Page 61

MY HOME IS WHERE THE HEART IS

Eliza was awoken by her husband’s kiss. She opened her eyes to watch him tousled-haired and naked walk away from her to pour out two glasses of champagne.

He carried them back to their bed, the wine sparkling in the slanting morning light.

As he crossed the room through shafts of early sun, she thought him as beautiful as Orpheus on his return from the Underworld.

She laughed, still amazed at her good fortune in being loved by him.

Words bubbled unbidden to her mind: I love, I am loved, he is mine.

Raven passed Eliza a glass and she asked, ‘What are we celebrating, my lord?’

‘Shame on you for not remembering.’

‘Well it’s ten months since we married, ten months since we made Hartfield Castle our home. Is that what we’re marking?’

He had climbed back into bed. ‘No! We’re celebrating the first time I kissed you, when the world stopped turning and I asked you to marry me. You, of course, were more concerned about bringing your great horse with you. Do you recall, my daring wild countess?’

‘I think I might need a reminder,’ Eliza said with a giggle as she handed back her champagne.

He put both glasses down and took his wife into his arms. ‘Well, madam, you know by now I don’t need to be asked twice.’ His hand then reached up for Mr Fox, sitting beady-eyed on Eliza’s side of the bed, and he stuffed the small creature under the pillow.

‘Rav, what are you doing?’ Eliza murmured.

Her noble husband chuckled. ‘I don’t think we need an audience, do you?’ and he began to trace her fine collarbone with an increasingly insistent series of kisses.

* * *

Lying later with Eliza in his arms in the blissful warmth of the marital bed, Raven Purfoy idly circled a finger through the pale damp fronds of the hair that framed his wife’s face and murmured, ‘I’m ashamed to admit how it thrills me to hear you call me my lord in circumstances such as this.

I have been called so all my life by everyone from the under-gardener to the Prince of Wales.

It has meant very little. However, when your sweet voice whispers my lord when you’re in my arms, it sends a jolt through my blood and quickens my spirit. How say you, my lady?’

Eliza’s head was resting on his shoulder and she reached up to further ruffle his hair, already tousled from the night.

How much she liked to see him unbuttoned and undone from the immaculate figure he usually presented to the world.

But she had not fully exorcised the ghosts.

A small tremor went through her body as she said, ‘Why does such happiness make me afraid?’

She watched his smiling eyes narrow and grow serious. ‘Afraid? My bold, brave countess who can gallop without a saddle and leap from a speeding horse? Surely not?’

‘Physical danger does not scare me. There is a beginning and an end to that. But the thought of loss of someone I love more than life threatens pain that does not cease: it fills me with despair.’

‘But Eliza, we have each other. We can face anything together.’ He pulled her to him, fierce with the force of his feelings.

‘But what if I lost you?’ Her voice was barely audible, muffled by his embrace.

‘You will never lose me. I’m not going anywhere.’ He gave her a gentle shake. ‘Come on, Lady Purfoy. The day has long begun. We have horses to ride, an estate to run.’

At breakfast, Raven looked at Eliza with a smile, his dark eyes soft and shining in the morning light.

‘It seems my whole existence has been in expectation of this. There was a fated pattern, not that I recognised it before you burst into my ordered life. If only I had known that solitary path I trod was just the prelude, that a greater love than I had ever dreamed possible was there for me.’

Eliza reached for his hand. ‘I’m so glad, dearest Rav, you eventually realised something I’d always known.

I’m afraid once I’d seen you, there was no other possible ending to our story.

’ She was watching him, her violet-grey and greenish eyes looking all the more witchy in the soft light reflected off the pale sandstone of the castle walls.

‘And how strange our fates one late windy night should cross only because you were driving too fast and in your cups.’ Her voice was teasing and she lobbed a piece of currant bun at him.

He laughed. ‘You never tire of reminding me what a bad horseman I was that night.’ Then he turned serious. ‘’Tis true I resisted the inevitable. I allowed the past to write the present. But then I am but a mere man and have not the wisdom and soul of a woman.’

Eliza got to her feet and settled in his lap. ‘You could never be a mere man, my lord.’ She gently tweaked his elegant nose. ‘And despite a couple of aberrations, you’re really a first-rate horseman.’

‘Well, I thank you for that lukewarm accolade. At least I’m good at the truly important things, don’t you agree?’

