The Cinderella Countess

by Sophia James

  ‘The mystery of supply and demand, then? How old is she?’

  ‘Not young. She spoke French, too, which was surprising.’

  That interested Aurelian. ‘Smith is not a French name?’

  ‘Neither is Annabelle. There was an older woman there who did appear to be from France, though. An aunt I think she called her after their dog attacked me.’ He loosened the buttons of his jacket to show them the wreckage of his waistcoat.

  ‘A colour like that needs tearing apart.’ Edward’s voice held humour, but Aurelian’s was much more serious.

  ‘I have never heard of this woman or of her French aunt. Perhaps it bears looking into?’

  ‘No.’ Lytton said this in a tone that had the others observing him. ‘No investigations. She is meeting Lucy tomorrow.’

  Edward was trying his hardest to look nonchalant, but he could tell his friend was curious.

  ‘What does she look like?’

  ‘Strong. Certain. Direct. She is nothing like the females of the ton. Her dress was at least ten years out of date and she favours scarves to tie her hair back. It is dark and curly and reaches to at least her waist. She was...uncommon.’

  ‘It seems she made quite an impression on you then, Thorn? I saw Susan Castleton a few hours back and she said you were supposed to be meeting her tonight?’

  ‘I am. We are going to the ballet.’

  Susan had been his mistress for all of the last four months, but Lytton was becoming tired of her demands. She wanted a lot more than he could give her and despite her obvious beauty he was bored of the easy and constant sex. God, that admission had him sitting up straighter. It was Lucy, he supposed, and the ever-close presence of her sadness and ill health.

  He wished life was as easy as it used to be, nothing in his way and everything to live for. One of his fingers threaded through the hole in his waistcoat and just for a second he questioned what ill-thought-out notion had ever convinced him to buy clothing in quite this colour.

  It was Susan’s doing, he supposed, and her love of fashion. Easier to just give in to her choice of fabric than fight for the more sombre hues. He wondered when that had happened, this surrender of his opinion, and frowned, resolving to do away with both the excessive rings and the colour pink forthwith.

  Miss Annabelle Smith was contrary and unusual and more than different. He could never imagine her allowing another to tell her what to wear or what to do. Even with the mantle of poverty curtailing choices she seemed to have found her exact path in life and was revelling in it.

  Belle awoke in the dark of night, sweating and struggling for breath. The dreams were back. She swallowed away panic and sat up, flinting the candle at her bedside so that it chased away some of the shadows.

  The same people shouting, the same fear, the same numbness that had her standing in the room of a mansion she had never recognised. She thought she hated them, these people, though she was not supposed to. She knew she wanted to run away as fast as her legs could carry her and although she could never quite see them she understood that they looked like her. How she would know this eluded sense, but that certainty had been there ever since she had first had the nightmares when she was very young. Sometimes she even heard them speak her name.

  The sound of the night noise from the street calmed her as did the snoring of her aunt in the room next door. At times like this she was thankful for the thin walls of their dwelling, for they gave her a reason to not feel so alone.

  The visage of Lytton Staines, the Earl of Thornton, floated into her memory as well, his smile so very different from the clothes he wore.

  She remembered the hardness of male flesh beneath the thin beige superfine when her fingers had run along his thighs by mistake. Her face flamed. God, she had never been near a man in quite such a compromising way and she knew he had seen her embarrassed withdrawal.

  The incident with the spilled tea this afternoon began to attain gigantic proportions, a mistake she might relive again each time she saw him which would be in only a matter of hours as he was due to collect her in the morning at nine. She needed to go back to sleep. She needed to be at her best in the company of Lord Thornton because otherwise there were things about him that were unsettling.

  He was beautiful for a start and a man well used to the exalted title that sat on his shoulders. He was also watchful. She had seen how he’d glanced around her house, assessing her lack of fortune and understanding her more-than-dire straits.

  She wondered what he might have thought of her paintings, the flowers she lovingly drew adorning most of one wall in the front room. Drawing was a way for her to relax and she enjoyed the art of constructing a picture.

  In her early twenties she had drawn faces, eerie unfamiliar ones which she had thrown away, but now she stuck to plants, using bold thick lines. The memory of those early paintings summoned her dreams and she shook off the thought. She would be thirty-two next week and her small business of providing proper medicines for the sick around Whitechapel was growing. She grimaced at the charge per visit she had asked the Earl to pay, but, if a few consultations with the sister of a man who could patently afford any exorbitant fee allowed many others to collect their needs for nothing, then so be it. Not many could pay even a penny.

