‘Gillian would not have appreciated her daughters outshining her. She had to be the sole focus of attention in every room she walked into. Even I fell under her spell.’
‘You were a little boy and, from what you’ve told me, starved of affection. So I’m not surprised.’
‘You make me sound like a stray kitten.’ Daniel grimaced. ‘I suppose that is an apt description. The runt that no one wanted, that everyone thought too weak to survive.’
‘Don’t say that.’
‘It’s the truth. When she eloped, my father purged this place of any trace of her. I was forbidden to mention her name, all her possessions were destroyed—it was as if he had never had a daughter—and I was banished, for my part in her fall from grace. I was sent to school—which should have been a small victory for me, but was an absolute disaster.’
Daniel had been gazing at his sister’s portrait, but now his expression was quite blank, his tone equally so. It made Kate’s spine tingle. She had no idea why he was confiding in her like this, volunteering such deeply personal and painful memories, but she sensed the reason was ominous.
She wanted to comfort him, to hold his hand, to tell him to stop, because she knew it hurt him, but she didn’t dare interrupt. So she waited, silently, until he spoke again.
‘I was ten years old and Elmswood formed the boundaries of my world. I’d never had friends, I’d no experience of what they call the rough and tumble of life at such a school. Can you imagine—? No, I don’t suppose you can. In plain terms, I was bullied, ostracised and humiliated. No, don’t, Kate. Let me speak.’
With difficulty, she did as he bade her, biting back her indignant exclamations and protests. ‘Go on.’
‘I could either sink or swim. I chose to swim—though against the tide, not with it. I threw myself into my studies—Classics and languages—and I took up athletics. But I wouldn’t play their stupid ball games, I wouldn’t acknowledge the strict hierarchy that matters so much in those places, and I duly paid the price.’
‘Daniel! I’m sorry, but that is awful.’
‘It served to toughen me up. I relied on no one but myself. I learned how to put on a front. I learned not to care. All lessons that stood me in good stead later. I got by for the better part of four years. I was lonely, but I grew accustomed to that too. I thought I preferred being alone. And then Leo arrived at the school.’
‘The Classics tutor you mentioned?’
He took his turquoise amulet from his pocket and began to turn it over in his hands. ‘He was my tutor, but he also became my friend—my only friend. For that last year at school I was happy. Leo and I planned to visit the ancient sites of Greece and Italy one day. He was as eager as I was to explore the world of antiquity. Then I made the mistake of inviting him to Elmswood for the summer, and my father hated Leo from the first. He saw that I was happy, and he set about destroying that happiness. Leo left suddenly one day, under a cloud, and I was removed from school—presumably so I couldn’t have any further contact with him.’
‘What happened to provoke such an extreme reaction in your father? It had to be more than jealousy or a desire to thwart you.’
For the first time Daniel looked agitated. ‘I can’t remember.’ He jumped to his feet. ‘My father must have had serious words with Leo—some sort of argument, I presume. He refused to discuss it with me, so I don’t know what triggered it. All he would say was that he wouldn’t tolerate my having such a friend. And as for Leo—he didn’t answer my letters. I never saw him again.’
‘And that’s when you joined the Admiralty?’
Daniel sat down again and put his turquoise back in his pocket.
‘My father decided I needed to pay a suitable penance for blotting my copybook a second time and proving to be a sore disappointment to him. He reckoned consigning me to shuffle papers closeted away in Admiralty House for a few years might teach me a bit of a lesson. But after two years I was thoroughly bored, and I had worked out that no matter how many papers I shuffled I’d never be good enough for him. So I volunteered to sail with an expedition sponsored by Joseph Banks and the Royal Society. The perfect opportunity, you’d have thought, to make a man of a so-called insipid eighteen-year-old with no experience of the world. But naturally my father objected. Having lost one child to foreign climes, he wished to keep the other close to home and under his wing.’
‘That implies protectiveness, but it sounds more like wanting to control your every move,’ Kate said. ‘I can’t believe all this was playing out while I was growing up on your doorstop. I had no idea.’
‘Fortunately for me Sir Marcus stepped in, persuading him that my duty to King and country required me to sail, and so I sailed. Though I had no idea at the time, he’d been keeping an eye on me, and had seen evidence of the particular qualities he required in anyone serving in his field. He wished to test my suitability, without either myself or my father being aware that he was doing so. When I returned, three years later, I had clearly passed the test, since he offered me my first active role. And the rest, as they say, is history.’
A great deal more history than Daniel had ever revealed before, Kate thought, struggling to assimilate all that he’d told her.
‘Did your father know, then, that you were not really an explorer?’
‘Oh, yes, he knew. And he knew too, that when I left I had no intention of returning.’
‘You wished him to disinherit you. You told me that when I proposed. But he didn’t.’
Daniel smiled grimly. ‘Between us, you and I thwarted his plan to put me back in my place. By then I’d found my own niche, and I was determined, as you know, not to give it up. Not ever.’
Her stomach sank. This, then, was the point of his confession. ‘It means everything to you, your work? More than anything?’
‘I’m sorry, Kate, but it does.’
