Chapter 12 – Grant
W ives are mysterious… and vexing.
“Sorry,” she murmurs, sweeping her finger over my lip before she flees.
Why the hell is she sorry? One little kiss and it set off a fresh tidal wave of tingling want humming through my body, leaving only the fading scent of peaches in its wake.
Sitting back down at my desk, I idly spin the gold band around my left ring finger a few times. Why does she vex me so? And, why was I so damned pleased to see her wearing her band even with orange paint chips under her unpolished nails?
Reflecting on the conversation with Lincoln, I know Daisy did her best to play her part despite my cousin’s probing questions and my own complete failure to prepare her for it. But, a new cashmere sweater didn’t hide the cheap bag, filthy sneakers or lack of an engagement ring from his sharp eyes. I’ll have to prepare her better for New Year’s so she won’t be the proverbial lamb getting thrown to the wolves.
Nothing could’ve prepared me for her tears though. I knew at once why and I would’ve crushed Lincoln for causing them if I hadn’t been more concerned with comforting Daisy. How strange that her tears should leave me so uneasy or that the simple act of comforting my wife should be so unexpectedly fulfilling.
The afternoon passes in a blur of uselessness when there’s a knock on my door. I have no clue where the time has gone. I only know it’s nearly time to make the drive to Napa and spend some time with her. Why does that notion make my heart beat faster? “Come in.”
It’s not Hadley as expected but Dean. I suppose I have another interrogation due. “I heard Lincoln was here.”
“Remember him fondly from school, do you?” Lincoln was a grade above Dean and two above me. Him and his friends thought themselves the lords of the academy but Dean was never intimidated by them.
“Not particularly. Grant, are you alright?”
“Why shouldn’t I be?”
“Come on. You barely told me about your grandfather’s passing. You didn’t even take a single day away from work to mourn. Then, after swearing you would never marry, you drop that news on us after the meeting earlier.”
“My grandfather had been preparing me for his passing for over a year.” Linus was delighted to inform me of his condition regarding matrimony last summer. I’d been so cocky assuming I’d find a way out of it at the time. “Work fills the time and distracts me. Does that suffice as a method for dealing with grief?”
Dean huffs impatiently at my avoidance. He never would allow me to evade my feelings in peace. “I suppose for men like us it does. What about your wife? I’m sorry I missed meeting her. My own wife has told me she was working here until recently.”
“What of it? Your wife is still our employee.”
“Yes but… Was she really a janitor?”
“Yes, she was. What of it?” He raises an eyebrow and I know my bluff is being called. Grant Barclay marrying a cleaning girl? The press will have a field day with that if I’m not careful. “The terms of the will stipulated that I marry without a prenuptial agreement in order to inherit the estate. I'm married and there is no prenup. We have made another arrangement.”
“A marriage of convenience,” Dean sighs. “Grant…”
“I had to get married before my next birthday. I’ve been trying to find a way out of the will for months and then I wasted more time dating a slew of women I didn’t want and couldn’t think of something better, alright?”
“Okay, I know you didn’t have a lot of time but-”
“I didn’t. But, I’m sure Tabitha has also informed you that Daisy’s a lovely girl. You’ll meet her at the ball with the others in a couple of weeks and I’m sure you’ll find her… uniquely charming.” A smile tugs at the corners of my mouth thinking that phrase sums Goldilocks up perfectly.
“Very well,” Dean says with an appraising look. “You do know I only ask these things as your friend, right?”
“Yes, yes. If you would be so kind, would you ask your wife where mine might find a suitable gown for the ball? Daisy seemed a little concerned over the matter when I mentioned it.”
He smirks as if I’ve said something amusing. “I will though I guarantee Tabitha will have more than a shop to recommend when I do.”
“Perhaps it’s best to leave it then,” I grumble with dawning realization. Worse than a sewing circle, they’ll descend to whisk her away and quiz her about our marriage and, if Grace has blabbed, the Well-Dressed Man purchase.
He turns to go but stops in the doorway. “As a newly married man, I hope you’re working on that, Grant.”
“Working on what?”
“Taking down that wall you’ve meticulously maintained around your heart for so long.”
“A heart of stone, Granite Grant. Wasn’t that the nickname for me at school?”
“I never should’ve repeated it.”
“We were only boys,” I say with a shrug.
“I still shouldn’t have said it. Look, you don’t have to open up to me but your wife, even one of convenience, is another matter. I hope you know that.”
Do I? Suddenly anxious to know what other advice a happily married man might give me, I nearly call him back. Instead, I grab my coat to make my way home to her.
∞∞∞
A wreck on I-80 made the commute twice as long and it’s grown dark when I reach the estate. Thunder rolls in the distance and the first fat drops are falling as I pull up to the front of the house.
