The Countess by Catherine Coulter

his arms in time to catch me. I kissed his face thoroughly, even his earlobes. “You’re

home,” I said in his ear and kept kissing him and hugging him.

He was laughing as he hugged me back. Finally, he set me on my feet and held me

back from him. “You’re looking well,” he said at last, and I knew a lie when I

heard it. I looked white and thin and had eyes that were so shadowed they could

scare children away from the door on a sunny day.

I kept rubbing my hands up and down his arms, wanting to reassure myself that he

was really here, with me. “Why are you here? I didn’t expect you. Oh, goodness,

is something wrong?”

Peter dropped his arms. “I won’t be here long,” he said over his shoulder as he

walked to the sideboard and poured himself a brandy. “I must return to Paris

soon.” He held up the decanter, and I nodded. He poured me a bit in one of

grandmother’s magnificent crystal snifters.

We clicked our glasses together and drank. I realized then that he was angry.

How very odd to see his movements so measured, to see how he was holding himself

in. I stepped back and waited. I hadn’t seen him for six months. He hadn’t

changed, save he was perhaps more handsome now than when he’d left England the

previous May to go to Brussels. I’d never prayed so often or so rigorously in my

life as in those weeks before the fateful Battle of Waterloo. Peter was

Grandfather’s heir, son of Rockford Wilton, who had died, his wife with him,

when Peter had been only five years old. He’d been nominally raised in my

parents’ household until Grandfather deemed Peter ready to go to Eton. I

remember that Peter had been fond of my mother. I had no idea what he had

thought of my father.

Peter reminded me of that man, John, a man I still didn’t know even if I had

seen him on three different occasions.

That last time had been three months ago. Time had dragged. It was now in

November, cold and damp, not a glimmer of sun to be seen for days at a time. I

hated it. The air was thick with smoke from too many coal fires. White wasn’t

the color to wear during a cold London autumn and winter.

I wanted to go to the country, where the air was clean and fresh, but Miss

Crislock wasn’t well. I couldn’t very well demand that she travel for four days?at

least not now.

Grandfather’s study was warm, the draperies drawn against the cold gray late

afternoon. “Sit down, Peter,” I said at last, still drinking in the sight of him,

“and tell me why you’re angry.”

“I’m not angry,” he said in an amazingly clipped, hard voice that could shatter

the glass I was holding.

I realized then that Mrs. Pringe, my grandfather’s housekeeper for many years

longer than I had been on this earth, was standing in the open doorway, watching

us, one of her thick black eyebrows arched upward a good inch.

“I should like some tea, Mrs. Pringe,” I said, nodding to her. Mrs. Pringe was a

large lady, larger than Grandfather had been, and she always wore heavy

bombazine violet gowns. I could tell she didn’t want to leave, bless her. She’d

known both of us forever. She wanted to know what was going on. She wanted to

fix whatever was wrong. And she’d always scented when something was out of

kilter. I, naturally, had a very good idea why Peter was here and why he was

angry, but still, I figured I had the right of first hearing, without Mrs.

Pringe hovering with pursed lips and patting hands.

But Peter just stood there, staring at me as if I were a soldier in his unit and

I had sent my bayonet through a friend rather than a foe. Too handsome for his

own good, Grandfather had always said. Too much hair, more than a young man

needs or deserves, he would howl. There was no justice in life, none at all.

Grandfather had lost most of his hair six months shy of his fortieth year.

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