Marrying His Cinderella Countess. Louise Allen

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      And I should forgive him. It is the right thing to do. He has made amends as best he can, so why is it so difficult? It was an accident, just as he said.

      She would be in close proximity with Lord Hainford for at least another three days. She really must learn to be easy with him, she told herself.

      * * *

      It was not until they were sitting around the table in the private parlour, Ellie and the two men—Polly was taking her supper in the kitchens—that she realised what it was that made her react to Blake as she did. This was not about Francis, nor about Blake’s character.

      She could forgive him for ignoring Francis that night—for failing to suppress her stepbrother’s expensive obsession with him. Francis had had a thick skin and it would probably have needed physical violence to turn him away from his admiration. And he had been infuriatingly self-centred and tactless—it would not have occurred to him that interrupting the game with a demand to discuss his own affairs was unmannerly and deserved a snub.

      She could forgive and she could understand. That was not the problem. It was not Blake. It was her.

      She was frightened of him in a way that went far beyond the straightforward fear of what a man might do to a lone woman without protectors. There was that, of course. There was always that whenever a man came close enough to touch, whenever she was cornered with a man between her and the door. That was her secret fear. and understanding why she felt like that was no help at all in conquering it.

      But she desired this man—found him deeply attractive—and had done so from the moment she had seen him. It was irrational to feel like that, she knew. Even if she was not crippled by her anxieties she was crippled in fact—and plain with it—and he would never spare her a glance under normal circumstances. For men like him women like her did not exist. They were not servants and they were not eligible girls or members of the society in which he existed. Spinsters, those to be pitied for their failure to attract a man, were invisible.

      Before she had met him it had been safe to keep Blake in her daydreams. But now, for him, for a few days, she did exist. She was a constant presence day and night, from breakfast to dinner. What if he could tell how she felt? What if her pitiful desire showed in her eyes?

      And it was pitiful—because she was determined to manage her own life, to live a full and independent existence, earn money. Be happy. This wretched attraction was a weakness she must fight to overcome. It was merely physical, after all—like hunger or thirst.

      ‘You look very determined, Eleanor,’ Blake remarked. ‘Claret?’ He lifted the bottle and tipped it towards her glass, holding it poised as he waited for her answer.

      He had called her by her first name without even the fictitious Cousin.

      ‘Yes.’ The agreement was startled out of her and he poured the wine before she could collect her wits and refuse it. ‘Yes, I am looking determined. I was thinking about pigs.’

      Mr Wilton blinked at her over the rim of his wine glass. ‘Pigs, Miss Lytton? Not present company, I trust?’

      ‘Raising pigs. Or a pig. And chickens. I should have thought of it before and bought books on the subject before I left London. But Lancaster is certain to have a circulating library.’

      ‘Forgive my curiosity, Eleanor,’ Blake drawled, ‘but why should you need to know about raising livestock?’

      ‘To eat. Eggs and ham and bacon and lard. I must learn about vegetables as well.’

      When both men continued to look at her as though she was speaking Greek—which she supposed they would probably comprehend rather better than talk of chicken-keeping—she explained. ‘I must make my resources stretch as far as possible. Polly suggested a vegetable garden and poultry.’

      ‘Eleanor, you are a gentlewoman—’

      ‘Who has not, my lord, made you free with her name.’

      ‘What is the harm? I make you free with mine, and Jonathan, I am sure, will do likewise. We have been thrown together for several days in close company—can we not behave like the cousins we pretend to be? I promise you may “my lord” me from the moment you step out of the carriage at your new front gate, and I will be lavish with the “Miss Lyttons.”’

      ‘Has anyone ever told you that you have an excessive amount of sheer gall, my... Blake?’

      ‘I am certain that they frequently think it, Eleanor, although they are usually polite enough to call it something else.’

      ‘Charm, presumably,’ she said, and took an unwise sip of the wine. ‘Oh.’

      ‘It is not to your taste?’

      ‘It is like warm red velvet and cherries and the heart of a fire!’ She took another sip. She had meant to leave it strictly alone, but this was ambrosia.

      ‘Are you a poet, Eleanor?’

      ‘No, a—’

      She’d almost said a writer, but bit her tongue. He might ask her what she wrote, and she could imagine his face when she admitted to the ghastly Oscar and his equally smug sister. As for her desire to write a novel—that would be a dangerous admission indeed. She could just picture the scene: her, after a glass of this wickedly wonderful wine, blurting out that Blake was the hero of her desert romance. He would either laugh himself sick or he be utterly furious. Neither was very appealing, although she thought she would probably prefer fury to mockery.

      ‘A mere amateur at poetry,’ she prevaricated. Which was true. Her attempts at verse were strictly limited to the moon-June-swoon level of doggerel. ‘But words are dangerously tempting, are they not?’

      ‘All temptation should be dangerous,’ Blake said. ‘Otherwise it is merely self-indulgence. May I carve you some of this beef?’

      ‘Self-indulgences can be dangerous, surely?’ Jonathan passed her the plate and followed it with a dish of peas. ‘In fact most of them are—even if it’s merely over-indulgence in sweet things. Before one knows it one is entrapped in corsets, like poor Prinny, or all one’s teeth go black and fall out.’

      ‘Not a danger for any of us around this table,’ Blake remarked, carving more beef and then passing the potatoes to Ellie.

      She wondered if that was a snide remark about her skinniness. Her mother had been used to saying, with something like despair, that she would surely grow some curves with womanhood—and she had indeed begun to just before Mama had died. But they’d seemed to disappear in the general misery afterwards, when she’d so often forgotten to eat properly. At least that had made it easier to be inconspicuous...

      ‘Some bread sauce and gravy?’ Jonathan passed the two dishes, one glossy with butter, the other rich and brown. ‘And will you take more vegetables, Eleanor?’

      ‘Thank you, no. I have only a small appetite.’

      They devoted themselves to their food for a while. The beef was good, and the two men clearly close enough friends not to feel the need to talk of nothing simply to fill a silence that felt companionable to Ellie. They were attentive to her needs, but when their conversational sallies were met by monosyllabic replies they seemed comfortable with her reticence.

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