Marrying His Cinderella Countess Read online

  Instinct made him roll onto his back, taking her with him so that she lay along his body, his hands light on her shoulders. From there she could knee him in the groin—right in the iron-hard erection that surely she must be aware of. Or she could roll free and leave him lying there, abandoned. Or…

  Eleanor blinked, then touched the very tip of her tongue to her lower lip. She was studying him as though she had never seen anything quite like him before and was interested in examining this strange life form more closely. His legs bracketed her hips, positioning her just at the point of greatest torment for him, and he forced himself to lie still—so still that he could feel his own heartbeat and hers too, because small, delectable breasts were squashed to his chest.

  Frankly, Blake thought hazily, the Spanish Inquisition might have made good use of her, because just at that moment he was willing to confess to anything—every embarrassing peccadillo, every deep, dark secret—if only she would stay where she was, directing her warm breath into his face. He could smell the wild mint leaf she had plucked as they walked.

  Eleanor sighed softly and her long, light lashes drooped. And Blake curled one palm around the back of her head, pulled down her head and kissed her.

  She tasted of the mint, faintly of tea, and very much of woman—of Eleanor. She gasped as their lips met and he took advantage, sliding his tongue between her lips, urging her to open to him. He could feel her surprise at the intrusion shivering through her, could almost read her thoughts. Bite? Flee? And then she relaxed, let him in, let him explore, and began to kiss him back.

  She was unsure, unskilled, had almost certainly never been kissed before, and Blake thought it was the most erotic kiss he had ever had—innocent, generous, curious.

  When he was certain that she was willing he rolled again, without breaking the kiss, and came over her, taking some of the weight on his elbows so he could control the kiss. He felt her arms come around his shoulders as she angled her mouth under his, the better to explore.

  This had to stop, and soon—he knew that. He was aroused to the point of pain, and he did not dare touch her in any other way but this. If he got his hands on her body he knew what would happen, and she was an innocent—not some bawdy country lass to be tumbled by her swain in the long grass.

  Blake pushed up and off her, onto the turf, to sit with his knees up and his forehead on them while he waited for his body to calm down.

  Eleanor made a small sound and he jerked his head up, terrified that it had been a sob. But she was lying on her back still, looking up at the sky, her mouth a little swollen and red from his kisses and—thanks be to whoever the patron saint of careless males was—smiling just a little.

  ‘Do you think we have our hats?’ she asked. ‘Or perhaps the bull has eaten them.’

  ‘Yours is there. Goodness knows where mine is,’ Blake said, after a quick survey of the flattened grass around them. The bull was staring at them through the rungs of the stile, presumably thinking that he managed matters better with his heifers.

  ‘I thought you were truly wonderful,’ Eleanor said seriously as she sat up.

  ‘Ah, well, I wouldn’t say that exactly.’

  She was an inexperienced virgin, after all. That had been her first kiss…

  ‘Picking me up and running like that. I know I am skinny, but I am quite tall. I must weigh quite a lot.’

  ‘Not at all. And in the heat of the moment one gets extra strength.’ Blake shrugged, trying for modesty and attempting not to feel ludicrously cast down by the fact that she had not mentioned the kiss. He deserved a boxed ear, at the very least, but he had expected some reaction.

  ‘And I believe that danger is also an aphrodisiac?’ Eleanor said seriously, making a question out of it and pronouncing aphrodisiac as calmly as she might have said potato. ‘Hence that kiss.’

  ‘That kiss,’ Blake said firmly, ‘had nothing to do with danger. We wanted to kiss—that is all.’

  ‘Oh, really, my lord. I am plain, and not the kind of woman that men want to kiss except in the course of attacking me or out of relief at not being gored by a bull. I am quite well aware of that.’

  She stood up and began to brush down her skirts. Then, when he made no move to stand, picked up her bonnet and shook the grass off it.

  ‘It was very…interesting.’

  Interesting?

  ‘Eleanor, you are perfectly kissable.’ He got to his feet. At least this conversation was having a dampening effect on his visible arousal.

