Marrying His Cinderella Countess Page 21

  Ellie was not sure how she got there, but she found herself sitting on the broad wooden bench inside the lych gate. How could he? Leaving tokens like that could only mean that, far from being put aside, Blake’s love for his lost beauty must be as profound as ever.

  I swear to you, he had said, only yesterday.

  He had lied to her, and all the closeness that she had thought was growing between them, all the trust and hope that one day he might even come to love her, his wife, was simply self-delusion.

  Her skimpy breakfast churned in her stomach, and Finch found her a few minutes later retching miserably behind the wall.

  ‘I’ll take you along to the vicarage, my lady, and ride back for the carriage,’ he said when she straightened up and accepted the red spotted handkerchief that he had soaked under the pump.

  ‘I am all right now, thank you, Finch.’

  ‘I’m not at all sure you should be riding, my lady. Not at this stage of things.’

  ‘What things?’ Ellie blinked at him, trying to make sense of his words while she fought not to give way to tears.

  ‘Why, you are with child, are you not, my lady?’ he asked in his straightforward manner.

  For the second time in her life Ellie fainted.

  Chapter Twenty

  Ellie recovered consciousness almost immediately—in time to stop Finch shouting for help and carrying her off to the vicarage.

  ‘How do you know?’ she demanded.

  ‘My ma and my sisters have all had plenty of babes,’ he said. ‘There’s a look that women get. And then you were sick.’

  ‘I will ride back,’ she said. ‘Toffee is as steady as the coach would be, and I do not want any fuss.’

  Finch did not speak again until they were back at the stable yard. He helped Ellie dismount, then stood there, whip and hat in his big hands, and just looked at her. ‘My lady…’

  ‘Don’t speak of this, Finch. Except to Polly.’

  She patted Toffee and went inside, up to her bedchamber, and rang for the maid. ‘Please tell anyone who asks that I have a headache and do not wish to be disturbed.’

  ‘My lady? What is wrong?’

  ‘Go and talk to Finch.’

  Ellie locked the doors behind her and went to sit in front of the dressing table mirror. She was in love with, and married to, a man obsessed with a past love, and now she was carrying his child. Which would be a miracle if only she could feel happy about anything else in this marriage. She should have realised sooner, but it was very early days and she had explained the irregularity in her courses to herself as being due to the excitements and changes of the past few weeks.

  But she was pregnant, and somehow she had to come to terms with the reality, because this marriage must be saved for the sake of the child. And for Blake’s sake.

  And because I love him and I will not give up on him.

  And yet she would be bearing a child whose father saw it as a dynastic pawn, just as he had been.

  ‘Do not leave me, Eleanor,’ he had said in jest.

  And she had promised. ‘No, I never will. I keep my vows…’

  And when she had agreed to marry him she had asked for his fidelity, and Blake had said, ‘While we agree that the marriage is real then you will have my fidelity, not only the appearance of it.’

  While we agree…

  Well, what she had seen was presumably as clear an indication as she could ever receive that for Blake the appearance of their marriage and what lay in his heart were two quite different things. How did that make a real marriage? The kind she had dreamt of, hoped for? How could she trust him to treat his children with the love and warmth she wanted for them?

  Ellie took off her hat and her gloves and contemplated her reflection in the mirror. Strangely, she felt no desire to weep. She still loved him, so the human heart was obviously more resilient than she had imagined. But she could not face Blake just now—not with the news that should have made her so very happy.

  She could not force him to change so she must learn to cope, and that was hard to face while she felt weak and ill and unhappy. She needed time to herself, time to become stronger both in body and spirit, and then she would return and somehow build a family from a hollow marriage. Now, feeling as she did both sick and betrayed, she would only lose her temper, say things that might never be forgotten or forgiven.

  For a moment she hesitated. Stay? Confront him with his broken promises? What good would that do other than to humiliate her? No. She was Countess of Hainford and she had a farm—even if it had been absorbed into Blake’s estates on their marriage—and money in the bank. All she had to do was to get to Carndale…so far away, so peaceful and uncomplicated.

