Chapter Seventeen
The contrast with her first spectacular wedding couldn’t have been greater.
In the cluttered cottage parlor, after tea, Kate and Tristram knelt at the feet of the old clergyman, who said the sacred words and led them through their vows. The only witnesses were Knollys and a smiling young kitchen maid called Emmy. And yet this was the wedding that seemed so huge. She’d gone carelessly through the first, at once naive and worldly, and she’d paid for both attitudes. The importance of what she was doing here almost overwhelmed her, and yet she had no intention of drawing back. It was terrifying and beautiful, and she’d never wanted anything so much in her life.
Her lips trembled with sheer emotion when Tristram kissed her. As if in a dream, she rose to her feet as Mrs. Tristram Grant and was toasted in fresh tea.
“Perhaps you’d like to stay here for tonight,” Mr. Dallas suggested. “Since I understand your carriage has gone.”
“Your efficiency didn’t stretch that far,” Kate murmured.
“Actually, it did,” Tristram said from the window, where he’d been gazing out at the sky. He let the curtain fall and glanced back over his shoulder with an apologetic smile at Mr. Dallas. “I was hoping we could indeed stay here until the morning.”
“Knollys will help me up to bed,” Dallas said, as the servant all but lifted him out of the chair and supported him toward the door. “And then he’ll show you to the spare bedchamber. I hope you’ll be comfortable.”
Kate blinked after his retreating back, murmuring a dazed goodnight. She sat back in her chair. “What a very odd evening it’s been. I confess I never saw it ending like this.”
Tristram said, “It hasn’t ended.”
And her whole body flushed, churning with emotions she couldn’t begin to sort out. This man was her husband.
He walked toward her. “Shall we make an assignation?”
“Mr. Dallas’s spare bedchamber in half an hour?” she said lightly.
“Or your hotel tomorrow, the vicarage in three days, or Scotland in a week. Or the Muirs’ cave whenever you like—providing the smugglers aren’t active. I mean, you can choose. I know I rushed you into this on a wave of emotion.”
“Isn’t that the way it’s meant to be done?” She looked up at him as he came to a halt before her. “Are you regretting this already?”
He shook his head quite definitely. “How could I? I’m trying to be kind, to give you time.”
“Mr. Grant,” she said with a faint shake in her voice. “I’ve been trying to seduce you since I met you.”
The spontaneous smile she loved broke out on his face as he bent and took her hand, drawing her to her feet. “Were you born this outrageous?”
“Yes, I think so.”
He bent his head, his breath not quite steady on her lips. “Why don’t you let me seduce you?”
As his mouth closed on hers, she couldn’t imagine a more delicious outcome. She clung to his lips, opening to him as her hand reached up to touch his cheek. His kiss burned her, engulfing her, drowning that insidious, insistent panic that haunted her idea of marriage. It didn’t change who he was, didn’t dampen her ardor or his.
The kiss ended, and her eyes fluttered open to meet his, warm and clouded and hungry. Her stomach seemed to delve and melt as he bent for another kiss and another.
They separated only when the door began to open and Knollys coughed in discreet warning. “This way, if you please.”
At some point, the cottage had been extended, and the spare bedchamber turned out to be the upper floor of this addition, more spacious and less cluttered than the other rooms Kate had seen, giving the impression not only of privacy but of being in a different house entirely.
“Mr. Dallas’s granddaughter stays here on occasion,” Knollys volunteered. “There is a most pleasant view, as you’ll discover in the morning. I have brought fresh water for washing, and Mr. Dallas begs you will make use as you wish of the nightgowns and so on in the chest of drawers. Is there anything else you might require?”
“No. No, thank you, Knollys,” Tristram said.
The servant bowed and left them where they stood side-by-side just inside the door.
“Where was I?” Tristram murmured.
“Here.” She lifted her face and kissed him.
But now, in the privacy of their borrowed bedchamber, it was not enough.
