Their local acquaintance had known Anna as she grew up and, presumably, were used to her and accepted her as Grant’s child without question. Now he shifted Anna until he could hold her up facing the mirror beside his own face and compared their features—straight brown hair in a shade nearer his dark tones than Kate’s lighter tresses. A face that would, he was sure, echo her mother’s as she grew out of babyhood and the promise of height that would fit well with both her assumed parents.
And green eyes. He shifted her round again so he could study them more carefully. Several doting matrons had remarked on those eyes—‘Green, just like her papa’s!’ That was useful.
Anna was watching him now, eyes wide, and he realised that her eyes were not like his after all. They were a paler, clearer green with gold flecks and a dark rim around the iris. The effect was beautiful and unusual and when she grew up he imagined they would give her a unique charm. He checked his own eyes in the mirror—a darker green that verged towards hazel when he was tired or angry, so he’d been told. No gold flecks, no dark ring. But that was not a problem, Anna was like enough in various characteristics to both of them not to raise the slightest suspicions. It might be a different matter if she was a redhead or a pale blonde. He was conscious of disappointment that he had not found the reason for Kate’s anxiety.
‘Here we are, my lord, her warmest shawl. I’ll take her now, shall I?’
Jeannie bore Anna away to the terrace, leaving Grant frowning at his own reflection in the mirror. Kate was perfectly competent socially, she was intelligent enough to learn and adapt quickly and she was usually confident enough to be aware of that. Could it be that she feared encountering her brother? He knew he should have insisted on making contact with the shadowy Mr Harding of somewhere in Suffolk, but he had managed to forget all about Kate’s brother and she had done nothing to remind him. He should confront her about all of these things, but he sensed that if he did he would destroy the happiness they now had, perhaps simply for a phantom of his own imagination. He would watch and think and see how she took to London, see what clues he could discover.
He strode out of the drawing room and along to the little room Kate had claimed as her writing room, tapped and went in. ‘Kate.’
She jumped, blotted her page and tutted irritably at him. Sometimes he made her cross simply because it was so rare to see her lose her self-control and he wanted to see the real woman that she kept so carefully hidden behind the facade of the good wife and mother. She revealed that face in bed, when she lost all inhibition with him, and she had shown it when she had helped him fight his demons over Madeleine, but there were times when he thought she was moving further and further away from him.
‘I’m sorry.’ He moved to stand behind her and ran the back of one finger down the exposed nape of her neck, enjoying the sensual little shiver she gave. ‘Were you writing poetry? I am sorry if I have made you blot the final stanza.’
Kate gave a little snort of laughter, the irritation vanishing as fast as it always seemed to. ‘No, I am not writing poetry. This is a shopping list for the linen warehouse. There hardly seems to be a decent sheet left in the house.’ She twisted round to look up at him and he kept his hand where it was so that his fingers trailed round her neck as she moved. ‘Do you think I should be writing odes to my husband’s eyelashes?’
‘Are they so worthy of praise?’ He felt absurdly anxious that she should say so.
‘They are indecently long and thick.’
‘Are they indeed? Indecent, eh? All the better to tickle you with.’ The confrontation he had come for was less interesting than the possibilities presented by a flustered wife, a comfortable chaise longue and the thought of how his eyelashes might be employed.
‘Grant!’ It was accompanied by a most encouraging blush. He turned the key in the lock, twitched the nearest curtain across the window and advanced on the desk.
‘Grant—only half
the window is covered.’
‘If anyone is standing in the middle of the flower bed, on a box, contorting their neck in an effort to see in through the uncovered area of the window, all I can say is that we have more flexible staff than I imagined.’ He stripped off his coat and waistcoat as he advanced. ‘Am I going to have to chase you round the desk?’
‘Do you want to?’ Kate slipped off the chair and retreated to the far side. ‘I warn you, I have a quill and I know how to use it.’
Grant hopped on one foot, then the other as he tugged off his boots. Kate was not making much of an effort to escape, which was interesting. He had never tried to make love to her downstairs and he had expected her to be shy of doing so in broad daylight. When he emerged from the folds of his shirt and prowled towards her clad only in his breeches she edged away around the desk, then, when he was within arm’s reach, extended the quill like a rapier and flicked his right nipple with the point of the feather.
‘Touché,’ Grant conceded, moved his right hand and, when her eyes flickered to follow the movement, lunged, caught Kate around the waist and bore her off to the chaise. She tried to bounce up. He flipped her skirts up over her head and, as she struggled to extricate herself, pressed a kiss into the exposed triangle of curls at the junction of her thighs.
Kate went very still, but did not resist as he eased her knees apart, settled his shoulders between them, bent his head and brushed his lashes up the inside of her thigh, over the white, soft skin. There was a sudden heave and the skirts settled over his head plunging him into semi-darkness as he shifted the subtle caress to her other thigh.
That convulsive movement was all the resistance she gave as he worked his way up, fraction by fraction, towards his goal. She was aroused, there was no mistaking that. Grant parted the delicate folds, touched once with his tongue, and Kate came apart in his hands. He used his lips and mouth in a long, demanding kiss that had her writhing on the couch before he shook off the folds of her gown, pulled down his breeches and sheathed himself in her pulsing, hot body in one hard movement.
‘Grant.’ Her face was buried in the angle of his neck, her arms locked around his shoulders as he thrust. ‘Grant, I—’
‘Come again,’ he demanded, controlling, somehow, his own need. ‘Come for me again. Now.’
And she did, pulling him with her into the maelstrom.
*
I almost told him I loved him, Kate thought as she cradled her husband in her arms in blissful discomfort. The sofa cushion, a hard, cylindrical bolster, dug into the base of her spine, her corset was doing its best to stop her breathing and Grant, though without any spare flesh on him, was a significant dead weight on top of her. Thank goodness I didn’t.
‘Kate.’ Grant’s voice was muffled and he heaved himself up until he was sitting on the end of the chaise. ‘You were trying to say something just then.’
‘Probably more, or again,’ she temporised. ‘Goodness, after that, how do you expect me to recall my own name?’
He grinned. ‘Flatterer. Kate…’ That change of tone from teasing to serious within the space of two words was ominous. She braced herself. ‘Is the problem about going to London because you fear coming across your brother? I know you haven’t written to him. Perhaps we should make contact now, before we go.’
‘No.’ She pushed down her skirts and scrambled to sit upright at the end of the chaise. ‘Please, Grant. It will be too awkward. I cannot forgive him for how he behaved and he will not forgive me. Let sleeping dogs lie.’ He still looked unconvinced as he refastened his breeches. ‘It isn’t as though my parents are alive, or that I have other siblings.’ Which was true. She had cousins, but they were even more country mice than she was.