  ‘But I am—’

  ‘Being a conventional beauty is not a prerequisite for being kissable,’ he said, thinking that he sounded a pompous ass. The bull stared at him, drooling slightly. It had ludicrously long eyelashes for something so male.

  ‘Oh. You are being kind, but thank you. What will you do now?’

  ‘What?’

  Visions of marriage proposals, of what any respectable woman’s expectations might be after that little episode, of doing the right thing, flashed through his mind.

  What the hell have I done? What does she expect? Look what happens when you let down your guard—you hurt someone else.

  She was looking at him as though he was having trouble understanding plain English. ‘Do you want to walk any more or should we go back?’

  ‘Go back.’

  Blake looked round for his hat, saw it was in the field, trampled, and sought for some kind of mental balance in the conversation.

  He had just kissed Eleanor after a life-and-death flight from an enraged bull. He had been rolling about in the grass with her, damn it. She was completely inexperienced. And all she had to say about it was that it was interesting. The woman was extraordinary and, as for himself, he could not recall when another female had confused him quite so thoroughly. But at least she did not appear to be alarmed or expecting anything else.

  She handed him her bonnet, took hold of her escaping hair in both hands and screwed it into a knot, then snatched back the bonnet and jammed it on her head before it could get free again. ‘Bother it. My hair has a life of its own.’

  ‘Cut it,’ Blake suggested as they began to walk back in the direction of the carriage.

  ‘I do cut it,’ she said. ‘The ends…to trim it.’

  ‘No, I mean cut it really short—it would make little curls then. Rather charming. Very fashionable.’

  Charming little curls? Whatever is coming over me?

  The sideways look Eleanor gave him was wary, as though she thought he was teasing. Or had lost his mind, more likely. ‘It would be easier to look after, I suppose,’ she said doubtfully. ‘Look, there is the carriage.’

  She began to hurry, her limp suddenly more pronounced.

  No doubt she will be delighted to get back to Polly, Blake thought grimly as he lengthened his stride and opened the carriage door for her with a word of thanks for their patient driver.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked after a few minutes. ‘Have I got grass stains on my gown?’ She fussed with her skirts.

  ‘No. It is fine.’ Blake resisted the temptation to brush away a single crushed daisy. What was this feeling she provoked in him? Whatever it was, it had prompted him to buy her nice clothes to give her pleasure, not because she was so shabby. Well, that too, he admitted.

  And why was she so easy around him, come to that? He supposed the latter was easier to answer. Eleanor, the innocent, divided men into potential rapists and gentlemen. He, it seemed, was a gentleman from whom she was quite safe—except for interesting experimental kisses.

  As for her…he supposed it was the novelty of a gentlewoman who was not setting her cap at him, who was not pretending to be in love with him, who had no expectations of him. He felt relaxed around Eleanor—dangerously so. Well, he thought ruefully, relaxed in most areas of his body. It was almost as though her plainness made her no threat, although he supposed it was that plainness which meant she had no expectations.

  She looked at him, head on one side, intelligent, brisk, puzzled, o
bviously wondering what was wrong with him. He wondered himself, and then he realised. Last month he had known exactly who he was and what he was doing—and he had been doing only what he’d wanted to. His responsibilities had been only those he chose to take on.

  Now here he was, miles from London, with a battered brother and a ridiculously kissable, thoroughly awkward female for whom he had, madly, made himself responsible.

  That was what was wrong with him. Insanity.

  *

  Blake seemed to be giving himself a brisk mental shake. At least his grey eyes were focussed and he had lost the slightly dazed look he had been wearing since he’d climbed back into the carriage.

  Ellie wondered briefly about concussion, although she hadn’t seen him hit his head. Or shock? But a big, strong, capable man like him would not go into shock after a confrontation with a bull—especially when he had come out on top in the encounter.

  Perhaps he was simply preoccupied with concerns about Jonathan and about being dragged away from London for so long. She watched the big, long-fingered hand that rested on his crossed knee. It made her think the things she should not—the pressure of his lips on hers, the taste of him, the surprising pleasure of that shockingly demanding tongue in her mouth, the feel of that long body on her, under her, over her again.