  Ellie began to stand and realised that she was shaking and very cold. If she just lay down for a while… No. If she did that she would weep, and she needed to be strong—had to be strong. She tugged the bell-pull and then remembered that the door was locked. She opened it just as Polly reached it.

  ‘My lady! James has told me! Such wonderful news! I had begun to wonder…but then you often are irregular so I didn’t like to hope, but—’

  ‘Thank you, Polly. But not everything is… There is some trouble between the Earl and myself. I need to be by myself for a while, just to…to think, you understand?’

  Polly obviously did not, but she nodded. ‘Yes, my lady.’

  ‘Is the Earl back yet?’

  Polly shook her head.

  ‘Then please bring Finch here.’

  Polly blinked, opened her mouth as though to protest, then left without asking questions. Ellie began to rummage in drawers to find her pin money.

  ‘My lady.’ Finch came in, closed the door and stood, stolid as always, as though he was used to being summoned to the Countess’s bedchamber.

  ‘I need to travel to Lancashire immediately. Is there a carriage and horses I can use to get me to the nearest posting inn to hire a chaise?’

  ‘There’s the Countess’s travelling carriage, my lady, and a second team of horses. You’ve no need to go post.’

  ‘But how would I return it?’

  ‘It is your carriage, ma’am. And I will drive.’

  ‘No, Finch, his lordship—’

  ‘You are, my lady, in a delicate condition—if I may be so bold as to mention it again—and I’ll not have it on my conscience that I let you clatter about the country in a hired chaise without your own men at your back.’

  His weatherbeaten face was set in an expression of grim determination.

  ‘His lordship might not like it, but he can only sack me, and I can always get a job with horses somewhere. I want to marry Polly and she’ll go with you, which is only right, so I’m coming to Lancashire one way or another. I’ll go and get the carriage ready now, my lady,’ he added, and he strode out without waiting for her reply.

  Ellie took a deep breath. ‘Help me change, Polly. Then we will pack. I do not know how long we will be away, but take only sensible, practical stuff. I’ll have no need of ball gowns and evening dresses. Hurry.’

  ‘But his lordship will follow us—catch us,’ Polly said, even as she began to help Ellie out of the riding habit.

  ‘I will misdirect him,’ Ellie said grimly, her brain spinning with the effort of remembering everything she must do.

  ‘We are coming back, aren’t we, my lady?’

  ‘Of course we are, Polly. Of course.’

  *

  Blake rode away from the churchyard with a sense of liberation, as though a weight had been lifted from both his spirit and his back. He had carried that portrait of Felicity like a talisman and like a punishment ever since she had fled with her treacherous poet. It had been months since he had looked at it, although at the back of his mind he had been as aware of it as he would have been a monk’s hair shirt fretting at his flesh.

  It had taken him far too long to realise that he should have talked about what had happened with Felicity before. He could have confided in Jonathan and come t
o understand his own feelings a lot sooner. Guilt, he was sure now, was an unhealthy emotion unless one learned from it and moved on—instead of romanticising it as he had done.

  It had taken him far too long to realise how he felt about Eleanor as well. He had gone from hostility and guilt—guilt again—to reluctant admiration and then liking.

  I married her because I like her, because she is brave and honest and her passions are genuine, not some act, he thought as he rode. There is beauty in her eyes and her soul and her passions. I love her.

  He intended to tell her now—to go home, explain the feelings that he had hidden from everyone, himself included, for so long. He had taken that miniature and in a way given it back to Felicity by hiding it within her memorial. Now he felt free to go to his wife and open his heart.

  Blake turned towards home and sent Tuscan off in a flat-out gallop across the hay fields, taking gates and hedges and ditches as though in a hunt after some phantom prey. He gave the big horse its head, hardly seeing where he was going, thinking only of Eleanor and holding her in his arms, somehow making her smile with happiness.

