A proposal from the enigmatic earl

Plain, lame Ellie Lytton isn’t destined for marriage. She’s perfectly content being her stepbrother’s housekeeper... Until the high-handed Earl of Hainford arrives with shocking news—her stepbrother has been killed!

Ellie believes the earl is responsible for her plight and that he is duty bound to escort her on the journey to her new home. But soon Blake’s fighting an unwanted attraction to his argumentative companion... And when she needs protection, he determines he’ll keep her safe—by making Ellie his countess!

‘You really are the most extraordinary creature,’ Hainford said.

Ellie opened her mouth to deliver a stinging retort, and then realised that his lips were actually curved in a faint smile. The frown had gone too, as though he had puzzled her out.

‘So, not only am I a creature, and an extraordinary one, but I am also a source of amusement to you? Are you this offensive to every lady you encounter, or only the plain and unimportant ones?’

‘I feel like a hound being attacked by a field mouse.’

He scrubbed one hand down over his face, as though to straighten his expression, but his mouth, when it was revealed again, was still twitching dangerously near a smile.

‘I had no intention of being offensive, merely of matching your frankness.’

He made no reference to the plain and unimportant remark. Wise of him.

‘You are unlike any lady I have ever come across.’

‘But?’ Ellie held her breath.

Hainford looked up, the expression in his grey eyes either amused or resigned, or perhaps a little of both. ‘But I will do it. I will convey you to Lancashire.’

Author Note

Do you ever wonder where the ideas for a novel come from? I do too! Quite often they seem to appear mysteriously in my head—but occasionally I can trace at least some elements of a story back to its inspiration.

Marrying His Cinderella Countess was a marriage of more than my hero and heroine. I knew quite a lot about Ellie already, and I also knew just how Blake came to be injured at his club, but it took a little while to realise that the two of them belonged together. And then I went to the Romantic Novelists’ Association annual conference at one of Lancaster University’s rural campuses, built around an old farmstead. The lovely farmhouse had become part of the dining hall, and after several days of eating my lunch outside its front door I began to wonder who had lived there.

It was when I imagined Ellie there that the parts of this story all fitted at last. I hope you enjoy Blake and Ellie’s tale—and if you are thinking about visiting Lancashire I can promise that it really doesn’t rain all the time. That was 1816, which was not a good year for the weather!

Marrying His Cinderella Countess

Louise Allen

www.millsandboon.co.uk

LOUISE ALLEN loves immersing herself in history. She finds landscapes and places evoke the past powerfully. Venice, Burgundy and the Greek islands are favourite destinations. Louise lives on the Norfolk coast and spends her spare time gardening, researching family history or travelling in search of inspiration. Visit her at louiseallenregency.co.uk, @LouiseRegency and janeaustenslondon.com.

Books by Louise Allen

Mills & Boon Historical Romance

The Herriard Family

Forbidden Jewel of India

Tarnished Amongst the Ton

Surrender to the Marquess

Lords of Disgrace

His Housekeeper’s Christmas Wish

His Christmas Countess

The Many Sins of Cris de Feaux

The Unexpected Marriage of Gabriel Stone

Brides of Waterloo

A Rose for Major Flint

Stand-Alone Novels

Once Upon a Regency Christmas

‘On a Winter’s Eve’

Marrying His Cinderella Countess

Visit the Author Profile page

at millsandboon.co.uk for more titles.

MILLS & BOON

Before you start reading, why not sign up?

Thank you for downloading this Mills & Boon book. If you want to hear about exclusive discounts, special offers and competitions, sign up to our email newsletter today!

SIGN ME UP!

Or simply visit

signup.millsandboon.co.uk

Mills & Boon emails are completely free to receive and you can unsubscribe at any time via the link in any email we send you.

For AJH. You know why.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Author Note

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Excerpt

Copyright

Chapter One

London, May 1816

As the burning ball of the sun sinks into the shimmering azure of the Mediterranean and the soft breezes cool the heat of the day I lie in the cushioned shade of the tent, awaiting the return of the desert lord. The only sound besides the lap of the wavelets and the rustle of the palm fronds is the soft susurration of shifting sand grains like the rustle of silk over the naked limbs of...

‘Susurration... Drat!’ Ellie Lytton thrust her pen into the inkwell and glared at the words that had apparently written themselves. She opened the desk drawer and dropped the page onto a pile of similar sheets, some bearing a paragraph or two, some only a few sentences. She took a clean page, shook the surplus ink off the nib and began again.

I can hardly express, dear sister, how fascinating the date palm cultivation is along this part of the North African coast. It was with the greatest excitement that I spent the day viewing the hard-working local people in their colourful robes...

‘Whatever possessed me?’ she muttered, with a glance upwards to the shelf above the desk.

It held a row of five identically bound volumes. The gilded lettering on the red morocco spines read: The Young Traveller in Switzerland, The Youthful Explorer of the English Uplands, Oscar and Miranda Discover London, A Nursery Guide to the Countries of the World and The Juvenile Voyager Around the Coast of England. All were from the pen of Mrs Bundock.

Her publisher, Messrs Broderick & Alleyn, specialists in ‘Uplifting and Educational Works for Young Persons’, had suggested that Oscar and Miranda might fruitfully explore the Low Countries next. Edam cheese, canals, tulip cultivation and the defeat of the French Monster would make an uplifting combination, they were sure.

Ellie, known in the world of juvenile literature as the redoubtable Mrs Bundock, had rebelled. She yearned for heat and colour and exoticism, even if it came only second-hand from the books and prints she used for research. She would send young Oscar to North Africa, she declared, while secretly hoping that the Barbary corsairs would capture him and despatch the patronising little prig to some hideous fate.

What she really wanted was to write a tale of romance and passion to sell to the Minerva Press. But separating the two in her head for long enough to complete Oscar’s expedition—and earn enough from it to subsidise several months of novel-writing—was proving a nightmare. No sooner had the beastly boy begun to prose on about salt pans and date palms than her imagination had filled with the image of a dark-haired, grey-eyed horseman astride a black stallion, his white robes billowing in the desert breeze.

She pushed back the strands that had sprung out of her roughly bundled topknot and jammed in some more pins.

After luncheon, she promised herself. I will start on the sardine fisheries while the house is quiet.

Her stepbrother, Francis, who had not returned home last night, was doubtless staying with some fellow club member, which meant that all was blissfully peaceful. With only Polly the maid in the house she might as well be alone.

The rap of the front door knocker threatened her hopes of an uninterrupted morning. Ellie said something even more unladylike than drat, and tried to ignore the sound. But it came again, and there was no sign of Polly coming up from below stairs. She must have slipped out to do the marketing without disturbing her mistress at work.

Ellie cast a glance at the clock. Nine o’clock, which meant that it was far too early for any kind of demanding social call, thank goodness. In fact it was probably only Francis, having forgotten his key again.

She got up, wiped her inky hands on the pinafore she wore when writing, jammed a few more hairpins into her collapsing coiffure and went out into the hall, wincing as her damaged leg complained from too much sitting. She tugged at the front door and it opened abruptly—to reveal not Francis, but a tall, dark, grey-eyed gentleman in dishevelled evening dress.

‘Miss Lytton?’

‘Er... Yes?’

I am dreaming.

She certainly seemed to have lost the power of coherent speech.

I have only just shut you safely in the drawer.

‘I am Hainford.’

‘I know,’ Ellie said, aware that she sounded both gauche and abrupt. Where are the white robes, the black stallion? ‘I have seen you before, Lord Hainford. With my stepbrother Francis.’

