Page 39 of Contracted as His Countess

She is beautiful and she looks so right, sitting there. How had I not realised how lovely she is? How wrong I was to try to force her into being something she is not.

Madelyn glanced at him, apparently too polite to demand that he come in and close the door and stop creating a draught. ‘I am embroidering a new set of seat covers for the dining-room chairs. They were so worn that it is impossible to see what the original design was.’ She moved the stand so he could see the canvas stretched on it. ‘I am using the beasts from your family coats of arms—this is the griffin from your mother’s family crest.’

Jack closed the door and went to stand beside her. ‘That is exceedingly clever. Did you design it yourself?’ The red griffin reared up against a background scattered with tiny flowers that made it seem to be prancing in a grassy meadow. Somehow Madelyn had given the fearsome beast an amiable expression, despite its claws and the curling black tongue.

‘Mmm,’ she said, bending to set a stitch in one pointed wing-tip. ‘I am giving all the beasts a flowery meadow as background.’ She finished the stitch, stuck the needle in the margin of the canvas and pushed the frame away a little. ‘I wanted to finish that wing, the shading is quite complex.’

‘Don’t stop, unless you really want to,’ Jack said as he took the chair on the other side of the fireplace. ‘It is soothing, watching you.’

Madelyn coloured up as she drew the frame back. ‘I imagine you need soothing.’ She stooped to rummage in the basket of wools at her feet, effectively hiding her face from him.

‘That was not what I meant. I had no intention of reading you some lecture, if that is what you thought.’

Damn, now I am snapping. And lying. I had been brooding on that lecture all through the breakfast.

‘This is our wedding night.’

Chapter Fifteen

From Madelyn’s expression as she straightened up with a hank of black wool in her hand, a reminder about their wedding night had not been tactful.

‘I had hoped for a quiet evening’s conversation, a rest after a very crowded day,’ Jack said, retrieving his temper. This was like gentling an unbroken mare and he was beginning to find the process of winning his wife’s trust even more absorbing than that.

Madelyn was threading the new wool into the needle, peering almost cross-eyed at the little slit, her tongue protruding with the effort of concentration. Jack’s body stirred. There was something very sensual and natural about that tiny glimpse of wet pinkness. She ran the tip over her lower lip, leaving a glimmer of moisture, and Jack drew an unsteady breath.

‘Ah.’ The wool went in the eye and she drew it through with a murmur of satisfaction that sent Jack to his feet. He took a couple of rapid strides across the room and stopped with his back to her, turning over the small pile of books on a side table while he got himself under control.

‘I do not have any conversation, I am afraid,’ Madelyn said. ‘I have never had anyone to practise on, you see. It has not been as bad as I thought it would be at parties, because everyone wanted to ask me the same questions about the castle and Father, but I do not know how to make small talk.’

‘Surely you held conversations with your father and with visitors?’ The more blatant evidence of arousal under control, Jack went back to his chair.

‘They discussed things among themselves, but Father never did so with me. He told me what he wanted, or he would tell me about his latest researches or an antique piece he had bought, but we did not converse. It was not an exchange.’ She adjusted the position of the frame and began to sew again. From the back, Jack could make out that she was giving the griffin his claws. ‘Mother and I would talk, of course, when she was not busy, or ill.’

How lonely you must have been.

Jack sensed that it would not be kind to say that out loud. ‘No imaginary friends when you were younger?’ he asked, his memory jolted as he caught sight of a small portrait of his grandmother. ‘Many children have them. My grandmother made up stories with a dashing pirate explorer and he became so real that we would go on voyages around the pond on a raft together, or when I climbed trees they were really the mainmast of his galleon and he was there, too. We would be on the look-out for rival pirates or native war canoes. His name was Randolph the Ruthless.’ He found himself smiling at the memory. Lord, how long was it since he had thought of Randolph, let alone gone adventuring with him?

‘You were lonely, too?’ Madelyn asked betrayingly.

‘When I was small, I suppose I missed children of my own age. But later when I went to school I made friends.’ Some stayed loyal when his father became more and more of a liability. Who the true friends were became clear when Roderick died and the full extent of the financial disaster became apparent. Many took the view that a man with no money to throw around was no fun and that an earl who would not use his title and who took commissions for money would somehow pollute their own lofty status. Lackland, they murmured, was showing bad form and that was inexcusable in a way that the profligate squandering of a family’s assets was not.

It had hurt at the time until he learned to view it as a way of pruning back the dead growth and seeing true character clearly. He had fewer friends now, but, like Charlie, they were true. ‘Did you have a governess?’

Madelyn shook her head. ‘Mother taught me to read and write and to do my figures. Father ordered my reading and taught me how to carry out research by setting me tasks to do—the right style of hangings for different rooms, or the composition of early glass for windows, that kind of thing. I suppose,’ she said thoughtfully, needle poised, ‘that did teach me a great deal about history and geography and some science and technology.’

‘It must have done,’ Jack said. Window glass? It had never occurred to him to wonder how it was made or how he would go about finding out. ‘But nothing of the modern world?’

‘I found out quite a lot by reading the boteler’s—the butler’s—newspapers. And sometimes I would go into Maidstone to shop.’ She bent over the canvas as though to hide her face. ‘I tried not to go very often—I was stared at so much. It was not a very good preparation for actually living in the nineteenth centur

y, I find.’

That was a considerable understatement, Jack realised. And he had thrown her into deep water and expected her to swim with as much care for her fears and feelings as her ghastly father had shown. A number of unutterable swear words came to mind.

‘Tell me which other heraldic creatures you are using,’ he said, abruptly jerking the subject back from the painfully personal.

Madelyn frowned in concentration, but he was glad to see that she was sitting up straight again and not hiding her face from him. ‘There are the golden bats from your maternal grandmother’s family—I thought several of those flitting about would be amusing. The blue spotted hound from your maternal grandfather—the one that is the opposing shield supporter to the griffin. Then there are several types of lion.’ She carried on listing beasts as Jack felt himself relax back into the cushions, watching her until one particular name caught his attention.

‘What in Creation is a pantheon—other than a group of great people or gods or a building?’

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