and thoughtful. At any rate he had not snatched at what she was offering without probing her own feelings first. And he appeared able to control his temper. She could cope with many things simply by enduring them, but blazing male anger terrified her.
Not that she was prepared to reveal her thoughts to him. It had not occurred to her before this meeting that an emotionless match might be easier than one where real passions were engaged, but now it seemed so much safer.
‘Yes, I am sure. I would not have sent for you otherwise.’ She turned and found him right beside her.
A poor choice of words, perhaps. His eyes narrowed. ‘If you marry me, you enter my world, you start living entirely in the year 1816. Do you understand? Clothes, style, home, manners.’
‘But this—’ Madelyn gestured around her ‘—I must tell you, it has been left in trust to my children. My husband would not be able to sell it, or to use the income for any other purpose than its maintenance or to control its management.’
Jack Ransome shrugged. ‘It is the Dersington lands that I want. All that I want. This would be maintained, of course, according to the provisions of the trust. But if it is to be one of our homes, then it must function as such and not as some medieval fantasy. I will not live in a museum. If I marry you and reclaim all my estates, then they will have priority for my time and attention until I am certain they are restored as I would wish. Do you understand?’
It was hard to control her reaction to that harsh demand, to the flat statement. But what mattered was fulfilling her father’s wish, of continuing the line. She had failed him by being a girl, she understood that. She looked at the man surrounded by her flowers, thought of the children they would have and nodded. ‘Yes, I understand.’
Some of the tension left the lean body so close to hers. Jack Ransome held out his hands, and she put hers, cool and wet, into his grasp and let herself be drawn to her feet.
‘A kiss to seal our bargain?’ he asked as her gaze locked with his.
He is still angry, she thought, momentarily daunted. He is not showing it, not shouting, but he hates the position I have put him in, he loathes being indebted to someone. The fact that he could control those feelings, still behave in a civilised manner, was almost more frightening than a display of temper would have been. Will he hate me also?
When Madelyn closed her eyes and leaned in towards him, he gathered her closer and then his lips brushed over hers, pressed, and she gave a little gasp as his tongue licked across, tasting. Then he lifted his head and she opened her eyes and found herself lost in the darkness and a heat that was more than anger.
Desire? For me? And then whatever it was had gone and he was smiling and stepping back, releasing her hands. It was her imagination, obviously. Imagination and inexperience. Or wishful thinking. Wishing for something she had not realised that she wanted any more.
‘I imagine the next step is for my lawyers to talk to yours. And you have trustees, I assume?’
‘Trustees, three of them. But they are bound closely by the conditions of my father’s will and cannot oppose this marriage. I will give you their various addresses before you leave, Mr Ransome.’
‘Thank you.’ He made no move to go. ‘Did your mother create this garden?’
‘Yes. When my brother died and she was… When she knew she would not get better, she asked me to continue looking after it. There are three gardeners. It takes a lot of maintenance.’
He glanced around. ‘I have seen very few servants.’
‘My father preferred them to stay out of sight as much as possible. One needs a large number to manage a castle and it proved impossible to keep them if he insisted on the correct period costume. He felt it spoiled the appearance of the castle to have them walking around in modern clothing.’
Jack Ransome did not try to hide his reaction to that. ‘Your father was obsessed, was he not?’
It was hard to deny it. ‘Perhaps. It was everything to him and he was a perfectionist. I suppose all true artists are.’
‘That must have been difficult for you if he expected the same standards from you at all times. Or are you as devoted to this as he was?’
‘This was how I was raised. I love this place and I would like to see it become a home, even if it has to change for that to happen.’ As soon as she said it she realised how revealing that choice of words was. Home. A house, an ordinary house, imperfect, comfortable. She loved this place, it was all she knew, but it was not a home, it was a statement. Jack Ransome gave her a fleeting look that might have held sympathy or perhaps pity. Or even exasperation at her sentimentality. Madelyn tipped up her chin and stared back.
‘How long ago did your mother die?’
‘A month after the baby.’ Yes, he was definitely feeling sorry for her. ‘I imagine you will want to be on your way, Mr Ransome. If you come with me, I will find you the addresses you will need.’
‘Will you not call me Jack now? We are betrothed, after all.’ He sounded more amused than seductive, although his voice was low and the tone intimate. He had suppressed his anger, it seemed, and now he was bent on humouring her, she supposed. That was better than she had feared: a man who simply snatched at what she was offering, took it—and her—and then disregarded her.
‘Very well. And you may call me Madelyn.’ Not that he would wait for permission.
It seemed to take a long time to find the addresses, to have his horse brought round, and she found herself without any conversation. Jack filled her awkward silences with polite remarks about the castle and its furnishings, questions about the armour, apparent interest in the problems of having tapestries woven when the Continent and its skilled craftsmen had been out of bounds until the last year. It was perhaps her imagination that he was tense with barely controlled impatience to be gone.
Madelyn supposed she answered sensibly enough, but she had no experience of making small talk. As he was drawing on his gloves Jack looked around again at the empty Great Hall. ‘You have a companion living with you, I suppose? An older relative, perhaps?’
‘No. I have no close relatives at all. I have my maids.’
‘Friends, then? I realise that you are still in mourning—’ he glanced, frowning, at her coloured gown ‘—but when you come up to London to buy your trousseau and so forth, you will need someone to show you how to go on. The year since your father’s death will be up very soon, will it not? I imagine by the time we have matters settled there can be no objection to you appearing in society before the wedding. London is very quiet at this time of year, of course.’
‘No. I mean, yes, I will be out of mourning shortly. I only wore black for a few days.’ There was no one to be shocked, after all, so why worry past the funeral? Draping herself in black to symbolise the emotions she felt was hypocritical, she had decided. Besides, white was the correct mourning colour for a lady of the upper classes in the Middle Ages, and she looked so frightful in white. ‘I have no… Father did not socialise in the area.’ He had fallen out with virtually all of their neighbours over one thing or another and those he had not upset regarded him as peculiar at best and a lunatic at worst.
‘That
