His Christmas Countess

‘Who is Lord Brooke?’ she asked in a whisper as the butler opened the door into a drawing room. A fire crackled in the grate, an aged pointer dog rose creakily to its feet, tail waving, and, on the sofa, a small boy sat up, rubbing his eyes.

‘Papa!’

‘Charlie, why aren’t you in bed? You’re keeping Rambler up.’ Grant snapped his fingers at the dog. It was obviously an old joke. The boy grinned, then his eyes widened as he saw what his father was carrying.

Grant settled Kate in a deep armchair by the hearthside and Jeannie, with Anna in her arms, effaced herself somewhere in the shadows.

‘Charlie.’ There was deep affection in Grant’s voice as he crouched down and the boy hurled himself into his arms. So, this was why he had been so impatient to get back, this was what the discovery of a woman in labour had been keeping him from. He has a son. He was married? A lord? This was a disaster and she had no inkling how to deal with it.

‘You got my letter explaining about the accident?’ The boy nodded, pushed back Grant’s hair and touched the bandage with tentative fingers. She saw his eyes were reddened and heavy. The child had been crying. ‘It’s all right now, but I’m sorry I wasn’t here when you needed me. Then on my way from Edinburgh my horse picked up a stone and was lamed with a bruised hoof, so I lost a day and a night.’

‘Great-Grandpapa died on Christmas Eve,’ Charlie said. His lower lip trembled. ‘And you didn’t come and I thought perhaps you’d... Your head... That they’d been lying to me and you were going to...’

‘I’m here.’ Grant pulled the boy into a fierce hug, then stood him back so he could look him squarely in the face. ‘I’m a bit battered and there were a couple of days when I was unconscious, which is why I couldn’t travel, but we’ve hard heads, we Rivers men, haven’t we?’

The lip stopped trembling. ‘Like rocks,’ the boy said stoutly. ‘I’m glad you’re home, though. It was a pretty rotten Christmas.’ His gaze left his father’s face, slid round to Kate. ‘Papa?’

Grant got up from his knees, one hand on his son’s shoulder, and turned towards her, but Kate had already started to rise. She walked forward and stopped beside Grant.

‘My dear, allow me to introduce Charles Francis Ellmont Rivers, Lord Brooke. My son.’

Kate retrieved a smile from somewhere. ‘I... Good evening, Charles. I am very pleased to meet you.’

He bowed, a very creditable effort for a lad of—what? Six? ‘Madam.’ He tugged at Grant’s hand. ‘Papa, you haven’t said who this lady is, so I cannot greet her properly.’

‘This is Catherine Rivers, my wife. Your stepmama.’

Kate felt the smile congeal on her lips. Of course, if Charles was Grant’s son, then she was his...

‘Stepmama?’ The boy had turned pale. ‘You didn’t say that you were going to get married again, Papa.’

‘No. I am allowed some secrets.’ Grant apparently agreed with the Duke of Wellington’s approach: never explain, never apologise. ‘You have a new half-sister as well, Charlie.’ He beckoned to Jeannie and she came forward and placed Anna in his arms. ‘Come and meet her, she is just two days old.’

The boy peered at the little bundle. ‘She’s very small and her face is all screwed up and red.’

‘So was yours when you were born, I expect,’ Kate said with a glare for Grant over Charlie’s head. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ she mouthed. The boy isn’t a love child. He’s the product of a first marriage. I married a widower. And a nobleman. She wrestled with the implications of Charlie having a title. It meant Grant was an earl, at least. Which meant that Anna was Lady Anna, and she was—what?

Earls put marriage announcements in newspapers. Earls had wide social circles and sat in the House of Lords. In London.

‘There never seemed to be a good time.’ Grant gave a half shrug that suddenly made her furious. He should have warned her, explained. She would never have agreed to marry him.

‘What is her name?’ Charlie asked, oblivious to the byplay. Anna woke up and waved a fist at him and he took it, very carefully.

‘Anna Rosalind.’ One starfish hand had closed on Charlie’s finger. His face was a mixture of panic and delight. ‘Would you like to hold her?’

‘Yes, please.’

Grant placed her in Charlie’s arms.

‘Very carefully,’ Kate said, trying not to panic. ‘Firm but gentle, and don’t let her head flop. That’s it—you are obviously a natural as a big brother.’ She was rewarded by a huge grin. She could only admire Grant’s tactics. The surprise of a new baby sister had apparently driven Charlie’s doubts about a stepmama right out of his head.

