall, her hand in his so he would know when another contraction came, even if he drifted off. He was tired enough to sleep without even the usual nightmares waking him, but Kate’s fierce grip would rouse him. How much time was this going to add to his journey? Charlie knew he was coming and he was a sensible boy for his age, but he’d been through too much and he needed his father. He needs a mother, too.

There was nothing he could do to hasten things now. He shifted, trying to find a smooth place on the craggy wall, and prodded at the other weight on his conscience, the one he could do nothing about now. Grant had disappointed his grandfather. Not in himself, but in his reluctance to remarry. Over and over again as he grew frailer the old man had repeated his desire to see Grant married. The boy’s a fine lad, he’d say. But he needs brothers, he needs a mother... You need a wife.

Time and time again Grant had repeated the same weary excuses. He needed more time, he had to find the right woman, to get it right this time. He just needed time. To do what? Somehow learn to read the character of the pretty young things paraded on the marriage mart? Discover insights he hadn’t possessed before, so he didn’t make another disastrous mistake? His own happiness didn’t matter, not any more, but he couldn’t risk Charlie. I promise, he had said the last time he parted from his grandfather. I promise I will find someone. And he had left for the Continent, yet again.

He neither needed nor wanted a wife, not for himself, but Abbeywell needed a chatelaine and Charlie needed a woman’s care.

‘What will you do when the baby is born?’ he asked, focusing on the exhausted woman beside him.

‘Do next? I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I can’t think beyond this. There is no one. But I’ll manage...somehow.’

She’s not a conventional beauty, but she’s got courage, she’s maternal. Time seemed to have collapsed, the past and the present ran together. Two women in childbed, one infant he could not help, one perhaps he would save. But even if he did, nothing would prevent this child being born illegitimate, with all the penalties that imposed.

The germ of an idea stirred. Kate needed shelter, security for her child. Would she make a good governess for Charlie? He pursued the idea around. Charlie had a tutor, he did not need someone with the ability or knowledge to teach him academic studies. But he did need the softer things. Grant remembered his own mother, who had died, along with his father, of a summer fever when he had not been much older than his own son was now. She had instilled ideas about kindliness and beauty, she had been there with a swift hug and a kiss when male discipline and bracing advice was just that bit too harsh.

A mother’s touch, a mother’s instinct. Kate was not a mother yet, but he sensed that nurturing disposition in her. Charlie didn’t need a governess, he needed a mother. Logic said...marry her.

What was he thinking? I’m too tired to think straight, my brain’s still scrambled.

In the stable the gelding snorted, gave a piercing whinny. Grant got to his feet, went to the outer door and peered through the faint mist the drizzle had left behind it. A couple of men, agricultural workers by the looks of them, were plodding along the track beside a donkey cart. He went back inside and Kate looked up at him. Her smile was faint, but it was there. Brave girl. Are you wishing for the impossible? Because I think it is walking towards us now.

‘We’re still in Scotland,’ he said, realising that his mad idea was possible to achieve. Am I insane? Or are those strangers out there, appearing right on the heels of that wild thought, some kind of sign? ‘There are two men, farmers, coming along the track.’ Witnesses. ‘Kate—marry me.’

* * *

‘Marry you?’

It was hard to concentrate on anything except what was happening to her, anything beyond the life inside that was struggling to be free. Kate dragged her mind back from its desperate focus on breathing, on the baby, on keeping them both alive. She remembered the mix of truth and lies she had told him and stared at Grant.

In the gloom of early-morning light he did not appear to have lost his mind, despite the blow to the head. He still looked as much like a respectable, handsome English gentleman as might be expected after a sleepless night in a hovel tending to a woman in childbed.

‘I am not married, I am not promised to another. I can support a wife, I can support the baby. And if you marry me before the child is born, then it will be legitimate.’ His voice was urgent, his expression in the morning light intent. He smiled, as though to reassure her, but the warmth did not reach his eyes.

‘Legitimate.’ Legitimate. Her child would have a name, a future, respectability. They would both be safe and Grant could protect her from the results of Henry’s scheming. Probably. Kate rode out another contraction, tried to think beyond the moment, recall why she couldn’t simply solve this problem by marrying a complete stranger. He could certainly hide her, even if unwittingly. She would have a new name, a new home, and that was all that mattered for the baby.

She was so very tired now, nothing else except her child seemed important. Grant was a doctor living in the wilds of Northumberland, hundreds of miles from London. That should be safe enough. But why would he? Why would he want her and her baby, another man’s child? Legitimate. We would be hidden. The tempting words swirled through her tired brain, caution fighting desperation and instinct. ‘But there’s no time.’

‘This is Scotland,’ Grant said. ‘All we have to do is to declare ourselves married before witnesses—and two are heading this way. Say yes, Kate, and I’ll fetch them and it will be done.’

‘Yes.’ He was gone before she could call the words back. She heard his voice raised to hail someone. Yes, I will do it. Another miracle to go with my good angel of a doctor. A Christmas miracle. He never need find out the truth, so it can’t hurt him. What is the term? An accessory after the fact. But if he doesn’t know...

‘Aye, we’ll help you and gladly, at that. I’m Tam Johnson of the Red House up yonder and this is my eldest son, Willie.’ The accent was broad Border Scots. ‘You’re lucky to catch us. We’re only going this way to do a favour for a neighbour.’

There was the sound of shuffling feet outside and Grant ducked back in. ‘May they come through now?’ Kate nodded and he stood aside for two short, burly, black-haired men to enter.

They seemed to fill the space and brought with them the smell of wet sheep and heather and peat smoke. ‘Good morning to you, mistress.’ The elder stood there, stolid and placid. Perhaps he attended marriages in tumbledown cottages every day of the week. Beside him the younger one twisted his cap in his hands, less at ease than the man who was obviously his father.

‘Good day,’ she managed, beyond embarrassment or social awkwardness now.

Grant produced a notebook, presumably from his capacious saddlebags. She wondered vaguely if he had a packhorse out there. ‘I assume we need a written record that you can sign?’

‘Aye, that’ll be best. You’ll be English, then? All you both need to do is declare yourselves married. To each other, that is.’ The older Mr Johnson gave a snort of amusement at his own wit.

‘Right.’ Grant crossed the small distance and knelt beside her, took her hand in his. ‘I, Grantham Phillip Hale Rivers, declare before these witnesses that I take you, Catherine—’

‘Jane Penelope Harding,’ she whispered. He was only a doctor. They did not put announcements of their marriages in London newspapers.

‘Catherine Jane Penelope Harding, as my wife.’

Another contraction was coming. She gritted her teeth and managed, ‘Before these witnesses, I, Catherine Jane Penelope Harding, declare that I take you, Grantham Phillip...Hale Rivers, to be my husband.’

‘We’ll write the record outside, I think.’

She was vaguely conscious of Grant standing, moving the Johnsons out of the room, then her awareness shrank to the pain and the effort. Something was happening, something different...

Where was Grant? She listened and heard him, still in the stable.

‘Thank you, gentlemen.’ There was the chink of coins. ‘I hope you’ll drink to our health. You’ll bring the donkey cart back down here after noon?’

‘Aye, we will, no trouble at all.’ That was the older man, Tam Johnson. ‘You’ll not find it far to Jedburgh now the rain’s stopped. You’ll be there by nightfall. Thank you kindly, sir, and blessings on your wife and bairn.’

‘Grant!’

He ducked under the low lintel and back into the inner room. ‘I’m here.’

‘Something’s happening.’

‘I should hope so.’ He took up the lamp. ‘Let’s see what this child of ours is doing.’