“Master Grant, your wife said you’d be home this evening,” Mrs. Keating says affably as I enter, taking my coat and swatting at the droplets of rain covering it.
If I give her half a chance, she’ll be after my damp hair with a towel next. My grandmother died three years before my mother and no one came close to mothering me after they had passed except Theodosia. She tried her best with a willful, wounded boy who never wanted to know love and loss like that again.
“A thunderstorm this late in the year, can you imagine? I’ve put a kettle on if you wish for tea…” She prattles on, the homiest part of this so-called home, until I tell her no tea for me and ask of Daisy. “The dear was busy working in your study all afternoon and then she said she felt the need to paint for a spell.”
“Begging the interruption but Luis said she wanted to see the ducks first,” the cook says, joining us.
“The ducks?”
“Yes, sir. Visits them at their pond every morning and every evening. She’s still trying to make friends with the swans but they’re a difficult sort.”
My wife makes friends with waterfowl? “She’s not still outdoors, is she?” I ask the women.
“Oh, I shouldn’t think so. Likely upstairs in your quarters.”
“Or, still working in your study perhaps.”
“She is neither place,” a crisp voice says from behind us. “Good evening, Mr. Barclay.”
“Ah, Radcliffe, hello. How have things been?”
Though he’s stuffy and unpleasant at times, the estate manager is an honest sort. Linus held him in high esteem though I recall Rat Fink Fisher getting me in trouble a few times as a boy with all that honesty of his.
I note the way Mrs. Keating’s mouth immediately draws up in displeasure. They never were friends but there’s far too much for her to deal with on her own and the man has always dealt efficiently with the estate as a whole.
Come to think of it, I never did hire a full-time maid as planned to help Theodosia. No, you married her instead.
“Very well, all things considered, though I fear I must contradict Theodosia and Jenna, sir. I last spotted Mrs. Barclay on her way to the winery.”
“The winery?” I repeat as a crack of thunder fills the night. It’s quite a walk from here, well past the duck pond.
“Yes, sir. Carrying paints and an easel in her arms as she went.”
“I wouldn’t worry,” Mrs. Keating says as Radcliffe heads on his way. “I’m sure Mrs. Barclay is upstairs readying for bed by now.”
“I’m sure she is,” Jenna agrees. “If you don’t mind, sir, we’ll head to the cottage before it starts to really come down.”
“Of course, take care along the walkway,” I tell them before turning to go upstairs.
But, a bad feeling leaves me unsurprised to find the bedroom empty though it is decidedly more lived-in looking since I was last here. Clothes strewn over a sitting chair, another bowl with stray popcorn kernels on the dresser, a damp towel hanging by the shower and her intoxicating fragrance in the bath.
I spy a stack of canvases by the bay window. Good God, what has she been doing with them? Those aren’t landscapes. They’re just wild swirls of color as though she’s been rubbing the paint on instead of using a brush. There are even a few traces of paint on the carpet. We must find her a proper location for this activity, especially if it’s going to be so messy.
On the nightstand, I see a pair of batteries. Hmm… Sure enough, in the drawer, I find Mad Maximus hiding out. “Pink bastard,” I grumble, deciding the thing would be better stored in the wastebasket.
As I gingerly pick it up though, I catch the faint hint of peaches again. It smells of her and why should that make my cock harden and my mouth salivate?
Because this toy has been inside my wife.
“She’s my fucking wife, Max. Your buzzing days are done.”
But, before I can commit vibratorcide, another loud crack of thunder draws my attention to the rain lashing against the window panes.
Hurrying down to the study, I find no wife waiting in her sumptuous little nothing to tempt me. Instead, there’s a stack of index cards covered with flowing handwriting in purple ink. Grant’s Birthday, Grant’s Favorite Getaway, Grant’s Favorite Movie are written as a question on one side of the top three cards. The other side of each is blank.
She really is making flash cards for us? I was joking when I said that but… Christ, it’s so sweet that she would do that. I suppose I’m to give the answers for these but I can’t think of a single movie’s title when all I want is to find my wife.
Flipping through the stack of flash cards, I find the first one that refers to Daisy. What is my biggest fear?
The answer lies on the other side and my pulse spikes reading it – Thunderstorms.
Dashing down the winding path, I call her name, growing more and more soaked and angry over this foolishness. If she’s afraid of a damned storm, why wasn’t she in the house like a sensible being?
Because she’s not entirely sensible , I grumble internally in soggy, and likely ruined, loafers.
Reaching the barn-like structure where grapes were once turned to wine, I shove open the door to find my wife, wide-eyed and frightened, huddled beside the old destemmer machine with an equally frightened looking duckling in her lap.
I take one step toward them… right before I’m attacked by an enormous feathered fury.