a dozen, I suspect,’ he groaned. ‘I seem to recall the trustees saying something about only letting the tenants use certain rooms. I should have realised this one would be one of the ones out of bounds.’ He ran his fingers through his hair. The Dog and Ferret was looking more appealing by the minute.
‘Well, let us find a room that has been in use more recently and is a bit better aired,’ she said, stepping smartly back into the corridor.
‘What a good job you thought of coming down to look the place over before telling your sister she could come to live here,’ she said brightly, after they’d inspected several more rooms and found them in a similar state to the master suite. ‘I’m going to have my work cut out, getting it ready for her return.’
Not if he could help it. He’d hire an army of servants to scrub and clean this place from top to bottom. Hang the expense. He wasn’t going to have her working her fingers to the bone on his account.
* * *
Mary was just beginning to think they would have to go back to the kitchen, after all, when Lord Havelock opened the door to a room that didn’t reek of damp and mice.
‘It doesn’t strike so cold in here, does it?’ he said, stepping over the threshold. ‘I’ll tell you what it is,’ he said sagely, as she lifted the corner of a cover that shrouded an item of furniture that turned out to be a bed. ‘Right at the end of the corridor, here, the room faces south. It must get the sun all day. Bound to keep it drier than the others, which face west or east.’
‘Even so, I’m not too sure we can use this bed,’ she said, lifting the cover higher to reveal a rolled-up mattress at the end of the frame.
He sighed. ‘The bedding at the Dog and Ferret may have been dirty and damp, but at least there would have been some.’
‘We could air the mattress for a while in front of the fire, once we get it lit,’ she suggested. ‘And we can use our coats, and what have you, for bedding. Just for one night. If...if you wouldn’t mind fetching our luggage.’
‘I’ll do that,’ he said. Then, as he passed her, he swept her into his arms and gave her a swift, hard kiss. ‘You think of everything.’
Well, in the past, she’d had to. She wouldn’t have got as far as Aunt Pargetter, if she hadn’t had the sense to track down the lawyer who’d dealt with her father’s affairs.
But, only fancy, now she was telling her husband, a peer of the realm no less, how to deal with the situation in which they found themselves. And sending him off on an errand.
She wouldn’t have believed it, if someone had told her, even a few weeks ago, that she’d have the courage.
But it came easily to her, with Lord Havelock, she mused, kneeling on the hearth to see if she could get the fire going. In fact, as she set a taper to the wadded-up paper in the grate, she decided she was going to ask him to fetch some more coal, when he came back with their luggage. For there were only a few dusty coals sitting on top of the kindling, and only a handful more in the scuttle. And she really didn’t think he’d mind.
Thanks heavens she’d decided to make the best of things, rather than nursing her grievances. What was the point, after all, of dwelling on past mistakes, when he was clearly making such an effort with her now? He’d been an attentive companion during the journey, apologised profusely for the state of the house and even carried her over the threshold—a romantic gesture that had taken her completely by surprise. Not that she was going to read too much into it.
She didn’t care that circumstances were far from ideal. They were making a much better job of being married than her parents ever had, with each blaming the other for everything that went wrong and neither of them lifting a finger to do anything about it.
She put her hand to her lips, which were still tingling from his last kiss, a great surge of hope rising up in her heart.
‘How are you getting on?’ said Lord Havelock as he came back to the room with one of her cases and one of his.
She opened her mouth to thank him for being so even-handed, rather than just bringing up his own cases first. But the moment he’d opened the door a cloud of smoke came billowing into the room instead of going up the chimney, making her cough and wipe at her streaming eyes.
‘Now I can see,’ he said, shutting the door hastily, ‘why this room was never occupied by the family, in spite of the view. It looks as though it has one of those fires that sends more smoke into the room than up the chimney.’
‘It doesn’t seem to be drawing very well,’ she said. ‘I just thought the chimney was probably a bit damp.’
‘No. I’ve just remembered something. I never understood it before, but it was so odd, that it stuck in my mind,’ he said, striding to the window. ‘Nobody ever lit the fire in here without shutting that door and opening this window first.’
He turned the handle and pushed at the casement. It didn’t budge.
‘Stuck,’ he said gloomily. ‘Frame is probably warped with damp. Will probably need to get a lot of the frames shaved,’ he said, giving it another, harder shove, ‘or replaced.’
Suddenly, the window gave. Only not just the casement, but the hinges, too. His entire top half disappeared through the opening for a moment while a gust of wind whooshed in.
The smoke curled in on itself and got sucked up the chimney while flames finally started dancing across the sluggish kindling.
Lord Havelock hauled himself upright and staggered away from the window. He was sopping wet. And swearing fluently at the segment of window frame he was still clutching in his hand.
‘You...you...’ She pressed her hand to her mouth. But it was no use. She couldn’t suppress the torrent of giggles fizzing up inside.
‘You are quite...’ she managed shakily. ‘Quite right, the fire d-does draw better with the window...the window...’ Finally rendered speechless with laughter, she pointed at the frame dangling from his hand.
‘You think this is funny?’
She nodded, completely unable to frame any words for the laughter bubbling over.
With a low growl, he spun away from her, wedged the window frame back in place and thumped it home with several strategic blows from his large, powerful fists.
Strange, but she wasn’t the least bit intimidated by the demonstration of raw masculine frustration. If that had been her father, now, she would have been crouching lower, keeping her eyes down, her head bowed. Anything and everything to render herself small and invisible.
But Lord Havelock wasn’t cast from the same mould as her father. He might be hot-tempered, but he wasn’t bad-tempered. And that made all the difference.
As if to prove the point, the second he’d mended the window as well as he could, he strode across the room, dropped to his knees beside her and draped one arm about her shoulders.
‘You’re a good sport,’ he said brusquely, before planting a kiss on her temple. ‘I know I’ve said it before, but you must be the only woman alive who would see the funny side, rather than ripping up at me.’
He