* * *

Grant made her feel secure, Kate thought hazily. Even in those last hectic minutes she had felt safe and when the first indignant wails rent the air he had known just what to do.

‘Here she is,’ he’d said, laying the squirming, slippery, red-faced baby on her stomach. ‘The most beautiful little girl in the world at this minute and very cross with the pair of us by the sound of her.’

Time had passed, the world had gone by somewhere outside the bubble that contained her and the child in her arms. She was conscious of Grant moving purposefully about. At some point he took the baby and washed her and wrapped her up in one of his clean shirts, then washed Kate and helped her into a clean nightgown and wrapped them both up in his coat.

There was something hot to drink, porridge to eat. Perhaps the Johnsons had left food or had come back. She neither knew nor cared. When Grant had spoken to her, asked her if she could bear to travel, she had nodded. He had sounded urgent, so she made herself agree, told herself that he would take care of them and all she had to do was hold her baby safe at her breast.

* * *

It was bumpy at first, and her nose, about all that was exposed, was cold, but that was all right because Grant was there. Then they were in his arms again and there was noise and people talking, women’s voices, warmth and a soft bed. They must have stopped at an inn to rest.

Kate looked up at him standing over her, looking dishevelled and very tired. And...sad? This was the man she had married. It seemed unreal. ‘Thank you.’

‘My pleasure.’ He sounded almost convincing. ‘What are we going to call her?’

‘Anna, after my mother.’ She’d decided that in the course of the bumpy journey. Anna Rivers. And I am Mrs Rivers now. We are safe and all at the cost of a few lies. Not little, not white, but she would be a good wife to him, be happy in her modest home. He would never know.

‘Anna Rosalind, then, for my mother.’ When she looked up, surprised by the possessive note in Grant’s voice, he shrugged. ‘She’s an important small person, she needs at least two names. I’ve found you a nursemaid. She’s used to newborns.’ A cheerful freckled face appeared at his side. ‘This is Jeannie Tranter and she’s happy to adventure into England with us. It isn’t far now, only across the border into Northumberland.’

‘Oh, good.’

I wonder whereabouts in Northumberland Grant lives...but it doesn’t matter, we’re safe now, both of us, hundreds of miles away from Henry, hundreds of miles away from a vengeful earl and the law. We can go anywhere and no one will take her away from me because she belongs to Grant now. That was all that mattered. We both belong to him.

The thought drifted in and she frowned. Her baby had a father, but she had a husband. A man she did not know, a man who had total control over her life, her future.

Something touched her hair and she opened her eyes. Grant was still looking down at them. She remembered to smile at him, then turned her attention back to the baby.

* * *

‘I’ll take a bath, then I’ll be in the parlour if you need me,’ Grant said to Jeannie Tranter.

The girl nodded briskly, her attention on the woman and baby in the bed. ‘Aye, sir, I’m sure we won’t need to disturb you.’

And that’s put me in my place as an unnecessary male. It had been the same the last time. Don’t think about the last time. The bathwater in front of the fire was still hot, the pleasure of scrubbing away the grime of the past twenty-four hours or so blissful. He soaped his hair, ducked under and came up streaming, then found he had no inclination to get out. Baths were good places to think.

* * *

Grant had dozed a little, then woke without any sensible thinking done at all to find the water cool. He splashed out to dry off and find something from his depleted wardrobe to change into. A childbirth used up an inordinate amount of clean linen.

By the time he was in the private parlour pouring a glass of wine, his legs stretched out on the hearthrug, his brain had woken up. Just what had he done? A good deed? Perhaps, although tying a woman, a complete stranger, to him for life was a risky act of charity. Or was it an entirely selfish act, a gesture to his guilty conscience, as though he could somehow appease his grandfather’s shade by doing what the old man had so wanted and thus fulfilling his promise? The uncomfortable notion intruded that he had found himself a wife and a stepmother for Charlie without any effort at courtship, without any agonising about choices.

The easy way out? Too late to worry about motives, I’ve done it now. And the child’s a girl, so no need to worry about the inheritance, should it ever arise, God forbid. He’d married a plain woman of genteel birth with a social-climbing brother who was going to be very pleased indeed when he discovered who his new brother-in-law was. That could be a problem if he wasn’t careful. Grant rolled the wine around his mouth as he thought it all through.

Pushing doubts aside, he had someone to look after the household, someone who appeared to be bright enough not to be a dead bore on the occasions when he was at home. And Kate had courage and determination, that was obvious enough. He had a wife and only time would tell if it had been a wise decision or a reckless gamble.

There were fifty miles to cover tomorrow, over moorland and open country. If the roads were good and the weather held, they’d do it in the day and he would be only one day later than he had hoped. The inn had a decent chaise for hire, the stables held some strong horses by the looks of them—and they’d be needed, because there wouldn’t be a change to be had until they were over the border. The gelding was sound now, it had only been a bruised hoof.

The rhyme ‘For Want of a Nail’ ran through his head. In that old poem the loss of the nail meant the loss of the shoe, the loss of the horse and its rider and, eventually, the loss of the battle and a kingdom. Because of his own haste his horse had been lamed, he’d had to stop and he’d gained a wife and child. Grant got up and rang for his supper and another bottle. He was maundering, comparing a disaster to—what? What crazy optimism made him think this marriage between two desperate strangers could be anything but a disaster?

Chapter Three

‘Mr Rivers is a very good rider, is he not, ma’am?’

‘Hmm?’ From her position lying full length Kate couldn’t see more than the occasional treetop passing by. ‘Is he?’

Jeannie, the nursemaid, stared at her. ‘But surely you’ve seen him riding, ma’am?’

‘Yes. Yes, of course. I don’t know what is the matter with me.’

‘Not to worry, Mrs Rivers. My nana, who taught me all about looking after mothers and babies, she always said that the mother’s mind is off with the fairies for days after the birth.’

My mind is certainly somewhere and I wish it would come back, because I need to think. Anna was sleeping soundly in the nurse’s arms and Jeannie seemed exceedingly competent. The chaise had an extension at the front so that when the wall section below the front window was removed it could be placed in front of the seat to make a bed where a passenger could stretch out almost full length. Kate had slept heavily and although she felt weak and shaky she was, surely, in a fit state to take responsibility for herself. She should be thinking about what she had done and what the consequences would be.

I have married the man, for goodness’ sake! A complete stranger. What is his family going to say? Grant was persuasive enough, but surely he couldn’t convince them that he was the legitimate father of this child by a mother they’d heard nothing about before?

‘I want to sit up.’ Lying like this made her feel feeble and dependent. Besides, she wanted to see what Mr Rivers—what her husband—looked like on a horse.

Jeannie handed her Anna and helped her sit up. That was better. Two days of being flat on her back like a stranded turtle probably accounted for her disorientation. Kate studied the view from the chaise window. It consisted of miles of sodden moorland, four horses with two postilions and one husband cantering alongside.

Jeannie was a good judge of horsemanship. Grant Rivers was relaxed in the saddle, displaying an impressive length of leg, a straight back and a steady gaze on the road ahead. His profile was austere and, she thought, very English. Brown hair was visible below his hat brim. What colour were his eyes? Surely she should have noticed them? Hazel, or perhaps green. For some reason she had a lingering memory of sadness. But then she’d hardly been in a fit state to notice anything. Or anyone.

But she had better start noticing now. This was her husband. Husbands were for life and she had begun this marriage with a few critical untruths. But they could do Grant no harm, she told herself as she lay down again and let Jeannie tuck her in. There was this one day to regain some strength and get some sleep, then there would be a family to face and Anna to look after in the midst of strangers. But by then she would have her story quite clear in her head and she would be safe in the rustic isolation of the far north of England.

