Marrying His Cinderella Countess

‘Is there any reason why I cannot learn to ride?’

Dr Murray had an open, freckled countenance which, she suspected, he had had to school into the proper impassivity for a medical man. She let her smile show, finding she liked him for all kinds of reasons—not least because he was as liberally freckled as she was and just as plain.

‘No reason at all,’ he said. ‘But I would wait until the soreness from yesterday’s experiment has passed. Is there anything else you would like to…er…ask me?’

‘Nothing whatsoever,’ she said, and had to get her expression under control. Whatever questions she had about ‘…er…’ she was certain Blake would be able to answer them very satisfactorily. ‘I would be grateful if you could reassure my husband that no lasting damage has been done.’

Dr Murray bowed himself out—no doubt to be cornered and interrogated thoroughly by Blake.

Ellie sent Polly away and wandered around her new bedchamber—a room she had spent virtually no time in at all.

Tomorrow, Blake had announced, they would set out for Hampshire. A day late to ensure that she was rested.

She knew it would probably be a while before he would relax and stop treating her as though she was fragile, but he would come to see that she was not soon enough. Last night, and again that morning, he had lost that careful control eventually, and those moments had been as precious to her as the pleasure he had given her body. It was so intimate—experiencing the man stripped to his essential animal nature and yet retaining his tenderness, his instinctive care for her.

Blake did not love her, and she still could not fathom why he had married her, but he was making her very happy and she was determined to make him happy in turn. He was her dream come true—even though she had still to discover the depths and the intricacies of the man if he would only let her.

She shivered, thinking about her casual words to Verity about his inner darkness and her friend’s alarmed reaction.

She could grow to love him so very easily, she thought, meeting her own gaze in the mirror. Perhaps she was already falling—tumbling past the point where prudence and self-preservation might keep her safe. The realisation was sobering. Blake could break her heart without the slightest inkling that he was doing so.

Chapter Sixteen

There was a scratch on the door and Blake came in. ‘Am I disturbing you?’

Disturbing is certainly the word. But then he has been disturbing me since the first time I saw him.

‘Not at all,’ Ellie lied.

‘Murray tells me that there is no damage done.’

‘Yes. That is good news. He warned me that I cannot switch between using the raised shoe and limping, though. I must choose. I have decided that I will go back to how I was before.’

Some emotion she could not read showed on his face.

‘I am sorry, Blake. I know it is clumsy, but I will be free to walk anywhere—even barefoot in the bedchamber. It is how I am,’ she added awkwardly, unable to explain properly.

This is me—damaged, broken and not very well repaired.

Every item in this house, every garment Blake wore, every servant she had encountered—all demonstrated that he was used to perfection. If a vase was broken then it would be mended by an expert so that no one could tell or else it would be discarded.

He frowned and her heart sank. ‘I asked you to marry me as you were—as you are, Ellie. I hate the idea of you torturing yourself to try and become something else. You have never deceived me about your limp.’

She was suddenly irrationally happy. ‘Then you won’t be cross when you discover I have deceived you about my hair and this is really a wig and I am bald?’ she asked, trying to look anxious.

‘A…? You dreadful woman.’ Blake strode across the room, picked her up and deposited her on the bed. ‘I am going to take every stitch off you—starting with this wig.’ He tugged at a curl and she yelped. ‘Hmm…glued tight, I see. We will have to see if exercise will shake it loose. And we must test this bed thoroughly while we are about it.’

He really was indecently good at undressing a woman, she thought, laughing up at him while he stripped off his own clothes. There was an entirely new field of fascinating study in watching the way his muscles tightened and relaxed, in the contrast of his skin against hers, of feeling the hair on his legs against her own smooth skin as, naked, he straddled her hips with those strong horseman’s thighs and leaned forward on his hands, caging her in.

The thought led to another. ‘Dr Murray says I may learn to ride.’

‘Does he, indeed? You never have before?’ When she shook her head he grinned. ‘You can begin now, if you like.’

‘Now? But we are—’

‘Astride.’ He swung his leg over and dropped onto the bed beside her. ‘Try it—but not if it pulls at any painful muscles.’

‘You want me to…? How does that work?’