Marrying His Cinderella Countess

‘It looks like a great deal more than that.’ Ellie could see a stack of notebooks, bristling with markers. ‘Cousin Blake makes you work exceedingly hard.’

‘And he makes me work exceedingly hard in return,’ Blake countered dryly. ‘Did you imagine that earls sat around all day, reading?’

‘No. I imagined that they spent most of their time enjoying themselves,’ she admitted, surprised into frankness.

‘I do—when I am allowed to escape.’ He cast her a sardonic glance. ‘I do all the things you imagine, Cousin Eleanor. All the things that put that judgmental expression on your face. Clubs, sporting events, my tailor, hatter and bootmaker. Social events, the opera, the theatre, gaming. A positive whirl of dissipation.’

Mr Wilton snorted. ‘Are you attempting to paint yourself as an idle rake to Miss Lytton? Should I not mention the House of Lords, your charity boards, investors’ meetings?’

‘It will do no good, Jon. My new cousin considers me to be an idle rake already. I have no need to paint myself as one.’

‘I am quite prepared to believe that you work as hard at your duties and responsibilities as you do at your pleasure, Cousin Blake. It is merely that I imagine you have to consider no one else while pursuing those occupations.’

‘I am selfish, in other words?’ Those dark brows were rising dangerously.

How had she allowed herself to be tempted into saying what she thought? She should be meek and mild and quiet—so quiet that he forgot she was there, if possible. An apology and a rapid return to the details of the North African date harvest was called for.

‘If the cap fits, my lord,’ Ellie retorted, chin up, ignoring common sense. ‘How pleasant not to be responsible for a single soul.’

Mr Wilton opened his mouth, presumably in order to enumerate his lordship’s friends, staff, tenants and charitable beneficiaries.

Blake silenced him with an abrupt gesture of his hand. ‘It is,’ he agreed, with a charming smile that did nothing to disguise the layers of ice beneath.

Stop it, she told herself. He will put you off at the next inn if you keep provoking him.

She was not even quite sure why she was doing it, other than the fact that it was curiously stimulating, almost exciting—which was inexplicable. Rationally, yes, he had been thoughtless in ignoring Francis’s plea for his time and attention. And, yes, he had behaved outrageously—stripping off like that, provoking that unpleasant Crosse man to the point of violence. But she could not pretend that she was devastated at Francis’s death, that she had loved her stepbrother, and Blake had done all she might have asked afterwards.

Just as he would have done whoever Francis’s relatives had been.

He did not help for your sake, whispered an inner voice—the one she always assumed was her common sense. He thinks you are plain, argumentative and of no interest. Which is true. He is helping because his conscience as a gentleman tells him to—and because it happens not to be desperately inconvenient for him. Just because you have been daydreaming about him, and just because you want to put him in your novel, that does not mean he has the slightest interest in you. You should try and be a nicer person. Ladylike.

After that mental douche of cold water she picked up her notebook. Perhaps she should start by being nicer to Oscar. Perhaps he might be treated to a marvellous banquet tonight. What would there be to eat...?

One of the travel books she had read contained several accounts of food, so she put together all the dishes that particularly appealed. Roast kid, couscous—which sounded delicious—exotic fish, pungent cheeses, flatbreads. Pomegranate juice, sherbets, honey cakes...

Her pencil flew over the pages.

* * *

They stopped for the night at Aynho, a Northamptonshire village Ellie had never heard of. It was built of golden stone and had an exceedingly fine inn, the George, which Mr Wilton had selected for them.

She was ushered to the room she would share with Polly and found it large, clean and comfortable. A bath had been ordered and would arrive directly, she was told, and dinner would be served in the private parlour at seven. Would Miss Lytton care for a cup of tea?

‘We both would,’ she said gratefully. ‘I could become very accustomed to this,’ she remarked to Polly as the inn’s maid hurried out after setting a very large bathtub behind a screen.

‘Me too, miss.’

Polly was soon answering the door to another maid with the tea tray. She set it on a side table and they both sat and gazed happily at dainty sandwiches and fingers of cake.

