Grant sat down and retrieved a knitting needle from the floor as Kate answered. He might as well order the teapot to be brought and some fancy biscuits—this seemed like a morning call, complete with stilted, meaningless polite chat, achieving nothing.
‘Tomorrow, I intend going down to London. I must present myself at the House of Lords, the College of Heralds and at Court.’ He was escaping.
‘Oh.’ She set down the wool and sat up in the chair as though bracing herself. ‘I am sorry, I had not realised we would be leaving so soon. I am not certain I feel up to the journey yet.’
Surely that was not panic he saw in her eyes? He shook his head and realised Kate had taken that as a refusal to listen to her objection.
‘But…if we must, may we stop in Newcastle on the way? Then I can buy a respectable gown or two to tide me over.’ She looked around, determined, it seemed, to obey his wishes. ‘Where have Jeannie and Wilson got to? I am sure we can be ready in time.’
‘There is no need for you to disturb yourself. I had no intention of dragging you away. I will take Charlie and Gough with me, I don’t want to leave the boy without me yet. They can come back on the mail after a few weeks, once I am certain he is all right.’ Kate closed her eyes for a moment and he felt a jab of conscience at not realising how exhausted she must be. ‘When you feel up to it you will find Newcastle will serve for all your needs while you require only mourning clothes.’
‘Very well. As you wish, my lord.’ Kate picked up the wool and needles again with a polite smile that seemed to mask something deeper than relief. ‘And you will send Charlie back, you say?’
‘The moment I am certain he doesn’t need me. In the longer term I will be too occupied with business to give him the company he needs and the house and servants will be unfamiliar to him. He will be better here, where he feels secure. I will send for him again after a month or two—travelling long distances will be no hardship for him, he’ll find it an adventure—but I want him based here.’
‘Of course. As you think best. I can see that London might not be a good place for a small boy in the longer term if you cannot be with him most of the time.’
Grant told himself he should be pleased to have such a conformable wife, such an untemperamental, obliging one. Perversely, he felt decidedly put out. Through yesterday’s fog of tiredness he seemed to recall the sparkle that temper had put in Kate’s eyes, the flush on her cheeks, the stimulus of a clash of wills. Women were moody after childbirth, he knew that. This placidity was obviously Kate’s natural character.
‘Grant?’ She was biting her lip now. ‘Grant, will you put a notice about the marriage in the newspapers? Only, I wish you would not. I feel so awkward about things…’
Newspaper announcements had been the last thing on his mind, but he could see she was embarrassed. ‘No, I won’t. An announcement of the birth, yes, but it will give no indication of the date of the marriage. “To the Countess of Allundale, a daughter.” All right?’ Kate nodded and he hesitated, concerned at how pale she had gone. Then she smiled and he told himself he was imagining things. ‘If you’ll excuse me, my dear, I have a great deal to do.’ She would no doubt be delighted to see the back of him—and why should it be otherwise?
May 5, 1820
Home. Warmth on his back, clean air in his lungs, the sun bathing the green slopes of the Tyne Valley spread out before him. Grant stood in his stirrups to stretch, relishing the ache of well-exercised muscles. However ambiguous his feelings about Abbeywell, he had been happy here once and perhaps he could be again, if only he could blank out his memories and find some sort of peace with his new wife.
His staff had obviously thought he was out of his mind to decide to ride from London to Northumberland instead of taking a post-chaise, but he knew exactly what had motivated him. This had been a holiday from responsibility, from meetings and parties, from political negotiating and social duty. And a buffer between the realities and reason of London and the ghosts that haunted this place.
If he was honest, it had also been a way of delaying his return to his new wife and facing up to exactly what his impulse on that cold Christmas Day had led to.
‘I like her,’ Charlie had pronounced on being questioned when he came on a month’s visit to the London house in March. But he was too overexcited from his adventurous trip on the mail coach with Mr Gough to focus on things back in Northumberland. He wanted to talk to his papa, to go with him to the menagerie, to see the soldiers and the Tower. And Astley’s again, and…
‘You get on together all right?’ Grant had prompted.
‘Of course. She doesn’t fuss and she lets me play with Anna, who is nice, although she’s not much fun yet. May we go to Tatt’s? Papa, please?’
Doesn’t fuss. Well, that would seem to accord with Kate’s letters. One a week, each precisely three pages long in a small, neat hand. Each contained a scrupulous report on Charlie’s health and scholastic progress, a paragraph about Anna—she can hold her head up, she can copy sounds, she can throw her little knitted bunny—and a few facts about the house and estate. Millie in the kitchen has broken her ankle, the stable cat caught the biggest rat anyone had seen and brought it into the kitchen on Sunday morning and Cook dropped the roast, it has rained for a week solidly…
They were always signed Your obedient wife, Catherine Rivers, each almost as formalised and lacking in emotion as Gough’s reports on Charlie or his bailiff’s lengthy letters about estate business. And never once did she ask to come to London or reproach him for leaving her alone.
He replied, of course, sending a package north weekly, with a long letter for Charlie, a note for Gough, answers to Wilkinson’s estate queries. And there would always be a letter one page long for Kate, with the kind of gossip that Madeleine, his first wife, had expected. What the royal family were doing, what the latest society scandal was—omitting the crim. con. cases, naturally—the latest fads in hem lengths and bonnets as observed in Hyde Park. Signed Your affct. husband, Grantham Rivers.
The parkland rolled before him like a welcome carpet and the road forked, the right hand to the house, the left to the rise crowned with the mausoleum his great-grandfather had built in the 1750s. The chestnut gelding was trotting along the left-hand way before Grant was conscious of applying the reins. No rush, it was only just noon, no one was expecting him to arrive on any particular day.
The classical monument sat perfectly on its hillock, turning the view into a scene in an Arcadian painting. It was a Greek temple with its portico facing south, its basement full of the ancestors his great-grandfather had removed from the church vault, its inner walls made with niches for the future generations of Rivers. ‘So we can admire the view,’ the first earl had reportedly announced. ‘I’m damned if I’m spending eternity in that damp vault with some dullard of a preacher sermonising on top of me.’ The countess of the day had had mild hysterics at the sentiment and had been ignored and now she, too, shared the prospect.
Grant tied the gelding to a ring on the rear wall of the building and strolled round to the front. There were stone benches set under the portico and it would be good to rest there awhile and think about his grandfather.
The sound of laughter stopped him in mid-stride. He recognised Charlie’s uninhibited shrieks, but there was a light, happy laugh he did not recognise at all. He walked on, his boots silent on the sheep-cropped turf, and stopped again at the corner.
A rug was spread out