  He’d looked just so absurdly rich. She wondered where he lived here in London. One of the beautiful squares in the centre of Mayfair, she supposed. Places into which she had seldom ventured.

  Would it be to one of those town houses that he would take her in order to tend to his sister? Would his family be in attendance? Alicia had told her the Earl had mentioned a mother who enjoyed tea.

  She had not addressed him properly. She had realised this soon after he had left because she had asked Milly, the kitchen maid, if she knew how one was supposed to speak to an earl. The girl had been a maid in the house of a highly born lord a few years before.

  My lord Earl was definitely an error. According to Milly she could have used ‘my lord’ or ‘your lordship’, or ‘Lord Thornton’. Belle had decided when she saw him next she would use the second.

  At least that was cleared up and sleep felt a little nearer. She had prepared all the tinctures, medicines and ointment she would take with her to see Lord Thornton’s sister so it was only a case of getting herself ready now.

  What could she wear? The question both annoyed and worried her. She should not care about such shallow things, but she did. She wanted suddenly to look nice for the mother who enjoyed tea. That thought made her smile and she lay back down on her bed watching the moon through undrawn curtains.

  It had rained yesterday, but tonight it was largely clear.

  As she closed her eyes, the last image she saw before sleep was that of the Earl of Thornton observing her with angry shock as she had wiped away the hot tea from his skin-tight pantaloons.

  Chapter Two

  Miss Smith was sitting on the front doorstep of her Whitechapel house when his carriage pulled up to the corner on the dot of nine. She held a large wicker basket in front of her, covered almost entirely by a dark blue cloth.

  The oddness of a woman waiting alone outside her home and completely on time had Lytton waving away the footman as he jumped down to the ground.

  Miss Annabelle Smith appeared pleased to see him as she stood, her hand shading her face and the odd shape of her hat sending a shadow down one side of her cheek.

  ‘I thought perhaps you might have decided not to come,’ she said, her fingers keeping the cloth on her basket anchored in the growing breeze.

  The heightened notice of her as a woman he’d felt yesterday returned this morning and Lytton shoved it away.

  ‘My chaperon will be here in just a moment as Aunt Alicia would not settle until I agreed to have her with me. I hope that is all right with you, your lordship?’

  She knew, now, how to address him. He found himself mis
sing the ‘my lord Earl’.

  ‘Of course.’ The words sounded more distant than he had meant them to be. She looked tired, dark circles under her eyes, and there was a cut on her thumb. He hoped the injury had not come about in the preparation of his sister’s medicines.

  Pulling the three pounds he had ready from his pocket, he offered them to her.

  ‘If it is too much I quite understand,’ she said, but he shook his head.

  ‘I can afford it, Miss Smith, and I am grateful that you would consent to attending my sister at such short notice.’

  The same velvet purse he had seen yesterday came out of her pocket, the notes carefully tucked within it.

  ‘It will be useful to buy more supplies for those who cannot pay. There are many such folk here.’

  ‘You have lived in this house for a while?’

  ‘We have, your lordship. It is rented, but it is home.’

  ‘Yet you do not speak with the accent of the East End?’

  She looked away, distracted as the same woman he had seen yesterday joined them, busy fingers tying the ribbons on her bonnet.

  ‘This is my friend, Mrs Rosemary Greene.’

  ‘We met briefly yesterday. Ma’am.’ He tipped his head and the older woman blushed dark red, but was saved from answering as Annabelle Smith caught at her arm and shepherded her towards the conveyance. When the footman helped each of them up Miss Smith took a deep breath, giving Lytton the impression she did not much wish to get in. He took the seat opposite them as the door closed, listening to the horses being called on.

  ‘Did you ever read the fairy tale Cendrillon by Charles Perrault, your lordship?’ Her dimples were on display, picked out by the incoming sunshine.

  ‘I did, Miss Smith.’

  ‘Your carriage reminds me of that. Ornate and absurdly comfortable.’

  ‘You read it in French?’

  ‘When I was a child I lived in France for a time with my aunt.’

  The traffic at this time of the morning was busy and they were travelling so slowly it seemed as if all of London was on the road.

  The silence inside the carriage lengthened, their last exchange throwing up questions. She did not give the impression of one born abroad for her words held only the accent of English privilege and wealth. How could that be?

