The Inconvenient Elmswood Marriage

Daniel shook his head impatiently. It wasn’t like him to be so fanciful. He would rather not be here at Elmswood, but he was, and he’d have to find a way to endure it. Hopefully it wouldn’t be for long.

He leaned his forehead on the glass, which had been heated by the gentle English summer sun. There had been trout in the lake back in the day. He wondered if Kate kept it stocked. She would have told him if she had, in one of the letters she’d sent to him regular as clockwork every other month, since they had married, but it was the sort of detail he chose not to remember.

They’d come into his possession sporadically, those carefully penned epistles, usually in bundles of two or three at a time, and as the years had passed, contained less and less detail. She had asked him to approve decisions in the early days, had on occasion asked his opinion on a decision still to be made, but his silence on both counts had led to silence on her part. She’d realised without him having to say so bluntly that he simply didn’t care.

But, from the little he’d seen of the house and gardens, it was clear she did. His acceptance of her astonishing proposal all those years ago had been one of the best decisions of his life.

‘Sorry I was so long.’ Kate set the tray she was carrying down on the table by the fireside. ‘Coffee, and there’s some spiced biscuits fresh out of the oven.’

Daniel re-joined her, sitting down with a relief that he tried to disguise. Kate made no comment, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t noticed. Without asking, she poured a small cup of thick black coffee into a familiar-looking cup.

‘I brought them back from Cyprus, along with the coffee pot,’ she told him, proving his suspicions that she could read his mind too accurately for comfort correct. ‘I brought a supply of Turkish coffee too. I acquired a taste for it.’

‘Sketo,’ Daniel said, taking a sip. ‘You don’t want sugar with it?’

‘You mean metrio?’ she answered. ‘No, I like it like this, and I assumed that you—’

‘You assumed correctly.’ He took another sip. ‘This is good.’

‘Efcharistó.’ She smiled, shaking her head. ‘Before you ask, that is almost the limit of my Greek. I was fortunate to have Paniotis, my guide, to assist me with shopping and obtaining supplies. Do you remember him? Or Larnaca?’

Larnaca. Cyprus.

It was when he took another sip of the coffee she had poured that he had a sudden flash of memory. The distinctive aroma of it, brewing on a stove, rousing him from the depth of oblivion. A cool cloth gently wiping his brow.

Was it a fevered dream? He didn’t know, but he remembered it so clearly.

He’d kept his eyes closed. He’d heard the swirl of water as the cloth was rinsed, the drip as it was wrung out, the soft exhalation she gave as she settled back on the stool or chair she sat on. She—for he had known instinctively that his angel of mercy was female—smelled of English meadows and cool English summer. When she’d leaned over to wash his shoulders her bare arm had brushed against him, and he had sensed the rest of her hovering over him, tantalising inches away. She had washed his chest and his belly, his arms and his hands. Then she had pushed the sheet lower. He had given himself over to the soothing delight of her touch, cast adrift from the struggle to escape and survive, from the endurance test that his life had been for the last year, to float in an alternative world of tender feminine care.

It could only have been Kate. He knew that, and he knew that she had performed heaven knew what other intimate tasks, but he’d managed not to think about any of it. So why think of it now, dammit?

‘No,’ he said tersely, ‘I don’t really remember being in Cyprus.’

‘I’m not surprised. You were quite gravely ill. It’s a lovely island, though, and the people were so friendly. I saw a little of it while I was waiting for you to arrive, but I’d like to have seen more. The ruins of Ancient Kition—’

‘Save your rhapsodies, if you please,’ Daniel interrupted brusquely. ‘I know there are some who enjoy hearing travellers’ tales second-hand, but I do not count myself among their number.’

‘I had never travelled beyond London before. I would of course have preferred the circumstances to have been different, and I would have liked to have spent a great deal more time at the various stops they prescribed for me,’ Kate said, looking as if he had slapped her, ‘but I was surprised—extremely surprised, actually—by how much I enjoyed the experience. When I was not worrying about you, that is.’

‘Then perhaps you’ll take yourself off again once you’re rid of me?’

