‘Please don’t. You could not reproach me half as much as I am reproaching myself. We were building trust between us, weren’t we? And I destroyed it.’ Bravely, she kept her gaze on his face and he remembered that it was her courage that had first impressed him.
‘No, we were not.’ It came out more harshly than he had intended, a snarl at himself as much as at her. Kate bit her lip and Grant closed his mouth before he said anything else unconsidered.
‘I am not going to apologise any more.’ She levelled a steady look at him across the teacups. Grant looked down and saw her hands were shaking. When Kate saw the direction of his gaze she curled them loosely in her lap as though willing them to stillness. ‘I have said I am sorry, and I am, but my motives were good. Mostly. I cannot acquit myself of some curiosity.’
She admitted inquisitiveness and he knew she wanted to remodel that part of the house, but neither of those could be described as a good motive. Grant almost said as much, and then he saw the anxiety in her eyes, stopped thinking about his own feelings and saw hers. Because if the positions were reversed, I’d have done the same thing. Of course he would.
If Kate had been hiding some secret that gave her nightmares, made her short-tempered and laid her low with migraines, he would have done anything that he could to discover what it was and try to set it right, whether she said she wanted him to or not. She was too important to him now—he would not have shrugged and ignored her pain, left her to carry the burden alone. Which meant that he was important to her. He knew himself well enough to recognise that when he was angry it took nerve to stand up to him. Kate had risked his anger and so he must forgive what she had done.
Forgive. And that meant telling her the truth, because otherwise she was going to fret herself to flinders over him. Hell. The thought made him nauseous all over again, his shoulder seemed to flare with remembered pain. What would she think of him? That he was as good as a murderer? It was, after all, what he thought of himself often enough as he lay awake long into the night, because that was better than sleeping and the dreams that came with sleep.
With another woman he would never have the confidence in her discretion and her understanding, but he could trust Kate, he realised.
‘Yes, I can see that your motives were good.’
Kate’s expression changed subtly. Relief, possibly. Anxiety about what he would reveal? Or regret that she had pushed things this far? He had always known her to be self-contained, now he could not read her thoughts, interpret her emotions, and he knew he should be able to. This was his wife, he should be able to understand her because that was what happened in real marriages and he wanted this one to be real.
Grant forced his reluctant tongue to form the words. ‘I would not let you in to my secrets. Where’s the trust in that? And you were not idly curious, I know that. You wanted to help, despite my best efforts to keep you out.’
‘Most husbands would maintain that a wife must obey them,’ Kate ventured. He thought of someone edging out on to thin ice, testing each step, listening for the ominous cracking. He had failed her by not trusting her before. Now she was wary of how far this tolerance went.
‘Even if they are wrong. Yes, I know. I do not want to be a husband like that. Will you come here, Kate?’
She stood up, looking demure, except for the hint of a smile, and he realised with a flash of insight that she was relieved and something more positive than that. Happy? The relief at being able to understand her made his own lips curve in response.
‘You have a headache,’ she said.
‘So don’t bounce.’ Grant opened his arms and Kate curled up on his lap, her head on his shoulder, and he gathered her in tight, tucked her head under his chin and thought how right she felt there, how perfect her weight on him was.
‘Have you had these headaches all the time we have been married?’
‘No. When we first got here I was so busy that I was too tired to dream. I had them in London, now and again, but they are always worse here.’ He felt the familiar guilt at his own weakness, even as the rational part of his brain, the part that had studied medicine, told him that it was not something he could control by willpower.
He could almost hear Kate working it out. ‘You have slept with me every night since you returned from London and you have not had nightmares, not ones that disturbed your sleep and woke me.’
‘I suspect that sex helps,’ Grant said, hoping he had not shocked her. It had occurr
ed to him, these past few days when he woke refreshed after a solid night’s sleep.
‘Of course!’ Kate sat up, bumped his chin with her head, murmured an apology. ‘The night you woke me up because you were dreaming and I went into your bedchamber and found the key was the first time since we had been sleeping together that we…haven’t…’ She seemed to find it difficult to select the right word. ‘Made love.’
‘Well, there’s the answer,’ he said, feeling, for the first time since that confrontation upstairs, like smiling. ‘Lovemaking as often as possible.’
‘It will cure the symptoms,’ Kate said seriously, apparently not ready to joke about it. ‘But not the cause. Have you talked to anyone about what happened when Madeleine died?’
‘My grandfather, when it first happened. The other three.’ He gestured at the ceiling, but she knew what he meant. The other three of the close band of four friends.
‘Did you tell them what happened or how you feel?’ Kate asked.
‘How I feel? No, of course not. I told them the facts.’
Kate pushed at his chest until she was sitting upright, her expression wry. ‘Men! Tonight, when we go to bed, tell me what happened and tell me how you felt, how you still feel.’
‘I realise I owe you an explanation, that I can’t make a mystery of this any longer, but what the devil do my feelings have to do with it?’
‘I want to understand,’ she said as she slid off his knee and stood up. ‘How is your migraine now?’
‘Better.’ He rolled his head and flexed his shoulders. ‘My neck’s stiff, but that’s usual afterwards.’