They stopped at three inns—small, isolated, primitive. Jeannie helped her out to the privy, encouraged her to eat and drink, cradled the baby between feeds. Her new husband came to look at her, took her pulse, frowned. Looked at Anna, frowned. Swung back on to his horse, frowned as he urged the postilions to greater speed. What was so urgent? Anyone would think it was life and death.

* * *

‘I think we must be here, ma’am.’ The post-chaise rocked to a halt. Kate struggled up into a sitting position and looked around. Darkness had fallen, but the house was lit and lanterns hung by the front door. Away from the light, the building seemed to loom in the darkness. Surely this was bigger than the modest home a country gentleman-doctor might aspire to?

She looked for Grant, but he was already out of the saddle, the reins trailing on the ground as he strode up the front steps. The doors opened, more light flooded out, she heard the sound of voices. She dropped the window and heard him say, ‘When?’ sharply and another voice replied, ‘In the morning, the day before yesterday.’

Grant came back down the steps. ‘In you come.’

‘Where are we?’ But he was already lifting her out, carrying her in his arms across to the steps. ‘Anna—’

‘I have her, Mrs Rivers. I’m right behind you, ma’am.’

‘This is Abbeywell Grange, your new home.’

There was a tall, lean man, all in black, who bowed as Grant swept her in through the front door. A butler, she supposed, fleetingly conscious of a well-lit hall, a scurry of footmen. The smell of burning applewood, a trace of dried rose petals, beeswax polish, leather. There were evergreen wreaths on the newel posts of the stairs, the glow of red berries in a jug. She remembered Grant’s offering of the holly sprig and smiled. This was an old, loved home, its aura sending messages of reassurance. She wanted to relax and dared not.

‘Welcome home, my lord. We are all very relieved to see you. The staff join me in expressing our deepest condolences.’

Condolences? On a marriage? Then the whole sentence hit her. ‘My lord? Grant, he called you my lord. Who are you?’

But the butler was already striding ahead towards the end of the hall, Grant on his heels. ‘Master Charles... Lord Brooke, I should say, will be happy to see you, my lord. It has been quite impossible to get him to go to bed.’

‘Who is Lord Brooke?’ she asked in a whisper as the butler opened the door into a drawing room. A fire crackled in the grate, an aged pointer dog rose creakily to its feet, tail waving, and, on the sofa, a small boy sat up, rubbing his eyes.

‘Papa!’

‘Charlie, why aren’t you in bed? You’re keeping Rambler up.’ Grant snapped his fingers at the dog. It was obviously an old joke. The boy grinned, then his eyes widened as he saw what his father was carrying.

Grant settled Kate in a deep armchair by the hearthside and Jeannie, with Anna in her arms, effaced herself somewhere in the shadows.

‘Charlie.’ There was deep affection in Grant’s voice as he crouched down and the boy hurled himself into his arms. So, this was why he had been so impatient to get back, this was what the discovery of a woman in labour had been keeping him from. He has a son. He was married? A lord? This was a disaster and she had no inkling how to deal with it.

‘You got my letter explaining about the accident?’ The boy nodded, pushed back Grant’s hair and touched the bandage with tentative fingers. She saw his eyes were reddened and heavy. The child had been crying. ‘It’s all right now, but I’m sorry I wasn’t here when you needed me. Then on my way from Edinburgh my horse picked up a stone and was lamed with a bruised hoof, so I lost a day and a night.’

‘Great-Grandpapa died on Christmas Eve,’ Charlie said. His lower lip trembled. ‘And you didn’t come and I thought perhaps you’d... Your head... That they’d been lying to me and you were going to...’

‘I’m here.’ Grant pulled the boy into a fierce hug, then stood him back so he could look him squarely in the face. ‘I’m a bit battered and there were a couple of days when I was unconscious, which is why I couldn’t travel, but we’ve hard heads, we Rivers men, haven’t we?’

The lip stopped trembling. ‘Like rocks,’ the boy said stoutly. ‘I’m glad you’re home, though. It was a pretty rotten Christmas.’ His gaze left his father’s face, slid round to Kate. ‘Papa?’

Grant got up from his knees, one hand on his son’s shoulder, and turned towards her, but Kate had already started to rise. She walked forward and stopped beside Grant.

‘My dear, allow me to introduce Charles Francis Ellmont Rivers, Lord Brooke. My son.’

Kate retrieved a smile from somewhere. ‘I... Good evening, Charles. I am very pleased to meet you.’

He bowed, a very creditable effort for a lad of—what? Six? ‘Madam.’ He tugged at Grant’s hand. ‘Papa, you haven’t said who this lady is, so I cannot greet her properly.’

‘This is Catherine Rivers, my wife. Your stepmama.’

Kate felt the smile congeal on her lips. Of course, if Charles was Grant’s son, then she was his...

‘Stepmama?’ The boy had turned pale. ‘You didn’t say that you were going to get married again, Papa.’

‘No. I am allowed some secrets.’ Grant apparently agreed with the Duke of Wellington’s approach: never explain, never apologise. ‘You have a new half-sister as well, Charlie.’ He beckoned to Jeannie and she came forward and placed Anna in his arms. ‘Come and meet her, she is just two days old.’

The boy peered at the little bundle. ‘She’s very small and her face is all screwed up and red.’

‘So was yours when you were born, I expect,’ Kate said with a glare for Grant over Charlie’s head. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ she mouthed. The boy isn’t a love child. He’s the product of a first marriage. I married a widower. And a nobleman. She wrestled with the implications of Charlie having a title. It meant Grant was an earl, at least. Which meant that Anna was Lady Anna, and she was—what?

Earls put marriage announcements in newspapers. Earls had wide social circles and sat in the House of Lords. In London.

‘There never seemed to be a good time.’ Grant gave a half shrug that suddenly made her furious. He should have warned her, explained. She would never have agreed to marry him.

‘What is her name?’ Charlie asked, oblivious to the byplay. Anna woke up and waved a fist at him and he took it, very carefully.

‘Anna Rosalind.’ One starfish hand had closed on Charlie’s finger. His face was a mixture of panic and delight. ‘Would you like to hold her?’

‘Yes, please.’

Grant placed her in Charlie’s arms.

‘Very carefully,’ Kate said, trying not to panic. ‘Firm but gentle, and don’t let her head flop. That’s it—you are obviously a natural as a big brother.’ She was rewarded by a huge grin. She could only admire Grant’s tactics. The surprise of a new baby sister had apparently driven Charlie’s doubts about a stepmama right out of his head.

‘Grant,’ she said, soft-voiced, urgent, as Jeannie helped the boy to sit securely on the sofa and held back the inquisitive hound. ‘Who are you?’

‘The fourth Earl of Allundale. As of two days ago.’

‘I suppose that was something else that there was no time to mention?’ Again that shrug, the taut line of his lips that warned her against discussing this now.

Her husband was an earl. But he was also a doctor, and heirs to earldoms did not become doctors, she knew that. It was a conundrum she was too weary to try to understand now. All she could grasp was that she had married far above her wildest expectations, into a role she had no idea how to fill, into a position that was dangerously exposed and public. Even in her home village the social pages in the newspapers were studied and gossiped about, the business of the aristocracy known about, from the gowns worn at drawing rooms to the latest scandals. How could the wife of an earl hide away? But Grant had no need to fear she would make a scene in front of his son: unless they were thrown out into the dark, she found she was beyond caring about anything but warmth, shelter and Anna’s safety this night.

‘You are worn out. Charlie, give your sister back to her nurse and off you go to bed. I’ll come and see you are asleep later.’ Grant reached for the bell pull and the butler appeared so rapidly that he must have been standing right outside the door. ‘Grimswade, can you dispatch Master Charles to his tutor? And you will have prepared my wife’s rooms by now, I’ve no doubt.’

