Marrying His Cinderella Countess

‘A serious fall three years ago, I understand. There was a complex fracture and it seems that she did permanent damage to her leg. Her stepfather suffered a fatal seizure upon finding her. I imagine you will want to be on your way, my lord? I am grateful for your efforts to make these notes legible. I can see I have some work to do in order to present Miss Lytton with a full picture tomorrow.’

‘I will leave you to it, sir.’

Blake shook hands with the solicitor and went out, braced for another encounter with Miss Lytton. But the hallway held nothing more threatening than scurrying domestics, and he let himself out with a twinge of guilty relief.

*

‘That is the last of the paperwork concerning Francis Lytton’s death.’ Jonathan Wilton, Blake’s confidential secretary, placed a sheaf of documents in front of him.

Blake left the papers where they lay and pushed one hand through his hair. ‘Lord, that was a messy business. It is just a mercy that the Coroner managed the jury with a firm hand and they brought a verdict of accidental death. Imagine if we were having to cope with Crosse’s hanging. As it is, he’s skulking in Somerset—and good riddance.’

Jonathan gave a grunt of agreement. He was Blake’s illegitimate half-brother—an intelligent, hard-w

orking man a few months younger than Blake, who might easily have passed for a full sibling.

Blake had acknowledged him, and would have done more, but Jon had insisted on keeping his mother’s name and earning his own way in the world. It had been all Blake could do to get him to accept a university education from him. He had gone to Cambridge, Blake to Oxford, and then Jon had allowed himself to be persuaded into helping Blake deal with the business of his earldom.

In public Jon was punctiliously formal. In private they behaved like brothers. ‘Lytton was a damn nuisance,’ he remarked now.

‘What I ever did to deserve being a role model for him, I have no idea.’ Blake made himself stop fidgeting with the Coroner’s report. ‘He irritated me. That was why I was so short with him that evening, if you want the truth. I didn’t want him hanging round me at the club.’

‘Not your fault,’ Jon observed with a shrug as he slid off the desk and picked up the paperwork.

‘I could have talked to him—made him see he was acting unwisely.’

He couldn’t shake an unreasonable feeling of guilt about the incident, and Miss Lytton’s courage in the face of bereavement and financial ruin had made him feel even worse. He did not like feeling guilty, always did his rather casual best not to do anything that might justify the sensation, and he managed, on the whole, to avoid thinking about the last time he had felt real guilt over a woman.

Felicity…

The woman he had driven to disaster. The woman he had not realised he loved until too late.

As usual he slammed a mental door on the memory, refused to let it make him feel…anything.

There was a knock on the study door. Blake jammed his quill back into the standish. ‘Come in!’

‘The morning post, my lord.’

The footman passed a loaded salver to Jon, who dumped the contents onto the desk, pulled up a chair and began to sort through it.

He broke the seal on one letter, then passed it across after a glance at the signature. ‘From Miss Lytton.’

Plain paper, black ink, a strong, straightforward hand. Blake read the single sheet. Then he read it again. No, he was not seeing things.

‘Hell’s teeth—the blasted woman wants me to take her to Lancashire!’

‘What?’ Jon caught the sheet as Blake sent it spinning across the blotter to him. ‘She holds you responsible for her present predicament…loan of a carriage…escort. Escort? Is she pretty?’

‘No, she is not pretty—not that it would make any difference.’

I hope.

‘Eleanor Lytton is a plain woman who dresses like a drab sparrow. Her hair appears never to have seen a hairdresser and she limps.’ He gave her a moment’s thought, then added for fairness, ‘However, she has guts and she appears to be intelligent—except for her insistence on blaming me for her stepbrother’s death. Her temper is uncertain, and she has no tact whatsoever. I am going to call on her and put a stop to this nonsense.’

Blake got to his feet and yanked at the bell-pull. ‘Lancashire! She must be even more eccentric than she looks. Why the devil would I want to go to Lancashire, of all places? Why should I?’

‘The sea bathing at Blackpool is reckoned quite good—if one overlooks the presence of half the manufacturers of Manchester at the resort,’ Jon said with a grin, ducking with the skill of long practice as Blake threw a piece of screwed-up paper at his head.

Chapter Three