With a gasp, she all but threw herself against him. They stumbled back against the wall, their mouths locked together. With wild triumph, she felt the hardness against her abdomen growing with shocking speed. She smiled against his lips and swayed against him, caressing him with her whole body.
He groaned, his back braced against the wall, deepening the kiss, his hands stroking her face, her neck, shoulders, and down to her waist. Dragging his mouth down her jaw, he fastened it to the pulse at the base off her throat. She reached between them for the flap of his breeches.
His breath hitched. He let her unbutton him, and then, slowly, lifted his head, his eyes, blazing.
“Come,” she whispered. “Come to bed.”
A smile flickered across his face, half voracious, half mischievous. Languidly, he shook his head. “Not yet.”
And with dizzying speed, their positions were reversed. Now her back was against the wall and his hips pinned her there while he shrugged off his coat and tore off his necktie. Then, with agonizing slowness, he drew the pins and the diamond string from her hair, and returned to kissing her mouth while his fingers made short work of the fastenings of her gown.
“You do that too easily for a clergyman,” she said breathlessly.
“I wasn’t always a clergyman.”
“Were you a rake?” she asked with interest as her gown and undergown dropped around her elbows. His eyes devoured her, dissolving her anxiety into heat and pleasure.
“I liked women,” he admitted, though distractedly. His hands slid upward from her waist, until his thumbs caressed her naked breasts, pressing sweetly on her nipples.
She swallowed. “Liked? Past tense?”
He smiled and bent his head to take one nipple into his mouth. “Now, there is only you.”
Her eyes closed in bliss. She wanted him inside her with ever-increasing urgency, but whenever she tried to push him toward the bed, he held her where she was, continuing to worship her body with unhurried hands and lips.
Her clothes lay puddled around their feet. She wore nothing more than her dainty ruby necklace and earrings. He shifted position, kissing her mouth while his caressing hand swept downward and settled between her thighs.
She gasped. Her hands, which had been clutching at his shirt in frustrated desire, opened wide in shock. But his caress was soft and exquisite, and the sweetness intensified impossibly, spilling through her in a rushing wave of delight she couldn’t control.
Only his hands held her up. Her dazed eyes opened into his blazing ones.
“What was that?” she whispered in wonder.
“Oh, my darling,” he said huskily, and there was pity, surely as well as lust in his eyes. “Let me show you.” He swept her up in his arms at last and carried her to the bed.
She cried out with sheer bliss when he entered her. She hadn’t known that could feel so good either. Crowmore’s assaults had given her no idea except that there had to be more. But she’d never dreamed of pleasure like this, of tenderness like this. The candle cast flickering light and shadow across his handsome face as he rocked above her, within her, his every movement a caress, bringing her nearer and nearer to something tremendous.
For herself, she moved from sheer instinct, sheer desire, coupled with a profound need to make him happy. And she could not doubt that she did please him. He let her see and hear just how much. His breathing was wild and short and sometimes his whole body trembled with his effort to control his passion.
She bit his shoulder, caressing it with her teeth. “Let go, my love,” she whispered. “Let go.”
And suddenly he did, plunging deep and hard within her until she fell headlong once more into joy. Only then, at last, did he collapse upon her, groaning into her mouth as he found his own, massive release.
*
As men did, he fell asleep. She didn’t mind, for he did so with his arms around her, cradling her head on his chest. She soaked up his hard warmth, inhaled his scent, and smiled, just because she was happy. And fulfilled. She’d never understood what that meant before. She’d known desire, just not what could come of it. Life with her curate, it seemed, was exciting from the outset.
Raising her head, she gazed down at him in the guttering candle light. In sleep, his face was still, as it never was at any other time. He looked younger, without care or responsibility. Which he wasn’t. He cared for the world, and yet he had a special place for her. His wife. His lover.