‘My life is here, Daniel. It’s why you married me—to ensure that Elmswood is fit for its future heir. Though who that is to be now that poor little Diarmuid is no more…’

‘The boy died almost ten years ago and neither of us ever met him.’ He hadn’t meant to sound so harsh, but it was true, and Kate had no reason to look so—so hurt! Daniel drained his coffee. ‘The terms or our marriage didn’t require you to regard Elmswood as the limit of your world, you know,’ he said more mildly. ‘You’ve been away a few months…’

‘Nine, actually.’

‘Nine! What the devil…?’ Far longer than he had imagined. ‘Well, the place doesn’t look as if it has suffered much during your enforced absence.’

‘That is because before my “enforced absence” it was running extremely efficiently, largely thanks to Estelle. Though how you are able to comment at all is beyond me, unless you’ve been wandering about the estate in the middle of the night.’ Kate gave an impatient sigh. ‘Sorry, I don’t know why I’m so edgy—it’s not like me. Would you like a biscuit?’

Daniel took one, because it was easier than refusing and because it was clearly a peace offering—though he wasn’t sure he deserved one. Taking a small bite, he discovered to his surprise that it was actually very good.

‘One of Phoebe’s recipes,’ Kate said. ‘Phoebe is—’

‘Despite what you might think, I do note your updates on all my nieces’ progress. Phoebe is the youngest, and the one who is currently in Paris, with aspirations to become a chef.’

‘Not any longer. She’s in London, not Paris, she has opened her own restaurant and she is married.’

‘Married! Wasn’t the whole point of my eldest niece’s marriage…?’

‘Eloise, to Alexander.’

‘I am aware, Kate. I set that match up, if you recall.’

‘What I recall is that you almost never replied to my letters.’

‘It doesn’t mean I wasn’t aware of what was going on in your life—or at least what you told me of it.’

‘I told you about as much as you were interested to know. Which was not very much.’

‘You knew how little I was interested in the estate itself when we met. It was the reason we married.’

Kate set down her cup and folded her hands primly on her lap. ‘Yes, it was.’

Daniel refrained with difficulty from rolling his eyes. There was an essay in reprimand in those three words. ‘I’m not going to pretend an interest now. I won’t be here for long.’

‘You won’t be properly well for at least a month, more likely three.’

‘I am damned if I’ll stay marooned in this place for three months.’

‘Why not? You could take the time to get to know Elmswood a little. You might even come to appreciate it. It is your home after all, Daniel.’

‘Once and for all, this place is not my home and never will be! I hate the very—’

Daniel bit his tongue, taken aback himself by his tone. He needn’t panic. No one was going to force him to remain here permanently. It wasn’t like him to snap. He was not usually so irrational. It was his illness making him weak, that was all.

‘This is more your home than mine,’ he said through gritted teeth. ‘You are doing an excellent job of filling your father’s shoes. I will concentrate on getting fit to return to active service, and it won’t take me three months, I assure you.’

‘Perhaps not.’ She picked up the coffee pot to refresh their cups. ‘Though I imagine that Sir Marcus will also have a say in how long you remain here, since it was on his orders that you came in the first place. Do you really think we should expect him imminently?’

He was surprised the man hadn’t been waiting on the dock at Portsmouth, but Daniel wasn’t about to say that to Kate. His memories of his planned escape were still hazy, but the events leading up to his capture were etched in his mind. That life—the life he’d been leading for the last five years, the life that he’d worked so damned hard to establish—was over. The man he’d been was no more, and yet he couldn’t get to grips with that—for he was that man, and he was still here, wasn’t he?

Kate was eyeing him quizzically. She was waiting for an answer, he realised, though he couldn’t remember what the question had been. This woman was his wife. As far as she was concerned he was Daniel Fairfax. She had no idea of the many other men he’d been required to be in his life—so many that right at this moment he wondered if he knew how to be himself. And he was her husband. He’d never played a husband before. He wasn’t sure he would relish playing it for any extended period, but for now…? Behind that diminutive, and extremely attractive façade there was a very strong and determined woman. A brave one, whom he suspected would give as good as she got.

