The Countess Page 0,63

thing she thought she'd ever seen.

"There. Is this better?" he asked, pausing beside the window and turning so that he was sideways to it. Christiana cleared her throat to remove the laughter lodged there and made herself fol ow him across the room. She then bent and peered at his behind.

"Oh! There it is," she said, reaching out to brush a finger over the mark. It was a pale red or dark pink-colored splotch on his left butt cheek as Langley had said. "It's not real y a strawberry though, is it? It's more the shape of a rosebud. Langley said it was - "

"My lady? Your sisters are - Oh, dear Lord."

Christiana straightened abruptly and turned toward the connecting door that she'd left open and Daniel hadn't closed. Grace now stood in the entrance, eyes wide as she took in the portrait of the two of them by the window. A moment of silence passed as Christiana tried to think of something to say and then the maid started to withdraw, mumbling an apology that died abruptly as she spotted the body on the bed. Her gaze slid from the body in the bed to the man behind Christiana and back and she breathed, "Oh, dear Lord," again.

"I can explain everything," Christiana said at once, and hurried toward the woman. Hearing a resigned sigh and the rustle of clothing behind her, she glanced over her shoulder to see Richard looking exasperated as he pul ed up his pants and did them up. She supposed between her discovering the body, her demand to see his bottom and Grace's discovering the body, the man was having something of a difficult morning. Christiana could sympathize, she'd been having a difficult year and it didn't look as if things were going to get any easier in the near future.

Chapter Eleven

So," Grace said the moment Christiana finished her explanations and fel silent.

"Your marriage to Dicky-George wasn't legal, because it was Richard Fairgrave, Earl of Radnor on the marital contract and George was just impersonating Richard when he signed the papers?"

"I think that's probably true," Christiana admitted.

"But you've now consummated that il egal marriage to Dicky-George with Dicky-Richard . . . Does that make the marriage to Dicky-Richard legal now?

Or . . ." Grace let the words trail off, but then she didn't have to say it, Christiana knew what she was asking. Was she now legal y married to Richard or was she a fal en woman in a sham of a marriage with a dead man who hadn't been who he claimed to be?

Real y, Christiana thought, she'd believed she had problems when Richard had come walking into the bal and she'd thought Dicky resurrected, but it just kept getting more and more complicated, the problems mounting up one atop the other. Clearing her throat, she said, "I do not think so, though Richard may let it stand. He wishes to see how wel we deal together before he decides."

Grace snorted with disgust. "He apparently felt you dealt wel enough together last night when he consummated the marriage his brother got him into."

"Yes, wel , that may have been my fault," Christiana admitted, flushing hotly. "I was trying to see his strawberry and . . . er . . ."

"And fel on his pole?" Grace asked dryly.

"Grace!" Christiana cried with shock.

"Wel , listen to yourself trying to take the blame," the maid said impatiently. "You were an untried girl ere last night, the blood on the sheets proves that. And you were inebriated as wel . And you thought him your husband while he knew otherwise," she added grimly. "You are the innocent in this. It's those two in the next room at fault for al that has occurred."

"She's right."

Christiana swung around to see a grim-faced Richard in the connecting doorway to the master bedroom. He'd agreed to wait in the master bedroom while she explained the situation to Grace, but had apparently grown impatient. Christiana bit her lip as he now crossed the room toward them, worried that he might take Grace to task for what some would consider overstepping in even asking questions. However, Grace had been a member of her household al her life. While she was her maid, she was also like family to her. Christiana loved the older woman, and knew that love and caring was returned. It was the only reason the woman felt she could be so free with her tongue. Fortunately, Richard seemed