She stared at them. There was something familiar about them, the way the flesh had been damaged, the way the weapon had raked through the flesh. Then she remembered Jason Smith, who had been Henry’s groom years ago. He would get drunk and pick fights and he was, from all the rumours, a nasty dirty fighter when he’d taken drink. Then one evening he had come staggering into the kitchen, pouring blood, and Kate had helped the housekeeper dress the wounds. Long, raking parallel cuts like these, the result of a slashing blow from a broken bottle. Surely Grant was not the kind of man who got involved in barroom brawls? But that flat negative had been a clear warning, and if he had wanted to explain the scars, then he would.
‘And then you married?’ she asked as though her questions had not interrupted the story of his life.
‘Yes.’ There was no change in Grant’s tone, but he sat up and reached for his clothes. The affirmative had been as flat as the negative and just as clear a warning. No trespassing. ‘You are getting chilled, best to get dressed before the gardeners decide to scythe the back lawns, as well.’
He helped Kate with laces and pins, exhibiting the facility with feminine garments that she had noticed back in the bothy. If she had felt a little more confident, she might have twitted him gently on the subject, but she had strayed far enough into dangerous waters with that question about his first marriage.
‘We need a summer house, you know.’ Grant sat on a tree stump to pull on his boots. He pointed at a flat area in the centre of the clearing. ‘If we built one there, it would have a view down to your new water gardens.’ He stood and stamped his feet firmly into the battered old boots. ‘Then we can be frivolous whatever the weather and with less chance of scandalising our innocent staff and the not-so-innocent poachers.’
‘Classical or rustic?’ Kate laced her half-boots, determined to be as sophisticated about the prospect of future al fresco lovemaking as Grant was. The prospect was delicious in itself, but most of all she treasured the fact that he was becoming so relaxed with her. Surely, soon, the scars from his unhappy first marriage would fade?
‘Classical,’ Grant said. ‘A little temple in the woods. It will have a fireplace and an inner chamber we can lock and a room for picnics on warm rainy days.’
They strolled back up to the parterre, hand in hand, bickering gently about how a chimney could be incorporated into a classical temple, and were met by Charlie, his tutor at his heels.
‘There you are, Papa! Have you fallen off your horse? Your hair is on end and your hat has gone. And, Maman, did you know your cloak is inside out?’
‘Lord Brooke, we have discussed the fact that a gentleman does not pass personal comments on the appearance of others, have we not?’ Mr Gough was so straight-faced that Kate was certain he had a very good idea of just what his employers had been doing.
Charlie grimaced at the formal address, the signal that he was in the wrong. ‘I am sorry, Maman, Papa. Only, I was looking for you. The post has come and there are letters with Uncle Alex’s seal on, and Uncle Cris’s and a very splodgy one that must be from Uncle Gabriel, I think, because he told me he had lost his signet ring whilst dicing with a German count and—’
Mr Gough cast up his gaze as though in search of heavenly assistance. ‘Lord Brooke, we will return to the schoolroom and you will translate I must not speculate on other people’s business into Latin and then write it out twenty times in a fair hand.’
‘Ouch,’ Grant remarked when his son had departed with the air of a condemned man heading for the gallows. ‘I am not certain I could translate that with any elegance these days.’ He ran a hand through his tousled hair, twitched off Kate’s cloak, shook it out, draped it over his arm and opened the door for her. ‘Those letters, I hope, are the replies to my invitations to our first house party.’
Kate was conscious that he was watching her for a reaction. Did he fear she would be unable to manage a small, informal gathering, or was it his guests’ reactions to her that gave him more concern? No man would want his closest friends to think he had made a poor marriage, that his wife was not good enough for him.
I am good enough, she told herself. Good enough for him and for his friends. And I can manage a country house party more easily than he thinks. The thought of confounding Grant with her ability gave her an inner glow of unworthy satisfaction, even if it was only a small thing. Henry liked to entertain his friends and his wife, Jane, uncomfortable with country gentlemen and their hearty manners and unsophisticated pleasures, had been more than happy to unload the burden of organisation on to Kate.
If truth be told, it was the thought of female guests that gave her the most apprehension. Men, if they were comfortable, well fed and provided with plenty of sport, tended to be uncritical of their hostess. Ladies, on the other hand, were not. Polite, charming—and if they sensed a weakness, as relentless as a flock of pigeons pecking away at a pile of wheat grains until there was nothing left but the husks.
‘Let’s hurry and open them,’ she said and was through the doorway into the shadowed hall with, surely, enough enthusiasm to convince Grant that she was not nervous in the slightest.
‘Alex and his wife can come,’ he said, studying the first letter. He opened the others. ‘So can Cris and Gabriel. But they both say they will not be accompanied by their sisters. Gabe, in language I will not use to my respectable wife, assures me he will inflict neither his latest chère amie upon us, nor a respectable fiancée—which it is unimaginable that he will ever have, by the way—and certainly not his unmarried sister.’ Grant folded the sheet with its sprawling black handwriting and grimaced. ‘Now I come to think about my last encounter with her, that is probably a good thing. She can talk the hind leg off a donkey and needs diluting with a very large pool of other guests. Cris merely thanks me most properly for the suggestion, but tells me that he will be unaccompanied, as his sister is newly betrothed and will be staying with her future
in-laws.’
Grant handed her that letter and Kate scanned the elegantly written page. ‘He sounds somewhat cool,’ she ventured. ‘Is it the prospect of meeting me?’
‘He always sounds cool, although this does seem more detached than usual.’ Grant took the letter back and read it again. ‘It isn’t us, it is him. Something’s wrong, I think. He’s been in Russia or Denmark or somewhere in that direction, doing a vaguely diplomatic job for the Foreign Office.’
‘Not as an ambassador?’
‘No, far more undefined than that.’ Grant looked thoughtful and Kate did not probe. If his friend was engaged in espionage, he certainly would not want to speak of it. The poor man probably needed some peace and quiet and homely comforts after the stress of a foreign court.
‘I suggested May 20 and they all say they can make that. Is it convenient for you?’
Two weeks? ‘Certainly,’ Kate said with a sense of fizzing excitement. Her first house party as mistress of Abbeywell and the chance to understand Grant much better through his friends. She could hardly wait. ‘That will be no problem at all.’
*
The house was quiet, finally. Grant leaned back against the door of his bedroom and yawned. Charlie, still overexcited from the day before at the prospect of all his favourite honorary uncles arriving at the same time, had been difficult to get to bed. Anna, with the knack of small children for knowing when adults were tired and distracted, decided to wail endlessly and Kate had been absent-minded throughout dinner. And, to put the cap on a wearisome evening, she had indicated in an embarrassed murmur that it would not be a good time for him to visit her bedchamber.
So now he was feeling selfish for feeling disappointed when she was obviously self-conscious and uncomfortable. The decanters had been set out and he went to pour himself out a finger of brandy, shifting his shoulders under the heavy silk of his robe in an effort to ease the ache in the right one, which always complained when the weather turned cold and damp.
He’d been short with Kate yesterday when she had asked a perfectly reasonable question about the scars. On an impulse he tossed back the brandy and strode to the door, stopping only to remove the key from its hiding place in the indented base of a Japanese bronze figure and to pick up a three-branch candlestick.
It was over a year since he had been in the empty suite. The door swung open with a faint creak and the cold, stale air hardly moved the candle flames. He could still smell burning, he was convinced, even though all the fabrics and carpets had been torn out and destroyed, the walls and floor scrubbed. The seat of the fire was obvious from the heavy charring of the floorboards in front of the hearth and near the door where the edge of the rug had been was a dark patch. His blood.