  So very different from that nightmare in her bedchamber. This was what it should be like between a man and a woman.

  It had been a moment of madness on his part, of course, she knew that.

  You are perfectly kissable.

  His eyes had been closed. Any woman under him like that would have been…kissable. Even so, she thought it would be hours before her pulse recovered its even rhythm. She would write about it—capture those sensations, the feel and the taste and the scent of him while they were still vivid. Lay them up like lavender, to bring out on long dark nights and recall one perfect spring moment when she had been…kissable.

  She was almost at the end of this strange diversion from reality. By tomorrow night she would be in her new home in Lancashire and Blake would be out of her life for ever. She should be glad. He had disturbed her equilibrium quite enough as it was. What her future life held was vegetable plots, chickens, Oscar’s travels and perhaps a novel. And a pig.

  It would definitely not hold handsome earls with grey eyes and broad shoulders and wicked mouths and dark shadows behind their smiles, and she had better get used to the fact.

  *

  ‘Is this it?’ Blake let down the window as the coachman turned on to a rutted track. ‘I suppose it must be. The man back in that village seemed to know what he was talking about. And the directions were clear enough. What a wilderness.’

  ‘It is just…farmland, I suppose.’

  She was not used to the countryside, but this was not exactly a howling moor or a rocky hillside. It was, in fact, rolling green fields broken up by stone walls, straggling hedges and clumps of windblown trees. By the look of them the wind blew a lot of the time, and from one direction—the sea, she supposed.

  ‘It is very green.’ And muddy.

  ‘Plentiful rain,’ Blake said. ‘That’s the Forest of Bowland over there.’ He waved a hand in the direction of the lowering hills that had previously been on their right and were now behind them. ‘They are part of the Pennines. Too high for much of the rain to get over, so it dumps itself on this side. The damp is good for cotton spinning—and ducks, I suppose.’

  ‘Oh, excellent…’ Ellie said weakly.

  Still, if it was pouring with rain she couldn’t be expected to dig vegetable plots and would have to stay inside and write. Her spirits had been plunging with every mile north today, and now all she wanted was to get into a big, warm goosedown bed and pull the covers over her head, or sit and write by a roaring fire, drinking chocolate and never having to emerge.

  ‘Good for slugs and snails too,’ Polly said helpfully. ‘But ducks eat those. Perhaps we had better get some as well as the chickens, Miss Lytton.’

  ‘Why not?’ What next? Sheep? Please, no—then she would have to get a spinning wheel.

  ‘That must be the house.’

  She dropped the glass on her side of the carriage and leaned out. A solid farmhouse sat squarely on the rise of the hill, farm buildings straggling around it. It was built of a pinkish-grey stone, had a stone-tiled roof—and looked about two hundred years old.

  ‘At least the roof seems to be intact.’

  They drove into the yard and stopped. There was a wait while the groom got down and opened the door, and Ellie saw he was trying to pick his way through the mud to preserve the shine on his gleaming boots. He was unsuccessful.

  ‘There’s stepping stones, of sorts, to the front door, Miss Lytton,’ he volunteered. ‘I’d take my hand if I were you, miss.’

  ‘Let me.’ Blake eased past her and down onto a flat stone just as a man came round the corner of a farm building, a black and white dog slinking at his heels, belly to the ground. ‘Good afternoon!’

  ‘Aye.’ The man wore boots and gaiters, old breeches and a vast frieze coat. He made no effort to remove the hat from his straggling brown hair.

  ‘This is Carndale Farm?’

  ‘Aye.’

  Ellie could tell Blake was becoming irritated, but he kept his voice pleasant. ‘And you are…?’

  ‘Ebenezer Grimshaw. He who farms this,’ he added, in a tone that suggested that the information had cost him actual money to part with.

  ‘Right. Well, I am Lord Hainford and this is Miss Lytton, who owns the farm. Your landlady, in fact.’

