Marrying His Cinderella Countess Page 19

  Eleanor’s eyes widened. ‘You would hit me?’

  Blake slammed his clenched fist against a sagging pergola support. ‘Under no circumstances would I strike a woman, Eleanor. If you don’t know that about me by now—’

  ‘Oh, what have you done?’

  She reached for him and he realised that his hand hurt like the devil—because he had slammed it into broken wood wrapped in rose briars. Splinters and thorns studded his bruised fist, and blood trickled down his wrist and over her fingers as she held him, the crimson shocking against her white skin as it stained the lace cuff of her gown.

  ‘That must hurt so much. Come inside quickly, so I can clean it and get those splinters out. And it is your right hand too.’

  Blake looked down at her bent head, felt the tenderness with which she held his throbbing hand, saw her concern over something that had been his own stupid fault on top of an incident which must have hurt her deeply, whatever her feelings for him. This was one reason he had married her, he realised. She did not sulk or bear grudges. She was honest with herself over her feelings, and she was honest with him too. And she had a heart that was generous and giving.

  ‘Ellie,’ he said, and she looked up. ‘I married you because I like you.’

  And that was nothing but the truth.

  Chapter Eighteen

  ‘Well, then,’ Eleanor began, and a smile flickered over her lips and was gone. ‘That is a good thing, because it is why I married you too. Whether you will still like me when I have finished with your hand remains to be seen.’

  ‘Duncombe will deal with it.’

  His valet would be exceedingly efficient and aloofly incurious about what Blake had done to injure himself.

  ‘I will.’

  She walked beside him back to the front door, managing not to fuss over him and without so much as a glance at her own stained cuff. Felicity would probably have fainted, he thought, and realised that Eleanor’s practical approach was rather refreshing under the circumstances.

  ‘Hot water to his lordship’s dressing room, please, Tennyson, and some linen for bandages and salt. I will see you there,’ she added to Blake. ‘I must find some tweezers.’

  Duncombe came with the hot water and helped Blake, cursing and wincing, out of his coat. ‘Do you wish me to remain, my lord? It is rather…gory for a lady,’ he added as he rolled up Blake’s shirtsleeve.

  Blake regarded the throbbing results of his lack of control. ‘I have every confidence that her ladyship is perfectly capable of dealing with any amount of gore, Duncombe.’

  Eleanor came in, her gown changed, her cuffs turned back, her hands full of items that Blake decided not to look at too closely. She poured salt into the hot water and stirred it.

  ‘Put your hand in that and I will clean it so I can see clearly. I worry that anything left behind will fester.’

  Blake submerged his hand, thinking ruefully that if the doctor or Duncombe were doing this he could curse and relieve his feelings at will, whereas stubborn masculine pride was going to keep him tight-lipped for however long this torture would take.

  ‘Put your elbow on the towel and hold up your forearm,’ Eleanor said after a few minutes. ‘The light here is perfect.’

  She sat down, picked up a pair of tweezers and leaned close to his hand, her nose almost touching it as she squinted at the splinters and thorns.

  ‘I never really thought you would strike me,’ she said after a minute. ‘I rather lost track of who you are for a moment.’

  She said no more, and he could find no words to answer her.

  It took almost half an hour and another soak in fresh water before Eleanor was satisfied that every last fragment was removed, and then there was a tussle over just how much bandaging was necessary.

  His wife won, of course. She tied off a neat knot and put down the scissors. Her hands were shaking, and she did not meet his eyes as she began to tidy up the equipment.

  ‘Eleanor? Ellie?’

  She looked up and her eyes were bloodshot, just as he had predicted, her cheeks were tear-streaked and her hair, even in its modish new crop, was a mess. She must have been weeping silently all the time she had been tending to him.

  ‘Eleanor, why are you crying?’

  ‘Because I was hurting you,’ she said as she dumped the bandages and picked up a square of linen. She scrubbed at her eyes—not improving things one iota—then blew her nose defiantly.

