Marrying His Cinderella Countess

Perhaps it would be better to wait until he had stopped seeing double before he tried either confession or lovemaking.

He was half a mile from home, riding on a loose rein and letting Tuscan find his way, when he saw two riders galloping towards him. They became one as he forced his eyes to focus, then resolved into Jon, hatless and grim.

‘Thank God. What has happened to you? You are bleeding like a stuck pig.’

‘Am I? Scalp wound, I suppose. Fell off…hit my head,’ Blake said concisely, wondering if he was about to cast up his accounts. ‘What’s the panic—I haven’t been gone that long, have I?’

‘Hell, no, I wasn’t worried about you.’ Jon rode alongside and leaned across to peer into his face. ‘But I am now—you look dreadful.’

‘Concussion.’ Blake put up a hand and probed the sticky patch at the back of his head. ‘Nothing cracked, I don’t think.’ The wave of sickness passed. ‘Who are you worrying about, then?’

‘Eleanor.’

‘What? What’s wrong? Is she hurt? Ill?’ He kicked Tuscan into a trot, and then into a less skull-jarring canter.

‘No. Gone. So are Polly and Finch.’

‘What?’

‘They’ve taken the small travelling carriage and the team of four bays. When Frederick asked Finch where he was going, expecting to be needed to drive, he said he was driving the mistress.’

‘What?’

‘Eleanor came in from her riding lesson with Finch—’

‘Her what?’ Blake shut his mouth—hard. Asking questions was only going to slow down the explanation.

‘Apparently she was white as a sheet. Sent for Polly, then Finch. The next thing they’re carrying bags out to the carriage. Tennyson asked Eleanor what he should tell you and she simply handed him two letters. Blake, what the hell’s going on?’

Blake stopped swearing long enough to snap, ‘I have no idea. And what riding lessons?’

‘Finch has been teaching her to ride on Toffee. I thought you knew.’

He didn’t shake his head because it hurt too much—but not as much as the realisation that he hadn’t even noticed that Eleanor was learning to ride.

Tennyson was pacing up and down in the hall when Blake went in. ‘My lord! Your head—’

‘Give me the letters.’

The blue wax that Eleanor always used splintered under this thumb and he forced his eyes to focus on the few lines of writing.

Blake,

I saw you at the church by Felicity’s memorial. Even after I saw the portrait miniature and you promised…

I want to be a good wife, to make this marriage work, but I need to get away, to think how to do that.

I am not feeling very well, but I know where to go for advice.

Please do not follow me. I will come back. I keep my promises.

Eleanor.

‘London. She has gone to London—she must have. She says she is feeling unwell and knows where to seek advice and she liked Dr Murray, trusted him. Hell, why isn’t she feeling well? I hadn’t noticed anything.’

All the more reason for leaving him if he hadn’t even noticed that she was feeling ill enough to flee to London.

‘Tennyson, tell Duncombe to pack and order the stables to get the travelling coach ready. You had better come too, Jon. I may need you.’