Marrying His Cinderella Countess

‘No, Finch, his lordship—’

‘You are, my lady, in a delicate condition—if I may be so bold as to mention it again—and I’ll not have it on my conscience that I let you clatter about the country in a hired chaise without your own men at your back.’

His weatherbeaten face was set in an expression of grim determination.

‘His lordship might not like it, but he can only sack me, and I can always get a job with horses somewhere. I want to marry Polly and she’ll go with you, which is only right, so I’m coming to Lancashire one way or another. I’ll go and get the carriage ready now, my lady,’ he added, and he strode out without waiting for her reply.

Ellie took a deep breath. ‘Help me change, Polly. Then we will pack. I do not know how long we will be away, but take only sensible, practical stuff. I’ll have no need of ball gowns and evening dresses. Hurry.’

‘But his lordship will follow us—catch us,’ Polly said, even as she began to help Ellie out of the riding habit.

‘I will misdirect him,’ Ellie said grimly, her brain spinning with the effort of remembering everything she must do.

‘We are coming back, aren’t we, my lady?’

‘Of course we are, Polly. Of course.’

*

Blake rode away from the churchyard with a sense of liberation, as though a weight had been lifted from both his spirit and his back. He had carried that portrait of Felicity like a talisman and like a punishment ever since she had fled with her treacherous poet. It had been months since he had looked at it, although at the back of his mind he had been as aware of it as he would have been a monk’s hair shirt fretting at his flesh.

It had taken him far too long to realise that he should have talked about what had happened with Felicity before. He could have confided in Jonathan and come t

o understand his own feelings a lot sooner. Guilt, he was sure now, was an unhealthy emotion unless one learned from it and moved on—instead of romanticising it as he had done.

It had taken him far too long to realise how he felt about Eleanor as well. He had gone from hostility and guilt—guilt again—to reluctant admiration and then liking.

I married her because I like her, because she is brave and honest and her passions are genuine, not some act, he thought as he rode. There is beauty in her eyes and her soul and her passions. I love her.

He intended to tell her now—to go home, explain the feelings that he had hidden from everyone, himself included, for so long. He had taken that miniature and in a way given it back to Felicity by hiding it within her memorial. Now he felt free to go to his wife and open his heart.

Blake turned towards home and sent Tuscan off in a flat-out gallop across the hay fields, taking gates and hedges and ditches as though in a hunt after some phantom prey. He gave the big horse its head, hardly seeing where he was going, thinking only of Eleanor and holding her in his arms, somehow making her smile with happiness.

He rode by instinct until part of the park’s herd of deer panicked and plunged out of a thicket in front of them.

Tuscan shied, then reared. Blake got the stallion’s head down and had him under immediate control. And then one of the does careered back towards them. Tuscan backed, stumbled, and Blake, his balance all on the wrong side, was pitched to the ground.

He was conscious of pain in his head, and then everything went black.

*

The setting sun blazing in his eyes woke him and he struggled into a sitting position, feeling sick, dizzy and disorientated. Tuscan grazed calmly, broken reins trailing, taking no notice whatsoever of the herd of deer close by.

‘Stupid horse,’ Blake said, and Tuscan’s ears twitched as though the last thing he would dream of doing was to shy at a herd of deer.

He should get up, mount, ride home. Eleanor would be worrying about where he had got to and he had so much to say to her. His head was aching, but that was not why he felt so sick—that was from the remembered shame of betraying Eleanor by clinging to that illusion that he loved Felicity, had loved her for years, when all the time it had been nothing but a spell cast by a lovely face and his own sense of guilt for neglecting her so long.

Blake hauled himself to his feet and made his unsteady way towards the horse. He couldn’t see his hat, but his head hurt too much to put it on anyway.

Love her.

That was the important thing. Confess first—all the muddled thinking, all the clinging to the memory of a woman he had never really known, never truly understood. And then tell Eleanor about the realisation that it was she whom he loved.

Could she love him in return? He would be a luckier man than he deserved if she did. They had got off to a dreadful start, and then he had insulted her, kissed her in a field, married her out of hand and brought her to the one place where she would come face to face with all the memories of his past.

Blake gathered up the broken reins, stuck his foot in the stirrup and got into the saddle—then sat there swaying while the familiar landscape swayed and circled around him.

Concussion.