Marrying His Cinderella Countess Page 9

  He had been wrong then and a woman had died. It seemed he was going to be wrong again, but he refused to leave this woman here.

  Chapter Eight

  ‘Fine,’ Eleanor said. ‘You can stay on the doorstep until you rust and get rheumatism. See if I care.’

  She got down from the coach, as angry as he was, and glared at him.

  ‘Mr Grimshaw!’

  The man appeared again—suspiciously quickly, in Blake’s opinion. Presumably he was lurking, listening to their edifying discussion.

  ‘Thank you. I apologise for shouting like that. Do you have any farm hands who would be willing to help me take my luggage inside and fetch in the firewood and some water?’

  ‘Aye, I have that.’ He turned and bellowed, ‘Seth! Greg! Get out here!’

  A big man and a skinny lad came round the edge of the barn, knuckling their foreheads and sending sideways glances at Blake, Eleanor and the carriage.

  ‘Help this lady in with her traps. This is Miss Lytton, the owner. You mind and call her ma’am, now.’

  ‘You will do no such thing. Miss Lytton is not staying.’

  The lad who had lifted down the bags stood fumbling with them, then dropped one in the mud.

  ‘Clumsy lummock.’ The farmer cuffed him. ‘You this lady’s brother? Or her betrothed? Or what—?’

  ‘He is none of those things,’ Eleanor cut in. ‘He kindly gave me a ride here and has now been seized with an inappropriate desire to order my life, it seems.’

  ‘I am Lord Hainford and—’

  ‘I don’t care iffen you’re the Lord Chief Justice. Yon’s the lady’s house and she wants to go into it and that’s the end of the matter. Get on, now!’ he roared at the two hands, who broke into a shambling run towards the house with the first load of baggage.

  Blake contemplated brute force. There were two large men and a lad against himself and his coachman and groom. Very good odds. Then he saw Eleanor’s face. That was what she expected—that he would brawl in the mud to get his own way.

  ‘Miss Lytton. You cannot expect me to leave you in this isolated place with only a slip of a maid and three men of whom we know nothing.’

  ‘Now, you look here, your lordship.’ Grimshaw clenched weatherbeaten fists. ‘I’m a sidesman of our chapel and I’ll have the minister here iffen I have any more from you about my good name.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Grimshaw. I look forward to meeting the minister and I appreciate your help. Perhaps if I could just have a word with his lordship in private?’

  The farmer nodded, gave Blake a look strongly reminiscent of the bull, and plodded off to supervise the unloading of the bags and boxes of supplies.

  ‘Eleanor, you are not going to be stupidly independent and insist—?’

  ‘Miss Lytton to you, my lord. And, yes, I am going to insist. This is my home, my property—and, grateful as I am for transport to this point, I think our association is now at an end. I fail to understand why you should wish to involve yourself in my affairs when you have made it clear from the beginning that you have found this an imposition. Unless you wish to add kidnapping to your roster of outrageous behaviour?’ she flung at him, as if trying to provoke a response, an answer. ‘Perhaps you could strip off here and now—that would certainly divert Mr Grimshaw while you toss me into the carriage and drove off.’

  He could do it—snatch her, that was, not strip. The three of them could get Eleanor and the maid into the carriage and drive off. But where would that get him? He knew what it would get him—a furious female who was in the right. And he, who had no rights at all, would be entirely, and legally, in the wrong. A kidnapper.

  Chivalry would allow him to fell Grimshaw if the fellow insulted or threatened her, but the farmer was apparently fully on her side and respectful in his gruff way. And, as for anything else, Blake wasn’t her brother or her guardian or her legal advisor, and most certainly not her betrothed.

  Miss Lytton was an unusual creature in English society: a woman of property, old enough to order her own life. The fact that her property was a filthy rural slum in the middle of what to southern eyes resembled a howling wilderness was neither here nor there.

  He had tried to bully a woman into doing the right thing before and that had been fatal. Never again. A gentleman knew when to apologise. A gentleman knew how to withdraw gracefully.