With the tip of her finger, she traced a crease on his chest, caused by her lying on him. She got distracted by the scattering of hair on his chest, narrowing into a distinct line on his stomach. For the first time, she noticed a jagged scar on his side, a souvenir, no doubt of a battle he never mentioned. He would, in time. She had a lifetime to learn what had come before. In the meantime, she followed the creased line until it vanished into the sheet.
“Does it disgust you?” he said quietly. “Because I’m afraid there are more of them.”
She shook her head, embarrassed to have been caught, and yet pleased he was awake. “I love all of you.”
A slow smile broke over his face. “Do you really?”
“You know I do.”
“But you never said so before. I just wanted to hear it again.” He reached up to her neck and drew her mouth down to his.
“How has this happened to us so quickly?” she whispered.
“I don’t know. But I think we should thank God and gracefully accept it.” He rolled her beneath him. “Would you mind, madam, if I availed myself once more?”
She stretched provocatively, loving every inch of his arousal and her own. “Sir,” she drawled. “I insist upon it.”
*
Kate could have cheerfully stayed in bed all the next day, wrapped in the warmth of this new intimacy, to say nothing of the pleasure of Tristram’s loving. But in the end, after a mere couple of hours of sleep, Tristram rose and dressed as though trying not to wake her. She watched him, unseen, until he began to walk back toward the bed and saw her open eyes.
“Good morning,” she said, suddenly shy.
He sat down on the bed and kissed her. “It’s Sunday,” he said ruefully. “And I have to be at church.”
She sat up. “It’s time to face Blackhaven.”
“Are you up to it?”
“If you are.”
In the end, they drove into town with Mr. Dallas, who had decided his presence at church would be advisable, since he had performed the marriage ceremony.
“The bishop will not approve,” he warned with unexpected worldliness, “so it’s important to win the congregation over and see that things run on as well as they did before.”
They stopped briefly at Henrit so that Kate could leave a note of apology for Mrs. Winslow, explaining her sudden departure and that she had married the curate by special license the night before. At least it would provide warning before the general announcement at church.
When they dropped Tristram at the vicarage, he insisted she wait for Cornelius to go back to the hotel with her. “In case Winslow hasn’t arrested Dickie,” he said grimly.
Cornelius and Tristram emerged together only moments later.
“Dickie’s dead,” Tristram said flatly.
“Blew his own brains out all over his hired carriage,” Cornelius added.
Kate stared at them. She felt numb.
“Who’s the heir now, then? Does the title die?” Cornelius asked.
“No, there’s a baby somewhere in Ireland.” Kate’s words were mechanical. “I never thought he would do that, however insane he appeared.”
*
Perhaps the shock of the previous night’s events and the gruesome discovery of Dickie’s body helped dissipate the worst of Blackhaven’s disapproval over the curate’s hurried marriage to the scandalous widow. That, and the august if frail presence of Mr. Dallas, who had seen fit to perform the ceremony.
There were certainly a few sniffs when Tristram announced his own marriage from the pulpit, and a few raised eyebrows, but final judgement, it seemed, was to be reserved. Once more, Blackhaven would give Kate a chance.
Gillie, whose own marriage to Lord Wickenden had been similarly speedy, was delighted for her.
“Will you have a party at the vicarage?” Gillie suggested, her eyes shining with mischief.
The idea appealed to Kate. “Do you know, I think I will? It’s likely to be the only chance I get to play hostess before Mrs. Hoag returns. After all, it is her home.”
“What will you do when the Hoags come back?” Gillie asked curiously.
“Take a house in the town if we can. In fact, we’re going to look into it with a Mr. Worthing tomorrow.”
“Excellent! Give him my regards. Also, you must have your party quickly, for David and I are leaving for London next week.”
*
Grant, anxious on Kate’s behalf, for he knew she wasn’t half so thick-skinned as she pretended, was pleased, on the whole, with how their marriage was received. Initially, Mrs. Winslow had shown a tendency to bridle, but when Grant began to praise her as the catalyst to their happiness, through being so understanding with Kate and sending him to her at the ball, she softened and wished them both very happy.