But not like this. Not with dark shadows under your eyes. Your bloodshot eyes. Not white to the lips. Not with your exquisite tailoring looking as though it has been used as the dog’s bed. Not with blood staining—

‘Your shirt... You are bleeding.’

Ellie banged the door open wide and came down the step to take his arm. It was only when she touched him that she remembered she was alone in the house. But, chaperon or no chaperon, she couldn’t leave a man out there, whoever he was. Losing blood like that, he might collapse at any moment.

‘Were you attacked by footpads? Do come in, for goodness’ sake.’ When he did not move she took his arm. ‘Let me help you—lean on me. Into the drawing room, I think. It has the best light. I will dress the wound and as soon as my maid returns I will send for Dr Garnett.’

She might as well have tugged at one of the new gas lamp posts along Pall Mall.

‘I am quite all right, Miss Lytton, it is merely a scratch. I must talk to you.’ The Earl of Hainford, standing dripping blood on her doorstep, looked like a man contemplating his own execution, not a shockingly early social visit.

He was going to fall flat on his face in a moment, and then she would never be able to lift him. Worry made her abrupt.

‘Nonsense. Come in.’

This time when she grabbed his arm he let himself be pulled unresisting over the threshold. She shouldered the door closed and guided him down the hallway, trying not to let her limping pace jar him.

‘Here we are. If you sit on that upright chair over there it will be easiest.’

He went willingly enough when she pushed him into the drawing room, and she realised as he blinked at her that he was very tired as well as wounded, and possibly rather drunk. Or in the grip of a hangover.

‘You are Miss Lytton?’

No, not drunk. He sounded perfectly sober.

Something fell from her hair as she put her head on one side to look more closely at him and she caught at it. Not a hairpin, but the quill she had misplaced that morning.

‘Yes, I am Eleanor Lytton. Forgive my appearance, please. I was working.’

And why am I apologising for my old clothes and ink blots? This man turns up at a ridiculously early hour, interrupts my writing, bleeds on the best carpet... So much for fantasy. The reality of men never matches it.

‘Please wait here. I will fetch water and bandages.’

The Earl had extracted himself from his coat by the time she got back. The state it was in as it lay on the carpet was probably not improved by her spilling water on it in agitation as he began to wrestle with his shirt.

He is wounded, she reminded herself. This is not the moment to be missish about touching a man’s garments, let alone a man.

‘Let me help.’

It was probably an indication of the state he was in that he sat down abruptly and allowed her to pull the shirt over his head. She took a sharp breath at the sight of the furrow in his flesh that came from below the waistband of his breeches at the front and angled up over his ribs to just below his armpit on the right-hand side. It was not deep, but it was bleeding sluggishly and looked exceedingly sore as it cut across the firmly muscled torso.

Ellie dropped the shirt, then picked it up again and shook it out, pulling the fabric tight as she held it up to the light.

‘That is a bullet wound in your side.’ She had never seen one before, but what else could make a hole like that?

He nodded, hissing between his teeth as he explored the raw track with his fingertips.

‘But there is no hole in your shirt. And the wound starts below the waistband of your equally undamaged breeches. You were shot when you were naked?’

Hainford looked at her, his eyebrows raised, presumably in shock at a lady saying breeches and naked without fainting. ‘Yes. Could you pass me some of that bandage and then perhaps leave the room so I can deal with this?’

He gestured downwards. The bullet must have grazed his hip bone, and the chafing of his evening breeches, even if they were knitted silk, must be exceedingly painful. He would certainly need to take them off to dress the wound. There was already far too much of the Earl of Hainford on display, and she realised she was staring in appalled curiosity at the way the light furring of dark hair on his chest arrowed down and...

‘Here.’ Ellie pushed both basin and bandages towards him. ‘Call me when you are decent—I mean, ready—and I will bring you a clean shirt.’

She was not afraid of the sight of blood, but she had absolutely no desire to get any closer to that bared body, let alone touch it, even though as a budding novelist she ought to know about such matters. Writing about them was one thing, and fantasising was another, but experiencing them in real life...

No.

She closed the door behind her and leaned back against the panels while she got her breathing under some kind of control. The man she had glimpsed a few times with Francis—the one who had become the hero of her future novel and the disturber of her rest—was in her drawing room. Correction: was half-naked and injured in her drawing room.

How had he been shot like that? By a cuckolded husband catching him in flagrante with his wife, presumably. She could think of no other reason for a man to be wounded while naked. If it had been an accident in his own home his servants would have come to his aid.

She could visualise the scene quite clearly. A screaming female on the bed, rumpled sheets, Lord Hainford scrambling bare-limbed from the midst of the bedding—her imagination skittered around too much detail—the infuriated husband brandishing a pistol. How very disillusioning. One did not expect to have one’s fantasy arrive on the doorstep in reality, very much in the flesh, and prove to be so sordidly fallible. Her desert lord was, in reality, a hung-over adulterer.

And, naturally, life being what it was, fantasies did not have the tact and good timing to arrive when one was looking one’s best. Not, she admitted, pulling a rueful face at her reflection in the hall mirror, that her best was much to write home about, and nor did she actually want to attract such a man. Not in real life.

Ellie had few illusions. After all, at the age of twenty-five she had been told often enough that she was plain, gawky and ‘difficult’ to recognise it was the truth. And now she was lame as well. A disappointment to everyone, given how attractive Mama had been, with her dark brown hair and petite, fragile appearance. Ellie took after her father’s side of the family, people would tell her with a pitying sigh.

Her best gown was three seasons old and she had re-trimmed her bonnets to the point where they were more added ribbons and flowers than original straw. Her annual allowance, such as it was, went on paper, ink and library subscriptions, and her earnings from Messrs Broderick & Alleyn seemed to be swallowed up in the housekeeping.

None of which mattered, of course, because she was not out in Society, lived most of her life in her head, and had a circle of friends and acquaintances that encompassed a number of like-minded and similarly dressed women, the vicar and several librarians. Giving up the social struggle was restful...being invisible was safe.

It was Francis who had the social life, and a much larger allowance—most of which went, so far as she could tell, on club memberships, his bootmaker and attempting to emulate his hero, Lord Hainford, in all matters of dress and entertainment.

She did not enquire any more deeply about just what that ‘entertainment’ involved.

At which point in her musings the door she was leaning on opened and she staggered backwards, landing with a thud against the bare chest of the nobleman in question.

He gave a muffled yelp of pain as Ellie twisted round, made a grab for balance and found herself with one hand on his shoulder and one palm flat on his chest, making the interesting discovery that a man’s nipples tightened into hard nubs when touched.

She recoiled back into the doorway, hands behind her back. ‘I will fetch you a shirt.’

‘Thank you, but there is no need. I will put mine back on. Please, listen to me, Miss Lytton, I need to talk to you—’

‘With a shirt on. And not one covered in blood,’ she snapped, furious with someone. Herself, presumably.

As she negotiated the stairs to Francis’s bedchamber she wondered what on earth Lord Hainford could want to talk to her about. An apology was certainly due for arriving in this state, although probably he had expected Francis to be at home—not to have the door opened by some idiot female who was reduced to dithering incompetence by the sight of a muscular chest.

She snatched a shirt out of the drawer and went back down again. Hainford got to his feet as she came in, the bandages white against his skin, the dark hair curling over the edges.

‘Here, that should fit.’ Ellie thrust the shirt into his hands and turned her back. She closed her eyes for good measure.