Grimswade stood aside as Charlie made a very correct bow to Kate, then ducked through the open door. ‘Certainly, my lord. His late lordship had some renovation work done. In anticipation,’ he added.

Grant stilled with his hand on the bell pull. ‘Not the old suite?’ His voice was sharp.

‘No, my lord, not the old suite. The one on the other side of your own chambers. The doors have been changed. One blocked up, another cut through. His late lordship anticipated that you would wish to retain your old rooms even after he had...gone.’

Kate wondered if she would have to stand there all night while they discussed the interior layout of the house. She didn’t care where she slept as long as it had a bed, somewhere for Anna, and the roof was not actually leaking.

‘Very well. Have you made arrangements for the child and her nurse?’

‘Yes, my lord.’ Without any change in voice or expression Grimswade managed to express mild affront at the suggestion that he was in any way unprepared. ‘My lady, if you would care to follow me.’

That is me. I am—what? A countess?

‘I’ll carry you.’ Grant was halfway across the room.

‘Thank you, no. Do stay here.’ Something, Kate was not sure what, revolted at the thought of being carried. Grant Rivers’s arms—her husband’s arms—were temptingly strong, but she was tired of being helpless and he was altogether too inclined to take charge. She had to start thinking for herself again and being held so easily against that broad chest seemed to knock rational thought out of her brain.

In a daze she managed the stairs, the long corridor, then the shock of the sitting room, elegant and feminine, all for her.

‘I will have a light supper served, my lady. The men are filling your bath in the bathing chamber next to the dressing room through there.’ Grimswade gestured towards the double doors that opened on to a bedchamber, one larger than she had ever slept in. ‘And this is Wilson, your maid.’

‘Luxury,’ Kate murmured to Jeannie as the butler bowed himself out and the maid, a thin, middle-aged woman, advanced purposefully across the room. ‘Too much. This is not real.’ Fortunately the sofa was directly behind her as she sank back on to it, her legs refusing to hold her up any longer.

‘You’re just worn out, ma’am—my lady—that’s all.’ Jeannie’s soft brogue was comforting. With a sigh Kate allowed herself to be comforted. ‘It will all come back to you.’

* * *

The next hour was a blur that slowly, slowly came back into focus. Firm hands undressing her, supportive arms to help her to the bathing room, the bliss of hot water and being completely clean. The same hands drying and dressing her as though she was as helpless as little Anna. A table with food, apparently appearing from thin air. The effort to eat.

And then, as she lay back on the piled pillows of a soft bed, there was Anna in her arms, grizzling a little because she was hungry, and Kate found she was awake, feeling stronger and, for the first time in days, more like herself.

‘We might be confused and out of place,’ Kate said as she handed the baby back to Jeannie after the feed, ‘but Anna seems perfectly content.’

‘You’ve not stayed here before, then, my lady?’

‘No. I’m a stranger to this house.’ And to my husband. ‘Where are you to sleep, Jeannie?’

‘They’ve set up a bed for me in the dressing room, my lady, just for tonight. It’s bigger than the whole of the upstairs of our cottage,’ she confided with glee. ‘And there’s a proper cradle for Lady Anna.’

‘Then you take yourself off and get some rest now. I expect she’ll be waking you up again soon enough.’

The canopy over the bed was lined with pleated sea-green silk, the curtains around the bed and at the windows were a deeper shade, the walls, paler. The furniture was light and, to Kate’s admittedly inexperienced eye, modern and fashionable. The paintings and the pieces of china arranged around the room seemed very new, too. Strange, in such an old house. The drawing room, the hallway and stairs had an antique air, of generations of careful choices of quality pieces and then attentive housekeeping to deepen the polished patina.

Kate threw back the covers and slid out of bed. Deep-pile carpet underfoot, the colours fresh and springlike in the candlelight. Grant had reacted sharply when her chambers were mentioned. Interior decoration seemed a strange thing to be concerned about, given the circumstances—surely a new wife who was a stranger, another man’s baby carrying his own name, a bereavement and a son to comfort must be enough to worry about. Another puzzle.

She moved on unsteady legs about the room, admiring it, absorbing the warmth and luxury as she had with the food earlier, feeling the weariness steal over her again. In a moment she would return to the big bed and be able to sleep. Tomorrow she would think. There was a murmur of voices, just audible. Idly curious, Kate followed the sound until she reached a jib door, papered and trimmed so it looked at first glance like part of the wall it was cut into.

The handle moved easily, soundlessly, under the pressure of her hand, and it swung inwards to show her a segment of another bedchamber. Masculine, deep-red hangings, old panelling polished to a glow, the glint of gilded picture frames. Grant’s bedchamber. For the first time the words husband and bed came together in her mind and her breathing hitched.

On the table beside the door was a small pile of packages wrapped in silver paper. She glanced down and read the label on the top one. Papa, all my love for Christmas. Charlie. It was obviously his very best handwriting. Her vision blurred.

Grant’s voice jerked her back. He must be speaking to his valet. She began to ease the door closed. ‘Thank you for coming by. Tomorrow I’d be grateful if you’d take a look at my wife and the baby. They both seem well to my eye, especially given the circumstances—Kate must be very tired—but I won’t be easy until a doctor has confirmed it.’

Another doctor? Kate left the door an inch ajar. There was a chuckle, amused, masculine, with an edge of teasing to it. ‘It seems to me that you did very well, given that you’ve never been trained for a childbirth. Or were you, in the year you left Edinburgh?’

‘I observed one. I had, thank Asclepius and any other gods that look after inept medical students, studied the relevant sections of the textbooks before I did so and some of it must have stuck. I’d just about reached the limits of my book learning, though, and after the last time—’

The other man made some comment, his voice low and reassuring, but Kate did not register the words. Grant is not qualified? He is not a doctor. The embossed metal of the door handle bit into her fingers. He lied to me. The irony of her indignation at the deception struck her, which did nothing for her temper.

‘I thought perhaps so much experience with brood mares might have helped, but I can tell you, it didn’t,’ Grant confessed.

Brood mares. He thought he could deliver my baby as though she were a foal.

She heard Grant say goodnight to his visitor as she set foot in his bedchamber. He turned from closing the door and saw her. ‘Kate, what’s wrong? Can’t you sleep?’

‘You are not a doctor.’ He came towards her and it took only two steps to be close enough to jab an accusing finger into his chest. ‘You delivered my baby, you told me not to worry. You fraud!’

Chapter Four

Grant stepped back sharply, the concern wiped from his expression. ‘I have two years of medical training, which is more than anyone else within reach had. There was no one else to deliver your baby.’

‘You might have told me.’ She sat down abruptly on the nearest chair. ‘You thought you could treat me like a brood mare.’

‘Ah, you heard that. Damn. Look, Kate, you were frightened, in pain, and you hadn’t the first idea what to do. You needed to be calm, to conserve your strength. If I had told you I had never delivered a baby before, would that have helped you relax? Would that have helped you be calm?’

She glared at him, furious that he was being perfectly reasonable, when something inside her, the same something that had latched on to those words, husband and bed, wanted nothing more than to panic and make a fuss. And run away.

Grant stood there, patient—and yet impatient, just as he had been in the bothy. He was good at self-control, she realised. If he wasn’t so distracted by grief for his grandfather and worry for his son, she would not be allowed a glimpse of that edginess. And he was right, perfectly right. He had some knowledge and that was better than none. He had kept her calm and safe. Alive. Anna was healthy. Kate swallowed. ‘I am sorry. You are quite correct, of course. I am just...’

