His Christmas Countess

‘Did it sober you?’ Kate buried the chilly tip of her nose in the angle of his neck and shoulder and smiled as he muttered in protest. He stopped complaining when she slid her hand, palm down, across the flat planes of his chest and began to play with the curls of hair.

‘Coming home and finding my grandfather recovering from a heart seizure did that. I was needed here and I couldn’t expect him to carry the burden of the estate and all its business while I pursued an interest that could only ever be that—an interest.’

She sat up, but stayed close to his warmth as she admired the lean, masculine beauty of the body lying beside her. The only flaws were the raking scars from his right shoulder, disappearing down to his shoulder blade. That was what she had felt the first time they had lain together.

Kate leaned over and touched them. ‘You said you were in the army for a while. When was that?’ She could feel him bracing himself against the desire to shrug her hand away.

‘I volunteered in ’15, when Bonaparte escaped from Elba. I was at Waterloo and escaped with my life and a healthy horror of warfare.’

‘So you were wounded and these are battle scars?’

‘No.’

She stared at them. There was something familiar about them, the way the flesh had been damaged, the way the weapon had raked through the flesh. Then she remembered Jason Smith, who had been Henry’s groom years ago. He would get drunk and pick fights and he was, from all the rumours, a nasty dirty fighter when he’d taken drink. Then one evening he had come staggering into the kitchen, pouring blood, and Kate had helped the housekeeper dress the wounds. Long, raking parallel cuts like these, the result of a slashing blow from a broken bottle. Surely Grant was not the kind of man who got involved in barroom brawls? But that flat negative had been a clear warning, and if he had wanted to explain the scars, then he would.

‘And then you married?’ she asked as though her questions had not interrupted the story of his life.

‘Yes.’ There was no change in Grant’s tone, but he sat up and reached for his clothes. The affirmative had been as flat as the negative and just as clear a warning. No trespassing. ‘You are getting chilled, best to get dressed before the gardeners decide to scythe the back lawns, as well.’

He helped Kate with laces and pins, exhibiting the facility with feminine garments that she had noticed back in the bothy. If she had felt a little more confident, she might have twitted him gently on the subject, but she had strayed far enough into dangerous waters with that question about his first marriage.

‘We need a summer house, you know.’ Grant sat on a tree stump to pull on his boots. He pointed at a flat area in the centre of the clearing. ‘If we built one there, it would have a view down to your new water gardens.’ He stood and stamped his feet firmly into the battered old boots. ‘Then we can be frivolous whatever the weather and with less chance of scandalising our innocent staff and the not-so-innocent poachers.’

‘Classical or rustic?’ Kate laced her half-boots, determined to be as sophisticated about the prospect of future al fresco lovemaking as Grant was. The prospect was delicious in itself, but most of all she treasured the fact that he was becoming so relaxed with her. Surely, soon, the scars from his unhappy first marriage would fade?

‘Classical,’ Grant said. ‘A little temple in the woods. It will have a fireplace and an inner chamber we can lock and a room for picnics on warm rainy days.’

They strolled back up to the parterre, hand in hand, bickering gently about how a chimney could be incorporated into a classical temple, and were met by Charlie, his tutor at his heels.

‘There you are, Papa! Have you fallen off your horse? Your hair is on end and your hat has gone. And, Maman, did you know your cloak is inside out?’

‘Lord Brooke, we have discussed the fact that a gentleman does not pass personal comments on the appearance of others, have we not?’ Mr Gough was so straight-faced that Kate was certain he had a very good idea of just what his employers had been doing.

Charlie grimaced at the formal address, the signal that he was in the wrong. ‘I am sorry, Maman, Papa. Only, I was looking for you. The post has come and there are letters with Uncle Alex’s seal on, and Uncle Cris’s and a very splodgy one that must be from Uncle Gabriel, I think, because he told me he had lost his signet ring whilst dicing with a German count and—’

Mr Gough cast up his gaze as though in search of heavenly assistance. ‘Lord Brooke, we will return to the schoolroom and you will translate I must not speculate on other people’s business into Latin and then write it out twenty times in a fair hand.’