  ‘Aye. Yon lawyer wrote and said as you’d be coming up. Got a key, have you?’ He jerked his head towards the farmhouse. ‘Don’t have nothing to do with the dwelling. Don’t rent that. Just the shippons and the byres. You mind your feet…that’s reet clarty underfoot.’

  He turned and stamped off through the mud.

  ‘Helpful,’ Blake remarked. ‘Could you make that out through the whiskers and the accent? He rents the farm buildings, but not the house. And I suspect he was warning us about the mud.’

  ‘Kind of him.’ Ellie looked down. ‘Rather more than mud, I suspect. I do have the key.’ She produced it from her reticule, where it had been shedding rust, and handed it to Blake. ‘I would be obliged if you would get the door open and evict any chickens, or sheep, or whatever else is inside.’

  She had to joke or she would simply burst into tears. And she would not allow that to happen.

  It began to drizzle, and fine rain was blown into her face as she stood in the carriage doorway, watching Blake negotiate his way to the front door. There was a handkerchief in her reticule. She pulled it free, shook out the rust flakes and blew her nose defiantly.

  I will not cry.

  The farmer, Mr Grimshaw, trudged back around the corner. ‘The back yard’s not in with mine, missus, nor the sheds out there neither,’ he said when he was standing in front of her. ‘And there’s wood chopped in the back porch. Happen some of it’ll be dry.’

  He turned round and walked away again before she could respond.

  The front door opened with an eldritch shriek suitable to a Gothic novel and Blake vanished inside, into the gloom. Ellie sat back on the deep, luxurious upholstery with an instinct to cling to the vanishing threads of comfort and waited for him to reappear.

  *

  How long since the place had been lived in? A year, Rampion had said. It looked more like ten. It was bone-cold, thick with dust and cobwebs, and the furniture belonged to some distant decade of the past century. Blake walked through the ground floor—a sitting room, a big kitchen, various other rooms he could not judge the use of—then went upstairs. Four bedchambers and a staircase that must lead to the attics.

  What the devil was that lawyer doing, sending Eleanor all that way to this? It was impossible.

  He went out, re-crossed the mud to where she sat in the carriage, her hands neatly folded on her reticule, her pale oval face perfectly composed. Her no
se was pink at the tip and her hair, rebelliously escaping from under her bonnet, was the only sign that something more than a meek spinster lurked inside the simple clothing. She had resumed her blacks.

  ‘It is impossible,’ he said bluntly.

  She winced. ‘It is my home now.’

  ‘It is miles from anywhere. Cold, filthy.’

  ‘There are logs, apparently. We have brought food and oil lamps and candles. Bedding.’

  ‘I am not leaving you here with a man we know nothing about lurking in the cattle sheds and no way to get to a village, let alone Lancaster.’

  ‘There is no option. This—’ she jabbed a finger at the muddy ground ‘—is all I have.’

  ‘Then sell it. Let me drive you into Lancaster, find you respectable lodgings.’ She opened her mouth to protest but he pushed on, overriding her words. ‘I will lend you the money. Then you can find a lawyer, sell this place, buy a little cottage in some small town.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Eleanor, if you insist on getting out of this carriage and going in there I am going to stay here, on your doorstep, until you see reason. I cannot and will not leave a woman in a place like this. Damn it, Eleanor, I do not care what you want, or what your stubborn self-reliance is telling you. I am going to stop you turning into some drudge in a rural slum and that is final.’

  ‘I do not care what you want, Felicity. I do not care what nonsense you are spouting. This is a perfectly suitable marriage for both of us and it has been arranged since we were children. You knew I would marry you—I fail to see why I had to rush to do so the moment I inherited. If we do not go through with it, then what is to become of you, a woman who broke off a perfectly good betrothal?’

  He had said all that to the girl who had been his betrothed since they were children—the pretty, sweet, gentle girl of impeccable breeding who had told him she did not want to marry him because he did not love her and had neglected her.

  Not because she didn’t like him, but because she didn’t love him. Because he didn’t love her. Of course he had not allowed her to have her own way. And look how that had turned out. Because he had loved her, and he had told her so, and she had refused to believe him.