Daniel managed a smile. ‘Shall we call a truce? You’re right. I’m here now, and there’s no point in my constantly lamenting the fact.’

She narrowed her eyes. ‘What will you do instead? I don’t know you very well, but I do know you’re not the type of man to sit about patiently and wait to be told what your next move will be.’

Daniel laughed. ‘Don’t worry. I meant what I said when I promised I wouldn’t interfere or stand on your toes. We’ve been married ten years, yet we’re to all intents and purposes complete strangers. Don’t you think it’s time we got to know each other?’

‘It was eleven years last month, actually—and don’t you think it would be a better use of your time to get to know your nieces instead? You’re their closest blood relative, Daniel, and you’ve never met them. Eloise has just had a baby—a little girl—I only found out this morning. We could—’

‘No.’ Daniel’s smile faded. He heaved himself to his feet. ‘I can tell by your expression that’s not what you want to hear, but I see no point at all in meeting any of them.’

‘Why ever not? I know they would very much like to meet you, and will be devastated if you shun them.’

‘No! I have not the time to involve myself in their lives…’

‘Not even to write them the occasional letter?’

‘Even if I had the time I have not the inclination.’ His words would hurt her, and he regretted that, but it was better that than give rise to expectations he could never meet.

‘Are you seriously saying that you don’t want to meet your nieces at all?’ Kate said now, looking outraged. ‘Never?’

He reminded himself that to all intents and purposes they were her children, and just for a moment considered whether he should do as she wanted. Gillian’s daughters were no longer girls, but young women with lives of their own. Did they look like his sister? She’d been a beauty. A selfish, utterly self-centred beauty, with no interest in anyone, and especially not her much younger brother.

He’d gleaned enough from Kate’s letters to know that her daughters had not inherited her capricious nature. Kate’s doing, no doubt. They were Kate’s girls, and that was how they must remain. He couldn’t risk acquiring any fresh emotional attachment. Recent events had provided a bitter lesson in the folly of displaying that weakness.

‘What would be the point?’ he said, more gently. ‘They won’t see me again, and it would be cruel to risk any sort of attachment or raise expectations. Best I remain faceless to them.’

‘You mean it’s best that they remain faceless to you,’ she snapped. ‘You’ve never given a damn about them, have you? When we married you told me you had a nephew, but you didn’t think to mention that your long-lost sister had already given birth to three girls.’

‘I didn’t think they were relevant. I certainly did not envisage that within two years they’d be orphaned and homeless, and I don’t know what the hell I’d have done about either if you hadn’t been here to step into the breach.’

‘I’m eternally grateful that I was in a position to do so.’

‘I believe you—though at the time I confess I had serious misgivings about burdening you with them.’

‘I remember. You said that you’d get your lawyer to find someone to take them on. As if I would dream of doing anything other than taking them in. I’ve often said if we had not already been married I would have married you for that reason alone. And I have never,’ Kate said vehemently, ‘told the girls that you considered any other outcome.’

‘Thus awarding me a great deal more credit than I deserve. I am sorry, Kate, but I won’t be swayed.’

‘Aren’t you even curious to see how the marriage you arranged turned out? You say you know nothing of the girls, but you gleaned enough from my letters to know that Alexander and Eloise would suit very well.’

‘I don’t respond to emotional blackmail, you know.’

Kate flinched. ‘You’re right, that was unworthy of me.’

‘You care a great deal for them. You think it’s in their interests to know me. I’m telling you it’s not. You need to trust me to know best.’

Her throat worked as she mulled this over. ‘Your work is a great deal more dangerous than you ever led me to believe, isn’t it?’

Until the recent debacle, from which he was still recovering, Daniel had never considered his own mortality, but he wasn’t a man who needed to be taught anything twice. He had come close to death. The next time—and he was bloody well determined to be given the chance of a next time—he might not be so lucky.

Which reminded him—whatever else he did while he was in England he must sort out the provisions of his last will and testament. Now that he no longer had a nephew to inherit Elmswood, he had no clue as to who would currently be his next of kin. Some distant cousin, no doubt. But he was damned if Elmswood would be taken from Kate if he had anything to do with it.