‘Embarrassed, very tired and somewhat emotional.’

‘Yes,’ she agreed. And confused. Damn him for being so logical and practical and right, when I just want to hit out at something. Someone. ‘You did not tell me you are an earl.’ She had wanted to hide, go to ground. Now she was in the sort of marriage that appeared in society pages, was the stuff of gossip.

Grant ran his hand through his hair. He was tired, she realised. Very tired. How much sleep had he had since he had walked into that hovel and found her? Little, she supposed, and he was travelling with a recent head injury. ‘I didn’t think it relevant and you weren’t in any fit state for conversation.’ His mouth twisted. ‘My grandfather was dying, or had just died. I was not there and I did not want to talk about it. Or think about it. All I wanted was to get back to Charlie.’

‘Were you too late to see your grandfather because of me?’

Grant shook his head and sat down opposite her. It was more of a controlled collapse than anything, long legs sprawled out, his head tipped back, eyes closed. The bandage gave him a rakish air, the look of a pirate after a battle. ‘No, I wouldn’t have reached him in time, not after the accident in Edinburgh. But even so, there was no choice but to stay with you—he would have expected it himself.’

No, she supposed there hadn’t been a decision to make. No one could walk away from someone in the situation she had been in. No decent person, at any rate. She had married a decent man. Her agitation calmed as she looked at him, studied his face properly for the first time. She was thinking only of herself and Anna, but she owed him a debt. The least she could do was to think about his needs. ‘I’m sorry. Go to bed. You are worn out.’

Grant shook his head and opened his eyes. They were green, she realised with a jolt, seeing the man and not simply her rescuer. But a warm green verging on hazel, not the clear green of a gemstone under water... ‘Soon. I need to look in on Charlie.’

She was not going to exhaust him more by complaining about the fact he had not told her he had been married, that he had a son as well as a title. That could keep until the morning. She was certainly not going to look for any more resemblances to Jonathan. ‘I will go back to bed, then. Goodnight.’

There was silence until she was through the jib door. She wondered if he had fallen asleep after all. Then, ‘Goodnight, Kate.’ She closed the door softly behind her.

* * *

‘Goodnight, Kate. Goodnight, wife,’ Grant added in a whisper as the door closed. Perhaps he should have kissed her. Poor creature, she looked dreadful. Pale, with dark shadows under bloodshot eyes, her hair pulled back into a mousy tail, her face pinched with exhaustion and a confusion of embarrassment and uncertainty. He could only hope that when she was recovered and suitably dressed she would at least look like a lady, if not a countess.

He hauled himself to his feet and stripped off his clothes with a grimace of relief. He felt as if he’d spent the past year in them. Naked, he stood and washed rapidly, then rummaged in the clothes press and pulled out loose trousers, a shirt and a robe, dressing without conscious thought. Comfort, something he could catnap in if Charlie needed him to stay and chase away nightmares, these would do. His eye caught the glint of silver paper and he went to investigate. Christmas presents. He picked them up, torn between grief and pleasure.

* * *

When he slid quietly into Charlie’s room the mounded covers on the bed heaved and a mop of dark blond hair emerged. ‘Papa!’

‘I had hoped you were asleep by now.’ Grant sat on the edge of the bed and indulged himself with a hug that threatened to strangle him. ‘Urgh! You’re too strong for me.’

Charlie chuckled, a six-year-old’s naughty laugh, and let go. He looked up at Grant from under his lashes. ‘I’m glad you’re home.’

‘So am I. I’m sorry I was not here when Great-Grandpapa died.’

‘Dr Meldreth took me in to see him. He was very sleepy and he told me that he was very old, so he was all worn out and he wanted to go and be with Great-Grandmama, so I mustn’t be sad when he left. But I am.’

‘I know, Charlie, so am I. And we will be for a while, then we’ll remember all the good times we had, and all the things we used to talk about and do, and you won’t feel so bad. What did you do on Christmas Day?’

‘We went for a walk and to church, and then I opened my presents because Great-Grandpapa said I must do so.’ He sniffed. ‘He gave me his watch. I...I blubbed a bit, but it made me really proud, so I’m glad. And thank you very much for the model soldiers and the castle and the new boots. Then we had Christmas dinner and Mr Gough showed me how to make a toast. So I toasted absent friends, for both you and Great-Grandpapa.’

‘It sounds to me as if the household was in very good hands with you in charge, Charlie.’ Grant managed to get his voice under control, somehow. ‘I found my presents—shall I open them now?’

Grant went to retrieve the gifts and they opened them together. His grandfather had given him a miniature of his parents, newly painted, he realised, from the large individual portraits that hung in the Long Gallery. He read the note that accompanied it, blew his nose without any attempt to conceal his emotion and turned to Charlie’s gift, which he had set aside.

‘This is excellent!’ It was a large, enthusiastic and almost recognisable portrait of Rambler, his old pointer dog, framed in a somewhat lopsided, and obviously home-made, frame. ‘I will hang it in my study next to the desk. Thank you, Charlie. You go to sleep now. Do you want me to spend the night here?’

‘I’m all right now you are home, Papa. And Mr Gough let me talk to him all I wanted. He thought it would be better after the funeral when we can say goodbye again.’

The tutor had proved as sensitive as he had hoped when he hired him. ‘You know where I am if you want to come along in the night.’ Grant tucked his son in, bent down and gave him a kiss that, for once, didn’t have his son squirming away in embarrassment. He seemed to understand and to be taking it well, but he was so young. Grant felt a pang of anxiety through the haze of weariness that was closing in like fog. Perhaps he would sleep without nightmares if he was this tired.

‘I didn’t know you were going to get married again, Papa.’ The voice from under the blankets was already drowsy.

Neither did I. ‘Go to sleep, Charlie. I’ll explain in the morning.’ Somehow. And I hope to heaven that you take to your new mother and sister, and she takes to you, because if not I’ve created the most damnable mess.

* * *

‘She’s being a little angel, my lady.’ Jeannie tucked the sleeping baby back into the crib she had brought into the sitting room while Kate was feeding Anna. Fed, clean and cuddled, she truly was sleeping like a small, rather red-faced cherub.

Kate, fresh from Wilson’s best, and exhausting, efforts to turn her into something approaching a respectable lady, retreated to the sanctuary of the sofa next to the crib. Wilson was handicapped by an absence of any gowns to dress her in, to say nothing of Kate’s figure, which, it was obvious, was not going to spring back instantly into what had been before. A drab, ill-fitting gown that was seriously the worse for wear was not helped by a headful of fine mousy hair that was in dire need of the attentions of a hairdresser.

She looked a frump, and an unhealthy one at that, she knew. Her husband, once rested and with a view of her in a good light, was going to be bitterly rueing his impetuous, gallant gesture.

His knock came on the thought and Kate twitched at the shawl Wilson had found in an effort to drape her body as flatteringly as possible. A harassed glance at her reflection in the glass over the fireplace confirmed that the wrap’s shades of green and brown did nothing to help her complexion.

‘Good morning. May I come in? Did you sleep well?’ The dark smudges were stark under Grant’s eyes and the strong-boned face seemed fined down to its essentials. The rakish bandage had gone, leaving the half-healed cut and angry bruising plain across his forehead.

‘Good morning. Yes, of course.’

She was not going to huddle on the sofa, trying to hide. She might look a fright, but she had her pride. Kate swung her feet down to the floor, pushed her shoulders back, lifted her chin and curved the corners of her mouth up. That felt very strange, as though she had not smiled properly in months. Perhaps she had not, except at Anna.

‘Dr Meldreth is here, Kate. I think it would be a good idea if he checked you and Anna over.’

