Regency Christmas Courtship. Louise Allen

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СКАЧАТЬ Kate stared at him, then scooped up Anna as the baby began to cry, as unsettled by his abruptly harsh tone as she was.

      ‘She was a disaster as a mother.’

      And a disaster as a wife? ‘He need not know that,’ Kate said fiercely.

      ‘Of course not, what do you take me for?’

      ‘I do not know. I do not know you. But he needs the confidence of knowing he had a mother who loved him, even if she was not very good at it in your eyes. What does it matter if you do not like it, if it is best for Charlie?’

      ‘Damn it, Kate. You presume to lecture me on my own child?’

      ‘Yes, of course I do.’ She glared back at him over the top of Anna’s bonneted head, aware that she was bristling like a stable cat defending her kittens. Then she saw the darkness in Grant’s eyes, the memory of goodness knew what past miseries. ‘I am sorry, but I am his stepmother and you left him with me to look after. He is still only a little boy, not ready for harsh truths.’ She rocked the baby, trying to soothe her. ‘What did she do that was so unforgivable?’

      Grant got to his feet in one fast movement, a controlled release of pent-up tension. ‘I am sorry, but I have no intention of raking over old history. Madeleine is in the past and there is nothing you need to know.’ He bent to pick up his hat. ‘If you will excuse me, Kate, I will ride on to the house and take Charlie with me. I assume a footman is coming out in the gig to collect you and bring the basket back?’

      ‘Yes, I expect him very soon.’ Kate was glad of Anna grizzling in her arms, demanding her attention. She did not want to look into those shadowed eyes and see his anger with her, or his pain over his beautiful, lost wife.

      He called to Charlie and the boy came running to be hoisted up into the saddle in front of his father. Grant gave him the reins. ‘Wave goodbye to your stepmama.’

      When the sound of hooves died away and Charlie’s excited chatter faded amongst the trees, Kate fed and changed Anna, packed away the baby things in one basket and the remains of the picnic in the other and got to her feet, too restless to wait for the footman and the gig.

      She had to think about Grant, but not about what would happen that night. If she began to imagine that, then she would be in more of a state of nerves than a virgin on her wedding night. The virgin might have a little theoretical knowledge, but Kate knew exactly what would happen and the thought of being in Grant’s bed made her mind dizzy and her body ache.

      She had lain with Jonathan just once and she had believed herself in love with him, a delusion she now knew was born out of ignorance, a desperation to get away from home and the lures of an accomplished rake. And the experience had been a sadly disappointing one, even though she had not truly understood what to expect. But she hardly knew Grant, the man, at all, he had never so much as kissed her hand and she was most certainly not tipsy with moonlight and champagne. And yet, just the thought of him made her breath come short and an ache, somewhere between fear and anticipation, form low down. Goodness knew how she had managed a rational conversation with him appearing like that.

      Kate tucked Anna more snugly into her little blanket, settled her into the folds of her shawl to make a sling and began to walk back to the house. It would take almost half an hour with her arms full of her wriggling, chubby baby. Time enough to think about something other than how long Grant’s legs had looked, stretched out on the rug, how the ends of his hair had turned golden brown in the sunlight.

      Time, in fact, to consider that locked door on the other side of Grant’s suite of rooms in the light of what he had said about Madeleine, the beautiful wife who had been such a bad mother and who had died in a fire.

      She had realised almost from the beginning that the forbidden suite must have been her predecessor’s rooms. She could understand that the chambers would hold difficult memories for Grant, but even so, it was surely long past the time when they should have been opened up, aired, redecorated and put to use. What would happen when Charlie was old enough to be curious about the locked door? It was unhealthy to make a mystery out of his mother like that, and if he ever discovered that was where she had died, he might well have nightmares about it.

      None of the keys on her chatelaine fitted the lock and all the servants denied having the right one, either. Eventually Grimswade told her that neither his late lordship nor his young lordship had wanted the rooms opened. ‘The earl holds the only key, my lady,’ he told her, his gaze fixed at a point over her head.

      Since then Kate had tried hard not to allow the locked room to become a Bluebeard’s chamber in her imagination, applying rigorous common sense to keep her own nightmares at bay. She had found her way around the house without looking at the door if she could help it, she had asked no further questions of the staff, but it refused to be forgotten. There were times when she seriously considered picking the lock with a bent hairpin, or seeing if a slender paperknife would trip the catch, then told herself to not even think about something so unseemly.

      Now she wondered just what Madeleine’s crimes had been. A disaster as a mother. That, somehow, did not make sense. Surely she could not have beaten the child—neither Grant nor his grandfather would have allowed her unsupervised access if they feared violence. And being a distant and cold mother was nothing unusual amongst the nobility, Kate knew. Many a child was raised almost entirely by servants without anyone accusing the parents of being a disaster.

      The only explanation Kate could think of was that she was a failure as a wife and therefore morally unfit to be a mother. Had she taken a lover—had Grant found them together in her bedchamber? It was an explanation, but it was difficult to imagine Grant being cuckolded. In fact, her mind refused to produce an image of a more attractive alternative who might have tempted his wife to stray.

      ‘Which is very shallow of me,’ she admitted to Anna. The baby stared back at her with wide green eyes. ‘Grant is intelligent, good-looking, and he was the heir to an earldom when she married him. But good looks and position are not everything. If Madeleine had found her soulmate…’

      Then she should have resisted temptation. Madeleine was married, she had made vows, she had a child. Which is easy enough for me to say. Despite being a well-brought-up, respectable young lady, I gave my virtue easily enough. Of course, having a scheming brother who put her in the way of a man who could be trusted to yield to temptation when it was offered and who could not afford a scandal had helped her along the path to ruination. Her becoming pregnant was, as far as Henry was concerned, the perfect gilding on his plan to blackmail her lover. What if Jonathan came back now, walked around that bend in the path ahead?

      Kate watched the bend approach. No one appeared around it, of course, least of all the rakish Lord Baybrook. And if he did, he would not be coming with protestations of undying love, with explanations of how she had entirely misunderstood his flat refusal to marry her when Henry had confronted him two months later, after she had been forced to confess her predicament.

      Not that she had seen him then, of course. Henry, as befitted the male head of the household, had taken himself off to London to, as he put it, deal with the matter. Only, he had not dealt with it, not brought her a husband back. At the time it had struck her as strange that her brother had not been more angry, but she had decided that perhaps he had been relieved that he had not found himself facing the viscount at dawn on Hampstead Heath. Then she had found the letter in Henry’s desk, the coldly furious response to blackmail, the counter-threats. But Lord Baybrook had not called Henry’s bluff. He would pay, she thought, reading the letter. Pay—and then she was certain that one day he would find some way to make Henry pay and Kate, too, the woman Jonathan thought had deliberately set out to ensnare him.

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