‘Kate…’

‘Was it always dangerous? Even when we first married?’

‘Kate, I can’t—’

‘Can’t answer that. Except you already have. I wonder that you suggest we get to know one another better. You’re not afraid that I’ll become too attached, I take it? Are you imagining that I’m longing to be a merry widow?’

‘I think the last nine months have proved rather conclusively otherwise, don’t you?’

She sighed, her shoulders sagging. ‘I’m not usually such a shrew, you know. I’m sorry you don’t want to meet the girls, for their sake, but I can’t force you, and I do understand, though I’m not looking forward to explaining it to them.’

‘I’ll likely be gone before you see them.’

She got to her feet. ‘Then I suggest you utilise the time you have to recuperate. I’m heading over to the Estate Office to make a start on catching up. I’ll have Cook send up some soup for you—or is there something else you’d prefer? What do you like to eat?’

‘It doesn’t matter. I’m not hungry.’

‘You should go to bed and rest. No…what I should say is don’t go to bed, I suppose, and then you will.’

He surprised them both by taking her hand in his. ‘This situation is as strange and awkward for me as it is for you.’

‘But, as you have pointed out several times, at least I’m on home turf and, unlike you, happy to be here,’ she said with a wry smile. ‘Your hand is freezing. I really do think you should go back to bed and try to get some rest, Daniel.’

And get out of her way. She was right. There was as little point in him getting to know his wife as his nieces. Yet he was strangely reluctant to let her hand go.

‘I’d better not detain you any longer.’

She hesitated, her wide-spaced blue eyes scanning his face as if she was trying to read his mind, before giving him a brief nod, disentangling her hand, and quitting the room.

He listened out for the oddly familiar scrape of the front door on the flagstones—one thing in the house she hadn’t remedied—before sinking back into the fireside chair, closing his eyes, and falling into a sudden deep sleep.

Chapter Two

Alone in the Estate Office, Kate found it impossible to settle. Just over eleven years ago she had proposed to Daniel here. She’d been twenty-two years old and the future, as far as she had been concerned then, had stretched a year into the distance, two years at most.

She’d been far more interested in the present, eking out every available moment with dear Papa and, when he’d finally passed away, hurling herself into planning the modernisation of the estates and the renovation of the house and gardens.

Then had come the unexpected arrival of the girls into her already busy life and the years had sped by, leaving her no time to worry about what lay ahead.

But now Elmswood Manor and the grounds were fully restored, the estate was a model of modern farming, and the girls had flown the nest. Kate was thirty-three years old and the future loomed—a vast, unpopulated space that she had no idea how she was going to fill. Eleven years ago thirty-three had seemed to her the age of an old crone, but now, despite her newly acquired lines, she felt every bit as young and untested as she had done when sitting here watching the clock all those years ago, waiting for Daniel to arrive.

Of course that was nonsense. The girls—young women! She really must stop thinking of them as ‘the girls’!—would testify to the passing years, as would Elmswood Manor itself. She allowed herself a mocking smile. Both had blossomed under her care. But while she’d been tending to her husband’s nieces, and Elmswood’s gardens, she’d neglected herself.

Who was Kate Fairfax?

The last nine months had taught her that she was more intrepid than she’d imagined. Until Daniel’s masters had called on her she’d always thought Elmswood the beginning and the end of her world, but having perforce seen a great deal more of the world since then, she would now like to see still more—though under more auspicious circumstances!

She was naïve, she was far from worldly-wise, but years of managing the estates had given her a confidence and a shrewdness that had helped her navigate many potentially daunting aspects of foreign travel. If she was honest, she envied Estelle her freedom now. It wasn’t that Elmswood was a burden, exactly, but it was no longer a challenge.

Kate closed the ledger, where the numbers had been dancing about in front of her eyes, and got to her feet to gaze out of the window. Time to put her pragmatic head on again. Why worry about the future when she had the present to deal with?