Kate’s father, on the other hand, was not so easily mollified. When Kate had informed him at the hotel, he had refused to come to church. Grant called upon him in the afternoon, to find him supervising his valet in the packing of his trunk.
“You are leaving,” Grant observed. “Kate was hoping you would stay for a few days, having come so far.”
Mere cast him a look of acute dislike. “I do not need you to carry messages between my daughter and me,” he barked. “You, sir, are a contemptible fortune hunter, and I will do everything in my power to have your so-called marriage annulled.”
“Then you will make a fool of yourself and drag your daughter’s name through the scandal rags for nothing,” Grant said, as calmly as he could. “There are no possible grounds for annulment.”
“She was coerced! She must have been. You’re not even a gentleman, merely a by-blow of Boulton’s from all I hear!”
“Which makes me half gentleman, at least. A rather higher proportion than you at this moment. Have you any ways left to insult your daughter? Do you credit her with no sense, no humanity or feeling?”
Mere’s complexion inclined toward the purple. “I don’t know what you’re talking about!” he blustered.
“Then perhaps you should just listen. I don’t expect you to be happy with me as your daughter’s husband. I’m aware I’m not who you chose, but your choices, sir, have proved faulty in the past, to call them no worse. I’m not a great match. I’m a country curate with no property or expectation beyond what I can earn. But I make your daughter happy.”
“Happy! Katherine? Tied to vicarage tea parties in a dreary little town? Are you insane?”
“No,” Grant said mildly. “It is you who are insane if you imagine that’s all her life will consist of. All that she consists of. You don’t even know she loves to help people, do you? She will do fine work here among the needy and the sick. And she will still laugh and have fun while she does it. Your daughter is a rare, wonderful person. If you can’t see that or wish for her happiness, then I for one will not miss such a father-in-law.”
Grant clapped his hat on his head and tipped the brim. “My wife invites you to tea at four. Good day, sir.”
As he closed the door behind himself, he thought Sir Anthony resembled a fish on a hook, opening and closing his mouth with no sound coming out.
Although, interestingly, he did come to tea at four. And he stayed two more days in Blackhaven, too.
*
The day Sir Anthony left, Grant received a brief letter from Mr. Hoag stating that the vicar would be back in Blackhaven, though without his family, by the end of the week. Spurred on, Grant and Kate looked at several houses for rent in Blackhaven.
“What do you think?” Tristram asked her as they walked back to the vicarage that Thursday afternoon.
“I think I’ll be happy with you wherever we are,” she said. And that was true, although there were degrees of comfort associated with it, too.
Tristram cast her a wry smile. “Now the truth, if you please.”
She smiled. “The cottage in Braithwaite Close is too cramped,” she admitted. “And the house in the square is too large. It will put Mrs. Hoag’s nose out of joint if we live there.”
“Then we shall keep looking,” Tristram said cheerfully.
“Where would you most like to live?” she asked. “If you could choose.”
He shrugged. “I don’t know that I care hugely. It can be a barn, providing I have the peace to make love to you. Constantly.”
She flushed with the desire that never seemed to be far away. “Is that an invitation, Master Curate?”
“Oh yes.”
“Then I accept. At least the vicarage is still ours for now.”
However, when they stepped inside, they found it invaded by both his brothers, quarrelling as usual. Tristram tried to throw them out. Kate shooed them all into the drawing room and asked Mrs. Walsh to bring tea.
This time the Fanshawes were arguing over whether or not Cornelius should go home to his father. He’d apparently written to inform his parent he had returned to England, but that was as far as he’d got. Vernon maintained it would be worse the longer he waited.
“Why should he care?” Cornelius demanded. “He told me not to come back if I had anything more to do with Helene.”
“He didn’t mean it.” Tristram said. “Well, he probably did at the time, but he won’t now.”
Cornelius cast him an impatient glance. “Which, I suppose, is why you’re hiding from him!”