‘Grant,’ she said, soft-voiced, urgent, as Jeannie helped the boy to sit securely on the sofa and held back the inquisitive hound. ‘Who are you?’

‘The fourth Earl of Allundale. As of two days ago.’

‘I suppose that was something else that there was no time to mention?’ Again that shrug, the taut line of his lips that warned her against discussing this now.

Her husband was an earl. But he was also a doctor, and heirs to earldoms did not become doctors, she knew that. It was a conundrum she was too weary to try to understand now. All she could grasp was that she had married far above her wildest expectations, into a role she had no idea how to fill, into a position that was dangerously exposed and public. Even in her home village the social pages in the newspapers were studied and gossiped about, the business of the aristocracy known about, from the gowns worn at drawing rooms to the latest scandals. How could the wife of an earl hide away? But Grant had no need to fear she would make a scene in front of his son: unless they were thrown out into the dark, she found she was beyond caring about anything but warmth, shelter and Anna’s safety this night.

‘You are worn out. Charlie, give your sister back to her nurse and off you go to bed. I’ll come and see you are asleep later.’ Grant reached for the bell pull and the butler appeared so rapidly that he must have been standing right outside the door. ‘Grimswade, can you dispatch Master Charles to his tutor? And you will have prepared my wife’s rooms by now, I’ve no doubt.’

Grimswade stood aside as Charlie made a very correct bow to Kate, then ducked through the open door. ‘Certainly, my lord. His late lordship had some renovation work done. In anticipation,’ he added.

Grant stilled with his hand on the bell pull. ‘Not the old suite?’ His voice was sharp.

‘No, my lord, not the old suite. The one on the other side of your own chambers. The doors have been changed. One blocked up, another cut through. His late lordship anticipated that you would wish to retain your old rooms even after he had...gone.’

Kate wondered if she would have to stand there all night while they discussed the interior layout of the house. She didn’t care where she slept as long as it had a bed, somewhere for Anna, and the roof was not actually leaking.

‘Very well. Have you made arrangements for the child and her nurse?’

‘Yes, my lord.’ Without any change in voice or expression Grimswade managed to express mild affront at the suggestion that he was in any way unprepared. ‘My lady, if you would care to follow me.’

That is me. I am—what? A countess?

‘I’ll carry you.’ Grant was halfway across the room.

‘Thank you, no. Do stay here.’ Something, Kate was not sure what, revolted at the thought of being carried. Grant Rivers’s arms—her husband’s arms—were temptingly strong, but she was tired of being helpless and he was altogether too inclined to take charge. She had to start thinking for herself again and being held so easily against that broad chest seemed to knock rational thought out of her brain.

In a daze she managed the stairs, the long corridor, then the shock of the sitting room, elegant and feminine, all for her.

‘I will have a light supper served, my lady. The men are filling your bath in the bathing chamber next to the dressing room through there.’ Grimswade gestured towards the double doors that opened on to a bedchamber, one larger than she had ever slept in. ‘And this is Wilson, your maid.’

‘Luxury,’ Kate murmured to Jeannie as the butler bowed himself out and the maid, a thin, middle-aged woman, advanced purposefully across the room. ‘Too much. This is not real.’ Fortunately the sofa was directly behind her as she sank back on to it, her legs refusing to hold her up any longer.

‘You’re just worn out, ma’am—my lady—that’s all.’ Jeannie’s soft brogue was comforting. With a sigh Kate allowed herself to be comforted. ‘It will all come back to you.’

* * *

The next hour was a blur that slowly, slowly came back into focus. Firm hands undressing her, supportive arms to help her to the bathing room, the bliss of hot water and being completely clean. The same hands drying and dressing her as though she was as helpless as little Anna. A table with food, apparently appearing from thin air. The effort to eat.

And then, as she lay back on the piled pillows of a soft bed, there was Anna in her arms, grizzling a little because she was hungry, and Kate found she was awake, feeling stronger and, for the first time in days, more like herself.

‘We might be confused and out of place,’ Kate said as she handed the baby back to Jeannie after the feed, ‘but Anna seems perfectly content.’

‘You’ve not stayed here before, then, my lady?’

