Marrying His Cinderella Countess

And for hoping for your lovemaking to soothe my fears and drive away my nightmares.

‘I never asked you for perfection.’ He turned and stalked across the room, stood regarding a chest of drawers as though he would like to kick it, and then stalked back.

‘You made it quite clear that a plain spinster like me was not up to your standards,’ she flung back.

Blake stared at her, then she saw recollection sink in. ‘You heard that?’

‘Yes, I heard it. So I have been eating until I am queasy to try to put some flesh on my bones, and spending all my money on clothes and my hair and those damnable shoes because I did not want you to feel ashamed of me—for all those people to despise me and despise you for choosing me.’

She was going to cry in a moment, she thought, desperately whipping up her anger to try and stop that, the ultimate humiliation.

‘As for you—frankly, I do not care what you think any longer, because you will obviously take any excuse not to go to bed with me. Which is a pity, because it is rather late for second thoughts.’

Although if I am still a virgin he can have this marriage dissolved. Does that happen any more?

‘Any excuse? You are in pain, Eleanor. What sort of brute do you take me for?’

My brute. My darling brute, who would never intentionally hurt me.

‘I do not take you for any such thing,’ she managed. ‘But you married me out of pity and I do not think I—’

‘Pity? Eleanor, what nonsense is this?’ Blake dropped to his knees again, took her by the shoulders. But this time he simply held her, his fingers warm and gentle.

‘Then why did you marry me?’ she flung back.

‘Because I desire you! Like you! Because I thought we would get along together! I did not marry you so that you could cripple yourself trying to live up to standards that I certainly have not set for you. And there is no need to look at me like that. I was stupid and I made superficial judgements before I knew you properly. I did not want to like you, Eleanor. I felt guilty because of Francis, and thinking of you as anything other than an abrasive, difficult woman made it worse. And, before you point it out, I know that is absolutely no excuse.’

‘It is not even logical,’ she said with a shaky laugh, and leaned forward against the pressure of his hands so that her forehead rested on his. ‘Are we having our first married row?’

‘I believe we are.’ He sat back on his heels and studied her face. ‘Only we are not quite married yet.’

She could feel herself blushing, even though that was why she had been storming at him only moments before. ‘I wish we were.’

If I can just get tonight over with, surely it will be better after that?

‘Eleanor, tell me truthfully what you want. You can go back to your own bed and rest. You can come to my bed and we can sleep together and that is all that will happen. Or we can make love and I will do my level best not to hurt you. And we can have supper before or after—whichever you choose.’

She d

id not have to ask which he wanted. The heavy-lidded look, the visible thud of his pulse in his throat told her that. And she wanted it too—wanted him and wanted this fear to go away.

‘I would like to make love in your bed,’ she said without hesitation. ‘I am really not hungry.’

Except for you.

Blake nodded, as though they had just had a lengthy, perfectly calm discussion, and then reached for the ties of her robe, his gaze intent as he unfastened it and pushed it back over her shoulders so she was sitting in a pool of green velvet, clad only in her nightgown.

‘Would you like me to blow out the candles?’ he asked as he pulled her gently to her feet.

Ellie shook her head. She wanted to see him, look at him. See that this was Blake, not any other man.

He held out his hand and she took it, let him lead her slowly through into his bedchamber. It was dominated by a bed that looked as though generations of his family had made love in it since the reign of Henry VIII. The thought of all those other nervous brides was strangely cheering.

‘It will be easier to take all our clothes off before we get into bed,’ Blake said, sounding practical. Perhaps he thought that would steady her nerves.

He untied the sash of his robe and shrugged it off, then pulled his shirt over his head—which was anything but steadying. Ellie managed not to gulp audibly as she fixed her gaze on the middle of his breastbone, stared at the swirls of dark hair that she remembered from that day he had come to the house, wounded. It was not so thick that she couldn’t see his nipples or the planes of muscle.

She dragged her eyes upward to his shoulders, seeming broader without clothes, to the line of his collarbone, the dip at the base of his throat where that betraying pulse beat out its signal to her own heartbeat. She let her gaze flicker down for a second, saw the white line of the bullet scar.