‘I am respectable again,’ he said after several minutes of flapping cloth and hissing breath.

Ellie turned back to find the Earl once more dressed, his neckcloth loosely knotted, his bedraggled coat pulled on over the clean shirt. His own shirt was bundled up, the blood out of sight. ‘Thank you,’ he added. ‘Your maid—’

‘Is still not back. She cannot be much longer and then she will go for the doctor.’

Something in her bristled defensively at his closeness and she gave herself a brisk talking-to. He was a gentleman, and surely trustworthy. And he was hurt, so she should be showing some womanly nurturing sympathy. At least the Vicar would certainly say so.

Her feelings, although definitely womanly, were not tending towards nurturing...

‘There is no need. The wound has stopped bleeding. I am concerned that you are alone in the house with me.’

You are concerned?

‘You think I require a chaperon, Lord Hainford?’ Ellie used the back of the chair as a support and sat down carefully, gesturing at the empty chair. ‘Or perhaps that you do?’ Attack was always safer than showing alarm or weakness.

‘No, to both.’ He ran his hand through his hair, his mouth grim as he seemed to search for words. ‘I have bad news for you, and I think you will need the support of another woman.’

‘My maid will soon be here,’ she said. Then what he had said finally penetrated. ‘Bad news?’

That could only mean one thing. Her parents and her stepfather were dead and there was no one else, only her stepbrother.

‘Francis?’ Her voice sounded quite calm and collected.

‘Sir Francis...there was an accident. At the club.’

‘He is injured?’

No, if he was I would have been called to him, or he would have been brought here.

She seemed to be reasoning very clearly, as though this was not real—simply a puzzle on paper to be solved. ‘He is dead, isn’t he? How? Did you kill him? Was it a duel?’

Over a woman?

That was all she could think of, given that Hainford had been naked when he was shot himself.

‘No. I did not shoot him. It was an accident. Someone was shooting at me, and Francis was standing at my back.’

‘And you had no clothes on,’ she said, her voice flat.

She must have fallen asleep over her work—this had all the characteristics of a bad dream. Certainly it made no sense whatsoever.

‘Which club was this?’

Perhaps club was a euphemism for brothel? Or something else—something not legal. She read the newspapers, had some glimmering of what went on between certain men, but she hardly knew how to ask.

‘The Adventurers’ Club in Piccadilly.’

A perfectly respectable gentleman’s club, then. Not a... What did they call them? A molly house—that was it. It would not completely surprise her if Francis had gone to one—out of curiosity, if nothing else—but this man? Surely not. Although what did she know?

Her silence was worrying the Earl, judging by his expression and the way he leaned forward to look into her face, but she was not sure how she was expected to act, how she should feel. Perhaps this was shock.

‘Look, let me fetch you some brandy. It is dreadful news to take in.’ He was halfway to his feet again when the door opened.

‘Miss Lytton, I’m back! Oh!’ Polly stood staring, her arms full of loosely wrapped parcels. An onion dropped to the floor and rolled to Ellie’s feet.

‘Polly, this is Lord Hainford and I believe he needs a glass of brandy.’

‘I do not.’

He was on the verge of snapping now—a man at the end of his tether. She should have wept and had the vapours. Then he could have produced a handkerchief, patted her hand, said, There, there meaninglessly. He would have felt more comfortable doing that, she was sure.

‘Fetch your mistress a cup of tea,’ he ordered.

‘And brandy for Lord Hainford. The hair of the dog might be helpful,’ Ellie suggested mildly.

Yes, this was a bad dream. Although...could one faint in a dream? The room was beginning to spin and close in...

She closed her eyes and took a deep, steadying breath. Fainting would not help. When she opened them again Lord Hainford was still there, frowning at her. The crumpled shirt was still at his feet. Francis had still not come home.

‘This really is not a dream, is it?’ she asked.

‘No. I am afraid not.’ Simply a nightmare.

Blake saw the colour flood back into Miss Lytton’s cheeks with profound relief. Things were bad enough without a fainting woman on his hands and, ungallant as it might seem, he had no desire to haul this Long Meg up from the floor.

Her figure went up and down, with the emphasis on up, and showed little interest in anything but the mildest in-and-out. Even so, his ribs had suffered enough, and lifting plain women into his arms held no appeal.

He studied the pale oval of her face, dusted with a spectacular quantity of freckles that no amount of Lotion of Denmark, or even lemon juice, would ever be able to subdue. Her hair was a bird’s nest—a flyaway mass of middling brown curls, ineptly secured with pins. The wide hazel eyes, their irises dark and dilated with shock, were probably her best feature. Her nose was certainly rather too long. And there was the limp... But at least she had managed not to swoon.

The girl came back with a tea tray and he gestured abruptly for her to pour. ‘Put sugar in your mistress’s cup.’

‘I do not take sugar.’

‘For the shock.’ He took a cup himself and gulped it sugarless, grateful for the warmth in his empty, churning gut.

The maid went and sat in a corner of the room, hands folded in her lap. He could feel her gaze boring into him.

Miss Lytton lifted her cup with a hand that shook just a little, drank, replaced it in the saucer with a sharp click and looked at him.

‘Tell me what happened.’

Thank heavens she was not some fluffy little chit who had dissolved into the vapours. Still, there was time yet for that...

‘I was at the Adventurers’ last night, playing cards with Lord Anterton and Sir Peter Carew and a man called Crosse. I was winning heavily—mainly against Crosse, who is not a good loser and is no friend of mine. We were all drinking.’

Blake tried to edit the story as he went—make it somehow suitable for a lady to hear without actually lying to her. He couldn’t tell her that the room had smelled of sweat and alcohol and candlewax and excitement. That Anterton had been in high spirits because an elderly relative had died and left him a tidy sum, and he and Carew had been joking and needling Crosse all evening over some incident at the French House—a fancy brothel where the three of them had been the night before.

Blake had been irritated, he remembered now, and had wished they would concentrate on the game.

He had just raked in a double handful of chips and banknotes and vowels from the centre of the table and called for a new pack and a fresh bottle when Francis Lytton had come up behind him—another irritation.

‘Your stepbrother appeared, most agitated, and said he wanted to talk to me immediately. I was on a winning streak, and I certainly did not intend to stop. I told him he could walk home with me afterwards and we would talk all he wanted to then.’

Miss Lytton bit her lip, her brow furrowed. ‘Agitated?’

‘Or worried. I do not know which. I did not pay too much attention, I am afraid.’

‘You were drunk,’ she observed coolly.

It was a shock to be spoken to in that way by a woman and, despite his uneasy sense of responsibility, the flat statement stung.

‘I was mellow—we all were. And we were in the middle of a game in which I was winning consistently—Lytton should have seen that it was a bad time to interrupt. We began to play with the new pack. Crosse lost heavily to me again, then started to shout that I was cheating, that I must have cards in my cuffs, up my sleeves. That I had turned away to talk to your stepbrother in order to conceal them.’

That red face, that wet mouth, those furious, incoherent accusations.

The man had scrabbled at the cards, sending counters flying, wine glasses tipping.

‘Cheat! Sharper!’

Everyone had stopped their own games, people had come across, staring...

‘I told him to withdraw his accusations. So did the others. He wouldn’t back down—just kept ranting. It seems he was on the brink of ruin and that this bout of losses had tipped him over the edge. He was so pathetic I didn’t want to have to call him out, so I stripped off my coat, tossed it to him to look at. He still accused me of hiding cards. I took off my waistcoat, my shirt. Then, when he overturned the table shouting that I had aces in my breeches, I took those off as well. Everything, in fact. He’d made me furious. Francis stood behind me, picking things up like a confounded valet. People were laughing...jeering at Crosse.’