“That’s different,” Grant said. “You’re his sons. I’m an obligation—an ungrateful obligation.”
“Which neither of you forgives,” Kate said with sudden understanding.
Grant’s gaze flew to her face. There was pain beneath his rueful smile. “I try. But I am not a great man of God.”
Vernon hooted derisively and hurled a cushion at him.
“You’re barely a man at all,” Cornelius added.
Grant caught the cushion in one hand and hurled it at Cornelius, just as the drawing room door opened and Mr. Hoag walked in. Kate recognized him at once and sprang to her feet.
Behind him strolled a younger gentleman—the Earl of Braithwaite himself—and behind him a tall, older gentleman with a ferocious expression.
Each of them halted in surprise. For an instant, there was total silence in the room. The Fanshawes had never met the vicar, had no idea who he was. But they would know Braithwaite, and were liable to be too comfortable in his company.
Don’t throw the cushion back at Tristram, she willed them silently. Don’t throw any cushions!
Cornelius laid the cushion down beside him. Astonishingly, his impudent face was bright red.
“Mr. Hoag!” Tristram rose with slightly late aplomb, going to shake hands with the vicar. “Welcome back. Let me first introduce my wife.”
“Wife,” Hoag repeated, startled. “Good Lord, I had no idea. How do you do, Mrs. Grant?”
“Very well, sir, and delighted to meet you at last. I must apologize for ensconcing myself in your house—”
“Not at all, my dear, not at all,” the vicar said faintly. “Where else would you ensconce yourself but with your husband? Um—won’t you introduce your guests?”
“There’s no need,” snarled the older gentleman, striding out from behind Mr. Hoag. “I know all these miscreants only too well!” He stopped and glared at Vernon and Cornelius who were on their feet looking more hunted than guilty. With foreboding, Kate realized who he must be. “What the devil are you doing here? With him?”
The Earl of Boulton—for surely it could be no one else—threw his pointing finger at Tristram without even looking at him.
“They’re visiting,” Tristram said mildly. “As are you.”
Generally, pointing out ill manners to an already angry person is not the quickest way to peace. And certainly, Lord Boulton’s furious face took on a worrying purple hue. However, it seemed there were so many things to anger him that he couldn’t hang on to just one for very long.
“Married?” he repeated. “Married?” He swung at last on Tristram, sweeping his contemptuous gaze over Kate as well as his son. “Who gave you permission to be married?”
“I need none,” Tristram replied.
Lord Boulton ignored that and turned on Kate. “And what poor dab of a creature can you have induced to marry you?”
“That would be me, sir,” Kate said pleasantly, squeezing Tristram’s hand to prevent the explosion of rage already tightening his body. “You must be Lord Boulton.”
The old man glared at her in silence, perhaps temporarily stunned by her calm and collected manner. Fortunately, her old friend Lord Braithwaite stepped into the breach.
“Kate,” he said warmly, holding out his hand to her. “How are you? I was so sorry to hear of your troubles, and now you are married? I cannot keep up with you!”
“My husband, Mr. Grant.” It still felt strange and rather wonderful to introduce him this way. “Tristram, this is Lord Braithwaite.”
Tristram shook hands with Lord Braithwaite, too, and Kate was pleased to see the tension gone from his shoulders. He’d been taken by surprise but he would not let his unreasonable father rile him again.
Braithwaite turned to the Fanshawes. “Vernon.” He offered his hand once more. “I didn’t expect to find you here. What brings you to Blackhaven?”
A trivial question, yet impossible to answer honestly. He could not say he came charging up to persuade Kate to marry him, and his presence in the vicarage—with the curate—must have seemed odd, to say the least.
“Actually, my brother,” Vernon said with conscious defiance. Inevitably, Braithwaite glanced at Cornelius who certainly looked like his brother, but Vernon would not allow that mistake. “Tristram. He’s the curate.”
