Marrying His Cinderella Countess

Not that I realised until it was too late.

‘I am sure you did,’ Eleanor said, with the faintest touch of impatience in her voice. ‘What I asked was whether you love her still. Her memory?’

‘No.’

It was so abrupt—far too forceful. Betraying. Did he mean it? He found he did not know. But he could scarcely believe that Eleanor had asked so directly.

She looked up, her face showing nothing but that sparrow-like intensity, as though she was studying something that might or might not be good to eat.

‘No,’ he repeated. ‘Of course not. I am married to you, Eleanor.’

‘What on earth has that got to do with anything?’ she asked, and he realised suddenly that he had no idea whether she was hurt or angry or merely curious. ‘I had hoped for honesty from you, Blake.’

Then she walked away, leaving him staring after her, quite incapable of finding anything to say. But he was no longer in any doubt as to her feelings, even if he could not sort out his own. His wife was both very hurt and very angry, and he could have prevented that with a little forethought and by keeping a better guard over his reactions.

And my emotions.

Loving a ghost, clinging to guilt, was a dishonourable way to go into a marriage.

Hell. Hell.

He turned and strode after her, around the the West Front and onto the long terrace. There was no sign of his wife.

‘Wilkins!’

The under-gardener, who was sweeping up trimmings from the climber he had been pruning, dropped his brush and hurried over.

‘Have you seen her ladyship? She came this way a moment ago.’

‘Yes, my lord. She went along in the direction of the sunken garden. She was—’ He glanced nervously at Blake’s face. ‘Hurrying, my lord.’

That was probably the man’s tactful code for crying, Blake thought grimly. He nodded his thanks to Wilkins and strode off towards the far end of the terrace, where the sunken garden was located. The intimate little rose garden, neglected since his mother’s death. The garden where he had proposed so disastrously to Felicity.

He blinked and was back in those moments before it had all gone so horribly wrong. She had been standing amidst white and yellow roses, her blonde hair more beautiful even than the satiny petals, her slender figure more graceful than the sweep of the arch above her head…

He shook himself and found he was looking down on an overgrown tangle of briars as he stood at the top of the flight of ten shallow steps that led down into the square plot. Somewhere in the centre was an octagonal pond, but that was invisible amidst unpruned rose bushes and sagging vine-swagged arbours. Blake stood listening, but he saw Eleanor before he heard her—just a glimpse of deep rose-red skirts between the stems.

He ducked under low thorny branches, stepped over fallen pergola poles and finally reached the centre, where Eleanor stood looking down into the scummy water of the pond, her back to him. Felicity had stood just there, a single white rose in her hand, and he had stepped forward, pressed a kiss to the vulnerable nape of her neck, She had turned. Turned and slapped his face. Turned and poured out her anger at his neglect of her, his complacent assumptions.

He had made no effort to move quietly but Eleanor did not turn when he reached the paved area behind her.

‘Lady Trenton is quite correct—this does need complete restoration,’ she said, apparently addressing a mat of pond weed. ‘In fact it has gone beyond that. I will have it stripped right out.’

‘You will?’ Blake said, startled by her assumption of control.

‘Certainly. I know that it is difficult to grow roses in the same soil they were planted in before. I have no idea why that is, but I have read about it. So I will have the earth cleared as well, and replaced.’

He made an involuntary sound and she finally turned to face him, chin up, eyes sparkling with unshed tears.

‘As Lord Trenton implied, the flower gardens are part of the responsibilities of the lady of the house, are they not? And I am the lady of this house, whether you like it or not, husband. Wedded and bedded.’

‘Eleanor, I am sorry. I do not know what you think, but—’ Blake began.

She put up a hand to silence him. ‘You are sorry, I am sorry, and Lady Trenton was tactless—which is not your fault. And I should know better than to care about your past, or even what you still feel about it. How very unbecoming of me to feel jealous of a ghost, even if you are still in love with her,’ she added with a brittle laugh.

‘Eleanor, don’t joke about it,’ Blake said, and caught her hands in his, pulling her round to face him fully.

‘No? What else is there to do, I wonder, other than joke and carry on? You have no need to tell me I am being foolish.’