Marrying His Cinderella Countess Read online

  ‘That would be kind of you.’

  Blake shrugged. ‘Why not? He is a good man and she is loyal to you. Why shouldn’t they be happy and be able to stay here if they want?’

  ‘No reason at all,’ Ellie agreed.

  People in love ought to be happy and secure and together…

  She had meant to tell Blake about her riding now that she was off the leading rein and venturing into the park, but somehow that afternoon’s encounter had taken the shine off her achievement. She had meant to give him Lady Trenton’s message as well, but had kept putting it off.

  Coward, she told herself. You have to do it before Lady Trenton’s letter arrives.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The footman put the brandy decanter on the table, but Ellie did not rise and leave Blake to his solitary drink. ‘Thank you, William,’ she said. ‘We do not require you further.’

  Blake looked at her, eyebrows raised. All the sections had been taken out of the dining table, so she was close enough to see the question in his eyes.

  ‘I met Lady Trenton riding in the park this afternoon,’ she said, before she lost the will to speak. ‘She asked me to give you a message.’

  ‘Not a very urgent one, it seems.’ He was frowning now.

  ‘Upsetting rather than urgent.’ Ellie realised that she was twisting her napkin and smoothed it out. ‘Lord and Lady Trenton are putting up a memorial to Felicity in the church and will be holding a ceremony to which you will be invited. She is writing.’

  ‘Upsetting?’ Blake poured two fingers of brandy into the glass and swirled it around, apparently focused on the golden brown liquid in the candlelight. ‘I am sure it will be a comfort to them.’

  ‘For you, I meant,’ Ellie said. ‘It will bring back memories that can only be painful.’

  Blake’s hand was steady as he raised the glass to his lips. ‘It will be sad for everyone who remembers her.’ He looked her straight in the eye over the rim of the glass. ‘I am not holding on to the memory of a dead woman, Eleanor. I regret the way I dealt with her, that is all.’

  ‘But you love her still.’ It was not a question.

  ‘No. You are wrong. I do not love her—not even the memory of her, Eleanor. I give you my word.’

  His eyes were the deep grey of old pewter and he did not smile.

  ‘Of course,’ she said.

  He has given me his word and he is a man of honour.

  Yet she could not but recall that conversation with Verity.

  ‘He has such darkness inside,’ she had said of Blake.

  And Verity had replied, ‘Do be very certain that it is a dark space that you can bring light into and not a black emptiness that will suck you in too.’

  Much as she hated the thought that her husband was still obsessed with this woman from his past, her suspicion that he might lie to her about it was even worse. And it was unworthy of her. This was the man she loved—her husband. She must believe him and must hope that one day he might find it in him to love her. Love their children. Want to make a home.

  How would he feel about her when she was big with child…ungainly? How would their marriage survive when this easy lovemaking which sometimes seemed the only glue holding it together became restricted by childbirth and small children?

  ‘Of course,’ Eleanor repeated. ‘And the Trentons will be grateful for your support at a very difficult time for them.’

  *

  It was a relief to be able to focus on someone else’s marriage for a change, Blake thought as he stood in the stable yard and talked to his head groom.

  ‘I’d be very grateful for the accommodation—and the approval, my lord,’ Finch said as he heaved the saddle onto the back of Blake’s new hunter. ‘I never thought of settling down, but you know how it is with the females, my lord. One minute there you are, fancy-free and not an idea in your head about wives and babes, and the next you’re knocked on your back by a fine pair of eyes and it’s all up with you.’

  ‘I hope it’s more than a fine pair of eyes,’ Blake remarked as he ran his left hand down Tuscan’s neck. There had been a brisk exchange of views with Ellie that morning, when he had appeared with his right hand unbandaged, and he had finally submitted to a light strapping.

  Just for the sake of domestic harmony, he told himself, ignoring the fact that he had enjoyed watching her solemn expression as she concentrated on getting the bandage just right, her lower lip caught between her teeth in fierce concentration.

  ‘Upsetting?’ he suggested.

