Marrying His Cinderella Countess

Lord but she had been beautiful—ethereal, almost—with an innocent fragility that took the breath. No wonder Blake had kept the miniature. No wonder he could not resist looking at it, whatever he had promised her, his wife.

‘She was lovely.’

‘Yes,’ he agreed, his voice flat.

‘No doubt you would have fallen in love with her whatever your parents had arranged.’

‘My feelings did not enter into the arrangement.’

‘No? Did you not resent that? When you were younger, I mean? Before you fell in love with her?’

‘I was the heir. That is what heirs do—marry appropriately. My father saw that as my duty and his was to arrange the match. It was hardly his fault that I made a hash of proposing and drove her away.’

‘And you will expect to make the same kind of arrangement for your own son when the time comes?’

‘Of course.’ Blake sounded surprised that she had to ask.

‘Despite you own marriage not being to the advantage of the earldom?’

He shrugged. ‘Despite that.’

This is our child you are talking about as though he was a piece of property, she almost shouted at him.

Then she saw his fingers close around the miniature and more immediate worry surfaced again. ‘You told me you were not holding on to the memory of a dead woman, and yet you have to hide her image away so you can brood over it in secret.’

‘Eleanor, I am not brooding over it. I was not hiding it away. As I said, I simply did not want to upset you. It is over. Felicity is the past. I swear it.’

Can I really trust you? she wanted to ask.

The words died unspoken as she heard Duncombe clear his throat as he entered the bedchamber.

Ellie turned on her heel and walked out.

*

‘Are you quite well, my lady?’ Polly put down a cup of hot chocolate on Ellie’s bedside table and went to draw back the drapes to their fullest extent before she came to study her mistress’s face.

‘I had a bad night,’ Ellie confessed.

A night she had spent alone, after telling Blake that she needed an uninterrupted sleep. What she had got was seven hours of uninterrupted fretting, and telling herself that she should be grateful that Blake was not carrying on an affair, or out carousing every night, which was what many wives had to endure, had been no help at all.

He had given her his word that he had put his thoughts of Felicity behind him and quite clearly he had not. But promising to control emotions and thoughts was apparently an impossible undertaking.

There were times when she wished she did not love Blake, but wishing it did not make it so. She could survive without his love—she had married not expecting it, and had never been promised it. But the children… She had begun to look forward to children as a joy in themselves, both for her and for Blake, but now it seemed that obtaining his heir, and controlling that heir’s future life were paramount in his ambitions for fatherhood.

If he thought like that about his oldest son, would he simply ignore any other boys and girls as of lesser importance? He would never be cruel to a child, she knew that, but children needed love…unconditional love…

‘Your chocolate is getting cold, my lady,’ Polly prompted.

‘Oh.’ A skin was beginning to form and, looking at it, she felt distinctly queasy. ‘Can you take it away and bring me tea, please, Polly? Chamomile.’

She sipped the clear liquid, ignored the maid’s anxious looks and began to feel a little better. ‘I need fresh air, I think. Send word down to Finch to saddle up Toffee and I will ride after breakfast.’

When she got downstairs she discovered that she would be eating alone. Jonathan had ridden out to deal with some emergency involving collapsing drains, and Blake had taken an early breakfast and also gone out, the butler informed her. No, his lordship had not vouchsafed his destination.

‘But doubtless his lordship will not be long or he would have given me a message for your ladyship.’

‘Of course—thank you, Tennyson.’ At least she was able to ignore the laden buffet and nibble at some toast without being urged to eat more. ‘Please send down to the gardens and ask for a small posy of roses to be made up immediately.’