‘But we must not. I do hope I will be able to continue to employ you, Polly, and that you will want to stay with me, but I have no idea what we are going to find in Lancashire or how far I can make my money stretch. The house may be half a ruin, for all I know.’

‘We’ll manage,’ Polly said stoutly, around a mouthful of cress sandwich. ‘It’s in the country—we can have a garden and grow vegetables, keep chickens and a pig, perhaps.’

‘Of course,’ Ellie said.

It was her duty to give a clear, confident lead to anyone in her employ, she knew that, but it was very tempting to wail that the only useful thing she knew how to do was to write children’s books and she had not the slightest idea how to look after chickens. Pigs she refused even to think about.

I am an educated, intelligent woman. There are books on everything. I will learn how to do all this, she told herself firmly, choosing a second cake for courage.

The hot water arrived and she persuaded Polly to take one end of the big tub while she took the other. It was a squash, with both of them having to fold in with their knees under their chins, but she could not see why her maid should have to make do with a washbasin and cloth while she wallowed in hot water.

Fashionable ladies would faint with horror at such familiarity, she was certain, but she was not a fashionable lady, after all.

‘May I ask a question, miss?’ Polly was pink in the face from the contortions necessary to wash between her toes.

‘Of course, although I won’t promise to answer it.’

‘Why don’t you like his lordship? I think he’s ever so lovely.’

‘Polly!’

‘Well, he is,’ the girl said stubbornly. ‘He’s good-looking and rich and he’s got nice manners and he’s taking us all this way in style. That Mr Wilton’s nice too.’

‘Lord Hainford could have prevented Sir Francis’s death,’ Ellie said coldly, and Polly, snubbed, bit her lip and carried on rinsing the soap off her arms in silence.

And I should forgive him. It is the right thing to do. He has made amends as best he can, so why is it so difficult? It was an accident, just as he said.

She would be in close proximity with Lord Hainford for at least another three days. She really must learn to be easy with him, she told herself.

* * *

It was not until they were sitting around the table in the private parlour, Ellie and the two men—Polly was taking her supper in the kitchens—that she realised what it was that made her react to Blake as she did. This was not about Francis, nor about Blake’s character.

She could forgive him for ignoring Francis that night—for failing to suppress her stepbrother’s expensive obsession with him. Francis had had a thick skin and it would probably have needed physical violence to turn him away from his admiration. And he had been infuriatingly self-centred and tactless—it would not have occurred to him that interrupting the game with a demand to discuss his own affairs was unmannerly and deserved a snub.

She could forgive and she could understand. That was not the problem. It was not Blake. It was her.

She was frightened of him in a way that went far beyond the straightforward fear of what a man might do to a lone woman without protectors. There was that, of course. There was always that whenever a man came close enough to touch, whenever she was cornered with a man between her and the door. That was her secret fear. and understanding why she felt like that was no help at all in conquering it.

But she desired this man—found him deeply attractive—and had done so from the moment she had seen him. It was irrational to feel like that, she knew. Even if she was not crippled by her anxieties she was crippled in fact—and plain with it—and he would never spare her a glance under normal circumstances. For men like him women like her did not exist. They were not servants and they were not eligible girls or members of the society in which he existed. Spinsters, those to be pitied for their failure to attract a man, were invisible.

Before she had met him it had been safe to keep Blake in her daydreams. But now, for him, for a few days, she did exist. She was a constant presence day and night, from breakfast to dinner. What if he could tell how she felt? What if her pitiful desire showed in her eyes?

And it was pitiful—because she was determined to manage her own life, to live a full and independent existence, earn money. Be happy. This wretched attraction was a weakness she must fight to overcome. It was merely physical, after all—like hunger or thirst.

‘You look very determined, Eleanor,’ Blake remarked. ‘Claret?’ He lifted the bottle and tipped it towards her glass, holding it poised as he waited for her answer.

He had called her by her first name without even the fictitious Cousin.

‘Yes.’ The agreement was startled out of her and he poured the wine before she could collect her wits and refuse it. ‘Yes, I am looking determined. I was thinking about pigs.’

Mr Wilton blinked at her over the rim of his wine glass. ‘Pigs, Miss Lytton? Not present company, I trust?’

