Marrying His Cinderella Countess Read online

  Finch hired a coachman and a groom in Lyndhurst, so they could drive through the night, and sent the team back to Hainford Hall with a groom from the livery stables.

  ‘There is no way anyone could know which way we’ll go from here,’ Finch explained when Ellie protested about giving up the strong team so early. ‘This is on the way to London just as it is to the North.’

  Hopefully her reference to seeking medical advice would make Blake think she was going to London, as she’d intended him to think. She would write to him once she was settled at Carndale, Ellie thought. There was no reason to hide from him—not if they were to find some way to save this marriage. But she did not want to see him. Not yet. She did not think she could cope with it, if she was honest with herself. Quiet reflection was what was needed. She would write eventually…tell him to write back.

  ‘His lordship hasn’t let Carndale, has he?’ Polly asked suddenly. ‘I only just thought of that. What are we going to do if he has?’

  ‘There is no need to worry—they haven’t finished the roof repairs or the bore hole for the well yet, Jonathan was telling me that only the other day. It will not be let until everything is complete.’

  It was strange how the old farmhouse represented a haven of calm now. Security. Perhaps it had even stopped raining.

  *

  It took them four days. Without Jon to book ahead and secure the best accommodation Ellie had been reluctant to arrive anywhere late in the evening and chance finding rooms, so she and Polly were both sick of the sight of the coach interior by the time it drew up in front of Carndale. The journey had not been helped by the fact that there had been absolutely nothing they’d felt like talking about.

  The past was too painful—especially the recent past—and the present too uncertain.

  Her nausea persisted, worse in the morning, which Polly told her was the usual pattern. ‘My ma used to suffer from it something awful,’ she confided. ‘But it stops after a bit.’

  ‘I hope so,’ Eleanor said wanly. She was making herself eat for the baby’s sake, although keeping breakfast down was proving a lost cause.

  She felt relief at the sight of Mr Grimshaw’s craggy face as he crossed the yard to meet them. With his dour unflappability he seemed like a rock in a storm, utterly reliable.

  ‘Miss—my lady, I should say. We weren’t expecting you.’

  ‘No. I have come to stay for a while, Mr Grimshaw. Are the family all in good health? And the farm? I hope the well is finished soon for you.’

  ‘Aye, my lady.’ He held out a callused hand to help her down. ‘That’s just finished today, and they’ll be done with the roof come next week. No need to worry, though. It’s sound enough, and we’ll not have any rain for a few days.’

  ‘That seems like a miracle,’ she said, looking at a clean, dry yard under a blue sky. Even the plain old house looked warm and welcoming. ‘Do you think Marjorie will be able to lend a hand again?’

  ‘She will that, my lady.’ He dug in his pocket and produced the key. ‘I’ve been letting the men in and out to do the roof.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Ellie took the key. ‘Have you anywhere my men can sleep? Mr Finch, my steward, Phipps, my driver and David, the groom.’

  ‘Aye, I can house them if you want, my lady. But there are rooms over the stable at the back. Needs a clean-out, but I reckon it would suit bachelors.’

  Finch’s eyebrows had risen at his new job title, but she had to do something to reward him for his support and loyalty. Hopefully he would be marrying Polly soon, and they could have their own rooms in the main house. She could only hope that Blake was not going to dismiss him. Surely he would not do that? She had to trust that she was not completely wrong about him.

  Although that might be easier to bear, she thought as she waited for Finch to unlock the front door. If she had been utterly misguided about Blake, if he was simply the arrogant rakehell intent on only his own pleasure and interests that she had taken him for in the beginning, then she could surely learn to fall out of love with him—which would make it so much easier to endure this marriage.

  The old house was warmer than she remembered. It smelt of woodsmoke and dust, but not of damp or neglect. She could take refuge here until she found the strength to go back and discover some way to exist and create a family.