She had never forgotten that she was married, but her experience of marriage had been husband-free. Until now. She had been too impatient with Daniel. It wasn’t like her to be so easily riled, but there was something about him that set her on edge.

It had been different when he was ill—easier, in a sense—for she had known how to care for him, had been clear about her role as his nurse. And while he had not been lucid,—which had been most of the time—she had been able to tend to him without embarrassment, thinking of him simply as a patient in need of care.

Only when he had become conscious had she become self-conscious, aware of him as a man.

A very attractive man. There, she could admit that. She’d always found him attractive. Yes, but from afar. Nursing him had brought her into intimate contact with him, and though at the time she’d thought herself detached, later—yes, later—there had been aspects of her nursing that had made her decidedly uncomfortable.

The feel of his skin as she’d washed him, the smoothness of his shoulders, the rough hair on his chest, the ripple of muscle that his illness had not wholly wasted when he moved. His hair was soft, despite years in the sun. He was deeply tanned in places, pale in others. And there were some places where modesty had prevailed, from which she had looked away when she’d washed him, but she’d touched them, all the same. Places which her imagination had lingered on as she’d lain sleepless, listening to his harsh breathing.

Did he remember? She sincerely hoped he did not.

It was bad enough, the effect those memories had on her, arousing all sorts of unwelcome feelings, stirring desires she’d always repressed so easily before. Eleven years of celibate marriage hadn’t been endured without vague longings, but now her longings were not vague—they were quite specific.

Was this what Eloise felt when she looked at her husband? And Phoebe? Was her marriage passionate? In the sphere of intimacy they had so much more experience than her, and they always would, for no matter what the future held Kate was married to Daniel very much in name only.

Though if he remained here at Elmswood to recuperate, what then? They were husband and wife—a man and a woman past the first blush of youth and beyond any of the silliness of fluttering hearts and fevered longing. Daniel was a very attractive man, and she wasn’t yet an old crone—in fact, she had every reason to believe that he found her attractive, for there had been times when she’d been nursing him… Though of course he’d had no idea who she was.

She was being foolish—very foolish—to be considering an affaire with her own husband. A very temporary affaire. That no one would know about. An affaire that might be her one and only chance to discover what it was she was missing out on.

Though how on earth she thought to propose it to Daniel…

Daniel was an invalid, for goodness’ sake! A very cranky invalid. Though the way he’d looked at her earlier, when they had been drinking coffee, hadn’t been cranky. If she did suggest they indulged in an affaire, then she doubted he’d turn her down. Not that she would dream of doing such a thing.

The sound of a carriage on the driveway made her jump to her feet. Four horses, attached to a very smart, if dusty post-chaise. Surely they had not come for him already? Her stomach sank.

With a start, she realised that was the last thing she wanted. Purely, she told herself as she sped out of the office and across the lawn, which was the quickest route to the house, because Daniel was far from well, and not at all because, despite the fact that he was infuriating, she wanted very much to get to know her husband better.

Mrs Chester, of all people, had emerged from the kitchen to answer the front doorbell herself by the time Kate arrived, breathless.

‘We’re a bit short-handed,’ she explained, ‘for I have sent Sylvia off to the village for provisions, and Mary is up to her neck in suds, it being laundry day.’

‘And I can see that you are making pies,’ Kate said, eyeing the cook’s floury hands and apron with amusement. The doorbell clanged again. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll get this.’

‘Can’t imagine who it will be. Someone for the master, no doubt? Shall I call him?’

‘No need.’

Daniel appeared at the top of the staircase. He had changed into country dress of breeches and boots, and was shrugging himself into a coat, looking decidedly heavy-eyed.

‘I think we both know who it is, Kate. And it’s for the best, don’t you think?’

Was it? What purpose could be served by prolonging his stay, if he remained determined to keep his distance from the girls? But what about her? Kate thought, panicking. He’d said he wanted to know her better, and she wanted—she didn’t know what she wanted.

The doorbell clanged again.

‘Isn’t there a footman to answer this?’ Daniel asked impatiently.

This rather ludicrous question went a long way to restoring her equilibrium. A footman, indeed!