He paused, sorting out the events through the brandy fug in his head, trying to be careful what he told her.

Everyone had been staring, and then Anterton had laughed and pointed at Blake’s wedding tackle, made some admiring remark about size. ‘Hainford’s hung like a bull!’ he’d shouted. Or had it been a mule?

He had laughed at Crosse.

‘Not like your little winkle-picker, eh, Crosse? The tarts wouldn’t laugh at his tackle like they did at yours last night at the French House—would they, Crosse?’

‘Crosse fumbled in his pocket, dropped something, and went down on his knees, groping for it. Then I saw it was a pistol. He was shaking with rage.’

I thought I was going to die—stark naked in the wreckage of a card game.

As the club secretary had pushed his way to the front of the crowd Blake could recall wondering vaguely if you could be blackballed for being killed in the club like that.

Conduct unbecoming...

‘Crosse pulled the trigger. The thing was angled upwards, so the bullet scored the track you’ve seen across my ribs and hit Francis, who was still standing behind me.’

Miss Lytton gave a short gasp, cut off by a hand pressed to her mouth. She was so white that the freckles across her nose and cheeks stood out as if someone had thrown a handful of bran at her.

‘He really is dead?’ she managed.

Very. You don’t live with a hole like that in you.

‘It must have been instant. He will have felt a blow to the chest, then nothing.’ He thought that was true—hoped that it was. Certainly by the time he’d knelt down, Lytton’s head supported on his knees, the man had been gone.

‘Where is he now?’

She was still white, her voice steady. It was the unnatural control of shock, he guessed, although she didn’t seem to be the hysterical type in any case. She had dealt with a bleeding man on her doorstep calmly enough. An unusual young lady.

‘At the club. There was a doctor there—one of the members. We took him to a bedchamber, did what was necessary.’

They had stripped off the wreckage of Lytton’s clothes, got him cleaned up and dressed in someone’s spare nightshirt and sent for a woman to lay him out decently before any of his family saw him.

‘I have his watch, his pocketbook and so on, all safe.’

‘I see.’

Miss Lytton’s voice was as colourless as her skin, and that seemed to have been pulled back savagely, revealing fine cheekbones but emphasising the long nose and firm chin unbecomingly.

‘He must come here, of course. Can you arrange that?’

He could—and he would. And he would try and do something about that mass of blood-soaked papers with a hole through the middle that had been stuffed into Lytton’s breast pocket. There was no way he could hand those back as they were.

‘Certainly. It is the least I can do.’

The dowdy nobody of a woman opposite him raised her wide hazel eyes and fixed him with an aloof stare.

‘I would say that is so. If you had listened to your friend when he was obviously anxious about something, instead of drunkenly goading that man Crosse, then Francis would not be dead now. Would he, my lord?’

Chapter Two

Her hostility had hit home—visibly. Ellie suspected that if he had been himself, alert and not in pain, Lord Hainford would have betrayed nothing, but she saw the colour come up over his cheekbones and the bloodshot grey eyes narrow.

‘If your brother had not come to the club, yes, he would be alive now, Miss Lytton.’

‘My stepbrother Francis is...was...the son of my mother’s second husband, Sir Percival Lytton. I took his name when she remarried.’

She could hardly recall her own father, the Honourable Frederick Trewitt, an abrupt man who had died when she was eight. Her mother’s remarriage had given them much-needed financial stability, although Sir Percival had shown little interest in his stepdaughter at first—so plain and quiet, where her mother had been vivid and attractive.

Not at first.

As for Francis, three years her senior, he had ignored her until, his father and stepmother dead, he had needed a housekeeper.

She had felt no affection for him, waiting for him to turn out like his father, but as time had passed and he’d shown her nothing but indifference she had begun to relax—although never to the point of leaving her bedchamber door unlocked.

The use she could be to her stepbrother had given her the only status that Society allowed a plain young woman of very moderate means and no connections—that of respectable poor relation.

‘You were close, of course. This must be a dreadful shock for you...a great loss.’ The Earl had reined in his irritation and was clearly ransacking his meagre store of conventional platitudes. ‘I quite understand that you are distressed.’

‘If my stepbrother had removed himself to some remote fastness and I had never seen him again I would not have shed a single tear, my lord,’ she said. ‘That does not mean I do not grieve the fact that he met his end in such sordid circumstances, thanks to someone else’s selfish neglect.’

She would have felt pity for any man killed like that, let alone a relative.

‘Madam, neither the place nor the circumstances were sordid, and Lytton was in a club where he might have safely passed the time with any number of acquaintances while he waited for me to be free.’

Hainford got to his feet and regarded her with something very like hauteur.

‘That he chose to insinuate himself into the middle of a fracas was entirely his choice, and the result was a regrettable accident. Unless you have an undertaker in mind I will engage a respectable one on your behalf. I will also establish how the Coroner wishes to proceed and keep you informed. Good day to you.’

Polly scrambled to reach the front door before he did, and came back a moment later clutching a small rectangle of card. ‘He left this, Miss Lytton.’

‘Put it down over there on my desk, please. I know perfectly well who he is.’

She had made it her business to find out the identity of the grey-eyed man whom Francis had idolised. William Blakestone Pencarrow, third Earl Hainford, was twenty-eight, owned lands in Hampshire, Yorkshire and Northamptonshire, a London townhouse of some magnificence in Berkeley Square and a stable of prime bloodstock.

He was also in possession of thick black hair, elegantly cut, a commanding nose, rather too large for handsomeness, an exceptionally stubborn chin and eyes that were beautiful even when bloodshot. His shoulders were broad, his muscles, as she was now in a position to affirm, superb, and he easily topped Francis’s five feet eleven inches.

To Francis, silently worshipping, he had seemed a god—a non-pareil of style, taste and breeding who must be copied as closely as possible, whatever the cost.

Altogether Hainford had seemed the perfect hero for her book. It did not matter in the slightest that in real life he had proved to be impatient, arrogant, self-centred and shameless.

Something fell onto her clasped hands. She looked down at the fat drop of water that ran down to her wrist.

Poor Francis, she thought, feeling sympathy for her stepbrother for the first time in her life. He deserved something more than one tear from her. He deserved that she exert herself for this final time for his comfort and dignity. He hadn’t been able to help being his father’s son, and probably hadn’t been able to help being insensitive and foolish either.

‘Polly, please see that the front room is cleaned thoroughly for when the...for when the master is brought home. The blinds and drapes must be closed in all the rooms. And then we will look at mourning clothes.’

* * *

Gradually the shock wore off. In a strange way it was a relief to feel loss as well as anger, and to cling to the rituals of death that Society prescribed. The black ribbons on the door knocker, the drawn blinds, the hasty refurbishment of the mourning blacks last worn when her stepfather had died—all occupied Ellie’s time.

A letter had arrived from the Earl, informing her that the inquest had been arranged for the next day. It seemed surprisingly prompt to Ellie, and she was grateful for the Coroner’s efficiency until she realised that it was probably due to Hainford’s influence.

The undertaker he had selected called on her, sombre and solemn as he delicately discussed the funeral details.

‘The Earl did not want you to be troubled with any tiresome detail, Miss Lytton.’

‘How kind,’ Ellie said thinly.

Managing, autocratic, domineering... Or perhaps he is feeling guilty, as he should.

