Contracted As His Countess

Anger at the shock at finding everything so changed was subsiding into a roiling stomach and a strong desire to down half a bottle of brandy. He hadn’t felt this bad since his grandfather died, he realised. It was like losing him all over again.

Jack looked across at his betrothed and felt a pang of guilt. This was still Madelyn’s house and she was trying to do the right thing. Probably, at this moment, she was wondering what she had done to promise herself to such an angry man.

‘I apologise for swearing. You meant it for the best, no doubt.’ He was a gentleman, he reminded himself. He should not take out his disappointment and temper on a lady, even if she was the cause of that disappointment.

She turned that wide blue-grey gaze on him, and he found he could manage to get the scowl off his face if he really tried. ‘This was my home, but why I should imagine it would stay unchanged for so many years I do not know.’ It was an explanation and, he supposed, a poor sort of apology.

‘Your home? But I had assumed that Dersington Mote would be the house that was of chief importance to you.’

‘That was where my father and brother lived. My mother died when I was ten and my grandparents did not think it was the right place for a child.’ That had been on the day when his grandmother had arrived to find he had a black eye and bruised cheek as a result of disturbing his father by crying at night over the loss of his mother. He tipped his head back against the hard, uncomfortable upholstery, closed his eyes and wondered why he felt so weary.

‘Your father’s parents?’ When he nodded she said, ‘But did they not live at the country house?’

‘My grandfather became confused with age. This smaller house was easier for him and, in London, my grandmother was closer to her friends who supported her.’

‘Oh, I understand now.’ There was a rustle of fabric, and he blinked. Madelyn was sitting on the footstool by his knees, hands clasped in her lap, ruffled skirts pooling around her. ‘I will speak to the workmen myself, make certain everything is just as you want it again.’ The faint scent of old roses and warm female drifted up.

‘You have a great deal of experience making certain that the men in your life have exactly the surroundings they desire, haven’t you?’ He found he was irrationally irritated by that. That was what ladies did, after all. The household was their kingdom but they were managing it for their husbands, fathers and, sometimes, brothers.

‘Yes.’ She tipped her head to one side, clearly puzzled at this sudden change of mood. Those ugly curls bobbed, but the movement sent up another disturbing waft of fragrance, a memory of her secret garden behind the massive stone walls. ‘But not men. There has only ever been my father to please.’

‘And what do you want? Where do you want to live? How do you want to live?’

‘Me?’ The suggestion that she might express a preference made her rock back on the stool as though to get him into better focus. ‘What is the point of wondering that? If I want children, a family, then I have no choice in the matter.’

‘Take this house, for example. We both agree we hate this.’ He rapped his knuckles on the gilded scales of the arm chair.

‘Yes,’ Madelyn agreed warily.

‘I want the study back how I remember it, I want this Egyptian nonsense gone. But there is no reason why we cannot decide on the rest of the house together.’

‘Truly? But if this is not the mode, then I have no idea about other possibilities. And what if we disagree?’ She hesitated, bit her lip. ‘Then it would be your decision, of course.’

‘No. Then we discuss it. Compromise, perhaps.’

It was as though he had handed any other woman of his acquaintance a very large diamond. ‘Oh, yes.’ Her face lit up with an unguarded smile that had him smiling back.

Jack caught her by the shoulders and bent his head until he could feel the warmth of her breath on his lips. ‘Oh, yes?’

Madelyn nodded, felt the warmth of the blush rising, although she kept her gaze locked with Jack’s, only closing her eyes as he came close. Jack tasted of something that she remembered from the castle garden—something indefinably spicy—and perhaps of his recent anger as well, and her lips parted immediately as he stroked his tongue over them.

Had he pulled her up or had she risen into his arms? She wasn’t sure, but she was there now, on his lap, arms twined around his neck, his body warm and hard and exciting under her hands.

And then the door opened and shut again with a click that sent her toppling off, bouncing onto the stool, then the carpet, in an ungainly tangle of limbs. Jack reached for her, she felt his hand curl around one silk-stockinged ankle, then he let go and ended up sprawled on the floor next to her.

Madelyn struggled to sit up, impeded by the unfamiliar stays that jabbed in her ribs. Jack flopped back on the thick gold and black carpet and laughed. ‘I think we have scandalised our new butler.’ He rolled over onto one elbow and looked at her, apparently more than happy to continue where they had just left off.

Scandalised, Madelyn scrambled to her feet. ‘I will open the door.’ She knew she was pink-faced with embarrassment. How she was going to face Partridge…

‘Leave it.’ Jack spoke so sharply that she stopped dead, turned and sat in the nearest straight-backed chair, chin up, struggling to get her breath under control. She knew she was shaking, then it dawned on her that it was not only fear that he was losing his temper and would shout at her. There was this alarming urge to give free rein to all the things inside her that were fighting to be expressed. She had no practice in showing her feelings, let alone in losing her temper, but it seemed she was going to begin learning now.

Jack stayed where he was, quite at ease cross-legged on the floor. ‘Really, Madelyn, there is no need to be so bourgeois about it. This is our house, or rather, yours and—’

‘Yes,’ she said steadily, ignoring the distracting sight of tight breeches straining over his muscles. ‘It is mine, just at the moment. And they are my servants. And whatever else I may be, I am not a bourgeois.’ It was amazing that she could speak so clearly, she thought, as though watching herself from afar. Any moment now he will stand up and he will shout—or worse—and I will dissolve…

‘I did not say you were, but the servants should conform to your standards, not you to theirs. It is not their place to be shocked.’ He was not shouting. Yet.

Emboldened, Madelyn shot back, ‘I see that you have adapted again quickly to the behaviour of the ton, Lord Dersington.’ She was shaking and she was appalled to realise that part of that was because of unsatisfied desire. She wanted to be rolling about on the floor with this man, which was appalling. What was he doing to her? She had never felt like this before, not even with Richard, the man she had dreamed of marrying…

‘I have never been out of society. The ton might have been shocked by my refusal to use my title, I might be disapproved of, snubbed and gossiped about, but I have hardly been existing in some back slum. And I am not going to bicker over this. You are about to become the Countess of Dersington. You will set standards and if you choose to make love to your husband on the drawing-room carpet, then you will do so and the staff will have to learn to be discreet about it.’

‘Very well. I will set some standards now.’ Madelyn stood up and Jack rose, too. Clearly, whatever she thought of him, he was not going to sprawl on the floor when a lady was on her feet. ‘I do not choose to have my husband tumble me like a milkmaid in a haystack.’ She had the door open before he could reach it. ‘I will have these rooms restored to their former state. I doubt I will be receiving anyone at all until that is done.’