  He rode by instinct until part of the park’s herd of deer panicked and plunged out of a thicket in front of them.

  Tuscan shied, then reared. Blake got the stallion’s head down and had him under immediate control. And then one of the does careered back towards them. Tuscan backed, stumbled, and Blake, his balance all on the wrong side, was pitched to the ground.

  He was conscious of pain in his head, and then everything went black.

  *

  The setting sun blazing in his eyes woke him and he struggled into a sitting position, feeling sick, dizzy and disorientated. Tuscan grazed calmly, broken reins trailing, taking no notice whatsoever of the herd of deer close by.

  ‘Stupid horse,’ Blake said, and Tuscan’s ears twitched as though the last thing he would dream of doing was to shy at a herd of deer.

  He should get up, mount, ride home. Eleanor would be worrying about where he had got to and he had so much to say to her. His head was aching, but that was not why he felt so sick—that was from the remembered shame of betraying Eleanor by clinging to that illusion that he loved Felicity, had loved her for years, when all the time it had been nothing but a spell cast by a lovely face and his own sense of guilt for neglecting her so long.

  Blake hauled himself to his feet and made his unsteady way towards the horse. He couldn’t see his hat, but his head hurt too much to put it on anyway.

  Love her.

  That was the important thing. Confess first—all the muddled thinking, all the clinging to the memory of a woman he had never really known, never truly understood. And then tell Eleanor about the realisation that it was she whom he loved.

  Could she love him in return? He would be a luckier man than he deserved if she did. They had got off to a dreadful start, and then he had insulted her, kissed her in a field, married her out of hand and brought her to the one place where she would come face to face with all the memories of his past.

  Blake gathered up the broken reins, stuck his foot in the stirrup and got into the saddle—then sat there swaying while the familiar landscape swayed and circled around him.

  Concussion.

  Perhaps it would be better to wait until he had stopped seeing double before he tried either confession or lovemaking.

  He was half a mile from home, riding on a loose rein and letting Tuscan find his way, when he saw two riders galloping towards him. They became one as he forced his eyes to focus, then resolved into Jon, hatless and grim.

  ‘Thank God. What has happened to you? You are bleeding like a stuck pig.’

  ‘Am I? Scalp wound, I suppose. Fell off…hit my head,’ Blake said concisely, wondering if he was about to cast up his accounts. ‘What’s the panic—I haven’t been gone that long, have I?’

  ‘Hell, no, I wasn’t worried about you.’ Jon rode alongside and leaned across to peer into his face. ‘But I am now—you look dreadful.’

  ‘Concussion.’ Blake put up a hand and probed the sticky patch at the back of his head. ‘Nothing cracked, I don’t think.’ The wave of sickness passed. ‘Who are you worrying about, then?’

  ‘Eleanor.’

  ‘What? What’s wrong? Is she hurt? Ill?’ He kicked Tuscan into a trot, and then into a less skull-jarring canter.

  ‘No. Gone. So are Polly and Finch.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘They’ve taken the small travelling carriage and the team of four bays. When Frederick asked Finch where he was going, expecting to be needed to drive, he said he was driving the mistress.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Eleanor came in from her riding lesson with Finch—’

  ‘Her what?’ Blake shut his mouth—hard. Asking questions was only going to slow down the explanation.

  ‘Apparently she was white as a sheet. Sent for Polly, then Finch. The next thing they’re carrying bags out to the carriage. Tennyson asked Eleanor what he should tell you and she simply handed him two letters. Blake, what the hell’s going on?’

  Blake stopped swearing long enough to snap, ‘I have no idea. And what riding lessons?’

  ‘Finch has been teaching her to ride on Toffee. I thought you knew.’

  He didn’t shake his head because it hurt too much—but not as much as the realisation that he hadn’t even noticed that Eleanor was learning to ride.