‘He studied with you in Edinburgh, I gather?’ He nodded. ‘But unlike you is actually qualified?’ That was a sharp retort—she could have bitten her tongue. If it were not for Grant’s time at the university, he would have been far less capable of helping her bring Anna safely into the world.

‘Exceedingly well qualified,’ Grant said before she had a chance to soften her words. He kept any annoyance out of his voice, but his expression hardened. He must think he had married a shrew. ‘I’ll show him in, shall I?’

He didn’t wait for her nod, but ushered in a short, freckled, cheerful man about his age. ‘My dear, Dr Meldreth. Meldreth—Lady Allundale. I’ll leave you together and I’ll be in my study when you’ve finished, Meldreth.’

Kate summoned her two female supporters and managed to produce a calm, friendly smile for the doctor. He examined Anna and then, swiftly and tactfully, Kate, maintaining a steady flow of conversation while he did so. Excellent bedside manner, Kate decided. She felt confident in having him as their doctor.

‘You are both in excellent health and the little one is just as she should be,’ he assured her when she rejoined him in the sitting room. ‘But you need to rest, Lady Allundale. Rivers told me what a rough time you’ve had of it and I don’t think you have been eating very well, have you? Not for quite a while.’

‘Probably not, Doctor.’

He closed his bag and straightened his cuffs with a glance at Wilson and Jeannie. It seemed he wanted privacy. Kate nodded to the other women. ‘Thank you, I will ring when I need you.’ When they were alone she made herself look him in the eye. ‘There was something you wished to say to me?’

‘I will be frank. I am aware that your marriage only just preceded little Anna’s birth. I am also aware that Grant will fudge the issue, making it seem that yours was a long-standing relationship and that the marriage took place some time ago, but was kept quiet. Probably his grandfather’s ill health can be made to account for that.’

‘I assume that, as a doctor, you will exercise professional discretion.’

‘Certainly.’ He did not appear surprised by the chill in her voice. ‘I simply wished to make the point that—’ He broke off and cursed softly under his breath. ‘This is more difficult than I thought it would be. I wanted to assure you that I will give you all the support I can. I also wonder just how much of Grant’s past history you are aware of.’

She could freeze him out, look down her nose and assume the air of a thoroughly affronted countess or she could take the hand of friendship he appeared to be offering her. She needed a friend.

‘I know nothing. I was not even aware that he was the heir to an earldom when I married him. Nor that he was a widower with a child.’

‘He will tell you himself, I am sure. But he was close to the old earl—Grant’s parents died when he was not much older than Charlie is now. His grandfather brought him up and did a good job of it, for all that he probably leaned too much on the side of tradition and duty. Grant married a suitable young lady, to please his grandfather and do what it seemed was his duty, and talked himself into believing that was how marriage should be.’ He pushed his hand through his sandy hair. ‘I am saying too much, but you have to know this—Madeleine was a disaster. Possibly the only thing that could have made the situation worse was the way she died.’

‘What happened?’ Somehow Kate made herself sit quietly attentive for the answer. She had thought she was coming to some safe, comfortable home. A doctor’s household, decent and respectable. Modestly prosperous. Instead she found herself married to an earl, with his unburied predecessor somewhere in the house. Her husband had married tragically, she had a stepson—and a new baby. And she had the overwhelming feeling that she could not cope with any of this. But she had to. Grant had thrown her a lifeline and she had a duty to repay him by being a proper wife, a good stepmother to Charlie—and, somehow, a passable countess.

‘There was a fire. Rivers was...injured, but he managed to get Charlie out. They couldn’t save Madeleine.’

‘When?’

‘Four years ago. We do not think Charlie remembers any of it, thank God.’

‘That is a blessing.’ Poor little boy. ‘Thank you. Forewarned, at least I can try not to blunder into sensitive areas.’

‘Some blundering might be a good thing, frankly.’ Dr Meldreth stood up. ‘Rivers took it too well, too stoically, for the child’s sake. I am not sure he ever really put it behind him. And now he is bone-weary, he’s exerted himself sooner than he should after a blow to the head and he’s feeling as guilty as hell because he didn’t get back in time to see his grandfather before he died.’

‘I will try to make him rest and hope he feels able to talk to me.’ Kate rose and held out her hand to the doctor. ‘Thank you. It is good to know he has a friend close by.’

‘I’ll be back in a couple of days, unless you send for me earlier.’ Meldreth shook hands briskly. ‘I wasn’t sure whether to mention anything, but Rivers said you’ve got courage, so...’ He shrugged. ‘I’ll see myself down to the study. Good day, Lady Allundale.’

After that it was hard to sit with any composure. So, the situation was such that the good doctor would not have said anything unless he thought she had courage. That was hardly reassuring.

But perhaps it was time she started drawing on that courage, assuming she did actually possess any. If only she did not feel so ignorant. She had experienced the upbringing of any country gentlewoman, with the neighbouring wives doing their best to support a motherless girl. But, although her manners would not disgrace her, she had no experience of the kind of social life Grant would be used to. Now she was presumably expected to know how to greet a duke, curtsy to a queen, organise a reception and look after scores of tenants and staff.

Well, there was no time like the present to begin. Kate rang for Wilson. ‘I do not know when the funeral will be, but I must have respectable mourning clothes.’ If they were going to have to improvise and dye something with black ink, then the sooner they started, the better.

‘It is tomorrow, my lady. His lordship said not to disturb you about it. There’ll just be gentlemen there, no ladies, so you can stay in your rooms.’

Her little burst of energy deflected, Kate sat down again and gazed out at the grey skies, trying to make sense of the world she found herself in and her place in it, and failing miserably. Luncheon was brought up. Grimswade delivered a pile of novels, journals and newspapers. She fed Anna and cuddled her, dozed a little, tried to pay attention when Wilson suggested they make a list of all the essentials she needed to buy. Dinner arrived, a succession of perfect, luxurious little courses. Kate refused the red wine, but found she had the appetite to demolish virtually everything else that was put in front of her. The doctor had been correct. She had been neglecting herself out of worry.

* * *

Grimswade appeared as the footman was carrying out the dishes. ‘Is there anything else you require, my lady?’ Butlers, she knew, cultivated a bland serenity under all circumstances, but she thought he looked strained. The whole household seemed to be holding its breath.

Was there anything she could do? Nothing, Kate concluded as the door closed behind the butler. Just keep out of the way. Charlie was with his father and a stranger’s clumsy sympathy would be no help to them. She should have asked Grimswade when the rest of the family would arrive. At least they could take some of the burden off Grant’s shoulders. How lonely this felt, to be in the middle of so many people and yet completely cut off from their fears, their hopes.

She gave herself a brisk mental shake for the self-pity. She and her child were safe, protected and, at least for a few days, hidden. They had a future, even if it was shrouded in a fog of unknowns. Grant and Charlie were mourning the loss of someone dear to them and the best thing she could do was to intrude as little as possible. Grant had made it clear he did not want her involved or he would have confided in her, wouldn’t he?

Chapter Five

She had slept well, Kate realised as she woke to the sound of curtain rings being pulled back. In the intervals when Jeannie had brought her Anna to feed she had listened for sounds from Grant’s bedchamber, but none had reached her.

The light was different. She sat up and saw the heavy snow blanketing the formal gardens under a clear, pale grey sky. ‘What a heavy fall there must have been in the night, Wilson. Is the house cut off?’

The maid turned and Kate saw her eyes were rimmed with red. She had been crying. Of course, the funeral. She felt helpless.

