‘I’d currently come second in a foot race with a tortoise,’ he said ruefully, lowering himself onto the bench beside her. ‘You’ve totally transformed this garden. I barely recognised it.’
‘Restored, really, with a few innovations.’
‘The vineyard?’
‘Yes, that was my idea. I’m thinking of doing something with this expanse of unkempt wilderness too.’
‘I actually like it as it is. I used to climb the trees here, though they’ve grown a great deal taller since I last saw them.’
‘So tree-climbing runs in the family, then? The girls…’
‘You mentioned they liked to climb trees. An activity enjoyed by most children, I imagine—hardly an inherited trait.’
Which was perfectly true, Kate supposed, though why he felt the need to point it out quite so harshly! She folded her arms, refusing to be hurt.
‘I like this wilderness,’ Daniel said, breaking the silence in a more conciliatory tone. ‘A little chaos in the midst of order is no bad thing.’
‘Somehow I don’t think you’re referring to gardening.’
‘Perhaps not.’ He stretched out his legs in front of him. ‘When I was a boy I used to imagine this garden was a jungle, full of lions and tigers and even the odd elephant.’
‘When I first started working here it was so overgrown that there might well have been all three lurking in the undergrowth. Well, maybe not the elephants. Did you spend a great deal of time here?’
‘When I wanted to be alone—which was most of the time.’ He took the turquoise from his pocket and began to roll it between his fingers. ‘Sometimes it wasn’t a jungle but a tropical paradise, with palm trees. At other times that tree over there was the main mast of a sailing ship that I’d climb in the hope of spying land after weeks at sea. At others…’ He caught himself, shaking his head. ‘What nonsense.’
‘I think it’s fascinating. Even as a boy your ambition was to explore the world.’
‘My ambition was to be anywhere but here.’
‘And you fulfilled that ambition rather spectacularly.’
His expression hardened. ‘Only to come full circle.’
‘Only for three months, Daniel, it’s hardly a life sentence,’ Kate said. ‘You know, if I was the type to take offence, I rather think I would.’
‘You know perfectly well that it’s not you.’
No, it was Elmswood—the place he’d said the hounds of hell wouldn’t have been able to drag him to. Why did Daniel dislike Elmswood so vehemently?
‘You don’t think that Sir Marcus might relent?’ Kate asked.
Daniel was studying his hands, frowning heavily. There was a sheen of sweat on his brow. ‘Beneath Sir Marcus’s urbane veneer lies a ruthless streak. He left you feeling you had little choice, no doubt, other than to go along with his plan to facilitate my safe return to England.’ He lifted his head, smiling at her grimly. ‘Tell me, if you don’t mind, exactly how they recruited you.’
‘Sir Marcus and Lord Henry turned up out of the blue, just as they did today. I had no idea who they were. My first thought, as I’ve already told you, was that they might have some letters from you. When they announced, in the middle of tea and cake, that they had a grave matter to discuss with me, I thought they were going to tell me you were dead. It was almost a relief to hear that you were in a foreign prison, but it was also a huge shock. I couldn’t take it in.’
‘And I’m guessing they didn’t give you time to ask too many questions?’
‘No, they did not. They spent their time very effectively emotionally blackmailing me. I was left with the impression that if I did not co-operate you might well perish. They barely gave me time to pack and to offload Elmswood onto poor Estelle. It was only later that I began to think a little more rationally, and by then I was on my way to Portsmouth, under escort. The escort simply gazed at me blankly, no matter what I asked. I couldn’t understand the need for so much subterfuge and secrecy… Daniel, are you a spy?’
He gave a bark of laughter. ‘That’s a wildly romantic term for it. Not one, I’ll wager, that Sir Marcus used?’
‘No. He said that you’d got yourself into a “tricky situation” while assisting the government with some “sensitive business”. He said that they weren’t quite sure of your whereabouts, but that they planned to “extract you”—I am pretty sure those were his exact words—and they needed me to escort you home. I couldn’t make sense of it at first. Why had he used such language? Why couldn’t he simply have said that you were in gaol and they were going to get you out? But I reckon Sir Marcus would cut his tongue out rather than talk in such simple terms.’
‘Oh, believe me, he can call a spade a spade when required,’ Daniel said grimly. ‘What else did they hint at?’
‘They did say that you would be in a bad way when they brought you to me—though they did not say quite how bad.’ Kate shuddered. ‘I barely recognised you. You were so thin, and that beard you had…and your hair!’
‘To say nothing of the lice that were living in it. Did I look like some sort of cave man? I wonder if I’ll ever be able to bring myself to grow my hair again.’
‘I like it short. You have excellent bone structure.’
‘Thank you kindly, ma’am. Go on—what else?’
‘Their biggest worry was that once they had extracted you it might trigger some sort of diplomatic incident. In fact they seemed very concerned about that, and about your being recaptured too—because, they said, whatever you’d been involved in was in a very “warm” part of the world. I thought at first they meant the weather,’ Kate admitted ruefully.
‘Ha!’ Daniel shook his head. ‘Volatile is the word I’d have used, but I’m no diplomat.’
‘No, but you must have been very valuable to them for them to have risked so much to extricate you.’
Kate waited, but Daniel, unsurprisingly, had nothing to say to this.
‘So they didn’t want to lose you again, and they didn’t want anyone to know where you were,’ she continued. ‘It was important to get you home safely unnoticed, which is why they needed me. I mean, they knew you’d need nursing, and they were concerned that you might be indiscreet in your fevered state, so were reluctant to send a regular doctor. But the main point of my being there was to play Lady Elmswood, the dutiful wife, bringing home her sick explorer husband.’
‘So I was playing the Earl, was I?’ Daniel said, his lip curling. ‘I’m glad I was blissfully unaware of that.’
‘Well, it was a first for me to play the Countess, and though it wasn’t a role I thought I’d relish, any more than you, it did ease the journey considerably. I think I became rather good at it.’
Daniel laughed. ‘I can just see you, all five foot nothing of you, looking down that very nice little nose of yours and demanding service now!’
‘Well, that’s what I did,’ Kate said, willing her cheeks not to flush—because it was a very small compliment, really, and she was thirty-three, and thirty-three-year-old women did not blush. ‘I arrived in Cyprus via Paris, Marseilles, Lisbon, Naples and Athens—as I think I’ve told you, though you might have forgotten.’
‘I remember. Lady Elmswood’s lightning tour of Europe’s ports.’
‘They are also, with the exception of Marseilles, very popular with English