‘Don’t be sorry. You have made it clear from the start—when we married—and consistently since you arrived here. This morning gave me no expectations.’
His hand sought hers. ‘I know that. What happened this morning took us both by surprise.’
‘But it changes nothing. That’s what you’re essentially saying, isn’t it?’ Kate shifted out of his reach.
‘My missions tend to last a year—sometimes less, rarely more. I have no time to make friends, no time to become embroiled with anyone, and I like it that way. I prefer it that way. That last mission was the longest time I’ve ever spent in one place. Looking back, I see that it was far too long. It left me open to becoming more embroiled than was healthy.’
‘So you are determined not to get “embroiled”, as you put it, with me,’ Kate said.
‘I’m choosing not to. It would be a mistake. I know myself very well. I know that I thrive on being alone, being my own man, answerable to no one. I don’t want to settle down. I doubt I could settle even if I wanted to. I am trying to be very honest with you. The life I have chosen for myself is the only one I want, and one perfectly suited to me. There is no room for anyone else in that life. Do you understand now?’
‘Perfectly.’
‘I know I’ve hurt you...’
‘You give yourself too much credit. I am not in love with you, Daniel, and nowhere close to falling for you. I am not going to waste my time or my affections on a man who has made it crystal-clear he doesn’t want either.’
‘Kate...’
‘No, you’ve had your say, now let me have mine.’
She took a breath, trying to quell her outrage and hurt, to think logically, to speak rationally, knowing that he would discount anything else.
‘I am touched by what you’ve told me, and honoured that you have confided in me, and I do understand, fully, how much the life you have chosen matters to you. Your sister—Oh, who knows, Daniel, if she ever thought of you or considered getting in touch with you? Did she know you
had been sent off to school? Probably not. Would she have written to you there? You were ten...she was nineteen, recently married, in a strange country, cut off entirely from her family. I reckon she’d have had more than enough to contend with, don’t you?’
She waited, receiving a non-committal shrug in response, but she was not fooled. He was listening.
‘And as for your father—the man you knew doesn’t square with what I remember of him, which admittedly is very little. If he really did adore Gillian, martinet or not, he must have been devastated by her elopement, and likely he saw it, rather than as her staking a claim to her own life, as trampling on the one he had given her. The purge of all her belongings—that’s not the act of someone who doesn’t care. Did she write to him? Probably. Did he forgive her? No. There were no second chances with him.’
Her fists clenched involuntarily.
‘But that’s not his biggest crime, as far as I am concerned. What is worse by far is that he punished the innocent for his own selfishness and terrible indulgence. He punished you, sending you away, and he punished his grandchildren, by refusing to acknowledge them, denying them a family and the sanctuary here that they were in dire need of.’
She unfurled her fists and made a conscious effort to mellow her tone.
‘And he kept them from you too, Daniel. He didn’t even tell you that you had a nephew and three nieces.’
‘If you are imagining that I would have leapt at the chance to play uncle, you’re mistaken.’
‘You don’t know that. If you had known where Gillian lived, you would have written to her. He kept that from you.’
‘Kate, you are imagining a rose-coloured past that never happened. I could have sought out my sister and her offspring when my father died. I chose instead to have my lawyer draw up what was fair and equitable, what was glaringly absent from my father’s will. But I did not deliver it in person. It would have been a simple matter then, to make the trip from England to Ireland. I chose not to make it.’
Was he truly so cold, or was he intent on hurting her? It didn’t matter. She would be a fool to ignore the implications.
‘I understand why you hate this place. I understand why you are so determined never to walk in your father’s shoes. But I don’t understand why you are following his example in other ways.’
‘What the hell do you mean by that?’
‘You are punishing your nieces for your father’s crimes. I don’t care what you say about not wanting to hurt them, not having time, or it being positively dangerous for you to take the time to write the occasional letter, the fact is that you are hurting them. You’re their nearest blood relative. You are right here in England, but you are refusing point-blank even to meet them. You are simply too concerned with your own life and your own business to give a damn about theirs. Does that sound familiar?’
‘Are you suggesting that I am selfish?’
‘You’ve fought to be the man you are, and I admire you for it, but now it’s your way or nothing. I’d call that selfish, wouldn’t you?’
She felt sick. Her chest was heaving. Her face was flushed with anger. Kate, who almost never lost her temper, was almost as furious with herself as Daniel. She glowered at him.
‘Are you finished?’ he said, in a carefully polite tone. ‘May I speak?’
‘Be my guest.’
‘We have two months more to maintain our fable of being Lord and Lady Elmswood. I suggest that you take tonight to calm down and we start afresh tomorrow.’
Kate stared at him incredulously. ‘Is that it?’
‘What more is there to say? We are clearly utterly incompatible in our views. This morning must have been, as I suggested, a peculiar combination of circumstances that we need have no fear will happen again. I am glad we had this conversation, Kate. There’s no room for misunderstanding now.’
‘There most certainly is not.’
She studied him for a moment, but he met her gaze blandly. The man she had shared such life-changing intimacy with this morning was nowhere to be seen. Life-changing! She almost snorted. It certainly had been.
