His Christmas Countess

‘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 occurred 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.’

‘You should take a hot bath.’ He almost smiled again at the confident tone. Planning and making decisions seemed to cheer Kate up as much as it did him. ‘And we’ll take our time changing for dinner. Let’s look in on Anna and Charlie on our way up,’ she suggested. ‘With our guests and our plans for later, I think this should be an evening for adults, don’t you?’

‘Oh, yes,’ Grant agreed. ‘Most definitely.’

Chapter Fifteen

Kate accepted a shelled walnut from Cris de Feaux, who was cracking them with one hand while moving the cruets around the table to demonstrate some obscure point about the Schleswig-Holstein question that her husband and Gabriel were arguing about.

‘Thank you,’ she murmured, too engaged with the argument to feel shy with him any more. He was beginning to intrigue her, with his sharp intelligence and sardonic observations. But he was unhappy, she sensed. It was hard to tell with such a controlled, contained man, but she thought he was acting, putting on a false front of normality for his friends. She wondered whether he resented the fact that two of them had married and there was certainly something in his eyes when he looked at Alex and Tess, but she thought it was pain rather than resentment or jealousy.

‘The convolutions in a walnut are as nothing compared to Gabriel’s mental processes,’ Cris observed, breaking into her musings. ‘Of course the Danes have a good claim to the territory,’ he added as Alex joined in the argument. ‘But the German states...’