  ‘You were much gentler than Duncombe would have been,’ Blake said. ‘And in any case I deserved it.’

  ‘I think it was a disproportionate punishment for not looking at what you were punching,’ she said, and the ghost of a smile touched her mouth.

  Blake stood up, pulled her to her feet one-handed, and kissed her. This was his wife, and his bedchamber was just the other side of that door, and his senses were full of the taste of tears and newly awakened sensuality and the now familiar essence of Eleanor.

  She made a noise like a startled kitten and blinked up at him. ‘Blake…?’

  ‘I want you, Eleanor,’ he said with brutal honesty, and waited for the rejection those tears promised.

  Blake was braced for a slap, an angry outburst, even more tears—although he was beginning to see that Ellie wept more over other people than she did over herself. Instead she reached up and curled her arms around his neck, then raised her face to him, eyes closed, lips parted.

  He seized the silent invitation, kissed her, took her in his arms and began to walk her backwards, pushing open the door as her back touched it. Kissing, kissing until she was against the bed.

  She fell backwards with a gasp as the kiss broke, and tried to scramble up, but he caught at her skirts and tossed them up in a flurry of petticoats, then fell to his knees, his hands on her bare thighs.

  ‘Stay there,’ he growled as she batted at the smothering fabric. Under his left hand her skin was warm and smooth, and he cursed the bandages covering so much of his right. But his fingers were free…

  ‘Blake? What are you doing? Oh!’

  Ellie subsided backwards as he pressed her legs apart and nuzzled into the nest of hot feminine curls. She was still moving, but then her hands found his head and clung on, her fingers burying themselves in his hair, and he smiled against her secret flesh, aroused by her frank acceptance of his actions.

  Did nothing daunt Ellie?

  *

  What was Blake doing? Surely not kissing her there? Ellie felt shock, embarrassment, and then sensation so intense and so focused that she stopped thinking altogether.

  Vaguely at the back of her mind was pain and hurt and anxiety, but somehow she could not hold on to them—not when her entire world was focused on the sensation of Blake’s lips and tongue and teeth, on the texture of his hair between her fingers, the shape of his skull, the overwhelming masculinity of him. How did he know the precise point to drive her out of her mind?

  And then she stopped thinking altogether, and surrendered to the wave of fire and darkness sweeping through her. She was vaguely aware of protesting as the heat of Blake’s mouth left her, and then the mattress shifted as something pressed down on either side of her head. She felt pressure and then yielding as he sheathed himself in her and began to move.

  She reached up and found him, opened her eyes onto the intensity of his gaze, saw the sudden lack of focus as he lost himself in her and the tension that was almost pain as he surged and gasped and fell forward, his face buried in her shoulder. She tightened her arms around him and held on—held him while he was hers and only hers.

  His eyes had been open as he’d taken her, found his release in her. Surely that meant he had been seeing her, thinking of her and only her, in those moments? Or had his imagination conjured up another face, a beautiful face, to superimpose over hers? A lush, feminine body instead of her angles and bones?

  Oh, my love, see me. See the one who loves you.

  *

  It was a very polite marriage, Ellie thought bleakly on the
fifth morning as she passed Blake the marmalade and he thanked her punctiliously. Ever since that afternoon when she had realised that he still held deep feelings for Felicity—the day when he had made shocking, desperate love to her, fully clothed—they had been scrupulously careful of each other.

  Blake had shown her over the parts of the house she had not seen, had set aside a couple of hours a day to explain the estate, the tenants, the work of the Home Farm. She’d learned about the holdings and the business interests of the earldom and been stunned. No wonder Jon had smiled when he’d said that Blake kept him busy—and that Blake himself worked hard.

  They’d entertained the local gentry when they’d called to pay their respects, and she’d met the vicar and the congregation on the third day, which had been Sunday. The Trentons had been there too, in their pew, the tops of their heads visible over the top of their high panelled enclosure, before Eleanor had sat in the Hainford pew and had been able to see nothing but the arches and the pulpit.