‘Raising pigs. Or a pig. And chickens. I should have thought of it before and bought books on the subject before I left London. But Lancaster is certain to have a circulating library.’

‘Forgive my curiosity, Eleanor,’ Blake drawled, ‘but why should you need to know about raising livestock?’

‘To eat. Eggs and ham and bacon and lard. I must learn about vegetables as well.’

When both men continued to look at her as though she was speaking Greek—which she supposed they would probably comprehend rather better than talk of chicken-keeping—she explained. ‘I must make my resources stretch as far as possible. Polly suggested a vegetable garden and poultry.’

‘Eleanor, you are a gentlewoman—’

‘Who has not, my lord, made you free with her name.’

‘What is the harm? I make you free with mine, and Jonathan, I am sure, will do likewise. We have been thrown together for several days in close company—can we not behave like the cousins we pretend to be? I promise you may “my lord” me from the moment you step out of the carriage at your new front gate, and I will be lavish with the “Miss Lyttons.”’

‘Has anyone ever told you that you have an excessive amount of sheer gall, my... Blake?’

‘I am certain that they frequently think it, Eleanor, although they are usually polite enough to call it something else.’

‘Charm, presumably,’ she said, and took an unwise sip of the wine. ‘Oh.’

‘It is not to your taste?’

‘It is like warm red velvet and cherries and the heart of a fire!’ She took another sip. She had meant to leave it strictly alone, but this was ambrosia.

‘Are you a poet, Eleanor?’

‘No, a—’

She’d almost said a writer, but bit her tongue. He might ask her what she wrote, and she could imagine his face when she admitted to the ghastly Oscar and his equally smug sister. As for her desire to write a novel—that would be a dangerous admission indeed. She could just picture the scene: her, after a glass of this wickedly wonderful wine, blurting out that Blake was the hero of her desert romance. He would either laugh himself sick or he be utterly furious. Neither was very appealing, although she thought she would probably prefer fury to mockery.

‘A mere amateur at poetry,’ she prevaricated. Which was true. Her attempts at verse were strictly limited to the moon-June-swoon level of doggerel. ‘But words are dangerously tempting, are they not?’

‘All temptation should be dangerous,’ Blake said. ‘Otherwise it is merely self-indulgence. May I carve you some of this beef?’

‘Self-indulgences can be dangerous, surely?’ Jonathan passed her the plate and followed it with a dish of peas. ‘In fact most of them are—even if it’s merely over-indulgence in sweet things. Before one knows it one is entrapped in corsets, like poor Prinny, or all one’s teeth go black and fall out.’

‘Not a danger for any of us around this table,’ Blake remarked, carving more beef and then passing the potatoes to Ellie.

She wondered if that was a snide remark about her skinniness. Her mother had been used to saying, with something like despair, that she would surely grow some curves with womanhood—and she had indeed begun to just before Mama had died. But they’d seemed to disappear in the general misery afterwards, when she’d so often forgotten to eat properly. At least that had made it easier to be inconspicuous...

‘Some bread sauce and gravy?’ Jonathan passed the two dishes, one glossy with butter, the other rich and brown. ‘And will you take more vegetables, Eleanor?’

‘Thank you, no. I have only a small appetite.’

They devoted themselves to their food for a while. The beef was good, and the two men clearly close enough friends not to feel the need to talk of nothing simply to fill a silence that felt companionable to Ellie. They were attentive to her needs, but when their conversational sallies were met by monosyllabic replies they seemed comfortable with her reticence.

‘Where is our next destination?’ she asked, when Blake began to carve more beef.

‘Cannock, I hope. It is a village north of Birmingham and about another seventy miles from here.’

‘A long day, then. At what hour do you wish to take breakfast?’

‘Would seven be too early for you, Eleanor?’

‘Not at all.’ She was usually up by six on most mornings, hoping to get at least an hour to write before the house came to life. ‘But I will retire now, if you will excuse me?’

‘No dessert? This apple pie looks good, and there is thick cream.’

‘Delicious, I am sure. But, no, thank you.’

Besides anything else, her life was not going to hold much in the way of roast beef and thick cream in the future, so best not to get used to them now.