‘Very heavy, but the turnpike road is open, my lady, and the men have cleared the path to the church.’ Wilson brought a small tray with a cup of chocolate and set it on the bedside table, then went to make up the fire. ‘I’ll be back with your bathwater in half an hour, my lady.’

The luxury, the unobtrusive, smooth service, suddenly unnerved her. She was a countess now, yet she was the daughter of an obscure baronet, a girl who had never had a Season, who had been to London only three times in her life, who was the mother of a child conceived out of wedlock and the sister of a man who had embroiled her in unscrupulous criminality. I can’t do this...

The door opened as she took an incautious gulp of hot chocolate and burned the inside of her mouth. ‘Wilson?’

‘It is us. Good morning.’ The deep voice held grief and weariness under the conventional greeting. ‘I came to tell you that we will be leaving for the church at ten o’clock. The procession will go past the window, if you wish to watch.’ Grant stood just inside the room, one hand resting on Charlie’s shoulder, the boy pulled close to his side. Charlie’s eyes were red and he leaned in tight to his father, but his chin was set and his head high. Grant looked beyond exhausted, although he was clean-shaven, his dark clothes and black neckcloth immaculate.

‘I am so very sorry.’ The cup clattered in the saucer as Kate set it down and Grant winced. She threw back the covers, slid out of bed and then just stood there in her nightgown. What could she do, what right had she to think she could even find the comforting words? Her instinct was to put her arms around the pair of them, hug them tight, try to take some of the pain and the weariness from them, but she was a stranger. They would not want her.

‘There will be local gentlemen in church, those who can make it through the snow. And the staff, tenants and so on. There will be a small group returning for luncheon, but the staff have that well in hand and you should not be disturbed.’ He might as well be speaking to some stray guest who deserved consideration, but was, essentially, an interloper. ‘There will be no relatives, no one to stay. We only have cousins in the West Country, too far to attend in this weather, and a great-aunt in London, who likewise could not travel.’

Kate sat down on the edge of the bed. ‘I am so sorry,’ she repeated. ‘Is there anything I can do? Letters to write, perhaps? You will want to spend your time with Charlie.’

‘Thank you. My grandfather’s... My secretary, Andrew Bolton, will handle all the correspondence. There is nothing for you to do.’ Grant looked down at the boy as they turned towards the door. ‘Ready? We should go down to the hallway now.’

‘I’m ready.’ Charlie’s straight back, the determined tilt of his head, were the image of his father’s. He paused and looked back at Kate. ‘Good morning, Stepmama.’

* * *

Kate watched the procession from her window. The black-draped coffin was carried on the shoulders of six sturdy men, cushions resting on it with decorations and orders glittering in the pale sunlight. Grant walked behind, his hand on Charlie’s shoulder, the two of them rigidly composed and dignified. Behind paced a crocodile of gentlemen in mourning clothes followed by tenants in Sunday best and a contingent of the male staff.

She found a prayer book on a shelf in the sitting room and sat to read the burial service through quietly.

* * *

By the time luncheon had been cleared away Kate decided that she was going to have to do something. She had cracked the jib door into Grant’s bedchamber open a fraction so that she would know if he had come up to rest, and by four o’clock he had not. She handed a fed, gurgling Anna to Jeannie, cast a despairing glance in the mirror at her appearance and set off downstairs.

‘Have the guests left?’ she asked the first footman she encountered. He was wearing a black armband, she noticed with an inward wince for her own lack of mourning.

‘Yes, my lady.’

‘And where is my husband?’

‘In his study, my lady.’

‘Will you show me the way, please?’

He paused at the end of the hallway outside a dark oak door. ‘Shall I knock, my lady?’

It looked very much closed. Forbiddingly so. ‘No, I will. Thank you...’

‘Giles, my lady.’

She tapped and entered without waiting for a response. The room was warm, the fire flickering in the grate, the curtains closed against the winter chill. There were two pools of light, one over a battered old leather armchair where Charlie slept, curled into a ball like a tired puppy, the other illuminating the papers spread on the desk.

It lit the hands of the man behind the desk, but left his face in shadow. ‘Grant, will you not come to bed?’ she asked, keeping her voice low.

There was a chuckle, a trifle rusty. ‘My dear, that is a most direct suggestion.’

Kate felt her cheeks flame. ‘I was not trying to flirt, my lord.’ I would not know how and certainly not with you. ‘Surely you need to rest, spend a few hours lying down. You must be exhausted.’ She moved closer, narrowing her eyes against the light of the green-shaded reading lamp. The quill pen was lying on its side on top of the standish, the ink dry and matte on the nib. Grant had run out of energy, she realised, and was simply sitting there, too tired to move.

‘Perhaps I am.’ Grant sounded surprised, as though he had not realised why his body had given up. He made no attempt to stand.

‘Why did you marry me, if you will not allow me to help you?’ Kate sat down opposite him, her eyes on the long-fingered, bruised hands lying lax on the litter of papers. They flexed, then were still. Beautiful hands, capable and clever. She had put those discoloured patches on the left one. She had a sudden vision of them on her skin, gently caressing. Not a doctor’s hands any longer, but a lover’s, a husband’s. Could he see her blush? She hated the way she coloured up so easily, was always consumed with envy for those porcelain-fair damsels who could hide their emotions with ease.

‘You felt sorry for me, I can see that. It was a very generous act of mercy, for me and my child,’ she went on, thinking aloud when he did not answer. ‘And, for some reason, your grandfather was anxious to see you married again and you would do anything to make him happy.’ Still silence. Perhaps he had fallen asleep. ‘But I cannot sit upstairs in my suite for the rest of my days.’

‘Not for ever, no. But for now you are still a new mother. You also require rest. Is there anything you need?’ he asked.

At least he was not sleeping where he sat. Kate did not wish to bother him with trivial matters, but he was talking to her, maybe she could distract him enough to consider sleep... ‘I have no clothes.’ His expressive fingers moved, curled across a virgin sheet of paper. ‘Other than two gowns in a sad state and a few changes of linen,’ she added repressively. ‘I need mourning.’

‘It can wait.’ The words dropped like small stones into the silence, not expecting an answer.

At least he was not sleeping where he sat. If she could rouse him enough, she might persuade him to get up and go to his bed. ‘Not for much longer. I cannot appear like this, even if it is only in front of the servants.’

He focused on her problem with a visible effort. ‘The turnpike is clear. Tomorrow, if the snow holds off, Wilson can go into Hexham and purchase enough to tide you over until you are strong enough for a trip into Newcastle.’

‘Thank you.’ Kate folded her own hands in her lap and settled back in the chair. If he thought he could send her back to her room with that, he was mistaken. The silence dragged on, filled with the child’s breathing, the soft collapse of a log into ash, her own pulse.

‘Are you going to sit there for the rest of the afternoon and evening?’ Grant enquired evenly when another log fell into the heart of the fire.

‘Yes, if you will not go and rest.’ She kept her tone as reasonable as his. ‘You will be no good to Charlie if you make yourself ill with exhaustion.’

‘So wise a parent after so few days?’ There was an edge there now.

‘One needs no expertise, only to be a human being, to know that the boy will need your attention, your presence, while he grieves. You are in no fit state for anything now, after so many days without proper rest. And you cannot deal with your own grief by drugging yourself with tiredness.’

‘How very astringent you are, my dear.’ Grant moved suddenly, sat up in his chair and gathered together the papers in front of him. ‘No soft feminine wiles to lure me upstairs, no soft words, only common-sense advice?’