  Polite greetings had been exchanged and nothing more said. Blake made no reference to the neighbouring estate and neither did she.

  He came to her room at night and made love to her with skill and care—and a consideration that made her want to shake him and demand the fierce passion of that afternoon. But she never found the words to talk about their marriage and her dreams for them before he kissed her and left her alone in her big bed.

  Blake seemed to feel that good sex and mutual politeness was what made a satisfactory marriage, and that was all. And he seemed worryingly offhand about children. He wanted an heir, she knew that, but it was almost as though ‘an heir’ was an abstract object, quite removed from a real child. Was that how he had felt? An heir to be pushed into a suitable dynastic marriage?

  But he had loved Felicity…

  Eleanor had made herself a list of things to achieve—learn to ride; restore the gardens, beginning with the sunken rose garden; work through the house turning it into a home; visit all the tenants. She wrote that list down, but she kept another list in her head: never let Blake see how uneasy and unhappy she felt; never betray her love for him; find a way to fight a ghost for the love of her husband.

  She did not let herself dream about a baby.

  *

  Finally the miserable weather cleared and she thought about that first item on her list. She had ordered a riding habit before her marriage, but she had not shown Blake, and nor did she intend to involve him in her riding lessons, provided the head groom was prepared to teach her.

  When Blake found out she would tell him she had intended to surprise him, but the truth was that she did not want him worrying about her leg and fussing over her.

  ‘Polly, have you met the head groom yet?’

  ‘Finch?’ Polly blushed a deep and surprising pink. ‘Um…yes.’

  ‘What is he like?’ Ellie probed, diverted by the blush.

  ‘He is young to be head groom, but everyone speaks well of him and he’s very…manly.’

  Teasing would be unkind, so Ellie nodded, and merely said, ‘I will change into my riding habit and go down to the stables to see for myself.’

  Somehow she was not surprised when Polly caught up with her in the stable yard with a better pair of gloves than the ones she had originally selected.

  Finch was certainly manly, she decided, feeling interested that being in love with one’s husband did not prevent an appreciation of tall, blond, well-muscled head grooms. From a distance, naturally.

  He was refreshingly matter-of-fact about the whole business when she explained that she needed riding lessons. ‘Does your leg pain you, my lady?’ he asked when she was seated in the saddle, and, when she assured him it did not, made no other reference to her limp.

  She had been afraid that he might insist on consulting Blake first, but he seemed to assume that she had permission to ride as she wished. He found her a stolid brown pony named Toffee, and spent an hour a day with her in the paddock, patiently teaching her. Polly soon gave up finding excuses and simply tagged along, perching on the mounting block or sitting on the paddock fence.

  ‘You’re a natural, my lady,’ Finch pronounced after the third lesson, and let her off the leading rein.

  By the end of her third week at Hainford Hall Ellie was trotting and cantering, and good-natured Toffee was obediently following every one of her directions. It was a revelation to be able to go at speed—albeit the pony’s paces were not exactly breathtaking—without the awkwardness of walking or the passiveness of being a passenger in a carriage.

  She and Toffee made a good pair, she decided as she ventured out on her first exploration away from the paddock, with Finch a tactful distance behind and Polly abandoned at the stables. Neither she nor the pony were anything but what they appeared—plain, straightforward and practical rather than decorative—and she liked that.

  It was a lovely afternoon. She had left Blake closeted with Jon and a pile of estate papers and told herself to think about nothing but her posture in the saddle, the beauty of the parkland and the plans for the sunken garden which were gradually taking shape in her mind.

  The sight of another horse jerked her out of her abstraction and she stared at the pretty bay mare and its black-clad rider. She was close to the Trenton estate boundary, she realised, even as she guessed who the rider was.

  Ellie let Toffee walk on until the two horses met. ‘Good afternoon, Lady Trenton. Have you come calling?’

  ‘Why, yes. I had hoped to find dear Blake at home.’

