The Rake of Hollowhurst Castle (20 page)

‘Damn examples, Sir Charles, the ex-rake. Come here and kiss me.'

‘Willingly, my sweet vixen, willingly,' he murmured, and suddenly speech was not only useless but deeply undesirable as he succumbed to the lures of true love in his wife's arms and seemed to find the experience of proving how fervently he returned her lusty passion for him matchless.

‘S
o tell me again exactly why we're standing out here in the freezing cold, up to our ankles in slushy snow, Roxanne?' Mrs Thomas Varleigh quizzed her youngest sister.

‘Because we're both ridiculously in love with our husbands,' Roxanne said, trying not to let her teeth chatter out loud and give Joanna an excuse to drag her inside to the comfort of a blazing fire and Mereson's delicious hot punch while they got warm again.

‘True, although I'm still not quite sure my devotion to Tom extends to standing about in depths of the holly grove at midnight while my feet become strangers to the rest of me.'

‘It did once,' Roxanne told her abruptly, trying hard not to recall she was four and twenty now, not a silly, over-romantic schoolgirl about to fall in love with the handsome outward image of a man, when the real, faulty, human one beneath all his flash and glamour
and animal magnetism was so worth loving. Not that his very masculine, very superior good looks exactly repelled her, but they were a bonus, a wonderful addition to the man she adored, just as he adored her.

‘I do remember that night as well, you know,' Joanna answered as if she thought Roxanne had claimed the monopoly on folly and needed to be told it was a family failing. ‘Standing here with such hope and this odd, inexplicable ache at the heart of me I couldn't understand. All I knew then was that Tom was the only man who made me feel that ache and I couldn't imagine ever feeling it for anyone else. Come to that, I still can't,' she added ruefully. ‘Even after nine years of marriage and three and a half children.'

‘Three and a
half?
' Roxanne squeaked and even to her the sound rang loud on the still night air.

‘Did I not tell you about that?'

‘No, you didn't or I'd never have included you in this mad idea in the first place.'

‘Just as well I didn't then, for I believe number four is perfectly comfortable where he or she is, and that I won't break just because I'm going to have another baby. Anyway, why should you two have all the fun?'

‘It sounds to me as if you've been having some of your own.'

‘You're just jealous, which is outrageous considering how late you and your captain rise of a morning nowadays, even when you have guests in the house to entertain at Christmas.'

‘Guests who haven't been spotted at breakfast ever since they arrived, although I suppose you have some excuse if you're
enceinte.
'

‘Thank you, but I'm past that stage now.'

‘Goodness, when's it due, then?' Roxanne asked, rather alarmed she was so in love with Charles she hadn't even noticed Joanna's baby bump.

‘May or June, so don't panic, I'm not about to drop it here and now.'

‘But perhaps you'd better wait for Tom inside?'

‘No, I've had three babes without suffering more than a couple of weeks of morning sickness; now I've finally managed to persuade Tom I don't need wrapping in cotton wool all the time, I'm not having my little sister take over where he left off. I'm very well and quite safe. If my feet were only a little warmer, I might even consider myself comfortable.'

‘All right then, I'll stop worrying, but do you think it's really enchanted?' Roxanne asked with a sigh, so reassured about her sister's continuing well-being she went off at a tangent in pursuit of her own dreams.

‘Is what enchanted? I don't want to give birth to a changeling.'

‘Idiot, I mean this holly grove. Remember all the wild tales in the villages that it's the haunt of witches and their familiars?'

‘Who's the idiot now? If you believe one word of that hoary old tale, then I'm calling a halt to this nonsense right now.'

‘Of course I don't—well, not the bit about witches and their covens anyway. It just seems a little strange that all three of us stood here that night wishing for exactly what we've finally got, that's all.'

‘That sort of enchantment I'm more willing to countenance then, although I'm not sure poor Balsover altogether deserves his fate at Maria's hands. Our illustrious brother-in-law would far sooner be at Balsover Magna
among his acres and his horses than in London while she conquers the social world.'

‘He loves Maria in his way,' Roxanne defended her sister's illustrious marriage, although she preferred piratical sea-rover baronets to earls herself.

‘No doubt, but sometimes I wonder if she loves his title more than she does him.'

‘Well, if I were Henry, I wouldn't risk playing host to any mysterious strangers who might be long-lost heirs.' Roxanne laughed joyfully and, since both of them seemed to have decided there was no point pretending they weren't here, Joanna joined in and they were both giggling like schoolgirls at the thought of their solemn and dignified sister being usurped by a rival countess when just then the jingle of harness finally reached their dark hideaway.

‘Here they are at last—do you think they've been partaking a little too much of the Vicar's sherry?' Joanna asked as she strained her ears and her eyes through the now rather worn snow.

‘No, he'll have hurried off to his vicarage to sleep. I believe he's expecting a busy day tomorrow.'

‘Indeed, who'd have thought it, what with it being a Christmas morning and all?'

‘Christmas morning, ten years on,' Roxanne managed with an infatuated sigh as Thor's rider became visible through the gloom at last.

‘And this year at least I know you're happy as well.'

‘Oh, I am, Joanna, I am indeed.'

‘Wife!' a powerful bass rumble boomed out of the darkness and Joanna fluttered a quietening hand and hushed frantically.

