Blake sat too—warily, ready to jump up and catch her if, as seemed likely, she fainted. Anger appeared to be the only thing keeping her going.
‘Then the morning after it had all gone through I realised it just did not add up—that either it was a miracle or something strange was going on. I thought perhaps there was coal or iron or something under the land, and in that case I wanted it. So I bribed a chambermaid to let me into that nice Mr Harkness’s bedchamber at the inn while he was eating his breakfast and I went through his papers.’
‘You searched his room—?’
‘Of course I did. When I saw your name I knew it was too much to hope that he would take the money back—not if he was working for you. So I came straight down here.’
‘Why?’
‘To give it back myself.’ She opened her reticule and produced a bank draft. ‘Here it is. Now, give me the deeds.’
‘No. Why, Eleanor?’
‘I do not take charity.’
When he shook his head she picked up the bank draft, walked across to the fireplace and tossed it into the flames.
Jonathan leapt to his feet with an oath and seized the poker—but too late. He threw it into the grate with a muttered curse and stalked back to his seat.
‘I will simply write another,’ Blake said.
‘And I will not take it. I cannot be beholden to you.’ She swallowed, but kept her head up, staring at a point over his left shoulder.
Her hazel eyes swam with tears that she would not let fall, and he realised suddenly that this was not anger, but the stubborn defiance of a woman at her wits’ end.
‘Why not?’ he asked, holding up a hand to silence Jonathan. ‘Why not let me help? You blame me for Francis’s death, for letting him ruin you. All I am doing is making amends as best I can. I might have paid over the odds for that land now, but eventually I will get my investment back and you need the money at once—not in some indefinite future.’
‘No…’ she whispered, and closed her eyes on those betraying tears.
Her lips were parted, just a fraction, and suddenly he was back in that meadow, with her body warm and eager beneath his, those lips fresh and sweet and open to him. Back on that heap of sheepskins, with her defenceless and trusting, asleep in his arms, turning drowsily to meet his questing mouth.
Blake blinked and there she was, sitting opposite him. Drab and plain and, despite the new curves, a beanpole. And as f
ierce and proud as a defeated queen.
‘All right,’ he heard himself saying. ‘If you won’t take my money then take me. Marry me.’
‘What?’ Jonathan’s chair went over with a crash as he shot to his feet.
‘Marry you?’ Eleanor’s eyes were wide open now. ‘Me?’
‘Why not?’
The room seemed to swim around him and he wondered if he was coming down with something. Certainly words seemed to be issuing from his lips without any conscious thought behind them.
‘You are from a good family, perfectly eligible, and I really ought to get married—should have done it sooner. Yes?’
Jonathan was staring at him as though he had gone mad. He probably had. That was it—not a fever but insanity. Or he was drunk. Or this was a dream.
He had just asked a plain, penniless spinster to marry him.
Chapter Ten
Ellie blinked and swallowed salt. Blake had just asked her to marry him. Lord Hainford was asking her to be his countess. But it could not be true, of course. She was so tired, so worried, so miserable that she had made herself ill and now she was hallucinating in the grip of a fever. Or she was dreaming.
But if this was a fantasy, she might as well enjoy it until she woke up.
‘Yes,’ she said as his face blurred and she felt herself slide from the chair.