  A refuge, not a hiding place, she repeated to herself as she walked through the dim rooms. If she ran, as a cowardly little voice inside her urged, then they would never be able to reach any way forward. And besides, tempting as the idea of hiding somewhere and pretending to be a widow with a child might be, it was a coward’s way out.

  This baby deserved to know his or her father. And Blake had the right to be the kind of father she knew he could be if he could only forget he was an earl and think like a plain man. But just now the last person she wanted to see was her husband.

  *

  When he arrived in Berkeley Square that evening the house was as Blake had left it—empty except for a skeleton staff busy draping the main rooms under dust sheets as Turner directed a campaign of deep cleaning and repairs.

  ‘Her ladyship?’ Turner stood amidst the table silver in the strong room, surrounded by metal cleaner, polishing cloths and tubs of steaming water. ‘There has been no word from her, my lord.’

  ‘Obviously a misunderstanding,’ Blake said. ‘I understood her to be coming to Town on some business, but she must have gone to… Oh, what the hell? If I cannot trust your discretion, I cannot trust anyone’s. Between you and me, Turner, my wife has left me. I thought she would come here.’

  ‘It seems we must put on our thinking caps, my lord.’

  The butler opened a cupboard, produced two glasses and a bottle of brandy.

  Blake sat down with a thud on the chair on the opposite side of the table and reached for a glass. ‘Does nothing throw you off balance, Turner?’

  He took a gulp of brandy and decided that he did not want to know what spirits of this quality were doing in the strong room.

  ‘One would hope that a superior butler will always rise to the occasion, my lord. I collect that her ladyship is upset—some misunderstanding, no doubt. But she has no close relatives, I think?’

  ‘None. Oh, come in, Jon, join the party.’

  Jon came in, sat down and twitched the brandy glass out of Blake’s hand. ‘You know what the doctor said about alcohol and concussion. I have the wedding invitation list here.’ He brandished a sheaf of papers. ‘That has all Lady Hainford’s close friends on it—although quite how we go about asking if she is with any of them without starting the rumour mills going… I can set an enquiry agent to find who is living in each house…that might be the most discreet way. I won’t say who we are looking for. It will take a day or so.’

  ‘I had better start with Dr Murray. She liked him when he saw her about her leg, so he’s the most likely medical man she will have gone to for advice.’ Blake shoved both hands through his hair and winced as he knocked against the bandage. He tried to think, tried to focus on something other than the sickening fear that he had lost her.

  ‘And if we do not find her in London?’ Jon asked, downing the brandy in one go.

  ‘I’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,’ Bake said.

  Or throw myself off it.

  ‘Dinner,’ Jon said decisively. ‘We are both bone-tired and you are concussed.’

  It was sensible, and Jon was right. There was nothing to be done tonight. Blake went upstairs to bathe and change, ate dinner, then swallowed the foul potion that Duncombe produced—‘For your headache, my lord,’—and retreated to his study. He felt drained, beyond tired and yet achingly beyond sleep even as his eyelids dragged down.

  What about heartache, Duncombe? Have you a potion for that too?

  On the table was the portfolio of papers that he had taken from Eleanor’s locked desk drawer. What had possessed him to break into her private things? It was most definitely not the action of a gentleman, even a despe
rate one, but instinct had driven him—some small nagging voice that he had promptly forgotten in his haste to reach London.

  Now he opened the leather flaps and began to read. After a page he sat up straight. After two all desire for sleep fled. Blake laid the papers out on the desk and began to sort them into order because—bless her orderly soul—Eleanor had dated most of them. Dated, and noted the place where each part had been written.

  The faintest glimmering of hope crept into the aching void that was his heart.

  *

  ‘Yes, I am happy to confirm that you are in an early stage of pregnancy, my lady.’ Dr Eldridge, the doctor Ellie had gone to on the advice of Mrs Grimshaw, beamed at her.

  ‘I thought I must be,’ she said faintly. She was pleased—of course she was—and happy, but she wished she might be joyful.