‘You'll wake the children,' she protested, stumbling out of her prickly hiding place and into her lover's arms.

‘The nursery is on the other side of the castle and it'd take a cannon firing outside their bedroom windows to do that, so tired and over-excited as they are about tomorrow,' Tom assured his wife as he picked her up, kissed her soundly and threw her up into his saddle to carry her off.

‘And what about you, wife? Have you gazed on your handsome husband from the gloom long enough, or would you like me to fetch a lantern so I can show you my best profile?' Charles said as he stood holding Thor and smiling as easily as the laughing young man of a decade ago had done.

‘No, Charles, I'd like you to come in here and kiss me. Then you can take me inside so I can study your faults in peace and comfort.'

‘D'you hear her, Thor? What a nagging wife I've wed,' he confided in his fell mount, although this one was far better tempered than the demon he rode in on a decade ago. He slapped the patient animal on his rump and Thor obediently trotted off to his stables and the oats Whistler had waiting for him.

‘Are you never going to kiss me, Charles?' Roxanne said impatiently, for a cold wind had suddenly blown up, and it was dark, and she could feel a branch of holly dancing threateningly close to her face and she wanted it to look as perfect as possible for the best Christmas she'd ever had.

‘I'm letting you savour the moment, love, so you can relive the full glory of my first sparkling appearance in your dull life.'

‘Popinjay,' she scorned.

‘Not a bit of it. My wife thinks I'm a hero, I'll have you know. Ever since I found that out, I knew we were made for each other.'

‘Stop it,' she demanded, swatting him with the ancient muff she'd found in the attic for tonight's expedition.

‘I will in a minute,' he promised, batting away that intrusive branch and standing very close to her. ‘What a fine view you had of us that night; I dare say Tom and I would have felt self-conscious, while secretly preening ourselves like turkey-cocks, if we'd only known you were here.'

‘It
was
a fine view, I'm glad I saw it.'

‘Still, after all I've put you through these last ten years, love?'

‘Always,' she promised with such heart-felt fervency that he kissed her.

And Sir Charles Afforde kissed his wife of just over three weeks with all the passion and sincerity fourteen-year-old Roxanne could have dreamt of, and an added undercurrent of sexual, sensual desire lay under his enthusiasm she certainly couldn't have conjured up then, all innocent and headlong in love with a handsome face as she'd been at that tender age.

‘I'm glad you did, too,' he said, suddenly serious. ‘Imagine how terribly empty my life would have been if I'd never laid eyes on you and married some poor echo of my fierce, brave love.'

‘Although I'll try to if you absolutely insist, Charles, I really don't want to just now if you don't mind,' she said as she stood on tiptoe and kissed him in her turn, slowly, passionately and with deliberate, slow-burning invitation.

‘No, to the devil with all my other possible wives, I love only this one,' he said huskily.

‘Just as well…. Now, about that hot punch and nice warm fire Mereson has arranged for us…'

‘If he's half the butler I think him, our punch and that fire will be in our suite and Joanna and Tom's will be in theirs.'

‘D'you know, I think he
is
the very perfect example of his kind and that you're quite right?'

‘Of course I am, Roxanne, it's my mission in life.'

‘When it took you ten years to come back and marry me? I rather think not,' she scoffed even as he decided to risk no more nonsense and lifted her into his arms for the short trip back to their castle, their home.

‘I came back though, didn't I?
And
I managed to persuade your brother to sell me this millstone because you loved it so much.'

‘Bah! You bought the castle and had to accept me as the millstone,' she argued gruffly, and there was still a trace of hurt in her voice, just a sliver of pain in her velvety dark eyes as he walked close to the lantern set burning above their door to guide benighted travellers toward a warm welcome, this night of all nights.

‘If I had to choose between you and a pile of hoary old stones, my Roxanne, it would be you every time,' he assured her and kissed her under that lantern, perhaps because even Mereson allowed himself the occasional waggish moment and had caused a sprig of mistletoe to be suspended from the bottom of it, or perhaps he just kissed her because he wanted to, something he did rather a lot nowadays.

‘And you for me, Charles, so you really didn't need to buy me a castle.'

‘Damn, d'you suppose your brother will take it back?'

‘No, I think you're stuck with Hollowhurst as well as your nagging wife.'

‘Never was such a burden shouldered so joyfully, my love,' he told her and carried her over the threshold to find their household virtuously, even ostentatiously, in their beds, preparing for the most joyful Christmas Hollowhurst could remember in ten long years.

Not that the master and mistress of the house would have taken much notice if they'd all been up and dancing a jig, but as Charles insisted on carrying her up the stairs, protest how she might, Roxanne looked back to the great doorway of Hollowhurst and for a fleeting moment thought she caught a glimpse of a tall and still-straight figure much like Uncle Granger's standing beside it looking very pleased with himself about something.

‘I love this wonderful old house you bought me so selflessly, and I love you, Charles Afforde,' she whispered in her lover's ear, then kissed him soundly when he would have put her down at the door of her chamber and reached down with the hand that wasn't feeling the suggestion of golden stubble on his lean cheek and undid the door handle for him.

‘That's good to hear,' he managed, before walking into their fire-lit bedchamber and reaching behind his wife's temptingly curved back to shut the door on any interested spectres who might be listening or, heaven forbid, even watching Charles Afforde seduce his final lady love.