The men stood as she did, and Blake walked across the parlour to open her bedchamber door, which was uncomfortable. She heard his footsteps retreat back to the table as she turned the key and then lifted a small chair and wedged it under the door handle.

‘Isn’t the lock sound, miss?’ Polly was shaking out their nightgowns.

‘I expect so. But it is best not to take risks in strange buildings, I think.’

And not just strange ones. She had followed the same routine every night at home, rising in time to move the chair and unlock the door before Polly came to her room—another reason to rise at six. She had forgotten that the maid would be on her side of the door while they were travelling.

‘This seems very cosy. Did you have a good supper?’

Chapter Five

Blake listened to the low murmur of female voices from beyond the closed door as he settled back into his chair and reached for the cream jug to anoint the slice of pie that Jonathan had served him.

‘Eleanor doesn’t eat enough to keep a bird alive—no wonder she’s a beanpole,’ he said, keeping his voice down.

‘We make her nervous—which isn’t surprising.’ Jon finished his wine before tackling the pudding. ‘That might be what it is.’

‘She is bold enough when we are at a safe distance,’ Blake mused.

‘Probably she has had some unpleasant encounters with wandering hands in the past, or it is simply a maidenly aversion to masculinity,’ Jon suggested.

‘She damn nearly heaved me over her doorstep when I was there that first morning—although I suppose I was obviously in no state to offer her that sort of insult.’

The memory of Eleanor’s hasty retreat when it had become obvious that he could bandage his own wound, and her violent recoil when she had fallen against him and her hand had inadvertently touched his bare chest, seemed to confirm Jon’s opinion.

His body, hurting though it had been, had responded inexplicably to that touch, to that cool hand spread over his bare skin, and he had been glad when she had bolted from the room and left him to compose himself.

How laughable to be aroused by that—like some callow youth desperate for the touch of a woman...any woman. How very strange to recall the urge to wrap his arms around her, to hold her close. It hadn’t been sexual—more an instinct for comfort. He must have been in shock, because she was a most prickly female and he was not in need of...comfort.

That was definitely not something he was going to confide in Jonathan. He would never hear the last of it.

‘This is a decent claret. Let’s have another bottle.’

* * *

The next day was a repeat of the first. Ellie alternately read and wrote and gazed out of the window. Polly relaxed enough to put the dressing case down on the seat between herself and Jonathan and get out her tatting, and Blake and Jonathan worked, dozed and read.

No one teased anyone else, there were no hostile gibes—it was all remarkably comfortable, Blake thought. Positively domestic. He shook out the pages of the newspaper they had picked up at a stop in Birmingham and laughed at himself.

By noon the next day they were drawing to a halt in front of the Golden Crown inn in the middle of Stoke-on-Trent to take a light luncheon.

He watched Eleanor, worried again about how little she ate. Her lips, closing around the smooth, tight skin of a plum, were soft and pink and—

He jerked his gaze upwards and found those wide hazel eyes were focused on his face.

‘Have some more.’ He passed the bowl across. ‘They are very good.’

‘Thank you, no. I have had enough.’

In that steady gaze he could read discomfiture at his close attention and something else—something he could not identify. Or could he?

Blake found he was shifting uncomfortably in his chair, grateful for the all-concealing snowy expanse of tablecloth falling to his lap.

What? I am aroused by this woman? Damn it, celibacy—even for a few weeks—is really very bad for me indeed...

Jonathan cleared his throat and Blake jumped. So did Eleanor, who then gave herself an almost imperceptible little shake.

You too?

He almost said it out loud, then made a business of helping himself to fruit instead.

Well, why not?

Women had urges too, and those who said they did not had obviously had very little to do with women between the sheets. Just because a woman was on the shelf it did not mean that she was sexless. And Eleanor had too much dignity and reserve to make those kind of longings plain. If he had not lost himself in those rather lovely expressive eyes just now...

But it would be sensible to be wary. This business of chaperonage worked both ways—protecting men against scheming females just as much as it protected innocent girls from predatory men. That would be revenge for her stepbrother’s death indeed: entrapping the man she blamed for it into matrimony.

* * *

She would be delighted finally to arrive somewhere and be able to stop jolting around and living out of valises, Ellie concluded when they started off again.