  ‘It is that.’ Finch tightened the girth and straightened up. ‘She looks no more than a piece of fluff, but she’s got a backbone, has my Polly.’

  Like mistress, like maid, Blake thought as he swung up into the saddle, automatically adjusting his balance as the big horse snorted and sidled.

  ‘He’s fresh, my lord. Needs the fidgets shaking out of him.’

  ‘I’ll take him down the drive to the hay meadows,’ Blake said. ‘Do you want to come? Try him against Romulus?’

  ‘Thank you, my lord, but there’s something I need to do. Another time, perhaps? They’re well matched.’

  Blake turned through the archway, keeping the horse to a controlled trot until he stopped pulling and settled obediently, then let him canter. By the time they reached the long drive and he gave Tuscan his head he was as ready as the stallion for the freedom of a thundering, flat-out gallop. Tuscan was too full of oats, and Blake was too full of thoughts and emotions and conflict.

  He needed this, he realised as he put the big bay at the hayfield gate and they soared over. He felt like hell.

  The ceremony in the churchyard the previous day had been devastating, but not for the reasons he suspected Eleanor believed. Felicity was gone. She was the past. The upright figure who had stood next to him in her elegant dark grey ensemble, her hand on his arm, was his future. The best amends he could make to Felicity’s shade was to be a good husband to this living woman.

  The memorial was a six-foot handsome column of white marble. An oval plaque had Felicity in profile on it, and on top was an urn draped with swags and ivy. Her name and ‘Beloved Daughter’ with the dates of her birth and death was its only inscription.

  Lord and Lady Trenton had obviously been deeply moved, but he had been able to tell they were comforted by this symbol that their daughter had their forgiveness and acceptance at last. For himself he supposed it had drawn a sharp line under his history with Felicity. It was time to stop feeling regret, stop feeling guilt, and concentrate on making his wife happy—because she certainly deserved it.

  Eleanor must be hating this, he had thought as he had stood there, looking down at her calm, serious expression. But she had been there—out of compassion for her new neighbours and to support him.

  He had wondered if one day she would she grow to love him, because he was beginning to suspect that the feeling that warmed his heart when he looked at her, that made him want to whip himself for every unconsidered hurt he inflicted on her, might just be love. Not that he could tell her that, burden her… Eleanor would feel it her duty to love him in return, and love, he was discovering, was not something you got by wishing for it.

  He did not deserve that she loved him, of course. She would love their children, if they were fortunate enough to have them. Would he be jealous of his sons and daughters when she rocked them in her arms?

  ‘Blake.’

  Eleanor had nudged him and he’d realised that he had drifted off into his own thoughts. The few friends and relatives who had been invited to the ceremony had started laying flowers at the foot of the memorial, and Eleanor had moved forward to lay a spray of yellow and white roses and ferns.

  He had pulled himself together and given her his arm for the short walk back to the hall and Trenton Grange, steadied by her calm tact.

  Now Tuscan jinked at a hay stook and Blake cursed, made himself concentrate on what he was doing. The far field was still uncut, delayed by the weather, and he wanted to
go and check that it was ready to be scythed tomorrow. He steadied Tuscan to an easy canter and headed for the distant boundary hedge.

  The stallion’s powerful stride was soothing, and Blake let his thoughts drift back to Eleanor. He could not even curse the Fates for bringing him and Lytton and Crosse together that night in White’s, because if that fatal card game had not happened then he would never have met Eleanor.

  There was one more thing he must do to clear his conscience as far as Felicity’s memory was concerned. Then he could concentrate entirely on convincing his wife that she had made the right decision when she had said yes to his proposal.

  *

  From her eyrie in the Long Gallery window seat Ellie saw Blake come in from the stables. Usually he went to the front door, sought her out, told her what he had been doing. Today, walking rapidly towards one of the side entrances, he seemed almost…shifty? The glimpse she’d had of his face had revealed an expression not precisely grim, but certainly deadly serious.