‘No. I’m a stranger to this house.’ And to my husband. ‘Where are you to sleep, Jeannie?’

‘They’ve set up a bed for me in the dressing room, my lady, just for tonight. It’s bigger than the whole of the upstairs of our cottage,’ she confided with glee. ‘And there’s a proper cradle for Lady Anna.’

‘Then you take yourself off and get some rest now. I expect she’ll be waking you up again soon enough.’

The canopy over the bed was lined with pleated sea-green silk, the curtains around the bed and at the windows were a deeper shade, the walls, paler. The furniture was light and, to Kate’s admittedly inexperienced eye, modern and fashionable. The paintings and the pieces of china arranged around the room seemed very new, too. Strange, in such an old house. The drawing room, the hallway and stairs had an antique air, of generations of careful choices of quality pieces and then attentive housekeeping to deepen the polished patina.

Kate threw back the covers and slid out of bed. Deep-pile carpet underfoot, the colours fresh and springlike in the candlelight. Grant had reacted sharply when her chambers were mentioned. Interior decoration seemed a strange thing to be concerned about, given the circumstances—surely a new wife who was a stranger, another man’s baby carrying his own name, a bereavement and a son to comfort must be enough to worry about. Another puzzle.

She moved on unsteady legs about the room, admiring it, absorbing the warmth and luxury as she had with the food earlier, feeling the weariness steal over her again. In a moment she would return to the big bed and be able to sleep. Tomorrow she would think. There was a murmur of voices, just audible. Idly curious, Kate followed the sound until she reached a jib door, papered and trimmed so it looked at first glance like part of the wall it was cut into.

The handle moved easily, soundlessly, under the pressure of her hand, and it swung inwards to show her a segment of another bedchamber. Masculine, deep-red hangings, old panelling polished to a glow, the glint of gilded picture frames. Grant’s bedchamber. For the first time the words husband and bed came together in her mind and her breathing hitched.

On the table beside the door was a small pile of packages wrapped in silver paper. She glanced down and read the label on the top one. Papa, all my love for Christmas. Charlie. It was obviously his very best handwriting. Her vision blurred.

Grant’s voice jerked her back. He must be speaking to his valet. She began to ease the door closed. ‘Thank you for coming by. Tomorrow I’d be grateful if you’d take a look at my wife and the baby. They both seem well to my eye, especially given the circumstances—Kate must be very tired—but I won’t be easy until a doctor has confirmed it.’

Another doctor? Kate left the door an inch ajar. There was a chuckle, amused, masculine, with an edge of teasing to it. ‘It seems to me that you did very well, given that you’ve never been trained for a childbirth. Or were you, in the year you left Edinburgh?’

‘I observed one. I had, thank Asclepius and any other gods that look after inept medical students, studied the relevant sections of the textbooks before I did so and some of it must have stuck. I’d just about reached the limits of my book learning, though, and after the last time—’

The other man made some comment, his voice low and reassuring, but Kate did not register the words. Grant is not qualified? He is not a doctor. The embossed metal of the door handle bit into her fingers. He lied to me. The irony of her indignation at the deception struck her, which did nothing for her temper.

‘I thought perhaps so much experience with brood mares might have helped, but I can tell you, it didn’t,’ Grant confessed.

Brood mares. He thought he could deliver my baby as though she were a foal.

She heard Grant say goodnight to his visitor as she set foot in his bedchamber. He turned from closing the door and saw her. ‘Kate, what’s wrong? Can’t you sleep?’

‘You are not a doctor.’ He came towards her and it took only two steps to be close enough to jab an accusing finger into his chest. ‘You delivered my baby, you told me not to worry. You fraud!’

Chapter Four

Grant stepped back sharply, the concern wiped from his expression. ‘I have two years of medical training, which is more than anyone else within reach had. There was no one else to deliver your baby.’

‘You might have told me.’ She sat down abruptly on the nearest chair. ‘You thought you could treat me like a brood mare.’

‘Ah, you heard that. Damn. Look, Kate, you were frightened, in pain, and you hadn’t the first idea what to do. You needed to be calm, to conserve your strength. If I had told you I had never delivered a baby before, would that have helped you relax? Would that have helped you be calm?’

She glared at him, furious that he was being perfectly reasonable, when something inside her, the same something that had latched on to those words, husband and bed, wanted nothing more than to panic and make a fuss. And run away.