  ‘Are all your belongings and the supplies in the house now, Miss Lytton?’

  She glanced round, then narrowed her eyes at him suspiciously. ‘They are.’

  ‘Is there any way in which I may be of further use to you?’

  ‘There is not, my lord.’

  ‘In that case I will bid you good day and wish you every happiness in your new…home.’

  He bowed, got into the carriage with as much dignity as a routed earl in full retreat could muster and knocked on the roof. The coach lumbered out of the yard, and as it went he caught a glimpse of Eleanor standing in the mud and the rain, flanked by Polly and her rustic assistants.

  And that, Blake thought savagely, will teach me never to strip naked in White’s again.

  *

  Temper and affronted pride got Blake as far as Lancaster and an inn where, try as he might, he could find nothing to criticise and no outlet for his foul mood.

  A bath, a decent meal and a bottle of surprisingly good claret improved his mood to the point where anxiety won out over the humiliation of having his will so comprehensively flouted. The port after dinner was not as good as the claret, which meant that he was regrettably clear-headed as he sat staring into the fire and brooding.

  He had handled that confrontation with Eleanor about as badly as was possible. He knew she was strong-minded, opinionated, stubborn and intelligent. He should have tried reasoned argument—should have discussed the alternatives, not laid down the law and demanded that she submit to his will. Once she’d had her hackles up and her back to the wall she had been as fiercely determined not to yield as a chained bear facing a pack of dogs in the baiting ring.

  In the morning, after Eleanor had had a night to sleep on it, to discover the discomforts of the place, he would go back and apologise and try talking it through with her.

  Even as he decided that he felt uneasy. There were just the two of them, young women, miles from anywhere, hundreds of miles from anyone they knew, and he had left them with strangers—men he knew nothing about. And Eleanor was uneasy around men. How would she be feeling now that she’d had time to get over her annoyance with him?

  Leaving her to sleep on it seemed less and less possible, because if nothing else he was not going to be able to sleep. And if anything happened to that infuriating creature he would not be able to live with himself.

  *

  It had at least stopped raining by the time Blake rode into the front yard of Carndale Farm. There was a faint glimmer of light from behind the drawn curtains of the front room, but rather than pound on the door Blake led his hired horse through the mud and round to the back. There was light from the kitchen as well, he saw as he tied the animal up under the lean-to shed. No one had covered that window, and he looked in and saw Polly sitting at the table, her hands cupped around a mug, her whole body sagging with weariness.

  Why was she not in her bed? He couldn’t imagine that Eleanor was the kind of mistress who would keep an exhausted servant from her rest.

  He knocked on the door, and when he heard the chair scrape back stepped into the light from the window so Polly could see him.

  ‘My lord?’ She blinked up at him.

  ‘I was worried about you both,’ he said. ‘May I come in?’

  ‘Yes, of course. Sorry, my lord.’ She opened the door wide, then closed it behind him and stood swaying slightly.

  ‘You are exhausted. Why aren’t you in your bed? Surely Miss Lytton isn’t making you stay up?’

  ‘No. Oh, no, she said to go up a good hour ago, it must have been. I heard the church clock strike eleven, I think, but it was faint. I might
be wrong. But she won’t go to her bed, my lord, and I don’t like to leave her. She worked just as hard as I did. We got the beds made up, and the worst of the dirt out of those two bedchambers and in here. And we dusted off some of it in the front room and lit the fires. That Mr Grimshaw and his men carried the wood in, and he brought in a great load of sheepskins.’

  She gestured to one in front of the kitchen range.

  ‘Anyway, Miss Lytton’s sitting on a pile of them in front of the fire, just staring at it. I can’t go off to bed and leave her there, can I, my lord? I’d never sleep easy.’

  ‘You can now I am here. Off you go, Polly, and I’ll persuade Miss Lytton to go to bed as well. Don’t you sit up waiting for her. She can perfectly well manage and you’ve done enough for one day.’

  As he’d hoped, Polly was used to the man of the house laying down the law about everything, and now Blake was there she was happy enough to leave the responsibility in his hands. He watched her trudge upstairs and then let himself into the front room.