  The ceremony in the churchyard must have hurt him more than he had allowed her to see. Neither the hurt nor the fact that Blake had hidden it from her was a surprise. She had promised herself not to mention Felicity unless he did, but if he needed her then perhaps she should just happen by and see if he said anything.

  She reached the landing in time to see the tails of his coat vanish in the direction of his suite of rooms, so she followed along the passageway, through the open door of his sitting room, and paused outside the bedroom door. That was open too, and she could see that he was not inside, but she could hear someone moving in the dressing room.

  Her kid slippers made no sound as she walked across the carpet and halted in the doorway. Blake had his back to her as he stood at the dressing table. One drawer was open and he lifted something out and stood with it in his hands, quite motionless as he looked down at it. His body, intensely still, blocked it from her view.

  ‘Blake?’

  He turned, his hand behind his back.

  ‘I thought I saw you come in,’ she said. ‘A good ride?’

  ‘I was looking at the hay fields. There will be a better crop than I feared after all this rain. Have you had a pleasant afternoon?’

  ‘An idle one,’ she confessed. ‘I felt rather tired, for some reason, so I went to the Long Gallery and have been learning some more ancestors. I was daydreaming in the window seat when I saw you.’

  She could have kicked herself for mentioning tiredness when she saw Blake pick up on the word.

  ‘I am perfectly well. I simply spent too much time investigating the linen presses, that is all.’

  He tugged on the bell-pull. ‘I will take a bath. It is a trifle early to change for dinner, but I must smell of the stables.’

  ‘What were you looking at just now?’

  ‘Nothing of importance.’

  ‘Blake, don’t lie to me, please.’

  He stiffened, but she was too suspicious now to worry about any insult to his honour.

  ‘If it were of no importance you would not be trying to hide it.’

  ‘I have no wish to distress you.’ He brought his hand from behind his back and held out a miniature portrait.

  ‘Felicity…’ Ellie breathed.

  Lord but she had been beautiful—ethereal, almost—with an innocent fragility that took the breath. No wonder Blake had kept the miniature. No wonder he could not resist looking at it, whatever he had promised her, his wife.

  ‘She was lovely.’

  ‘Yes,’ he agreed, his voice flat.

  ‘No doubt you would have fallen in love with her whatever your parents had arranged.’

  ‘My feelings did not enter into the arrangement.’

  ‘No? Did you not resent that? When you were younger, I mean? Before you fell in love with her?’

  ‘I was the heir. That is what heirs do—marry appropriately. My father saw that as my duty and his was to arrange the match. It was hardly his fault that I made a hash of proposing and drove her away.’

  ‘And you will expect to make the same kind of arrangement for your own son when the time comes?’

  ‘Of course.’ Blake sounded surprised that she had to ask.

  ‘Despite you own marriage not being to the advantage of the earldom?’

  He shrugged. ‘Despite that.’

  This is our child you are talking about as though he was a piece of property, she almost shouted at him.

  Then she saw his fingers close around the miniature and more immediate worry surfaced again. ‘You told me you were not holding on to the memory of a dead woman, and yet you have to hide her image away so you can brood over it in secret.’

  ‘Eleanor, I am not brooding over it. I was not hiding it away. As I said, I simply did not want to upset you. It is over. Felicity is the past. I swear it.’

  Can I really trust you? she wanted to ask.

  The words died unspoken as she heard Duncombe clear his throat as he entered the bedchamber.

  Ellie turned on her heel and walked out.

  *

  ‘Are you quite well, my lady?’ Polly put down a cup of hot chocolate on Ellie’s bedside table and went to draw back the drapes to their fullest extent before she came to study her mistress’s face.

  ‘I had a bad night,’ Ellie confessed.

  A night she had spent alone, after telling Blake that she needed an uninterrupted sleep. What she had got was seven hours of uninterrupted fretting, and telling herself that she should be grateful that Blake was not carrying on an affair, or out carousing every night, which was what many wives had to endure, had been no help at all.

  He had given her his word that he had put his thoughts of Felicity behind him and quite clearly he had not. But promising to control emotions and thoughts was apparently an impossible undertaking.