Grant stood there, patient—and yet impatient, just as he had been in the bothy. He was good at self-control, she realised. If he wasn’t so distracted by grief for his grandfather and worry for his son, she would not be allowed a glimpse of that edginess. And he was right, perfectly right. He had some knowledge and that was better than none. He had kept her calm and safe. Alive. Anna was healthy. Kate swallowed. ‘I am sorry. You are quite correct, of course. I am just...’

‘Embarrassed, very tired and somewhat emotional.’

‘Yes,’ she agreed. And confused. Damn him for being so logical and practical and right, when I just want to hit out at something. Someone. ‘You did not tell me you are an earl.’ She had wanted to hide, go to ground. Now she was in the sort of marriage that appeared in society pages, was the stuff of gossip.

Grant ran his hand through his hair. He was tired, she realised. Very tired. How much sleep had he had since he had walked into that hovel and found her? Little, she supposed, and he was travelling with a recent head injury. ‘I didn’t think it relevant and you weren’t in any fit state for conversation.’ His mouth twisted. ‘My grandfather was dying, or had just died. I was not there and I did not want to talk about it. Or think about it. All I wanted was to get back to Charlie.’

‘Were you too late to see your grandfather because of me?’

Grant shook his head and sat down opposite her. It was more of a controlled collapse than anything, long legs sprawled out, his head tipped back, eyes closed. The bandage gave him a rakish air, the look of a pirate after a battle. ‘No, I wouldn’t have reached him in time, not after the accident in Edinburgh. But even so, there was no choice but to stay with you—he would have expected it himself.’

No, she supposed there hadn’t been a decision to make. No one could walk away from someone in the situation she had been in. No decent person, at any rate. She had married a decent man. Her agitation calmed as she looked at him, studied his face properly for the first time. She was thinking only of herself and Anna, but she owed him a debt. The least she could do was to think about his needs. ‘I’m sorry. Go to bed. You are worn out.’

Grant shook his head and opened his eyes. They were green, she realised with a jolt, seeing the man and not simply her rescuer. But a warm green verging on hazel, not the clear green of a gemstone under water... ‘Soon. I need to look in on Charlie.’

She was not going to exhaust him more by complaining about the fact he had not told her he had been married, that he had a son as well as a title. That could keep until the morning. She was certainly not going to look for any more resemblances to Jonathan. ‘I will go back to bed, then. Goodnight.’

There was silence until she was through the jib door. She wondered if he had fallen asleep after all. Then, ‘Goodnight, Kate.’ She closed the door softly behind her.

* * *

‘Goodnight, Kate. Goodnight, wife,’ Grant added in a whisper as the door closed. Perhaps he should have kissed her. Poor creature, she looked dreadful. Pale, with dark shadows under bloodshot eyes, her hair pulled back into a mousy tail, her face pinched with exhaustion and a confusion of embarrassment and uncertainty. He could only hope that when she was recovered and suitably dressed she would at least look like a lady, if not a countess.

He hauled himself to his feet and stripped off his clothes with a grimace of relief. He felt as if he’d spent the past year in them. Naked, he stood and washed rapidly, then rummaged in the clothes press and pulled out loose trousers, a shirt and a robe, dressing without conscious thought. Comfort, something he could catnap in if Charlie needed him to stay and chase away nightmares, these would do. His eye caught the glint of silver paper and he went to investigate. Christmas presents. He picked them up, torn between grief and pleasure.

* * *

When he slid quietly into Charlie’s room the mounded covers on the bed heaved and a mop of dark blond hair emerged. ‘Papa!’

‘I had hoped you were asleep by now.’ Grant sat on the edge of the bed and indulged himself with a hug that threatened to strangle him. ‘Urgh! You’re too strong for me.’

Charlie chuckled, a six-year-old’s naughty laugh, and let go. He looked up at Grant from under his lashes. ‘I’m glad you’re home.’

‘So am I. I’m sorry I was not here when Great-Grandpapa died.’

‘Dr Meldreth took me in to see him. He was very sleepy and he told me that he was very old, so he was all worn out and he wanted to go and be with Great-Grandmama, so I mustn’t be sad when he left. But I am.’

‘I know, Charlie, so am I. And we will be for a while, then we’ll remember all the good times we had, and all the things we used to talk about and do, and you won’t feel so bad. What did you do on Christmas Day?’