The day of the funeral passed in a blur, until finally she was able to join Mr Rampion, the family solicitor, in Francis’s study. He seemed ill at ease—but perhaps he rarely dealt with women. He stood when she entered the study, as did the man sitting to one side of the desk.

‘Lord Hainford is here at my request, Miss Lytton. After he spoke to me earlier I thought it advisable.’

Tight-lipped, Ellie sat down, fighting against her resentment at the intrusion. No doubt it would all become clear. Something to do with the inquest, perhaps. She needed to be calm and businesslike.

‘Very well. Mr Rampion, if you would proceed.’

‘The will, as it stands, holds no surprises in its terms,’ the solicitor said, still looking inexplicably unhappy. ‘The baronetcy and the entailed land pass to Sir Francis’s cousin, Mr James Lytton, who resides in Scotland. There are bequests to family retainers, and the residue of the estate to you, Miss Lytton. Sir Francis had, as you know, under the terms of his father’s will, been the sole trustee of your investments.’

‘Well, I suppose it will not make any difference that I have no trustee now. I am hardly a wealthy woman with complex affairs to control. I assume I will receive my quarterly allowance as I always have.’

Mr Rampion took off his spectacles, polished them, put them back, cleared his throat. ‘That is why Lord Hainford is here. Perhaps you should produce the documents, my lord...’

* * *

Blake took the wedge of papers from his pocket. Jonathan, his secretary, had washed the pages, and that had got the worst of the blood out, leaving a pencilled scrawl visible on the wrinkled paper. He had ironed each sheet, smoothing out the ragged edges in the centre where the bullet had passed, and had transcribed what could be made out of Sir Francis Lytton’s frantic calculations.

‘These notes were in your stepbrother’s breast pocket, Miss Lytton.’ He felt like a brute for being so direct, but there was no way of edging delicately around this.

She went pale as she took in the significance of the damage and made no move to reach for them. ‘What do they concern?’

‘I believe this is what Lytton wanted to talk to me about. He had, it seems, made major investments in a canal scheme near the Sussex coast. I knew of it—a hopelessly overblown and oversold scheme that has now crashed. The stock is worthless.’

‘Why would he have wanted to speak to you about it, Lord Hainford?’

She had not realised at all what this meant. He could see that. She was still puzzling over the detail.

‘He knew I had myself made a success of a series of investments in various canal schemes. I think Lytton had come to suspect that something was very wrong with the one he had put money into, and wanted to ask my opinion.’

‘And if he had spoken to you? Would it have made any difference?’

Miss Lytton was leaning forward. Hearing the question in her voice, watching the thoughts so transparently obvious on her face, Blake realised that this was an intelligent woman who was striving to understand what had happened. Curiosity animated her face and he almost revised his opinion of her as wan-faced and uninteresting. Almost.

‘If he had sold the next morning he would have made a small profit or just about broken even. But by the close of business that day things had fallen apart.’

‘I see.’

She met his gaze, her hazel eyes cool and judgmental. She did not have to say the words—if he had left the card game, spoken to her stepbrother there and then, not only would Lytton still be alive but he might have salvaged his investment by making immediate sales the next day.

Now it only remained to deliver the really bad news and she would go from despising him to hating him.

The solicitor spoke before Blake could. ‘I am afraid it is worse than that, Miss Lytton. It appears that not only did Sir Francis invest all his available resources in this scheme, but also yours.’

‘Mine? But he could not do that.’

‘He could,’ Blake said. ‘And he did. He had complete control of your finances. Doubtless he thought it was for the best.’

She took a deep, shuddering breath, her hands clenched together tightly in her lap, and Blake braced himself for the tears.

‘I am ruined,’ she said flatly.

It was not a question and there were no tears.

‘The investments have gone, and this house, as you know, is rented,’ Rampion said. ‘There is nothing remaining of your liquid assets—nothing to inherit from your stepbrother. However, you do own Carndale Farm in Lancashire. It was part of your mother’s dowry, if you recall, and tied up in ways that prevented Sir Francis disposing of. It is safe. That is nothing has been sold and it still brings in rents...although a mere two hundred a year.’

‘Lancashire,’ she murmured faintly. And then, more strongly, ‘But there is a house?’

Any other lady would have been in a dead faint by now, or in strong hysterics, Blake thought. Certainly she would not be wrestling with the essentials of the situation as this woman was. It occurred to him fleetingly that Eleanor Lytton would be a good person to have by one’s side in an emergency.

‘Yes, a house—although it has been uninhabited since the last tenant left a year ago. The farm itself—the land—is leased out separately.’

‘I see.’ She visibly straightened her back and lifted her shoulders. ‘Well, then, the furniture and Francis’s possessions must be sold to pay any remaining debts. Hopefully that will also cover his bequests to the staff. I will move to Lancashire as soon as possible.’

‘But, Miss Lytton, an unmarried lady requires a chaperon,’ the solicitor interjected.

‘I will have a maid. I think I can afford her wages,’ she said indifferently. ‘That must suffice. My unchaperoned state is hardly likely to concern the Patronesses of Almack’s, now, is it? Perhaps we can meet again tomorrow, Mr Rampion. Will you be able to give me an assessment of the outstanding liabilities and assets by then?’

She stood and they both came to their feet.

‘I think I must leave you now, gentlemen.’

She limped from the room, a surprisingly impressive figure in her dignity, despite her faded blacks and the scattering of hairpins that fell to the floor from her appalling coiffure. The door closed quietly behind her and in the silence Blake thought he heard one gasping sob, abruptly cut off. Then nothing.

‘Hell,’ Blake said, sitting down again, against all his instincts to go and try to comfort her. He was the last person she would want to see.

He was trying his hardest not to feel guilty about any of this—he was not a soothsayer, after all, and he could hardly have foreseen that bizarre accident and its consequences—but his actions had certainly been the catalyst.

‘Indeed,’ the older man re-joined, tapping his papers into order. ‘Life is not kind to impoverished gentlewomen, I fear. Especially those whose worth is more in their character than their looks, shall we say?’

‘Why does Miss Lytton limp?’ Blake asked.

‘A serious fall three years ago, I understand. There was a complex fracture and it seems that she did permanent damage to her leg. Her stepfather suffered a fatal seizure upon finding her. I imagine you will want to be on your way, my lord? I am grateful for your efforts to make these notes legible. I can see I have some work to do in order to present Miss Lytton with a full picture tomorrow.’

‘I will leave you to it, sir.’

Blake shook hands with the solicitor and went out, braced for another encounter with Miss Lytton. But the hallway held nothing more threatening than scurrying domestics, and he let himself out with a twinge of guilty relief.

* * *

‘That is the last of the paperwork concerning Francis Lytton’s death.’ Jonathan Wilton, Blake’s confidential secretary, placed a sheaf of documents in front of him.

Blake left the papers where they lay and pushed one hand through his hair. ‘Lord, that was a messy business. It is just a mercy that the Coroner managed the jury with a firm hand and they brought a verdict of accidental death. Imagine if we were having to cope with Crosse’s hanging. As it is, he’s skulking in Somerset—and good riddance.’

Jonathan gave a grunt of agreement. He was Blake’s illegitimate half-brother—an intelligent, hard-working man a few months younger than Blake, who might easily have passed for a full sibling.

Blake had acknowledged him, and would have done more, but Jon had insisted on keeping his mother’s name and earning his own way in the world. It had been all Blake could do to get him to accept a university education from him. He had gone to Cambridge, Blake to Oxford, and then Jon had allowed himself to be persuaded into helping Blake deal with the business of his earldom.