  There were times when she wished she did not love Blake, but wishing it did not make it so. She could survive without his love—she had married not expecting it, and had never been promised it. But the children… She had begun to look forward to children as a joy in themselves, both for her and for Blake, but now it seemed that obtaining his heir, and controlling that heir’s future life were paramount in his ambitions for fatherhood.

  If he thought like that about his oldest son, would he simply ignore any other boys and girls as of lesser importance? He would never be cruel to a child, she knew that, but children needed love…unconditional love…

  ‘Your chocolate is getting cold, my lady,’ Polly prompted.

  ‘Oh.’ A skin was beginning to form and, looking at it, she felt distinctly queasy. ‘Can you take it away and bring me tea, please, Polly? Chamomile.’

  She sipped the clear liquid, ignored the maid’s anxious looks and began to feel a little better. ‘I need fresh air, I think. Send word down to Finch to saddle up Toffee and I will ride after breakfast.’

  When she got downstairs she discovered that she would be eating alone. Jonathan had ridden out to deal with some emergency involving collapsing drains, and Blake had taken an early breakfast and also gone out, the butler informed her. No, his lordship had not vouchsafed his destination.

  ‘But doubtless his lordship will not be long or he would have given me a message for your ladyship.’

  ‘Of course—thank you, Tennyson.’ At least she was able to ignore the laden buffet and nibble at some toast without being urged to eat more. ‘Please send down to the gardens and ask for a small posy of roses to be made up immediately.’

  She was ashamed of herself for feeling as she did about Felicity, and for finding it so hard to forgive Blake for his continuing attachment. She should be willing to forgive his attempts at deception too, she knew. Perhaps a little penitence would ease her conscience and her emotions. And if she achieved some inner calm then she would speak to him about the children she hoped the future would hold.

  *

  ‘I want to follow the stream today,’ she said to Finch as he mounted the steady grey gelding he used when he rode out w
ith her.

  He had tucked the small posy of roses into one of his saddlebags, where it looked almost comical against the battered leather.

  ‘There must be some lovely spots for a picnic, and his lordship said something about trout fishing. I thought to surprise him with a little expedition if this better weather holds up. Then I want to go on to the church.’

  ‘It’s a fine trout stream, my lady,’ Finch agreed. ‘I can show you the best fishing spots. But as for picnic places—you’ll be the best judge of those. If you turn left under the arch we can cut through the spinney to the riverside path. If we’re quiet you might see kingfishers,’ he added.

  It was a joy to amble along the riverbank, with rare sunshine sparkling on the water as it chattered in its shallow gravel bed. The willow trees made shade, wild flowers spangled the turf, and they passed one delightful little bay after another—all of them, Finch assured her, excellent fishing spots.

  It was almost time to turn and cut across the meadows to the church when Finch saw the kingfisher. ‘See, my lady? There on that bare branch over the water. That’s his fishing spot. If we walk slowly we can get a bit closer.’

  They reached an open patch of grass where a track from the hay fields met the riverbank and stopped there while the tiny jewelled bird dived and came back to his branch, beak empty. He tried again and this time brought back a fish.

  After perhaps ten minutes it flew away, a blue speck vanishing upstream into the shadow, and Ellie turned Toffee’s head towards the village with a sigh of pleasure.

  ‘That was magical.’

  She felt so much better, so much more tranquil and at peace as they rode up to the churchyard gate. Finch helped her down and handed her the nosegay, then took the horses off to the water trough on the green.

  Ellie saw Tuscan as she turned the corner of the church’s western end. There was no mistaking the big stallion. He was tied up at the gate that led towards the Trentons’ house and she drew back behind a large table tomb at the sight.

  Blake was standing in front of Felicity’s memorial, hat in hand, one hand pressed against the stone urn. He seemed deep in thought. Then he put down his hat, took something from his pocket and stretched up to move the ornate lid of the urn that topped the column. Even at his height Blake could hardly reach, but he dropped the object in and moved the cover back.