‘Oh yes! Very good indeed.’ Their eyes met, their gazes burning with such an intensity of emotion that Eliza caught her breath as Raven Purfoy’s arm tightened round her waist. Their heads were close together, his dark, hers so fair, her mass of hair loosely gathered into a bun; they recognised so well the energy that crackled between them.

When he kissed her she murmured, ‘Not again, not now, my lord. The sun is up…’

‘What’s the sun got to do with anything?’ he asked just as there was a knock on the door. Eliza climbed out of his lap as Farrow, the Purfoy butler, entered bearing a letter.

‘Oh look, it’s from America!’ She gave a little shriek, sat down and proceeded to read it.

Looking up, her face alight, she said, ‘Rose is going to marry Mr Flynn! What wonderful news. Oh no! She has been involved in an accident with a runaway cart on a street in New York. But she says Zadoc was excessively attentive and affectionate to her.’ Eliza looked up, a triumphant expression on her face.

‘You see, some men do marry their mistresses!’

‘Well, Flynn’s enough of a blockhead to do so, certainly!’

Eliza crumpled her linen napkin into a ball and threw it at him, laughing. ‘Shame on you, Rav! I would have been your mistress if it had been the only way to keep you close!’

‘Oh! You only tell me now that I could have had all that I desire of you without signing over my horses, my estates, my heart, my soul! Perhaps it’s me who is the fool?’

Eliza ignored him as she read further, then looking up, she had tears in her eyes. ‘There’s going to be a little Flynn.’

‘Well, it’s the least of what he deserves. A sprig to plague him all his days!’

Eliza frowned and grew serious. ‘Rav, you know you say that you have a great deal of sympathy for King Herod. It is a joke, isn’t it?’

Lord Purfoy snorted. ‘No! It’s not a joke.

Look how having cubs has ruined Corinna and Alick, the two best, most entertaining friends I have.

They are forever listening out for the wailing cry, interrupting the best dinners to rush off to feed the squaller.

Really can’t see the joy in ’em until they’ve left school, perhaps, and can be thought of as fully human. ’

‘Rav! You are funning, I know.’ She was not as certain as she sounded but continued, ‘We have Corinna and Alick due to stay next week, and they’re bringing Emma and baby John. Ferdy’s coming later in the week. I’m so looking forward to seeing them all again!’

Her husband disappeared behind his newspaper.

Eliza looked at him, wondering if this was the time to raise something that thrilled her so much she was barely able to keep it to herself, but feared it would not be such welcome news to him. ‘My lord, I have something more to impart, I hope not distressing to you.’

Raven put down his paper and gave her a quizzical look. ‘What now, sweet wife? You’ve discovered more disreputable relations? Another stolen inheritance that needs to be restored to you? No, wait! A tribe of travelling circus people need a home and you’ve decided there’s space enough here?’

Eliza smiled. ‘No, but they’re all possible I suppose.’

‘What then can be more distressing?’

She took a breath and said with a rueful expression on her face, ‘I know you’re not a man who sees himself as a father, but I’m afraid you may have to get used to the idea. I hope this is not too much of a shock?’

Eliza was full of trepidation and closely watched his face. The smile did not fade from his face and eyes; in fact, it became warmer, more delighted. He was on his feet and pulled her up into his arms. ‘Is this true? How long have you known?’

‘Just a few weeks. So you’re not shocked?’

He laughed with amusement and in his drawling voice she loved so well said, ‘My darling Eliza, how can I be shocked? I’m man of the world enough to know that when a man and a woman love each other as much and as often as we do, this is the kind of thing that happens. ’ He held her close in his embrace.

‘But all your talk of Herod?’

‘Well, ’tis true, I’m not very keen on other people’s squallers, but I shall be positively devoted to our own.’ He was grinning with happiness as he lifted her face to meet his gaze and said, ‘And my estates are not entailed so whether we have a daughter or son, our child will inherit.’

‘So no future suitors are going to have to take to the hazard table ever again to right a wrong?’

‘I should hope not!’

‘I was afraid to tell you because by your talk, the advent of a child was ruination to a marriage.’

‘Oh no, Eliza, I just didn’t want you to fear I’d only married you as a brood mare, to provide my heir. I wanted you to know that you alone were more than enough for me.’ He kissed her and they leaned together, fingers interlaced, absorbing the profound change about to happen in their lives.