  Tennyson was pacing up and down in the hall when Blake went in. ‘My lord! Your head—’

  ‘Give me the letters.’

  The blue wax that Eleanor always used splintered under this thumb and he forced his eyes to focus on the few lines of writing.

  Blake,

  I saw you at the church by Felicity’s memorial. Even after I saw the portrait miniature and you promised…

  I want to be a good wife, to make this marriage work, but I need to get away, to think how to do that.

  I am not feeling very well, but I know where to go for advice.

  Please do not follow me. I will come back. I keep my promises.

  Eleanor.

  ‘London. She has gone to London—she must have. She says she is feeling unwell and knows where to seek advice and she liked Dr Murray, trusted him. Hell, why isn’t she feeling well? I hadn’t noticed anything.’

  All the more reason for leaving him if he hadn’t even noticed that she was feeling ill enough to flee to London.

  ‘Tennyson, tell Duncombe to pack and order the stables to get the travelling coach ready. You had better come too, Jon. I may need you.’

  ‘You’re damn right you need me. But you need a doctor first.’

  Blake snarled at him but he stood his ground.

  ‘What does Finch say?’

  That letter was sealed with a cheap wafer and addressed in Finch’s round, painstaking hand.

  My lord,

  Under the circumstances I think it best if I am with her ladyship. I will guard her with my life, be certain of it. I will ensure that the carriage and horses are returned to your lordship when her ladyship no longer requires them.

  Jacob Finch

  ‘Thank God he is with them,’ Blake said, handing the letter to the other man.

  Had Finch been with Eleanor at the church? Had he seen what she had seen? It seemed that little episode must have looked truly damning if Finch, with no emotional involvement, had immediately sided with Eleanor’s demands to leave the house without telling him.

  ‘But why has she gone?’ Jon demanded.

  ‘Because she saw me leaving what must have seemed like a token inside Felicity’s memorial—because she knew I was still carrying a miniature of Felicity and I suspect believed I loved the memory of a dead woman more than my wife and she could not trust my word.’

  Blake spoke before he realised that he had an audience—not just his half-brother but Tennyson and now Duncombe.

  ‘You…’ Jon expressed himself in language that made the butler gasp.

  ‘Quite. Duncombe, sor
t my head out—I haven’t time for the doctor. Then get me a clean shirt and pack.’

  The valet came down the remaining steps and peered at Blake. ‘You are concussed, my lord. Your eyes… You should be resting.’

  ‘I will rest in the carriage. Hurry.’

  Duncombe washed the cut on Blake’s scalp and bandaged it, then started to pack while Blake, unable to sit still, searched Eleanor’s rooms.

  The family jewels were still there, and all her evening finery.

  ‘She’s packed for practicality,’ he said to Jon, relieved by this evidence of rational thought and not simply hysterical flight. ‘And Polly must be with her as well as Finch.’

  Talk about snatching at straws… She is sick. Oh, God, I ought to be with her.

  ‘This is locked.’ He tugged at a drawer and then, when it failed to open, forced it with a paper knife without even thinking why he was violating his wife’s privacy. It was locked but he could not afford to overlook anything she had tried to hide from him in case it held a clue.

  The drawer was full of paper covered in Eleanor’s handwriting. He picked it up, expecting it to be more of Oscar’s adventures. A phrase caught his eye and he stared. Not Oscar… But what the devil…?

  Another straw?

  There was no time now. He pushed the whole lot into a portfolio.

  Jon infuriated him by taking his arm down the stairs, then producing a rug as they got into the carriage. ‘Rest, damn you!’

  What else was there to do? Nothing until he found her. Certainly thought was beginning to be difficult through the pounding waves of headache and nausea.

  Blake suffered Jon and Duncombe to thrust him down full-length on the seat with a pillow under his head.

  He closed his eyes.

  She saw. What must she be thinking? I promised her… She promised she would not leave me. But how can I blame her? She doesn’t love me, but I must have hurt her so much…

  Chapter Twenty-One