‘We went for a walk and to church, and then I opened my presents because Great-Grandpapa said I must do so.’ He sniffed. ‘He gave me his watch. I...I blubbed a bit, but it made me really proud, so I’m glad. And thank you very much for the model soldiers and the castle and the new boots. Then we had Christmas dinner and Mr Gough showed me how to make a toast. So I toasted absent friends, for both you and Great-Grandpapa.’

‘It sounds to me as if the household was in very good hands with you in charge, Charlie.’ Grant managed to get his voice under control, somehow. ‘I found my presents—shall I open them now?’

Grant went to retrieve the gifts and they opened them together. His grandfather had given him a miniature of his parents, newly painted, he realised, from the large individual portraits that hung in the Long Gallery. He read the note that accompanied it, blew his nose without any attempt to conceal his emotion and turned to Charlie’s gift, which he had set aside.

‘This is excellent!’ It was a large, enthusiastic and almost recognisable portrait of Rambler, his old pointer dog, framed in a somewhat lopsided, and obviously home-made, frame. ‘I will hang it in my study next to the desk. Thank you, Charlie. You go to sleep now. Do you want me to spend the night here?’

‘I’m all right now you are home, Papa. And Mr Gough let me talk to him all I wanted. He thought it would be better after the funeral when we can say goodbye again.’

The tutor had proved as sensitive as he had hoped when he hired him. ‘You know where I am if you want to come along in the night.’ Grant tucked his son in, bent down and gave him a kiss that, for once, didn’t have his son squirming away in embarrassment. He seemed to understand and to be taking it well, but he was so young. Grant felt a pang of anxiety through the haze of weariness that was closing in like fog. Perhaps he would sleep without nightmares if he was this tired.

‘I didn’t know you were going to get married again, Papa.’ The voice from under the blankets was already drowsy.

Neither did I. ‘Go to sleep, Charlie. I’ll explain in the morning.’ Somehow. And I hope to heaven that you take to your new mother and sister, and she takes to you, because if not I’ve created the most damnable mess.

* * *

‘She’s being a little angel, my lady.’ Jeannie tucked the sleeping baby back into the crib she had brought into the sitting room while Kate was feeding Anna. Fed, clean and cuddled, she truly was sleeping like a small, rather red-faced cherub.

Kate, fresh from Wilson’s best, and exhausting, efforts to turn her into something approaching a respectable lady, retreated to the sanctuary of the sofa next to the crib. Wilson was handicapped by an absence of any gowns to dress her in, to say nothing of Kate’s figure, which, it was obvious, was not going to spring back instantly into what had been before. A drab, ill-fitting gown that was seriously the worse for wear was not helped by a headful of fine mousy hair that was in dire need of the attentions of a hairdresser.

She looked a frump, and an unhealthy one at that, she knew. Her husband, once rested and with a view of her in a good light, was going to be bitterly rueing his impetuous, gallant gesture.

His knock came on the thought and Kate twitched at the shawl Wilson had found in an effort to drape her body as flatteringly as possible. A harassed glance at her reflection in the glass over the fireplace confirmed that the wrap’s shades of green and brown did nothing to help her complexion.

‘Good morning. May I come in? Did you sleep well?’ The dark smudges were stark under Grant’s eyes and the strong-boned face seemed fined down to its essentials. The rakish bandage had gone, leaving the half-healed cut and angry bruising plain across his forehead.

‘Good morning. Yes, of course.’

She was not going to huddle on the sofa, trying to hide. She might look a fright, but she had her pride. Kate swung her feet down to the floor, pushed her shoulders back, lifted her chin and curved the corners of her mouth up. That felt very strange, as though she had not smiled properly in months. Perhaps she had not, except at Anna.

‘Dr Meldreth is here, Kate. I think it would be a good idea if he checked you and Anna over.’

‘He studied with you in Edinburgh, I gather?’ He nodded. ‘But unlike you is actually qualified?’ That was a sharp retort—she could have bitten her tongue. If it were not for Grant’s time at the university, he would have been far less capable of helping her bring Anna safely into the world.

‘Exceedingly well qualified,’ Grant said before she had a chance to soften her words. He kept any annoyance out of his voice, but his expression hardened. He must think he had married a shrew. ‘I’ll show him in, shall I?’