‘It is difficult to know how to reply to that.’ Grant was not used to being left at a loss for words, she could tell. Possibly he was slightly flattered, although he must be accustomed to being regarded as good-looking. Possibly also he was feeling a trifle awkward about letting her see what he had thought of her before.
‘There is no need to say anything.’ She was not a conventional beauty, she never had been, but she thought that these days she looked at least tolerable, and, if Grant now thought so, too, she was content with that.
‘I have been away a long time, longer than I intended.’ He had decided to get all the apologising over at once, it seemed. Kate wondered if the length of his absence had anything to do with his mental image of his new wife. Had he escaped to London and the arms of a beautiful mistress? As apologies went, it was not very effusive, more a statement of fact than of regret.
‘We have managed very well and you were a most regular correspondent.’ Not that I understand you any better now than before you left. And you are a man, not a saint, so I must not feel jealous of a mistress—she is only to be expected. But if you take one up here, one that I know about, that will be a different matter. The stab of jealousy was unexpected and she diverted it into a vicious cut at the pastry in front of her. ‘Would you care for a slice of raised pie?’ she enquired to cover the impulse to snap out a demand to know all about this theoretical other woman. ‘It is chicken and ham.’
‘Papa, are you home for long?’ Charlie had been sitting almost on his father’s feet, obviously on the point of bursting with the effort to Be Good and not interrupt the adults.
‘For the summer. Ough!’ Grant fell back on the rug under the impact of Charlie’s flying leap and hug. ‘You are too big for jumping on your poor father. Big enough to come out with me and start learning about the estate, I think, provided you keep up your lessons to Mr Gough’s satisfaction. Now, sit quietly and eat your picnic while I talk to your stepmama.’ Grant settled the boy between them and against her side Kate could feel her husband’s encircling arm and the child’s skinny little body quivering with happiness like an overexcited puppy.
The arm was warm and it was tempting to lean into it, to feel the muscled strength braced to support her. Kate sat up straight and filled a plate for Grant from the picnic basket.
‘Thank you. Have you heard from your brother yet?’ he asked as he took the food from her.
‘No. I have not written to him and I would, of course, have mentioned it in my letters if I had. I do not want him to know of this marriage. I do not want him to know where I am. To be perfectly frank, we were not close. We did not part on good terms and it would be awkward...’ She’d scoured the newspapers daily, looking for the arrest or trial of Sir Henry Harding, baronet, for blackmail. But perhaps aristocrats had other ways of dealing with the potentially explosive matter of extortion. She shivered. But there had been no notice of Henry’s death, either.
‘Awkward to have him asking questions about our marriage?’
She nodded, grateful that he had jumped to the wrong conclusion. She did not want Henry to know about her marriage because, beside him embroiling her any deeper in his schemes, she had no idea how he would react. At best, he would attempt to borrow money from his new brother-in-law. At worst, he could cause the most dreadful scandal and she could not inflict that on Grant.
‘I would be much happier if you did not make contact with him.’ And find out who Anna’s father is and realise just how I came to lose my virginity to the man and became an accomplice in blackmail. Grant was the kind of principled gentleman who would never allow such dishonesty to go unpunished, whatever the scandal. Let sleeping dogs lie...
Grant shrugged. ‘We are going to have to deal with him sooner or later. In the meantime, are you opposed to entertaining a small house party? It had not occurred to me to propose it, but now I see you looking—’
‘More the thing?’ Kate suggested, swallowing the hurt. Had he really thought to shut her away up here, an unpaid housekeeper and guardian for his son, simply because he considered her plain and awkward? Now, it seemed, he did not fear she would embarrass him in front of his friends. The fact that she had welcomed the seclusion was neither here nor there.
‘More rested,’ Grant supplied smoothly. ‘And from your letters it sounds as though you have the household well in hand.’
‘Your staff are well chosen and well trained. Once they had accepted that I really was your wife, and not some stray you had picked up on the moors, they have proved most cooperative.’ Not that she would have stood for any nonsense. She had been used to helping run a small household, so she knew the principles, and she was all too aware that if she did not secure the respect and loyalty of the staff of this much larger one right from the start, then she never would. It was another mark in Grant’s favour, the loyalty and affection they showed for him.