Marrying His Cinderella Countess Page 13

  She tossed it back and smiled at him. ‘I am teasing. It is simply that there is a lot to do, and Verity is tutoring me intensively about Society and how to go on, which is making me dizzy. I promise you, I woke up last night from a nightmare in which I had to plan the seating for a dinner with a rural dean who was the son of a marquess, the well-born but scandalous mistress of a royal duke, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Prime Minister. It was a miracle that my screams did not wake Polly.’

  ‘You have my promise that I will never invite the Archbishop to dinner,’ Blake said solemnly, and then they were both laughing, and she slipped her hand into the crook of his elbow and everything was all right.

  Under her fingers his muscles flexed, making small adjustments that must be communicating themselves to the horses, although she could see no movement in his hand. It was very arousing to touch the subtle strength, to sense his awareness of the animals. Would he be as aware of a woman when he was making love to her?

  She thought about that kiss in the field, about waking with the weight of his arm—this arm—over her, about the heavy-lidded appraisal whenever she caught him looking at her mouth.

  Yes, he would be aware of his bed partner, of her pleasure.

  Ellie shivered, unsure whether it was with anticipation or alarm. What if he did not want her when they finally got to bed? What if he found her skinny body too unattractive, or missed the beautiful faces of the women who had been his mistresses? Men could not disguise a lack of arousal—she knew that.

  And what about her? She had somehow avoided thinking beyond kisses, but the wedding night was very much more than kissing, and she was not certain that she would be able to hide her fears and her shrinking from Blake. Women could feign arousal—she knew that too—but wanting Blake was not the problem…

  Chapter Twelve

  ‘Cold? I can stop and find the lap rug.’ Blake craned round to look over his shoulder, reining in as he did so.

  He must have noticed that tiny shiver.

  Ellie looked about her. They were in the lee of a large clump of shrubbery, screened from the open part of the park. It was ridiculous to feel emboldened by there being no one else within sight, because no one would overhear them unless they shouted. Even so…

  ‘I am not cold.’

  Blake stayed where he was, half turned on the seat, then he thrust the whip into its holder and wrapped the reins around it.

  ‘Stand.’

  The well-trained horses flicked their ears at the sound of his voice, but stayed still as he stripped off his gloves—almost, it seemed to her, a signal that he would wait, would listen to what she had to say.

  ‘I am afraid.’

  ‘Afraid?’

  He looked appalled—as well he might. What had come over her, blurting it out like that?

  ‘Ellie, I should have thought. You do not have a mother or married sister to advise you, to make you feel comfortable about what will happen. Do not worry, please.’ He lifted a hand and laid it gently against her cheek. ‘I won’t… We will take it very slowly. Nothing will happen—not until you want it to.’

  ‘No, no, that isn’t it, Blake!’

  Oh, Lord, now she must be crimson with embarrassment. What on earth had made her think that this rush of honesty would be a good thing?

  ‘I have absolutely no fears about that,’ she lied.

  She couldn’t bring herself to say that she was aching for him, and neither could she find the words to tell him what had happened—the fear, the horror of that night when she had broken her leg and her stepfather had died.

  ‘I am afraid that I won’t…please you. That night, in front of the fire, you said that I’d bruised your arm because I was so bony.’

  ‘I am an idiot,’ Blake said. ‘I was worried about you—you were thin. Worried that you would make yourself ill. I meant to joke, perhaps to encourage you to eat more. I would not have hurt you for the world, Eleanor.’

  Honesty, she reminded herself. I should tell him.

  Tell him how she had made herself thin because she had started to become afraid of her stepfather. It had begun when she’d started to develop a figure, so she had tried to make those treacherous curves go away.

  She looked at the horses, the trees, her gloved hands. Anywhere but into those concerned grey eyes.

  ‘I was not well after my accident,’ she prevaricated. ‘I lost my appetite and it was hard to get into the habit of eating again.’

  ‘Poor darling,’ Blake said.

