His Christmas Countess

After he had visited Madeleine’s rooms the nightmare had resulted in the inevitable headache and bad dreams every night afterwards. He fought both nightmares and the pain as he always had, but the relief when Kate shyly asked him back to her bed was acute. Somehow making love to his wife kept the demons at bay and he had not dreamed again.

But Kate was working too hard and he worried about that. When he waylaid her in the corridor and swept her into either his or her bedchamber, lists and note tablets would scatter along with her stockings and petticoats as he undressed her. Whichever room he walked into appeared to have a member of staff—some of them unfamiliar to him—working away. The billiard table was brushed to a perfect nap, while new blocks of chalk stood aligned under the racks of cues. His study acquired three more comfortable leather armchairs.

Grimswade was found in solemn consultation with his mistress on the correct number of packs of cards to order and brand-new umbrellas were set in stands by all the outer doors, along with every walking stick the house could muster. When Grant caught his wife emerging from the backstairs and kissed her, she tasted of sugar and cinnamon, but when he began to kiss with more enthusiasm, and the intention of licking it all off, she batted him away and scurried off muttering, ‘New recipes!’

Charlie entertained them before his bedtime every evening with an entire repertoire of poems and recitations, Anna acquired at least half a dozen new dresses and the small drawing room was declared out of bounds to men as it was transformed into a ladies’ boudoir.

‘Grant! Oh, there you are.’ Kate hurried in, seized his hand and began to pull him towards the door. ‘I need you to come upstairs immediately.’

‘An admirable idea,’ he agreed, allowing himself to be steered towards the stairs. ‘But have we time? I expect they will begin arriving in about an hour or so, and your hair looks dashed complicated to fix if it comes down.’ As it would, if what he had in mind—

‘Grant. I want you to look at the guest bedchambers, not to...well, not to do anything else.’

He loved the way he could make her blush, while at the same time she threw herself into whatever amorous idea he had in the most enthusiastic way. And she was beginning to have ideas of her own. Grant paused on the landing, happily recalling the uses to which a set of library steps could be put, and was ruthlessly tugged to the first set of rooms.

‘Is this all right for Lord Avenmore? He is the one I am most worried about. Lord and Lady Weybourn are newlyweds, so I thought what we would like and arranged their suite accordingly.’ That produced an intriguing pink glow over her cheeks. Grant thought again how satisfying it was that he could make Kate blush. It made him think about making love to her...

‘Grant, are you attending?’

‘Yes, my dear.’ It was his best husbandly voice and it usually worked whenever he had lost track of the conversation in erotic daydreams.

Kate gave him a decidedly old-fashioned look. ‘And by the sound of it, Lord Edenbridge values comfort and informality, so his rooms were easy. But Lord Avenmore...’

Grant surveyed the room. It had always been an elegant chamber, but now it was decidedly masculine, with the landscapes replaced with large architectural engravings and all the Dresden china swept away to be replaced by Chinese blue-and-white export porcelain. It would suit Cris de Feaux’s austere tastes very well and he said so.

‘I didn’t know what to do about books, so I have selected a mixture for all of the rooms. But I think we should consider redecorating some more suites very soon, because the rooms I have allocated to Lord Edenbridge are really almost shabby, and if you want to entertain larger parties in the future, it will be difficult. There are your grandfather’s rooms, of course—but I hardly like to suggest making changes there if you would find that upsetting.’

‘No, you are quite right. They would turn into three respectable guest rooms. I’ll have the personal items moved to my rooms and the study. The study and the library are the places that remind me most of him anyway. I have no sentimental attachments to the bedroom suite.’

He was rewarded by a warm smile and glanced at the clock on the overmantel. Perhaps there was just time.

‘And then there is the suite next to yours,’ Kate said with the air of a woman steeling herself. ‘The one with the locked door.’

‘No!’ He swung round away from her, his vision blurred by the smoke, his ears full of the obscene crackling laughter of the fire, the screams...the screams and the air full of the smell of brandy and burning and the pain in his shoulder and head so bad he could not focus, could not make that hellish decision...