After emitting a small, strangled sound of involuntary outrage, Lord Boulton growled much more audibly, but no one chose to pay him any attention.
“Really?” Braithwaite said, intrigued in spite of himself. After all, he must have heard the rumors of Kate’s liaison with Vernon and he could not have avoided the scandal following Crowmore’s death.
But Vernon, marching Cornelius with him, chose to march across the room, finally, to greet their father and Mr. Hoag. Lord Boulton looked as if he would crack their heads together if they came close enough, but in the end, clearly baffled by the situation he had no control over, he accepted their respects in silence.
“Ah, tea,” Kate said in relief as the trolley appeared through the half open door. “Thank you, Mrs. Walsh. I think we’ll need three more cups.”
For some reason, this amused Tristram. His eyes were alight with laughter as they met hers, and she couldn’t help smiling back.
The ritual of tea pouring covered the awkwardness of the situation for a little, and then Braithwaite attached himself to the Fanshawes, no doubt with the kind intention of mitigating whatever invective their father meant to heap upon them.
Mr. Hoag pulled his chair closer to Grant and Kate. “Hope this isn’t awkward for you, Grant.”
“Not in the least, although I am surprised.”
“It was an odd thing. I’d called at Lord Braithwaite’s club in London—by appointment—to discuss…well, I’ll tell you about that in a moment—but your name came up and Lord Boulton suddenly joined us and asked quite bluntly who was this Tristram Grant I spoke of. I had no reason not to tell him, and the upshot was, he accompanied Lord Braithwaite and me up here saying you were a relative he’d lost contact with. Are you truly his son?”
“Illegitimate,” Grant said frankly. “And we don’t acknowledge it. But he has always looked after me financially. This is between ourselves, sir, although my brothers do seem suddenly determined to spread the relationship.”
“Well, it’s not a relationship that will do you any harm with Braithwaite,” Hoag observed.
Tristram blinked. “With Braithwaite?”
“Well, yes.” Mr. Hoag took a deep breath. “Look, it hasn’t yet been announced, but I have been appointed the Dean of Brenchurch.”
Tristram smiled. “Congratulations, sir. I know it is what you were hoping for and it’s truly well deserved.”
Although Kate smiled politely, she was instantly uneasy. A new vicar in Blackhaven might be quite averse to Grant for any number of reasons.
“Thank you, thank you,” Mr. Hoag beamed. “It’s why I’m here, to tie up business and make my farewells. My wife and daughters are en route to Brenchurch now. I also want you to know I recommended you to Lord Braithwaite as my replacement. Which is why he’s here.”
“To look me over,” Tristram said. “And I was throwing cushions at my brother after making a hurried marriage that is the talk of the town.”
“Well, at least it’s to a friend of his,” Mr. Hoag soothed, with a quick smile at Kate. “And to be honest, a wife is good for a vicar.”
Not necessarily this wife, Kate thought ruefully.
Mr. Hoag patted Tristram’s arm. “Well, you have my recommendation, for whatever that is worth, but the living is in Lord Braithwaite’s gift, as you know. And I should warn you there is some cousin or other who’s just taken holy orders.”
Half an hour later, Lord Braithwaite took his leave, taking with him Lord Boulton who was, apparently, to be his guest at Braithwaite Castle.
At parting, Braithwaite grinned and kissed Kate’s hand before turning to Tristram. “Come up to the castle tomorrow, if you can. Shall we say two o’clock?”
“Of course.”
“My mother isn’t here, of course, but Kate, you’re welcome anyhow. Goodbye!”
“You’re done for,” Cornelius opined when the door was shut behind them. “Father will have his metaphorical hatchet buried up to the hilt in your back before they’re on the castle road.”
“I don’t know,” Kate said. “He came here looking for Tristram. Surely that can’t all be spite.”
“Yes, it can,” all three brothers said at once.
“Still,” Tristram said rallyingly. “At least I’ve taken the heat off you, Cornelius. He never even asked where you’ve been for the last year.”