  He ran his fingers down the curve of her cheek until his thumb met her mouth. He lingered there, rubbing gently across the swell of her lower lip, until she raised her eyes and met his gaze.

  ‘You are very feminine, Eleanor. Lush curves are not everything—or anything, come to that. So long as you are not frightened of me then it will all be well, you will see. I promise,’ he added, his voice husky.

  Without her conscious volition her lips moved against his thumb, in the whisper of a kiss, and then he slipped it into her mouth, rubbing across the sensitive inner flesh and she gasped, her tongue flickering out to meet the blunt thrust of Blake’s thumb.

  ‘Eleanor…’

  A question, a statement, or a demand? She did not know, but she swayed towards him and Blake took her into his arms, brought his head down and kissed her. Hot, open-mouthed, urgent.

  This should scare her, she knew. This was not how a gentleman was supposed to kiss his fiancée—not how any man was supposed to kiss a virgin. This was a quite blatant statement of desire as his tongue replaced his thumb in a way that left her in no doubt what that penetration symbolised. He tasted as she remembered from that kiss in the field, on the sheepskins, but the intent behind this kiss was different. She could tell that even in her ignorance. This was, after all, only her third kiss.

  And then Ellie lost the ability to analyse, to treat this as a new experience to be carefully considered, to savour. All there was, as she leaned into Blake’s embrace, was heat and desire and the unexpected delight of creating pleasure with another person. He was not simply kissing her…they were kissing each other. When she pressed into his mouth with her tongue he growled, deep in his chest. When he pulled back a little and nibbled at her lower lip she followed, took her turn, learning the exact pressure on the firm flesh that made him groan, made her heart beat faster at the masculine, primitive power of his response.

  The horses moved, jerking the curricle and breaking their kiss. They fell apart, both of them panting a little. Blake’s mouth looked swollen, sensual.

  I did that. I kissed him back and I was not afraid. Perhaps I can do this after all.

  ‘Do you doubt,’ Blake asked, his voice husky, ‘that I desire you?’

  *

  Why? Blake asked himself as he worked to get both his reactions and the horses under control. He had just kissed an inexperienced young woman in the middle of Green Park and he was as hard as teak, aching to drag her down from her seat and into the shelter of that shrubbery and make love to her until they were both screaming. He had kissed Felicity like that and she had recoiled in horror, but Eleanor had kissed him back.

  She blinked at him as though bemused, her mouth pink and swollen, her eyes wide, her pale skin flushed. Even a passionate kiss had not rendered her beautiful, simply rather sweet…endearing. Vulnerable. He had always demanded beauty in his lovers. No, he realised, not demanded, just expected. He was eligible, handsome, desired, so he could ignore the plain and the awkward.

  Arrogant bastard, he thought, looking at himself from the outside. It didn’t happen often that he was forced to see himself as someone else might, and it was not pleasant. Was that how Eleanor had seen him when they’d first met? As some privileged, top-lofty aristocrat cutting a swathe through Society, taking what he wanted and ignoring the side-effects?

  Felicity had been beautiful. Exquisite. It had been one of the things he had loved her for.

  Blake winced, and the pair backed edgily.

  He
always tried very hard not to use that word when he thought of Felicity—the woman he had loved without realising it, the woman he had alienated with his neglect, assuming she would still be there when he got around to snapping his fingers for her.

  She would not have been beautiful as she lay dying, racked by fever in some second-rate Roman boarding house. He had destroyed that along with everything else.

  Yet this woman—her undistinguished face now returning to its normal pallor, worsened by the deadening effect of mourning black on her complexion, her wildly curling hair once more making a bid to escape its cage of pins and the confines of her bonnet—he desired her.

  He licked his lips, tasting her. Marmalade and black tea, innocence and desire. Eleanor’s eyes were fixed on his lips, and he knew that if she echoed that lick, if he so much as glimpsed the pink tip of her tongue, then he would not be responsible for his actions.

  He hauled his attention back to the horses, and it did feel like a physical effort. ‘Walk on.’

  ‘No, I do not doubt your desire,’ she said, prim as a Sunday School teacher.

