May 20—Abbeywell Grange
Grant strolled through the rooms of his home and shook his head with bemused pleasure. Kate had seemed understandably nervous when he had first come home, not just of him, but at the thought of making any changes to the house. With the confirmation of the house party all that reserve seemed to have been swept away, although he worried that she was overdoing things. It was almost as though she had flung herself into the preparations as a way of burying her nerves.
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…
‘I realise there are sentimental reasons why it would be difficult, but it is a large suite, and if we were thoughtful with the decoration and furnishing, there need be nothing to remind you,’ Kate continued. The sensible, slightly nervous voice flowed on, the remarks perfectly reasonable. Grant hauled himself back from the edge of his waking nightmare and made himself stand still, listen to her.
‘How do you know it is a large suite? Have you been in there? I told the servants that the door was never to be opened except for a monthly cleaning.’
‘I know.’ He realised that Kate was standing her ground with an effort of will, that he was probably frightening her. He made himself step back, widening the space between them, and saw her make the effort to relax her hands from their tight grip on her skirts. ‘But…I assumed, from the space I have been given for my suite. And it is obvious the areas that those rooms occupy, one only has to look at the adjoining rooms.’
‘No,’ Grant said. ‘No, it is not obvious.’ The angle of the external walls was deceptive at that point, the arrangement of the inner rooms, confusing.
Kate was not blushing now. She was pale and stammering, the picture of guilt. She made no attempt to deny that she had entered the suite. ‘But…sooner or later Charlie is going to wonder why that door is locked. What will you tell him? Do you want to make it into some s-secret chamber of horrors to give him nightmares?’ Kate was regaining her confidence now, he saw, driven by the force of her argument. She took two rapid steps forward, caught
his hands in hers. ‘Grant—’
‘That room is a chamber of horrors,’ he said between lips that seemed frozen. ‘And it gives me nightmares. You’ve been in there, I don’t know how, but you have been, against my expressed wishes. Now, do you want to probe any more? Do you want to dig out secrets that don’t concern you, pry into my feelings and thoughts? Because the answer will be no, I tell you now.’ He flung his hands apart, dislodging hers. ‘You had no right, have—’
Grant broke off at the sound of a very heavy footstep outside the door. As he turned, Grimswade appeared in the opening. Somehow he bit back the demand that the butler go to the devil. ‘Yes?’
‘A carriage is approaching, my lord. I believe it is Lord Weybourn’s conveyance.’
‘Thank you. We will be down directly.’ He followed Grimswade along the corridor without turning to see if Kate was following him, without a word to her. He was dimly aware, through the crashing headache that had descended as he lost his temper, that he should go back, apologise to her. Try to forgive her, if he could, for that intrusion. He kept going, down the curves of the front stairs, across the marble floor, the percussion of his boot heels on the stone like daggers stabbing behind his eyes.