  The doctor was a jolly soul, unused to aristocratic patients, and cheerfully frank in a way that Ellie suspected many a London doctor would not be. He explained all the symptoms she might encounter, was encouraging about the morning sickness, and prescribed country walks, fresh air and a lack of worry for anything else that might ail her.

  ‘But summon me at any time you feel the slightest need, my lady.’

  Finch was waiting with the carriage and helped Ellie and Polly in. ‘I bought some newspapers, my lady. I thought you might find them of interest,’ he said.

  ‘Thank you, Finch.’ He climbed into the carriage after them as Ellie insisted—he was her steward now, after all—and settled next to Polly as Ellie picked up one of the papers and tried to read.

  The print blurred and danced before her eyes. So she must not worry and all would be well, would it?

  Where was Blake now, and what was he doing? Did he miss her even a little? Was he worried about her? She swallowed, turned the front page—all advertisements as usual—shook the pages of newsprint into order and made herself focus on the first item on page two.

  She had reached the foot of the fourth and final page by the time they drew up in front of Carndale. And if she had been challenged to recount a single item of news she knew she would not have recalled one of them.

  *

  ‘Eleanor is not in London.’

  Blake pushed back his chair and began to pace up and down the study.

  ‘The agents have turned up nothing, Murray dithered about his patients’ confidentiality, but it was largely to save face, and he couldn’t hide his surprise when I told him I thought she had been to visit him, so she hasn’t been in touch.’

  ‘So where else?’

  Jon looked as tired as he felt, Blake thought as he sat down again. Neither of them had slept much over the past three nights, and he had noticed that Jon had been pushing his breakfast around his plate as much as he had just now. At least his head had stopped aching. His doctor had pronounced him free of the concussion—not that it seemed to have done his thinking powers much good.

  Eleanor had some money, but not much, and she had respectable servants. If anything serious had occurred they would have let him know, surely? She did not know his other properties but—

  ‘Of course—Carndale. She is familiar with it, it is a good long way away and it is not mine. Or rather she would prefer not to think of it as mine.’

  ‘I will order the carriage.’ Jon pushed away his half-eaten breakfast and stood up.

  ‘No, the curricle. Just you and me and a bag apiece. We’ll drive turn-about, if your arm can stand it.’

  When Jon began to protest—something about Blake resting because of his head, the distance—Blake said flatly, ‘No. I cannot bear to think of her believing that I would hurt her deliberately. But I have hurt her, Jon.’

  ‘All right.’ His brother nodded agreement. ‘But we are taking your tiger, so we’ve a third to spell us with the driving—and do not tell me that the entire staff doesn’t know what is going on, because they do. With you looking like there’s been a death in the family and no funeral, they don’t have to use their imaginations to know what the cause is.’

  *

  Nine days since Ellie had left Hainford Hall. Long enough, surely, for her to have decided what to do, she told herself as she tried for the third time to draft a letter to Blake.

  The part concerning Polly and Finch was easy—praise for their loyalty to her, a word about how carefully Finch had looked after her, a statement that she was certain Blake would not be angry with him for following her orders…

  What was difficult was how to make him understand that she needed time before she could return to the marriage, but that she would come back, that she had every intention of honouring her vows. She set out how she had felt about his prevarication over the miniature, how she had come upon him in the churchyard unintentionally and how she felt hurt, angry and…lonely.

  In a way, it would have been easier if you were in love with a living woman. I would be able to fight, then. But all I have now is the knowledge that I am so far from what you need and want, let alone desire, that staying in your past is easier for you than making a present with me.

  I have to come to terms with that, and now I must discover how to forgive and to understand because I—

  She almost wrote love you, then jerked back her hand, blotting the page. That was too much like emotional pressure.

  I want this marriage to work so much. For the—

  For the baby’s sake. No, she could not mention the child either.