  There was a good blaze in the wide stone fireplace and a pile of logs by the side. Grimshaw and his men had at least done that job well. The heat was still superficial, though, barely touching the bone-deep cold of a house that had stood empty throughout a long winter and a wet, miserable summer.

  Eleanor was sitting on a pile of sheepskins with blankets around her shoulders and her hair loose and curling wildly on her shoulders. She did not look round as he closed the door with a soft click.

  ‘Do go to bed, Polly, please.’

  ‘She has,’ Blake said, and saw her stiffen, although she did not turn from the leaping flames. ‘I was worried about you so I came back.’

  ‘Blake?’ She did finally look round, and he thought her like something from a fairy tale—silhouetted against the fire, enthroned on her pile of sheepskins, her hair unbound and undisciplined, the glimmer of her pale oval face almost invisible against the light.

  ‘You must be exhausted.’ He shivered despite his caped greatcoat, but he unbuttoned it, tossed it onto a settle and went to hunker down beside her. ‘Are you frightened to go to bed, is that it? Did Grimshaw—?’

  ‘Oh, no, he couldn’t have been kinder, in that abrupt, growly way he has. And Mrs Grimshaw came and brought us a can of milk and some bread and eggs. I am just…’ Her voice trailed away and she hunched her shoulders under the blankets.

  ‘So tired that you have gone beyond sleep, even?’

  He had been that way himself before now, after an all-day, all-night orgy of card-playing, but that hadn’t been accompanied by anxiety and an argument and having to struggle to make a dirty, cold house habitable.

  ‘Mmm,’ she agreed.

  ‘Go to bed,’ he said. ‘I’ll sleep down here in front of the fire. Stand guard.’

  ‘What against?’ she asked, and lifted her head to look him in the eye. ‘Ghosts? I don’t think this house has any.’

  ‘Against whatever it is stopping you sleeping,’ Blake said. When she did not respond, except to give a little shake of her head, he shifted onto the sheepskins beside her, put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her in close. ‘I’ll carry you up.’

  ‘Cold up there,’ she mumbled, almost limp against his shoulder. ‘I put the warming pan in Polly’s bed.’

  Of course you did, Blake thought with exasperated admiration. Most mistresses wouldn’t even have thought of it—would assume that the servants would heat themselves a brick on the range.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Sleep here.’ He laid her down, then slid his arm out.

  Eleanor was asleep as soon as her head touched the soft curling wool, he realised. He heaped the skins up to make a barrier between her back and the draught from the door, then quietly mended the fire and banked it down with some turves that had been stacked on the hearth—presumably for just that purpose.

  He couldn’t leave now, he realised, because unless he woke one of the two women to lock up behind him he could not secure the house. He could spend the night in the lean-to, of course, but he didn’t feel quite that chivalrous.

  Blake went out to see to the horse, then came back in through the kitchen, dealt with that fire and blew out the lamp. Then he went into the front room and eyed the available furniture. It was all bare wood—two settles and an uncompromising upright chair with arms. And it was cold.

  He pulled off his boots, took off his coat, waistcoat and neckcloth, and eased down behind Eleanor. He pulled the sheepskins over both of them, pillowed his head on his bent arm and closed his eyes. The skins smelt of lanolin and sheep, the room of woodsmoke and dust…and Eleanor of woman and good plain soap.

  He pushed away the sheepskins until he could curl his body around her, wriggled his cold feet into the skins and closed his eyes, expecting to find that he was also too tired, too full of churning thoughts to be able to sleep. Oblivion came almost on a breath.

  *

  She was warm, and the bed smelt of sheep and—and Blake? The realisation of why she was warm came with the awareness of an arm lying heavily across her waist and the large, solid body she was held against.

  Ellie blinked into the dawn light and the weight over her waist lifted away. The pressure of the body—Blake’s body—left her back.

  ‘You are awake.’ He was still so close that his breath tickled warmly on the nape of her neck. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to crowd you.’ He sounded sleepy, comfortable.

