His Christmas Countess

None of it made sense. Kate stood watching her sleeping husband, then, once she was certain he was deeply unconscious, she pulled the covers up over him. Should she stay? No, she decided, staring down at his profile, stark against the white of the pillows. He had dragged himself out of that nightmare by sheer willpower, as far as she could tell. He would hate to know she had been watching his struggles against it.

But what had triggered it? she wondered as she turned away. She had seen no sign of bad dreams when they had slept together. The candlelight caught a glint of something metallic on the little table by the door and, curious, she went to see what it was. A key. A door key very much in the style of those for all of the bedchambers on this floor. It was in her hand before she realised that she had moved to pick it up. It was not the key to this room, that was protruding from the lock right in front of her, Charlie’s room was never locked, in case of accidents. Hers, too, was unlocked.

Madeleine’s suite. It had to be. Kate hesitated for perhaps ten seconds. Grant did not want her, or anyone, in those rooms. But whatever had happened there had scarred him, mentally and perhaps physically. It was giving him nightmares and the experience had been so bad he could not tolerate any mention of it. How could she help him if she did not understand?

The door opened with a faint creak like the protest of her conscience, but Kate kept going. This was the lesser of two evils and Grant need never know she had been in the rooms, she told herself.

The forbidden door opened easily and she stepped on to bare boards. The air was cold and dry and, stripped of its furniture, the room seemed enormous and overscale, like something from a fairy tale. Bluebeard’s chamber. The light of the single candle that she held created deep pools of shadow in the corners, the edges swaying as her hand trembled. Something dark spilled like a puddle in front of the hearth and for a moment Kate thought it was a body fallen there, draped in a black velvet cloak.

‘Nonsense,’ she muttered and shook off the superstitious dread. ‘Too many Gothic novels, you will be seeing ghosts next.’ Even so, it took resolution to walk towards the pool of blackness. She stopped, her toes at the edge, and saw that the boards at her feet were charred by the heat of an intense fire. Instinctively she stepped back, repelled by the thought of her bare skin touching the blackness. There was another patch of darkness by the door and she made herself walk to that. There was no charring here, the boards were intact, although scrubbed until the grain showed. She had the cold certainty that this was blood, but there was no way of telling in the dim light.

The bedchamber door was closed. It yielded to her cautious push and Kate stepped into Madeleine Rivers’s most intimate world. The room was feminine, exquisite in every detail, decorated in shades of blue with touches of silver, tarnished now, but still catching the light from the candle flame.

The dressing table held its array of bottles and jars, a silver-backed hairbrush and hand mirror. There was just the lightest film of dust, so whatever Grimswade said, one of the servants was coming in to keep the rooms clean. Then Kate saw a single line, fresh-traced through the dust. She held the candle flame close. It looked like the mark of a fingertip that had come close to one perfume flask. Essence de Jasmine.

There was a large mirror on a stand and Kate looked up to see herself reflected in it—pale-faced, pretty enough, dressed for warmth and comfort in a sensible nightgown, bare feet showing beneath the hem. The woman whose room this was would have scorned to look like this, she sensed. She glanced at the dressing room door, but did not try to open it. The thought of prying into the other woman’s clothes was abhorrent.

Slowly, forcing herself not to run, Kate closed the door, crossed the sitting room and let herself out into the familiar world again. She turned the key in the lock and tiptoed back to Grant’s bedchamber, laid the key down where she had found it and retreated to her own room.

What had that taught her? Nothing, she concluded as she climbed into bed and pulled the covers up tight to her chin, although the room was not cold. There were marks of a fire, possibly of blood. But she had known that already. She had intruded into Grant’s private nightmare, against his wishes, and she had discovered nothing that might help.

Let that be a lesson to you, she would have said to Charlie if she had caught him prying. Now she had a guilty conscience, a definite case of the shivers and another secret to keep from Grant.

May 20—Abbeywell Grange

Grant strolled through the rooms of his home and shook his head with bemused pleasure. Kate had seemed understandably nervous when he had first come home, not just of him, but at the thought of making any changes to the house. With the confirmation of the house party all that reserve seemed to have been swept away, although he worried that she was overdoing things. It was almost as though she had flung herself into the preparations as a way of burying her nerves.