She stared out of the windows as a succession of smoking chimneys, grimy streets and bulbous bottle kilns gave way to open fields. On the other hand, this was more comfortable than the stagecoach would have been, and much safer, and she was in no hurry to discover what awaited her in Lancashire.

Yesterday had been extraordinary. What had she seen in Blake’s eyes? Surely not desire? For her? There had been heat, and almost a question, rapidly followed by him diverting those penetrating grey eyes to a close study of a dish of apples.

If she was not a victim of her own torrid imagination then she ought to be wary. Very wary. And yet she could not feel threatened by him, and that was most strange. But then he had been at a safe distance, and she’d had her Dutch courage in the shape of a glass of wine.

The crack and the lurch came some twenty minutes after they had left the town, just as the coach turned a sharp corner going uphill.

For a second she thought the wheel had simply slipped into a rut, but then the lurch became a slide and the carriage tipped. There was a shout from the coachman, Polly’s piercing shriek, hands reaching for her—and then the world turned upside down as the whole vehicle fell over and all went black.

* * *

‘Stop screaming!’ Blake rasped, and the girl wedged against his side subsided into terrified gulps. Where the hell was Eleanor? Her silence was worse than the maid’s panic. ‘Polly? Polly, listen to me. I can’t turn over—something is on my back. Can you look up? Can you see the door?’

‘Yes...yes, my lord.’

‘Are you injured? Can you move? Climb out?’

‘It hurts...’ The whimper turned into a determined sniff. ‘Not anything broken, I don’t think. I can try. It’s Mr Wilton, my lord, over your back. He’s unconscious and his head’s bleeding.’ She sniffed again and her voice wavered. ‘Not...not spurting, my lord. I’ll try and wriggle past him.’

Blake braced himself against the pain the wriggling inflicted on him—the foot against his cheekbone, the pressure on his right shoulder that already felt as though it was on fire, the strain on his half-healed bullet wound.

Then Polly called, ‘I’m out, my lord.’

There were voices—she was talking to someone. Help would come. He made himself think—which was difficult with Jonathan’s dead weight pressing down on him.

Not dead, remember, he reassured himself. He’s bleeding, but not badly.

They must have slid down almost twenty feet of steep bank, he reckoned. But Eleanor...

She had been on his left side. Then he realised that the soft, yielding surface he was pressed down into was Eleanor’s body, and they were lying as close as lovers, as intimately as lovers, his pelvis wedged into the cradle of her thighs, his chest against her breasts.

Thank God—she’s breathing, he thought, his nose pressed into a mass of springing, lavender-scented hair. She smells delicious... She’s alive.

‘Eleanor, hang on—help is coming.’

For a moment he thought she was unconscious, and then—so suddenly that he jerked his head, banging it hard against something wooden—she heaved under him like a trapped, netted deer.

‘Get off me! Get off, get off, get off...!’

She sounded like a woman in a nightmare, fighting for her life, desperate, frantic.

‘Eleanor, it is me—Blake. I can’t move off you. I am sorry, but we’re trapped—just for a little while. Eleanor, lie still until help comes.’

He kept talking—repetition, reassurance, nonsense. She kept struggling. And then suddenly, with a sob that might have been sheer exhaustion, she lay still.

‘I can’t,’ she whispered. ‘Can’t fight...’

‘You don’t have to, Eleanor,’ he said, and found he was whispering too. ‘Don’t try and fight. Help will be here soon.’

Would it? It was very quiet outside. What if Polly had got out and then collapsed? Or Frederick, his coachman, was too badly injured to go for help? What if the horses were dead or had bolted?

Stop it. This is a well-travelled road. Someone will find us soon.

He scrabbled with his fingertips, found wood and braced himself, lifting his weight half an inch off Eleanor’s body.

‘I’ll make certain you get out safely,’ he promised.

Beneath him he could feel her vibrating like a taut wire, and he remembered a leveret he had found when he was a boy, lying still as death in its form in a wheat field. It had stared at him with the huge, mad eyes that hares had, but it hadn’t moved. Only when he’d lain his hand on it he’d been able to feel its heart pounding, feel the shivering vibration that racked it.