  Had she licked her lips? He flicked the reins, sending the pair into a fast trot.

  ‘I gather from my researches that almost any female may arouse male desire, as it appears to be quite separate from actual emotions.’

  ‘Your researches?’ Blake glanced across at her then. What possible ‘research’ had she been doing into male desire?

  ‘Theoretical,’ Eleanor said in a soothing voice.

  He suspected that she was laughing at him. Her voice certainly shook a little.

  ‘One reads…talks to one’s friends.’

  Blake found his shoulders relaxing. He hadn’t realised that the thought of Eleanor encountering male desire would make him react so strongly. ‘I see. Book research—like your textbook on Mediterranean agriculture?’

  ‘That had very little in it about male desire,’ she said. ‘Rather more about date-harvesting and Nilotic irrigation.’

  He was on the point of asking just why those topics should be of the slightest interest to her when Eleanor spoke again.

  ‘I have a confession to make.’

  ‘A confession?’ he said flatly. Days before the wedding and now she makes a confession?

  ‘Tell me.’

  *

  That had not been well-timed, Ellie realised. Talking about a confession immediately after that kiss and a discussion on male desire would be open to misinterpretation. No wonder Blake was bristling like a dog catching the scent of a rat.

  ‘I had best show you, I think. Will you take me back to the hotel, please?’

  Collecting the tiger at the gate did nothing to aid their conversation, but it was only a short distance to Bailey’s Hotel. Long enough to bring back that tell-tale furrow between Blake’s brows, she noticed.

  Miss Paston was surprised to see her back from her drive so soon, and decidedly flustered to find that Ellie was accompanied by Blake. ‘My lord. Er… Cousin. Good morning.’ She went pink when he bent to kiss her cheek as well as shaking her hand.

  ‘I just want to show Lord Hainford something, Antonia.’

  Ellie took down the works of Mrs Bundock from the shelf where she had arrayed them, in the hope that they would stimulate her to finish the Scottish book as soon as possible, and put them down on the table.

  ‘I wrote these. I am Mrs Bundock.’

  ‘Bundock?’ He picked up Oscar and Miranda Discover London. ‘Who on earth is Oscar?’

  ‘An insufferable little prig,’ Ellie confessed. ‘I have just finished a book about his visit to the North African coast—hence the date palms and the Nile—and I must confess to an almost irresistible urge to have had him seized by Barbary corsairs. As it was I had to cheer myself up by letting him fall into an irrigation ditch.’

  Blake moved on to The Young Traveller in Switzerland. ‘I would be tempted to drop him down a crevasse in a glacier. And do Messrs Broderick & Alleyn know the identity of Mrs Bundock? Your real name, I mean?’

  ‘Yes, of course. I had to deal with them direct, because I did not think Francis would be very reliable over the money. Do you think it might be a problem?’

  It had never occurred to her that it would be, her only fear had been that Blake would disapprove of her writing at all and would try and prevent her from honouring her contract.

  ‘I should imagine that dear Oscar’s adventures from the pen of Countess Hainford might sell even better than this edition, don’t you think? Publishers are businessmen—they will not miss such an opportunity for publicity. We can only be grateful that you have not written a torrid novel,’ he added absently as he scanned the titles.

  Ellie could feel herself turning pink, then pale. Thank heavens. ‘I had better have a word with them.’

  ‘Jonathan will have a word. More than one, if necessary.’

  ‘But I am still working on a book for them. I have an agreement.’

  ‘Jonathan can deal with that also.’

  ‘I do not like letting people down, Blake. Writing for them kept me afloat financially, and they have always dealt with me in a most straightforward manner.’

  The look he gave her was considering, but he was not frowning, she was thankful to see. Starting their marriage with a flaming row about Oscar, of all things, was not a good omen.

  ‘If we have their guarantee of discretion, then, yes, very well. Why did you not tell me about your writing before now, Eleanor?’

