Marrying His Cinderella Countess

‘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.’