Contracted As His Countess - Louise Allen

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had only increased them. If there was one thing his class hated, it was someone turning their back on inherited status. It devalued the entire concept.

      Now he was being offered his birthright back and he could feel the weight of the generations it represented pressing down on him. As he stared at the parchment, something stirred deep in his soul, the flick of a dragon’s tail of possessiveness, of desire. This is mine by right.

      Jack looked at the woman opposite him. He could say Yes, pick up those papers, live a new life. The life he had been destined to live. All that was required of him was to sacrifice his pride and to accept being a bought man. But there were two people in this equation.

      What if Madelyn Aylmer was as eccentric as her father? She seemed to have lived cloistered in this place for years. What if she could not cope with the outside world that she had called a world of steam and speed and cities, of poverty and ugliness? But it was an exciting world, his world, full of scientific and technical advances, full of discoveries and possibilities. He was not going to turn his back on that to pander to the bizarre fancies of this woman. If she married him, then she was marrying a man of the nineteenth century and she was going to have to change and conform to his world, his time, not drag him back into her fantasies.

      Every instinct screamed at him to snatch at what was being offered, but even so… He could not take advantage of a woman who, not to put too fine a point upon it, might not be in her right mind. ‘You are doing this because it is what your father wanted,’ Jack said, before common sense and self-interest could assert themselves. ‘Is it what you truly desire, to marry a man you do not know? You must forgive my frankness, Miss Aylmer, but I want children, an heir, and that involves, shall we say, intimacy.’

      ‘I want that, too.’ She was blushing now for the first time and with her pale skin he thought the effect was like a winter sunrise staining the snow pink. ‘I mean, I want children and I am quite well aware what that entails. I am not ignorant.’

      ‘All you know of me is my ancestry,’ Jack said in a last-ditch attempt to do the right thing.

       The right thing for her, and perhaps for me, might well be to walk away from this. Do I really want to regain my pride in my heritage at the price of my pride as a man? Can I live with this woman?

      She was not beautiful, she was probably almost as much of an eccentric antiquarian as her father and she appeared to have no society manners whatsoever.

      A fine wife for an earl, he thought savagely. He was angry—he knew that in the same way that some part of his brain was aware he was drunk when he had overindulged with the brandy. Anger was no basis for making a decision of this importance.

      To his surprise Madelyn Aylmer laughed. ‘Of course your ancestry is not all I know of you. Do you think I sit here like a maiden in a tower waiting for my prince to come and hack his way through the brambles that surround me and meanwhile I have no contact with the outside world? I am perfectly capable of employing my own enquiry agents. I know a great deal about you, Jack Ransome.’

      ‘You employed—who?’

      ‘On the advice of my man of business I used a Mr Burroughs of Great Queen Street and the Dawkins brothers of Tower Hill. And my legal advisers also made enquiries.’ The little smile that had seemed so tentative was suddenly sharp. ‘What is the matter, Mr Enquiry Agent Ransome? Do you not like it when the boot is on the other foot?’

      ‘Not so much,’ he admitted. She did not appear to be either feeble-minded or delusional. It seemed Miss Aylmer had a quick wit and perhaps a sense of humour. He tried to see that as a good thing and found his own sense of humour had utterly deserted him. ‘You were well advised. They know their business.’ Anyone who knew him could have told that tone signified danger—but then, she did not know him. Not at all, whatever information she had been given.

      So, what had his competitors told her? That he was ruthless, although he kept within the law—mostly? That he had recently ended a very pleasant liaison with a wealthy widow two years older than himself? That he had no debts to worry about and gambled within his means, but that he could be reckless when it came to a sporting challenge? That he had a short fuse when it came to attacks on his honour and had met two men on Hampstead Heath at dawn as a result? He was damned if he was going to ask, because the infuriating female would probably hand him the reports to read. Whatever was in them, it had not been bad enough to turn her from this course.

      Time to shift the balance of this interview—time to see whether he could tolerate this woman as his wife and to try to make a rational decision. Everything had its price and some costs were just too high to pay.

      ‘Have you made your come-out? Been presented at Court? What do you know of the world beyond that moat?’

      Madelyn made a small, betraying movement, the smile quite gone as she rose to her feet. ‘Come into the garden,’ she said and walked away towards a small door in one corner before he could reply. ‘I think better outside. In the summer the Great Hall can feel rather like a vault.’

      Jack strode after her and caught up in time to reach the door first and open it. ‘Is it better in the winter?’ he hazarded. ‘With fires and hounds and good food?’

      ‘Hounds? I agree, that would be authentic,’ she said, glancing back as though to reassure herself that he was following along the passageway. ‘We do have them, of course. But they are never allowed inside because of the tapestries. Do you like dogs?’

      ‘Yes, although I do not have any at the moment. You do not own one? I thought medieval maidens always had small white lapdogs or miniature greyhounds.’

      ‘I have an Italian greyhound called Mist. Father allowed that because she is very well behaved. She is shut up in case you did not tolerate dogs.’

      ‘And if I do not?’

      ‘I suppose I would have had to leave her here.’ For the first time he heard real uncertainty in her voice.

      We are not following her careful script, Jack thought, wondering if she saw everything as a stage setting with each piece in its place, every character performing their preordained actions, reading from their script. If that was the case, then life outside these walls was going to come as a severe shock to Mistress Madelyn.

      ‘There would be no need,’ he said. ‘If we wed, that is. I like dogs. You were about to tell me…’ And then Madelyn opened the door at the end and he lost the thread of whatever he had been about to say and stood silent, staring.

      ‘Come in.’ Madelyn held out her hand, and he stepped out into paradise. He must have said the word aloud because she smiled. ‘Yes, that is what the Islamic gardens were called. A paradise. Technically this is a hortus conclusus. But you do not want a lecture. Wander, relax, think: that is what this place is for. I will send for refreshment before we talk further.’

      By the time Jack had pulled himself together in the haze of perfume and colour and warmth, she had gone and the door was closed. He began to explore, still faintly bemused, strolling along grass paths between knee-high hazel hurdles that held back over-spilling colour. There were roses, ladies’ mantle, banks of herbs that were smothered in bees, banks of lavender where the buzzing was almost deafening.

      He looked around and realised that this was the interior of the castle, walled on all sides, a sheltered suntrap. In the centre a circular pool held a fountain and he passed intricate knot gardens as he made his way towards it. A wave of lemon scent assaulted him as he brushed past a bushy green plant, then his feet were crushing thyme underfoot.

      The fountain was surrounded by low grass banks, and he sat down, wondering if he was drunk on scent or whether he had been transported back five hundred years. He had to make a decision about the woman who dwelt in the middle of this fantasy and he was beginning to think that she had put a spell on him and that he was in no fit state to decide anything. Or perhaps it was simply shock.

      The ends of the turf seats were marked by tall wooden posts painted in spiralling red and blue and white, each topped

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