‘If you wanted the sort of wife who deals with a crisis by feminine fluttering, who feels it necessary to coax and wheedle, then you have married the wrong woman, my lord.’ She kept her voice low, conscious of Charlie so close. But she could not rein in the anger entirely and she knew it showed. ‘I do not know what your first wife was like, although I am sure she was raised to be a far more satisfactory countess than I will be, I am afraid. But I will try to enact little scenes of wifely devotion for you from time to time, as you obviously seem to expect them.’ His first wife was a disaster, Dr Meldreth said. I will be one, too, although a very different kind of disaster.

‘Demonstrations of wifely devotion would certainly be a novelty. However, if you can refrain from enacting scenes of any kind, I would be most grateful.’ Grant pushed back his chair, went to lift Charlie in his arms and murmured, ‘If I could trouble you for the door?’

I must make allowances for his exhaustion, for his bereavement, Kate told herself as she followed the tall figure through the hallway and up the stairs. Giles the footman was lurking in the shadows and she beckoned him over. ‘His lordship is going to rest. Please let the rest of the household know that he is not to be disturbed until he rings. It may well be that this disrupts mealtimes, so please pass my apologies to Cook if that is the case. Perhaps she can be ready to provide something light but sustaining at short notice?’

The footman’s gaze flickered to Grant’s unresponsive back. Kate waited, eyebrows raised as though she found it hard to understand his hesitation. She had never had to deal with superior domestic staff of this calibre and she suspected he knew it. The way she looked wouldn’t help. But, like it or not, it seemed she was mistress of this household now and she must exert some authority or she would never regain it.

‘My lady.’

‘Thank you, Giles.’ She nodded as though never doubting his obedience for a moment and climbed the stairs. By the time she reached the landing Grant had turned off down a side passage. She followed him to the doorway of what must be the boy’s bedchamber. A tall, fair-haired young man came out of an inner doorway and turned down the covers. Between them they got the child out of most of his clothes and into bed, exchanged a few words, and then Grant came out.

‘That’s his tutor, Gough. He’ll sleep in the side chamber in case Charlie wakes.’ Grant kept going into his own rooms. Without conscious thought Kate followed him. ‘I do not require tucking up in bed, Kate.’

‘I do not know what you require, my lord.’ She turned abruptly, in a way that should have sent her skirts whirling in a dramatic statement of just how strained her nerves felt. They flopped limply about her ankles, adding to her sense of drabness. ‘Your son has both more sense and better manners, from what I can see.’

She reached the jib door to her room, pulled it open, and a hand caught the edge of it, pushed it back closed. Grant frowned down at her. ‘What is wrong?’

‘Wrong?’ Would the man never give up and just lie down and sleep? Kate turned back, raised one hand and began to count off on her fingers. ‘Let me see. You do not tell me you had just inherited an earldom. You do not tell me you are a widower with a son. You drive yourself to the brink of collapse trying to do everything yourself. I find myself mistress of a great house, but the servants do not appear to expect me to give them orders...’ I need to hide and I find myself a member of the aristocracy.

‘You have just given birth, you should be resting.’ Grant pushed the hair out of his eyes with one hand, the other still splayed on the door. She rather suspected he was holding himself up.

‘I am quite well and I have a personal maid and an excellent nursery maid. I do not expect to talk about all those things now, but I do expect my husband to go and rest so we can discuss them sensibly in the morning.’

‘Very well.’ He turned back through the door with all the focus of a man who was very, very drunk with lack of sleep. He walked to the bed. Kate followed him and watched as he sat down and just stared at his boots as though he was not certain what they were.

‘Let me.’ Without waiting she straddled his left leg with her back to him and drew off the boot. Then switched to the other leg. ‘Now your coat.’

Grant’s mouth twitched into the first sign she had seen of a smile for days. ‘Undressing me, wife? I warn you, it is a waste of effort just now.’

Is he flirting again? Impossible. She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror, a drab creature with a lumpy figure, a blotchy complexion and a frightful gown, next to Grant’s elegant good looks. Mocking her was more likely. ‘Stand up. I am not going to clamber about on the bed.’

He stood, meekly enough, while she reached up to push the coat from his shoulders. She was slightly above average height for a woman, but he was larger than she had realised, now she was standing so close. No wonder he had lifted her so easily. She found herself a little breathless. Fortunately the coat, like the boots, was comfortable country wear and did not require a shoehorn to lever off. The fine white linen of his shirt clung to his arms, defining the musculature. He had stripped off his coat in the bothy, she recalled vaguely. Doubtless the other things she had to focus on had stopped her noticing those muscles. Ridiculously she felt the heat of a rising blush. Kate unbuttoned his waistcoat, pushed that off, then reached for his neckcloth.

Grant’s hand came up and covered her fingers as she struggled with the knot. She looked up and met his gaze, heavy-lidded, intent. ‘You have very lovely blue eyes,’ he murmured. ‘Why haven’t I noticed before?’

He was, it seemed, awake. Or part of him was, a sensual, masculine part she was not ready to consider, although something fundamentally feminine in her was certainly paying attention.

It is my imagination. He is beyond exhausted, too tired to be flirting. Certainly not flirting with me. Kate shot another glance at the mirror and resisted the urge to retort that at least there was something about her that he approved of.

‘I was quite right about you.’

‘What?’ she demanded ungrammatically as she tugged the neckcloth off with rather more force than necessary, pulling the shirt button free. The neck gaped open, revealing a vee of skin, a curl of dark hair. It looked...silky.

‘You have courage and determination.’

Kate began to fold up the length of muslin with concentration. ‘I am trying to get you to rest. What about that requires courage?’

‘You don’t know me.’ He sat down. ‘I might have a vicious temper. I might hit out at a wife who provoked me.’

‘I think I am a reasonable judge of character.’ She had wound the neckcloth into a tight knot around her own hand. Patiently, so she did not have to look at him, Kate began to unravel it. This close she could smell his skin, the herbal, astringent soap he used, the tang of ink on his hands, the faint musk that she recognised as male. But Grant smelt different, smelt of himself.

She walked to the dresser and placed the neckcloth on the top, distancing herself from the sudden, insane urge to step in close, lay her head on his chest, wrap her arms around the lean, weary body. Why? To comfort him perhaps, or because she wanted comfort herself, or perhaps a mixture of the two.

When she turned back Grant was lying down on top of the covers, still in shirt and breeches. He was deep, deep asleep. She stood looking down at him for a moment, studied the fine-drawn face relaxed into a vulnerability that took years off his age. How old was he? Not thirty-two or -three, as she had thought. Twenty-eight, perhaps. His hair flopped across his forehead, just as Charlie’s did, but she resisted the temptation to brush it back from the bruised skin. The long body did not stir when she laid a light blanket over him, nor when she drew the curtains closed slowly to muffle the rattle of the rings, nor when she made up the fire and drew the guard around it.

My husband is a disturbingly attractive man, she thought as she closed the jib door carefully behind her. Anna was crying in the dressing room, she could hear Jeannie soothing her.

‘Mama will be back soon, little one. Yes, she will, now don’t you fret.’

A husband, a stepson, a baby. Her family. She had a family when just days before all she had was a scheming brother who had always seen her as wilful and difficult and the babe inside her, loved already, but unknown.

Anna, Charlie, Grant. When her husband woke, refreshed, he would see her differently, realise he had a partner he could rely on. She owed him that, she owed Anna the opportunity to grow up happily here. The anxiety and the exhaustion had made her nervy, angry, but she must try to learn this new life, learn to fit in. As the pain of the funeral eased, she would be there for them all. Charlie would learn to like her, perhaps one day to love her. And somehow she would learn how to be a countess. She shivered. How could a countess stay out of the public eye?

When tomorrow comes, it will not seem so overwhelming, I’ll think of something. ‘Is that a hungry little girl I can hear? Mama’s coming.’

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