In public Jon was punctiliously formal. In private they behaved like brothers. ‘Lytton was a damn nuisance,’ he remarked now.

‘What I ever did to deserve being a role model for him, I have no idea.’ Blake made himself stop fidgeting with the Coroner’s report. ‘He irritated me. That was why I was so short with him that evening, if you want the truth. I didn’t want him hanging round me at the club.’

‘Not your fault,’ Jon observed with a shrug as he slid off the desk and picked up the paperwork.

‘I could have talked to him—made him see he was acting unwisely.’

He couldn’t shake an unreasonable feeling of guilt about the incident, and Miss Lytton’s courage in the face of bereavement and financial ruin had made him feel even worse. He did not like feeling guilty, always did his rather casual best not to do anything that might justify the sensation, and he managed, on the whole, to avoid thinking about the last time he had felt real guilt over a woman.

Felicity...

The woman he had driven to disaster. The woman he had not realised he loved until too late.

As usual he slammed a mental door on the memory, refused to let it make him feel...anything.

There was a knock on the study door. Blake jammed his quill back into the standish. ‘Come in!’

‘The morning post, my lord.’

The footman passed a loaded salver to Jon, who dumped the contents onto the desk, pulled up a chair and began to sort through it.

He broke the seal on one letter, then passed it across after a glance at the signature. ‘From Miss Lytton.’

Plain paper, black ink, a strong, straightforward hand. Blake read the single sheet. Then he read it again. No, he was not seeing things.

‘Hell’s teeth—the blasted woman wants me to take her to Lancashire!’

‘What?’ Jon caught the sheet as Blake sent it spinning across the blotter to him. ‘She holds you responsible for her present predicament...loan of a carriage...escort. Escort? Is she pretty?’

‘No, she is not pretty—not that it would make any difference.’

I hope.

‘Eleanor Lytton is a plain woman who dresses like a drab sparrow. Her hair appears never to have seen a hairdresser and she limps.’ He gave her a moment’s thought, then added for fairness, ‘However, she has guts and she appears to be intelligent—except for her insistence on blaming me for her stepbrother’s death. Her temper is uncertain, and she has no tact whatsoever. I am going to call on her and put a stop to this nonsense.’

Blake got to his feet and yanked at the bell-pull. ‘Lancashire! She must be even more eccentric than she looks. Why the devil would I want to go to Lancashire, of all places? Why should I?’

‘The sea bathing at Blackpool is reckoned quite good—if one overlooks the presence of half the manufacturers of Manchester at the resort,’ Jon said with a grin, ducking with the skill of long practice as Blake threw a piece of screwed-up paper at his head.

Chapter Three

‘Lord Hainford, Miss Lytton,’ Polly announced.

So he had come.

Ellie had known from the moment the idea had occurred to her that it was outrageous. In fact she had been certain he would simply throw her letter into the fire. But she had lain awake half the night worrying about getting herself and her few possessions to Lancashire, about how she could afford it, and how she would probably have to dismiss Polly in order to do so.

The loan of a carriage would save enough to keep her maid for two months—perhaps long enough for her to raise some more money and finish her book—and an escort would save them both untold trouble and aggravation on the road. She had written the letter and sent it to be delivered before she’d had time for second thoughts.

‘Good morning, my lord. Polly, I am sure his lordship will feel quite safe if you sit over there.’

‘Good morning. I feel perfectly safe, thank you, Miss Lytton. Confused, yes—unsafe, no.’ The Earl sat down when she did so, and regarded her with a distinct lack of amusement.

He looks like an elegant displeased raven, with his sharply tailored dark clothes, his black hair, his decided nose, she thought.

There had been no apparent soreness when he sat, so presumably the bullet wound was healing well.

‘Confused?’ Ellie pushed away the memory of the feel of his naked torso under her palm and folded her hands neatly in her lap.

‘I am confused by the reference to Lancashire in your letter, Miss Lytton.’

She had been right—he was not going to be reasonable about his obligations. Not that he would see it that way, of course. Probably he still did not recognise his responsibility in the way Francis had behaved. But why, then, had he called? A curt note of refusal or complete silence—that was what she had expected.

‘My lord—’

‘Call me Hainford, please, Miss Lytton. I feel as though I am at a meeting being addressed if you keep my-lording me.’

I will not blush. And if I do it will be from irritation, not embarrassment.

‘Hainford. My brother was your devoted disciple. He spent money he could ill afford copying your lifestyle and your clothing. He invested money he most definitely could not afford, and some he had no moral right to, in a scheme inspired by your dealings. And then, when he came to you for help and advice, you turned your back on him and neglected your friend for the sake of a card game.’

‘Francis was an adult. And an acquaintance, not a friend. I never advised him on his clothing, nor his horses or his clubs, and most certainly not on his investments.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘Are you implying an improper relationship, by any chance, Miss Lytton?’

‘Improper?’

It took her a heartbeat to realise what he was referring to, and another to be amazed that he would even hint at such a thing to a lady. Probably he did not regard her as a lady—which was dispiriting, if hardly unexpected.

‘Polly, kindly go and make tea.’ Ellie got up and closed the door firmly behind the maid. ‘No, I am not implying anything improper, and it is most improper of you to raise such a possibility to me.’

‘I am attempting to find a motive for your blatant hostility towards me, Miss Lytton, that is all.’

‘Motive? I have none. Nor am I hostile. I merely point out the facts that are at the root of my disapproval of your behaviour.’

Attack. Do not let him see how much you want him to help.

It had been dangerously addictive, the way he had stepped in after Francis’s death and arranged matters. She should have too much pride to want him to do so again. And, besides, the less she saw of him, the better. He was far too attractive for a plain woman’s peace of mind—unless one had a bizarre wish to be dismissed and ignored. There was this single thing that she asked of him and that would be all.

‘Why do you attempt to recruit me to escort you the length of the country if you disapprove of me so much?’

He sounded genuinely intrigued, as though she was an interesting puzzle to be solved. The dark brows drawn together, the firm, unsmiling mouth should not be reassuring, and yet somehow they were. He was listening to her.

‘I am impoverished thanks to my stepbrother’s foolishness and your failure to him as a...as an acquaintance and fellow club member. To reach Lancashire—where I must now be exiled—I face a long, expensive and wearisome journey by stage coach. The least you can do is to make some amends by lending me your carriage and your escort.’

‘Do you really expect me to say yes?’ Hainford demanded.

He was still on his feet from when she had got up to close the door and, tall, dark and frowning, he took up far too much space. Also, it seemed, most of the air in the room.

‘No, I do not,’ Ellie confessed. ‘I thought you would throw the letter on the fire. I am astonished to see you here this morning.’ She shrugged. ‘I had lain awake all night, worrying about getting to Carndale. The idea came to me at dawn and I felt better for writing the letter. I had nothing to lose by sending it, so I did.’

‘You really are the most extraordinary creature,’ Hainford said.

Ellie opened her mouth to deliver a stinging retort and then realised that his lips were actually curved in a faint smile. The frown had gone too, as though he had puzzled her out.

‘So, not only am I a creature, and an extraordinary one, but I am also a source of amusement to you? Are you this offensive to every lady you encounter, or only the plain and unimportant ones?’

‘I fear I am finding amusement in this,’ he confessed. ‘I feel like a hound being attacked by a fieldmouse.’

He scrubbed one hand down over his face as though to straighten his expression, but his mouth, when it was revealed again, was still twitching dangerously near a smile.