She turned on her heel and left him without another word.
* * *
‘We are going to High Farm,’ Kate said. ‘If you take the first turning on the right and then—’
‘I know where the High Farm is.’ But instead of taking the turn Daniel pulled the pony and trap over to the side of the road. ‘We’re supposed to be on our honeymoon. I don’t think we’re going to convince anyone if you won’t even look at me.’
She looked at him. She forced a travesty of a smile. ‘There—that is the best I can do. I’m afraid I don’t have your vast acting experience.’
‘It’s been two days and you’re still angry with me.’
She sighed heavily. ‘I’m angry with myself. You made your feelings—or rather lack of them—crystal-clear from the start. Then you did me the honour of explaining why you behave as you do a couple of days ago, and I threw it back in your face. I’m very sorry for that. You won’t change, and I don’t want you to change, but I—I have not your ability to simply forget what happened between us.’
‘I have not forgotten! What happened between us was...’ He met her gaze, and the longing to touch her, to reassure her, to tell her how much he ached with longing, was almost irresistible. ‘I have not forgotten, Kate, but it doesn’t help to dwell on it.’
‘I am not dwelling on it, nor begging for a reprise. I am simply saying that I am finding it difficult to find a way to be at ease in your company. I hadn’t realised how tactile we had become. I am having to be constantly on my guard not to—not to touch you.’ This last was said in a whisper. She was blushing painfully. ‘It makes me snappy, and most unlike myself.’
He hated seeing her like this. He felt so damned guilty, and at the same time so damned relieved, for he was exactly the same. Even now he was having to work hard not to take her hand. He hadn’t noticed how often he took her hand until he’d forced himself to stop.
‘Perhaps we shouldn’t put a complete embargo on touching—not immediately.’ He gave in to the need, taking her hand between his. ‘We took things too far and it’s given us a craving for more. We both know that would be a mistake, but to give it up immediately—no, we should try for a gradual retreat.’
‘So you’re suggesting we wean ourselves off each other slowly?’
There was a glint of humour in her eyes that had been absent for the last two days. Immensely relieved, Daniel nodded. ‘Hand-holding. A few chaste kisses. Nothing more.’
‘I don’t think we have ever kissed chastely.’
He kissed her cheek. Lavender. His body responded enthusiastically. Dear God!
‘Like that,’ Daniel said, stalwartly denying himself a second kiss. Not even on her cheek.
‘You don’t think that would be to stretch our powers of self-discipline to breaking point needlessly?’
‘I don’t. But if you would prefer to continue being on slightly frosty terms...’
‘Neither of us wants that. I’ve missed your grumpy face at the breakfast table.’
‘I’m never grumpy.’
‘You are, but I put up with it because you butter my bread so nicely.’
‘And don’t forget I know just how you like your tea. Milk first, but only a tiny splash. And you like your morning kiss not on the nape of your neck, as I first thought, but on the lips. Like this.’
It lasted only a few seconds. The simplest of kisses. A brief meeting of lips, no lingering. But they both felt it. He saw it in her eyes. The longing, and the sure and certain knowledge that it was not going to be a simple matter to wean themselves from each other.
Not simple, but it could be done. Kate was like the opium which he had occasionally been obliged to consume for form’s sake while on that mission to Hong Kong, posing as an English tra
der exporting Indian opium to China. He had witnessed its effects on those who fell under its spell first hand.
‘A gradual retreat, a measured dose,’ he said. ‘If we persevere, it can be done. What do you say?’
She hesitated, biting her lip, but then shrugged. ‘I have grown accustomed to you making my tea.’
The pony was cropping happily in the grass verge at the side of the road. Daniel released Kate’s hand to pick up the reins again.
‘Good. Now, let’s go and pay a visit to this model tenant you’ve been telling me all about.’
* * *
‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ Kate said as they resumed their journey. ‘I can easily call myself another day. You’ll probably find it very boring.’
‘I think Lord Elmswood should show some interest in what his wife has been doing with the land all these years, don’t you?’
‘You’re not in the least bit interested, Daniel.’
‘No, but Lord Elmswood is, and, actually, it may surprise you to know that I am intrigued.’
‘It would surprise me a great deal. In all the years I’ve been writing to you I don’t recall your once evincing any interest in the estate.’
‘I had no idea until I came here that your improvements would be so radical.’
‘How do you know I’ve been radical?’
‘You’ve forgotten—I’m a spy... I know everything. I really haven’t appreciated you nearly enough. All this work you’ve done—you should be featured as a shining example of estate management in some journal for landowners, if there is such a thing.’
‘I can’t imagine anything more embarrassing. Besides, all the work has actually been carried out by others. All I’ve done is supervise.’
‘You know that’s nonsense. You are far too modest.’
‘Would you like me better if I was forever boasting about my achievements?’
‘I like you exactly as you are.’
She smiled uncertainly. ‘If you hadn’t married me I’d probably be eking out a living in a cottage, with a cat to keep my company.’
The Inconvenient Elmswood Marriage (Penniless Brides 0f Convenience Book 4) Page 15
