Marrying His Cinderella Countess

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.’