‘I had no intention of being offensive, merely of matching your frankness.’

He made no reference to the plain and unimportant remark. Wise of him.

‘You are unlike any lady I have ever come across, and yet you are connected—if distantly—to a number of highly respectable and titled families. Did you not have a come-out? Were you never presented? What have your family been doing that you appear to have no place in Society?’

‘Why, in other words, have I no good gowns, no Society manners and no inclination to flutter my eyelashes meekly and accept what gentlemen say?’

‘All of that.’

Lord Hainford sat down again, crossed one beautifully breeched leg over the other and leaned back. He was definitely smiling now. It seemed that provided she was not actually accusing him of anything he found her frankness refreshing.

You are entirely delicious to look at, my lord, and lethally dangerous when you smile.

‘If you want it in a nutshell: no parents, no money and no inclination to become either a victim of circumstances or a poor relation, hanging on the coat-tails of some distant and reluctant relative.’

‘A concise summary.’ He steepled his fingers and contemplated their tips. ‘My secretary will tell me I am insane even to contemplate what you ask of me...’

‘But?’ Ellie held her breath.

He was going to say yes.

Hainford looked up, the expression in his grey eyes either amused or resigned, or perhaps a little of both. ‘But I will do it. I will convey you to Lancashire.’ His gaze dropped to his fingertips again. ‘If, that is, we do not find ourselves compromised as a result.’

‘Polly will come with us.’

‘A maid? Not sufficient.’

‘Lord Hainford, do you think I am plotting to get a husband out of this?’

He looked at her sharply.

‘Because I am not looking for one—and even if I were I have more pride than to try and entrap a man this way. A maid is a perfectly adequate chaperon. No one knows me in Society. I could be observed in your carriage by half the Patronesses of Almack’s, a complete set of duchesses and most of the House of Lords and still be unrecognised. I can be your widowed distant cousin,’ she added, her imagination beginning to fill out the details of her scheme. ‘A poor relation you are escorting out of the goodness of your heart.’

His mouth twisted wryly.

Yes, she realised, he had been wary that she was out to entrap him. From what she had heard he was exceedingly popular with the ladies, and had managed to evade the ties of matrimony only with consummate skill.

‘I could wear my black veils and call you Cousin Blake,’ Ellie suggested helpfully.

A laugh escaped him—an unwilling snort of amusement that banished his suspicions—and something inside her caught for a moment.

‘You should write lurid novels for a living, Miss Lytton. You would be excellent at it.’

‘You think so?’ she asked eagerly. ‘Oh, I see. You are teasing me,’ she added, deflated, when he shook his head.

‘What? You would aspire to be one of those ink-spattered blue stockings, or an hysterical female author turning out Gothic melodramas?’

It seemed he had forgotten the quill in her hair and the ink spots on her pinafore when they had first met—clues that might well have given her away. But then, Lord Hainford had had other things on his mind on that occasion.

‘No, I have no desire to be an hysterical female author,’ she said tightly, biting back all the other things she itched to say.

Ranting about male prejudice was not going to help matters. Hainford’s reading matter was probably confined to Parliamentary reports, the sporting papers, his investments and Greek and Latin classics.

That little stab of awareness, or attraction, or whatever it was, vanished. ‘When do you wish to set out?’

‘How long do you need?’ he countered. ‘Would six days give you enough time?’

‘That would be perfect. Thank you... Cousin Blake.’

He stood. ‘I will be in touch about the details, Cousin Eleanor.’

‘Ellie,’ she corrected, rising also.

‘I think not. Ellie is not right for the character you will be playing in this little drama. Eleanor is serious, a little mournful. You will drift wistfully about under your floating black veils, the victim of nameless sadness...’

So what is Ellie?

She did not dare ask—he would probably be happy to explain in unflattering detail.

‘Tell me, Cousin Blake, do you make a habit of reading Minerva Press novels or do you have a natural bent for the Gothic yourself?’

‘The latter, Cousin Eleanor. Definitely the latter. Dark closets, skeletons...’ There was no amusement in his eyes.

‘Will you not wait for tea?’ She rose, gestured towards the door.

‘I think not.’

He caught her hand in his and lifted it to his lips, his breath warm as he did not quite touch his mouth to her fingers, which were rigid in his light grip.

The door opened and Polly edged in, a tea tray balanced against one hip.

‘Lord Hainford is just leaving, Polly. Put the tray down and see him out, if you please.’

And leave me to recover from having my hand almost kissed and from the knowledge that I am about to spend several days in the company of such a very dangerous man.

She would be quite safe, she told herself. Polly would be with her, would sleep in her room every night, and an earl would stop at respectable inns—inns with locks on the bedchamber doors.

The problem was, he was not the danger—she was. Or rather her foolish imagination, which yearned for what, quite obviously, she could never have.

* * *

Ellie stood at the foot of the stairs and regarded the sum total of her personal belongings. One trunk with clothes and books, one hat box containing two hats, one valise with overnight necessities, one portable writing slope. And one umbrella. Nothing so frivolous as a parasol.

Polly had almost as much luggage.

Somewhere upstairs an auctioneer was going round with Mr Rampion, making an inventory and sorting the furniture into lots. The solicitor had managed to locate enough money and small items of value to discharge the debts and the legacies to old servants, which was a weight off her mind, but she would get no recompense from the sale for her losses.

The new baronet was inheriting nothing more than a title.

Polly was peering through one of the sidelights framing the door. ‘He is here, Miss Lytton. The Earl, I mean.’

‘I guessed that was who you meant,’ Ellie said wryly, and took a firm hold on the umbrella, feeling like a medieval knight arming himself for battle.

What did she know about this man? That he spent a great deal of money on his clothing and his boots, his horses and his entertainment. And most of the entertainment, she gathered, was hedonistic and self-indulgent but not, as a perusal of the gossip columns had told her, undisciplined.

Lord Hainford might enjoy gaming, racing...all matters of sport. He might be seen at every fashionable event and he might enjoy himself very well in other ways, as sly references to ‘Lord H’ and ‘renowned beauty Lady X’ being ‘seen together as we have come to expect’ betrayed, but there were never any reports of riotous parties, scandals at the opera or heavy gaming losses. He was not married, betrothed or linked to any respectable lady who might have expectations—which was interesting as he was now twenty-eight and had his inheritance to consider.

And when he smiled she thought there was something behind the amusement—as though he could not quite bring himself to surrender to it. Her imagination, no doubt...

Polly opened the door a fraction before the groom’s knock. ‘All these,’ she said pertly to the man, with a wave of her hand to the small pile of luggage.

‘It will go in the baggage carriage,’ the groom said, and Ellie saw there was a second, plainer vehicle behind the Earl’s glossy travelling coach with his coat of arms on the door. ‘Is there anything you would like to keep with you, Miss Lytton?’

‘Thank you, no.’ She had her reticule, holding her money, her notebooks, a pencil and a handkerchief. ‘Polly, run upstairs and tell Mr Rampion that we are about to leave.’

By the time the solicitor had come down Lord Hainford was out of the carriage and the luggage was loaded. She shook hands with the solicitor, took the letter he handed her with details of the house that would be her new home, and gave him, in return, the keys of the London house.

She had lived there for more than five years, and yet she could feel no particular sadness at leaving it. The companionship of her friends, the bookshops, the libraries—yes, she was sorry to lose those. But in this place she had been no more than a glorified housekeeper, the poor relation. At least now she would be mistress of her own house.

My own hovel, more likely.

All it would take was the willingness to endure the company of the Earl of Hainford for a few days.