  The letter was almost right. She had told him why she had left, assured him that she was coming back, and done her best to safeguard Polly and Finch from his anger. Now all she had to do was finish it appropriately—however that might be done—and then work out how to cope with a loveless marriage and a baby on the way and go home again.

  There was the sound of hooves in the front yard. Mr Grimshaw’s gig, by the sound of it, although the dogs were barking, which was odd. Polly was upstairs, changing the bed linen, so Ellie put down her pen and went to the front door herself.

  It was a high-perch curricle with a team of four steaming horses, a tiger perched up behind and two men…

  The tiger jumped from his seat and ran to the leaders’ heads and the driver climbed slowly down.

  Blake.

  He looked gaunt and grim, there was stubble on his chin, and his heavy driving coat was thick with white dust. For a moment her treacherous heart sang with relief and joy. He was here, he had come for her, and she took two running steps before joy turned to dismay.

  What am I going to do now?

  She stopped dead, began to back away—as though getting behind the door, closing it, would make him disappear, like a child playing hide and seek.

  If I cannot see you, you will not know that I’m here.

  ‘Eleanor.’

  He came across the few feet between them faster than she could back away.

  ‘Eleanor, don’t run from me. Please.’

  Be civilised about this, she told herself as she put up her chin and turned. Be dignified. He knows you are hurt, but do not let him guess how you feel about him.

  She went back inside, held the door open for him and walked in front of him into the parlour.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Ridiculous to have forgotten how Blake seemed to fill a room, how he took her breath. Idiocy to want to touch him, to kiss him, to be held.

  ‘Please sit down,’ Ellie said.

  Dignity. Be civilised.

  ‘I will stand. I am relieved to have found you. I thought you had gone to London.’ He sounded as though he was giving evidence in a court of law. ‘You said you were not well.’

  ‘That—’ Her voice cracked. She moistened her lips and tried again. ‘That is what I hoped you would believe at first. I am all right. Only…tired.’

  ‘You knew I had kept that miniature and then, at the church, you saw me put some token into the monument. You believe that I hold Felicity’s memory more dear than I hold my marriage to you, than my promises and vows to you.’

&n
bsp; ‘Yes. I thought… I had told myself that she was in the past and that we could build our marriage together, be honest with each other. I saw I was wrong and so I left. I will come back, Blake, I swear it. I just couldn’t… I did not know how to pretend that I had not seen and somehow hide the hurt, and I dared not speak of it and end up saying things that neither of us would ever be able to forget.’

  ‘I am not surprised,’ he said, startling her with his ready acceptance. ‘I can only wonder at your restraint. If the positions had been reversed—if I had seen what you did, thought that you felt like that for another man, alive or dead—I could never have controlled my tongue or my temper. Marriages have broken apart for far less.’

  He held out one hand to her, then sat down abruptly without touching her, even though she was still on her feet.

  ‘You have no reason to believe anything I tell you, Eleanor. Certainly no reason to trust me now. But will you let me explain?’

  I do not want to hear you telling me how lovely she was, how tragic it was!

  For a second she thought she had shouted it aloud. ‘Very well.’ She sat down too—it felt easier to control herself, somehow.

  ‘I told you how I put off asking Felicity to marry me after my father died. I hadn’t realised how I felt about her—I suppose I had come to take her for granted. She refused me. I became persistent…angry. I kissed her and she started crying. I stormed off, expecting her to come round in a day or so. I was too proud to go and beg. But I had been taken by surprise at how very beautiful she was, how she had felt in my arms. It was a lightning strike of realisation—Eleanor, please, do not look like that. Hear me out. I need to explain this properly. I am not trying to hurt you.’

  Are you not? You are succeeding very well so far.

  ‘Go on,’ she said to the log basket.

  ‘I found I was in love with her and realised that I had never looked at her properly before—that is the truth. I had been away a lot, and she had been an awkward fledgling girl. Now she was exquisite—far more lovely than any of the ladies I had seen in London. And she was mine. I told myself that she had only to get over her fit of pique at being neglected and all would be well.’