  Miss Paston had effaced herself—presumably going to her bedchamber. Ellie sat down at the table and thought about why she had kept her writing a secret from Blake. The real reason, she supposed, was her novel, with him portrayed as the dashing desert lord. Keeping that a secret had somehow encompassed the juvenile travel books—as though once he knew she wrote the words sensation novelist would be emblazoned across her forehead.

  He hitched one hip on the edge of the table and slapped his gloves against his thigh while he waited. It was not impatient—more an unconscious gesture, she thought, her eyes fixed on the hard muscles under the close-fitting buckskin breeches. Polly had confided that Francis had got into a bath wearing his new buckskins in an effort to mould them to his form as tightly as his idol Hainford’s.

  ‘I got into the habit of being secretive,’ she said at last. ‘I kept it from Francis because of the money. And I hardly have a wide social circle. Besides, it is not as though I have written a roman à clef to set Society by the ears, guessing who each character is based upon. Oscar is modelled on our curate, who is a pompous soul.’

  ‘No, I suppose it cannot do any harm—even if it does come out—and I agree it does not do to break contracts. Is that why you so often have inky fingers? I had thought you merely a clumsy penwoman.’

  ‘I forget everything when I write,’ she confessed. ‘I suspect I wave my pen about when I am holding conversations in my head. I certainly chew the end—which is disastrous when I pick it up wrongly. It is very hard to get ink off the tongue, you know.’

  Blake snorted with laughter. ‘I couldn’t taste any. Put out your tongue and let me see how black it is.’

  When she did he leaned in closely, pretending to inspect it, then snatched a kiss. ‘When I gamble away all my money you can write that scandalous Society novel and save our fortunes.’

  ‘If you gamble to that extent I will leave you, my lord. I give you fair warning.’

  The laughter ebbed from his eyes, leaving them bleak, even though he kept his tone light when he said, ‘No, do not leave me, Eleanor.’

  ‘I will not,’ she promised. ‘I keep my vows too.’

  I could never leave you to that hurt. Somehow we will fight it together—whatever it is.

  *

  This is my wedding day.

  Her head felt so light she thought it might bob off her shoulders and fly away like one of those exciting hot air balloons, hardly tethered by the weight of the diamond earrings.

  Ellie opened her eyes and looked in
the mirror to find herself confronting a woman even more different from the one she had seen after last night’s ruthless haircut.

  This Eleanor was still no beauty, of course. Rice powder could only do so much to subdue all those freckles, and nothing could shorten her nose or make her face anything but an undistinguished oval. But with her hair shorn into a myriad of tiny curls that actually looked as though they were meant to be a coiffure, rather than a nest for an unknown species of bird, she realised that she did have cheekbones. And her nose did not look even longer, as she had feared it would, and the tips of her earlobes showed, so that the lovely earrings were on display.

  ‘Now the gown.’ Verity and the modiste and her maid lifted it and lowered it over her head. ‘Stand still. No, do not look until it is laced up. There—now.’

  It was the palest almond silk, with a hint of warm creamy brown in the layer of net in the overskirt, and it was rippled through with gold embroidery. White or pink would have taken all the colour from her face, but this warmed it…made her eyes sparkle deep hazel.

  ‘Oh,’ Ellie said as Verity smudged something from a little stick on her eyebrows, darkening them a trifle. ‘I have got a figure.’

  It must be the corset and the seaming of the gown, but even so…

  ‘Told you so. Bite your lips—suck them. I don’t want to paint them,’ Verity ordered. ‘The necklace and the veil next.’

  The necklace was more diamonds—they should take everyone’s eyes off her face, Ellie thought, blinking at their magnificence. Then the veil went on, secured by a matching diamond tiara. Finally she slid her feet into the shoes, wincing at the sudden strain the correction made on her hip.

  Just for today, she promised herself. And at Court, if Blake arranges for me to be presented.

  He had said he would, but that seemed so improbable that she could not really believe it.

  She walked slowly up and down, accustoming herself to the painful pull on muscles that had adjusted to the shortening of her leg after the break. ‘I still limp.’