  ‘Blake. My lord. You are in my bed.’

  Now that the immediate shock of finding herself in bed with a man had left her, she found she had to force herself to pretend outrage. It was really rather lovely to feel that warm, big, male body curved around hers, protecting her. More than lovely.

  ‘It was the only warm, comfortable place and we are both clothed. And nobody knows.’

  ‘I know,’ Ellie pointed out, making no attempt to move. ‘And so do you.’

  ‘I won’t tell if you don’t,’ Blake said, the words caressing her nape in warm breath.

  This was real. She could not pretend it was a dream. Because if it had been then he would be kissing her, not making foolish quips, and she would be beautiful, and one part of her mind would not be shrieking, Man! Danger! while the other part said, Trust him…this is Blake.

  She heard him draw breath to speak, felt him inhale because he was so close. Then his breath caught and his lips pressed against her skin, exploring, tasting.

  ‘Blake…’ Her heart was pounding with fear and excitement and emotions she had no name for.

  He mumbled something—Hush, perhaps—as his mouth moved to the skin beneath her ear. Ellie wriggled to give him better access, and then froze as his weight came down over her.

  She was no longer dizzy with fear and excitement from their escape from the bull, and this was no field under the open sky. This was a bed and she was trapped and…

  She gave a sudden heave and his arm shifted and came down over her ribcage.

  Blake rolled away abruptly. ‘Hell. I’m sorry. Half awake and… No excuse.’ He ran his hands through his hair and frowned down at her. ‘Eleanor, you are far too thin. You aren’t eating properly—you are skin and bone.’

  Nothing could have jerked her back to reality out of the tangling feelings of fear and desire more effectively. Of course she was in no danger from Blake. Even if he was the kind of man who would force himself on a woman he quite obviously didn’t want when he was fully awake and not giddy from danger or fuddled by sleep.

  She sat up and twisted to glare down at him. ‘How could you say such a thing?’

  ‘Because it is true. Between your ribs and your hipbone I have probably got bruises on my forearm.’ He lay there, sprawled on the sheepskins like a Barbarian warrior king, his shirt open at the neck to reveal a glimpse of dark hair. ‘Some people are naturally slender, but you are half-starved, Eleanor. And all the time we’ve been together I have never seen you eat a decent amount.’

  ‘I have a poor appetite. And it is none of your b
usiness.’

  All the time we’ve been together…

  ‘No, it is not. But I am worried about you. Yesterday I was wrong to hector you, to demand that you come away. I should have tried persuasion. I came back to apologise, to make certain you were safe. Not to make love to you. And for that I have to apologise even more.’

  She wondered just how often this man felt the need to apologise for anything. How often the words to do so actually passed his lips. Not often, she’d wager. Was it pride that kept his thoughts locked up so tightly? What about all that she glimpsed when she saw that shadowy, inner Blake—a man keeping his secrets close out of an arrogant refusal to allow anyone close?

  ‘Thank you. Apology accepted for leaving me and for…for what just occurred. I quite understand. You were only half awake. So was I, or it would never have happened. And thank you for your concern. But will you now, please, go away?’

  Before I fall on you, kiss you, beg you to make love to me, skinny creature that I am. Before I lose all pride. Because just now I am angry enough not to be afraid.

  When Blake did not move she said, ‘I promise you that Grimshaw is a perfectly decent man, that this house is sound, and that once it warms up we will be exceedingly comfortable.’

  ‘Last night—’

  ‘Last night I was blue-devilled. Too tired and too cold to look forward and be positive. Now I have slept well, I am warm and I will be fine.’

  She stood up and gathered a blanket over her sensible flannel nightgown and wrapper—to find herself wearing them, and not some exquisite wisps of silk and satin was yet another clear indicator that this was not a fantasy.

  ‘I will put a kettle on the kitchen fire. I have no doubt you would prefer to start your journey back after a cup of coffee.’

  It was a physical wrench, turning and walking away—a tug as though he had taken hold of her arm to hold her. But of course Blake had done no such thing—would do no such thing. Not when he was fully awake.