  The other woman put back her veil. Ellie had not troubled herself with one, feeling that her complexion was unlikely to be damaged by the country air, but then, she reflected bitterly, it was not roses-and-cream-perfect in the first place. Lady Trenton’s features seemed more haggard than before, and there was a suspicious redness around her eyes.

  As if conscious that Ellie might have noticed something, the older woman smiled brightly. ‘What a dear little pony. Is it any particular breed?’

  Her own mare curvetted a few steps, showing off her arched neck and flowing tail. Lady Trenton was an accomplished rider, it seemed, and not above patronising dear Blake’s plain little wife.

  ‘None whatsoever, I imagine, but he is perfect for a beginner,’ she returned with a warm smile.

  ‘Oh? You did not ride before?’

  ‘No, but I am learning fast. I do, you know. I like to be competent at everything I turn my hand to.’

  ‘Including marriage and a great estate? It is not something that I imagine you are used to.’

  ‘Marriage? No,’ Ellie agreed, holding her smile with difficulty.

  ‘You are older than I was when I married, of course. And doubtless more experienced.’

  Ouch, Ellie thought, schooling her expression to show that she was taking experienced at face value. ‘I believe Blake is at home—although I left him and Mr Wilton buried in a pile of estate work. Perhaps I can take a message?’

  Lady Trenton produced a handkerchief and touched it to her eyes. ‘If you would. I find myself too… I will write, of course, but please tell him that we have decided to put up a memorial to Felicity at the church. It is a long time since her death, but…’

  But the scandal is old history now, Ellie supplied, then chided herself for being uncharitable. But was it a coincidence that they were doing this now that Blake had returned home with a bride?

  ‘I am sure that will be a great comfort to you,’ she managed.

  ‘There will be a small ceremony. I will write formally, but I know Blake would wish to be there—would want to know as soon as possible.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ Ellie said blankly as Lady Trenton put down her veil and turned her horse back towards her own house. ‘Of course.’

  *

  It makes no difference, Ellie told herself an hour later.

  She had retreated to the Long Gallery to memorise more of Blake’s illustrious ancestors but had given up, unable to concentrate. Now she sat in one of the
window seats instead, feet up on the cushions, arms curled around her legs, chin on her knees.

  But it did. All Blake’s feelings about his lost love would be stirred up again, and a belated ceremony was going to bring back all those feelings of guilt he so obviously held on to.

  Oh, for goodness’ sake, Ellie, pull yourself together. Of course Blake will be affected. After such a tragedy involving a close neighbour he would be heartless not to be. It does not mean that he is becoming obsessed by his feelings for Felicity.

  She stared at the haughty Elizabethan dame opposite her.

  I hope.

  The painted eyes seemed to speak of an infinite mistrust of the entire male sex.

  Movement outside caught her attention and she twisted to look down through the old glass to the inner courtyard. Blake was standing talking to Jon, one hand on his half-brother’s shoulder. They were laughing over something in the sunshine. Then Blake shook his head, still smiling, and they turned and went inside.

  That is Blake, the real Blake, she thought. That straightforward, honest man. That honourable man. I can trust him. I believe that. He is too good a man to neglect me for a ghost and I will fight with everything I have to make him happy in this marriage.

  *

  ‘Is your maid entangled with my head groom?’ Blake asked over dinner that night.

  ‘“Entangled” with Finch?’ Ellie laughed at his choice of word. ‘She is very taken with him—and who can blame her? He is exceedingly good-looking, only in his early thirties, and has a good position. As for him, he seems glad to see her but is being very discreet. Why do you ask? Would you disapprove?’

  ‘Not at all. I only ask because they are not being quite as discreet as you imagine. Hay lofts are tempting spaces.’

  ‘Then he is going to have to marry her,’ Ellie said briskly. ‘She’s a respectable girl—or she was until she encountered Finch.’

  ‘He isn’t casual about that kind of thing,’ Blake observed. ‘I am sure he means to do the right thing by Polly. There’s a whole set of rooms over the harness and carriage wing if they want to set up home.’