He stood waiting to hand her into the carriage and she balked on the doorstep, the reality of being in such an enclosed space with a man making her stumble. She gripped the railing and limped down to the pavement, exaggerating the hitch in her gait to account for that moment of recoil.

Courage, she chided herself. She was not going to allow the past to rule her present, her future. And this man was the bridge to that future—whatever it held.

* * *

‘Miss Lytton, may I introduce my confidential secretary, Jonathan Wilton?’

Jon got to his feet, stooping under the roof of the carriage. ‘I do beg your pardon for not getting out to greet you, Miss Lytton. I did not realise you were ready to join us.’

Blake noticed the fractional recoil before she held out her hand, and the sudden loss of colour in her cheeks, and yet she was perfectly composed as she greeted Jon. Was she simply unused to the company of men? He supposed that might be the case, if she had not made her debut and had led a somewhat isolated existence. Then, as she sat and looked up, seeing Jon’s face properly for the first time, he saw her surprise, carefully but not perfectly masked.

‘We are half-brothers,’ he said, settling himself next to her, opposite Jon.

The little maid scrambled up and sat opposite her mistress, a battered dressing case clutched on her knee.

‘It is something recognised but not spoken about. With the typical hypocrisy of Society Mr Wilton, my secretary, is perfectly acceptable, whereas Jonathan, my somewhat irregular brother, is not.’

‘Which can be amusing, considering how alike we are.’ Jonathan, three inches shorter, brown-haired and blue-eyed, grinned. ‘Acceptable as in a suitable extra dinner guest in emergencies, but not as a potential husband for a young lady of the ton, you understand.’

‘Yes, I quite see.’ Eleanor Lytton nodded. ‘One day everyone will be judged only on character and ability, but I fear that is a long way off.’

‘Are you a radical, Miss Lytton?’ Blake asked as the carriage moved off. He noticed that she took no notice of their leaving, and did not send so much as a fleeting last glance at her old home.

‘Cousin Eleanor, is it not?’ she reminded him. ‘I suppose I might be a radical—although I would not want change to be driven by violence. Too many innocents suffer when that happens.’

Blake was intrigued. There was plenty of room on the carriage seat and he shifted a little so he could study her expression. Most ladies, other than the great political hostesses and the wives of politicians, would be appalled at the suggestion that they might have an opinion on politics, and even those who did would be obediently mouthing their husband’s line.

To have radical leanings was quite beyond the pale, and indicated that she both read about such matters and thought about them too. What a very uncomfortable female she was to have around—and yet somehow refreshingly different from his usual female companions.

‘I agree with much of what the radicals advocate—both the need for change and the perils of making it happen,’ he said, jerking his thoughts back from his recent amicable parting with Lady Filborough, his latest mistress.

A gorgeous creature, and yet he had become bored very rapidly with her predictability. He had no desire for a mistress who would try and plumb the depths of his soul—far from it—but he did prefer one who engaged his brain as well as his loins.

‘People need bread in their stomachs before peaceable progress can be made.’

‘Bread in their stomachs and books in their hands. Education is critical, don’t you think?’

Her earnestness was rather charming, Blake decided. She was so unselfconscious, so passionate. Such a pity that she had no looks, he mused as he settled back into his corner. That passion combined with beauty would be truly...erotic. Good Lord—what a peculiar word to think of in conjunction with this woman.

Jon was ready to launch into his own opinions on working class education, he could see. A discussion of that all the way to Lancashire was going to be distinctly tiresome.

‘I hope you will excuse us, Cousin Eleanor, but we must go through this morning’s post.’

‘Of course.’

It was like blowing out a candle. All the intensity went, leaving only a meek spinster effacing herself in her corner.

‘Polly, pass me the book from my case, please. I have my notebook here.’

By dint of dropping his gloves, Blake managed to get a glimpse of the spine of the volume. Agricultural Practices of the Mediterranean Lands. He sincerely hoped that she was not going to try and impose those on the farm labourers of Lancashire or she would soon come to grief.

What a strange little female she was. Or not so little—she must be all of five feet and nine inches, he estimated, before he reached for the first letter Jon passed him and became lost in the detail of a land boundary dispute affecting a property he was buying.

Chapter Four

To be closed in with not one but two gentlemen had almost caused her to back out of the carriage in instinctive panic. Ellie was quite proud of herself for not only standing her ground but greeting Mr Wilton with composure. No one would have noticed anything amiss, she was sure.

And, curiously, the secretary’s presence made things easier. He was not as good-looking as his half-brother—more of a muted version—and the fact that the men had soon become engrossed in their work had helped her to relax. She did not like being the centre of attention under any circumstances, and now Lord Hainford—Cousin Blake—had a perfect excuse for virtually ignoring her, and she was sure he much preferred to do so.

She looked up from her book. The carriage was luxurious beyond anything she had travelled in before, with deeply buttoned upholstery and wide seats which meant that she could sit next to Blake without touching him or his clothing. Even though she told herself it was irrational, she had dreaded being shut up in a closed carriage, pressed against another body—or, worse, sandwiched between two men, which would have been quite likely to happen on a stage coach.

Ellie wriggled more comfortably into her corner and put her notebook on the seat. It was an effort to concentrate on date production and wheat yields, especially when she could smell Blake. It had to be him—that elusive scent of starched linen, an astringent cologne and warm, clean man. Mr Wilton was too far away for it to be him setting her nostrils quivering every time the two of them shifted, leaning across to pass papers or stooping to rescue fallen sheets from the carriage floor.

It was very provocative, that intimate trace that he left in the air. And just because the threat of a man touching her made her anxious, it did not mean she did not wish that was not the case. Blake was beautiful to look at—strong and male, the perfect model for both fantasy and fiction... Perfect, that was, when there had been not the slightest danger of getting close enough to speak to him, let alone scent him.

Ellie wrenched her concentration back to the book. Goodness, but the production of dates was dull. She flipped through the pages. Perhaps water management would be a more riveting subject for the tiresome Oscar to explore. He might even fall into an irrigation canal.

The thought cheered her, and she picked up her notebook and began to scribble not notes but an entire scene.

* * *

‘Bushey,’ Blake said. ‘We are changing horses here. Would you like to get down for a few minutes?’

Ellie almost refused. Oscar was now vividly describing the experience of being hauled out of a muddy irrigation canal, and the scene was giving her great pleasure to write.

Then it occurred to her that this might be a tactful way of suggesting that she might wish to find the privy. ‘Thank you. I would like to stretch my legs.’

Polly looked grateful for the decision, and Mr Wilton helped both of them to descend from the carriage, then turned away, as tactful as his brother, as the two of them went towards the inn.

When they returned Blake himself got out to help them in. ‘You look pleased about something, Cousin Eleanor.’

‘We were admiring the facilities. A most superior stopping place—thank you.’

‘Thank Jon. He sorts everything out.’

Mr Wilton glanced up from his papers and acknowledged the compliment with a tilt of his head. ‘Just doing my job, Miss Lytton.’

‘So what does an earl’s confidential secretary do, exactly?’ she asked as the groom closed the doors and swung up behind as the carriage rolled out of the inn yard.

‘I deal with Lord Hainford’s correspondence, keep his appointments diary, monitor all the newspapers for him, organise journeys, settle his accounts, ensure that reports from all his properties and investments are received regularly, scanned, and that any matters requiring his decision are brought to his attention. I make notes on topics he might wish to speak on in the Lords. That kind of thing.’

‘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?’

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.