Marrying His Cinderella Countess

Be civilised about this, she told herself as she put up her chin and turned. Be dignified. He knows you are hurt, but do not let him guess how you feel about him.

She went back inside, held the door open for him and walked in front of him into the parlour.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Ridiculous to have forgotten how Blake seemed to fill a room, how he took her breath. Idiocy to want to touch him, to kiss him, to be held.

‘Please sit down,’ Ellie said.

Dignity. Be civilised.

‘I will stand. I am relieved to have found you. I thought you had gone to London.’ He sounded as though he was giving evidence in a court of law. ‘You said you were not well.’

‘That—’ Her voice cracked. She moistened her lips and tried again. ‘That is what I hoped you would believe at first. I am all right. Only…tired.’

‘You knew I had kept that miniature and then, at the church, you saw me put some token into the monument. You believe that I hold Felicity’s memory more dear than I hold my marriage to you, than my promises and vows to you.’

&n

bsp; ‘Yes. I thought… I had told myself that she was in the past and that we could build our marriage together, be honest with each other. I saw I was wrong and so I left. I will come back, Blake, I swear it. I just couldn’t… I did not know how to pretend that I had not seen and somehow hide the hurt, and I dared not speak of it and end up saying things that neither of us would ever be able to forget.’

‘I am not surprised,’ he said, startling her with his ready acceptance. ‘I can only wonder at your restraint. If the positions had been reversed—if I had seen what you did, thought that you felt like that for another man, alive or dead—I could never have controlled my tongue or my temper. Marriages have broken apart for far less.’

He held out one hand to her, then sat down abruptly without touching her, even though she was still on her feet.

‘You have no reason to believe anything I tell you, Eleanor. Certainly no reason to trust me now. But will you let me explain?’

I do not want to hear you telling me how lovely she was, how tragic it was!

For a second she thought she had shouted it aloud. ‘Very well.’ She sat down too—it felt easier to control herself, somehow.

‘I told you how I put off asking Felicity to marry me after my father died. I hadn’t realised how I felt about her—I suppose I had come to take her for granted. She refused me. I became persistent…angry. I kissed her and she started crying. I stormed off, expecting her to come round in a day or so. I was too proud to go and beg. But I had been taken by surprise at how very beautiful she was, how she had felt in my arms. It was a lightning strike of realisation—Eleanor, please, do not look like that. Hear me out. I need to explain this properly. I am not trying to hurt you.’

Are you not? You are succeeding very well so far.

‘Go on,’ she said to the log basket.

‘I found I was in love with her and realised that I had never looked at her properly before—that is the truth. I had been away a lot, and she had been an awkward fledgling girl. Now she was exquisite—far more lovely than any of the ladies I had seen in London. And she was mine. I told myself that she had only to get over her fit of pique at being neglected and all would be well.’

He put his elbows on his knees and ran his hands through his hair. Then he looked up, his face bleak.

‘So I gave her time—and she reacted by running off with that damn poet.’

He was just out of arm’s reach. Ellie lifted a hand, shifted on her seat, then let her hand drop. She wanted to touch him, wanted to be in his arms, holding and being held. But that was too easy for both of them. Blake had to finish.

‘She left a note, you know. She said I had been a brute, a ravening beast without sensitivity or sensibility. She could not bear to be married to me. I could well believe that she had been frightened and shocked because I had kissed her—probably with far more passion, far more demand than I should have. Her father picked up their trail, but it was a week later. They had taken a ship for Italy and it was far too late to do anything about it.’

‘So your heart was broken,’ Ellie said.

‘My heart was broken, my pride was in tatters and I knew damn well that I had completely mishandled the whole thing—I should have come home sooner… I should have wooed her properly. I reacted by behaving as though it hadn’t happened. I should have followed them—found her, made certain she was all right, told her I was sorry and asked her to forgive me for my crassness. And then, if she had been content with her poet, I would have learned to live without her, to be happy for her. Instead I made a shrine in my heart for my lost love and carried on. And somehow the news that she had died, unhappy and alone, only made it worse. I managed to nurse my broken heart and found it armoured me very effectively against Cupid’s arrows and the inconvenience and uncertainty of a new courtship.’

He looked at her and his smile was wry and self-mocking. It did not touch the darkness in his eyes.

‘And then you met me.’

‘Yes.’ Blake’s voice warmed. ‘I met you. And you baffled me, infuriated me, provoked me and challenged me—and I found I liked you. Liked you a lot.’

‘So you married me. A safe, plain bride who was not going to run off with anyone else.’