His Christmas Countess

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

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

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

* * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chapter Seven

‘After all, I was in the process of giving birth,’ Kate continued calmly, hoping the frankness of her words accounted for the heat in her cheeks. The thought of Grant exercising his husbandly rights made her positively breathless. ‘It is hardly surprising that we both now appear to be tolerably well looking in comparison. Of course, I could tell that you were a well-favoured man, even then, but it must be a relief for you to discover that I am not quite as bracket-faced as you feared.’