  He hoped like hell that any of his extended family would not converge on his town house this morning, for he wanted to allow Miss Smith some time to talk with his sister by herself. His mother would be present, of course, but she was lost in her own sadness these days and appeared befuddled most of the time. Today such confusion would aid him.

  It was as if Lucy’s sickness had ripped the heart out of the Thorntons and trampled any happiness underfoot. It was probably why he had taken up with Susan Castleton to be honest, Lytton thought, her sense of devil-may-care just the attitude he had needed to counter the constant surge of melancholy.

  Miss Smith was watching the passing streets with interest, her fingers laced together and still. When they went around a sharp corner, though, as their speed increased he saw her grasp at the seat beneath her, each knuckle white.

  ‘It is perfectly safe. My driver is one of the most skilled in London.’

  Blue eyes washed over him and then looked back to the outside vistas.

  ‘People more usually come to see me, your lordship.’

  ‘You don’t use hackneys, then?’

  ‘Never.’

  This was stated in such a way that left little room for debate and Mrs Greene caught his eye as he frowned, an awkward worry across her face.

  Portman Square was now coming into view, the façade of his town house standing on one corner. He hoped that Annabelle Smith would not be flustered by the wealth of it, for in comparison to her living quarters in Whitechapel it suddenly looked enormous.

  As they alighted an expression unlike any he had ever seen briefly crossed her face. Shock, he thought, and pure horror, her pallor white and the pulse at her throat fast. His hand reached out to take her arm as he imagined she might simply faint.

  ‘Are you well, Miss Smith?’

  He saw the comprehension of what she had shown him reach her eyes, her shoulders stiffening, but she did not let him go, her fingers grabbing at the material of his jacket.

  Then the door opened and his mother stood there, black fury on her face.

  ‘You cannot bring your doxies into this house, Thornton. I shall simply not allow it. Your valet has told me you were in the company of one of your mistresses, Mrs Castleton, last night and now you dare to bring in these two this morning. Your father, bless his soul, would be rolling in his grave and as for your sister...’

  She stopped and twisted a large kerchief, dabbing at her nose as she left them, a discomfited silence all around.

  ‘I am sorry. My mother is not herself.’

  It was all he could think to say, the fury roiling inside him pressed down. He needed Annabelle Smith to see his sister, that was his overriding thought, and he would deal with his mother’s unexpected accusations when he could.

  * * *

  The Earl of Thornton kept mistresses and his mother thought she and Rosemary were fallen woman? The haze of seeing the Thornton town house dispersed under such a ludicrous assassination of her character and if there had not been a patient inside awaiting she would have simply insisted upon being taken home.

  This behaviour was so common with the very wealthy, this complete and utter disregard for others, and if the Earl had somehow inveigled her into thinking differently then the more fool she.

  It was why Belle had always made it a policy to never do business with the aristocracy, her few very early forays into providing remedies for the wealthy ending in disaster. They either did not pay or they looked down their noses at her. However, she’d had none of the overt hatred shown by the Earl’s mother.

  Well, here at least she had already been paid, the three-pound fee tucked firmly into her purse.

  The Earl looked furious, the muscles in his jaw working up and down and as they entered into the entrance proper he asked them if they might wait for just a moment.

  ‘Yes of course, your lordship.’ As Rosemary answered she drew Annabelle over to a set of comfortable-looking armchairs arranged around a table, a vase of pastel-shaded flowers upon it that were made of dyed silk.

  Belle sat in a haze, the smell of polish and cleaning product in the air. Everything was as familiar as it was strange and she could not understand this at all. She had seen a house just like this one in her dreams: the winding staircase, the black and white tiles, the numerous doors that led off the entrance hall to elaborately dressed and furnished salons, portraits of the past arranged solemnly on the walls up and down the staircase.

  ‘What on earth is wrong with you, Belle? You look like you have seen a ghost.’

  ‘I think I have.’

  ‘I cannot believe the Earl’s mother would have thought we were doxies.’ Rose looked horrified as she rearranged the red and green scarf draped about her neck into a more concealing style.

  ‘She has probably never seen one before and I suppose we dress differently from the people who live around here.’

  Belle hoped the woman would not return to find them again just as she prayed she could have asked for her coat and hat and left.

  But she’d been paid well for a consultation and the carriage outside had rumbled on already down the street. Their only avenue of escape was the Earl. He suddenly came down the passageway to one side, another servant accompanying him.

  ‘My sister’s suite is this way. There is a sitting room just outside if Mrs Greene would feel comfortable waiting there.’

  Rose nodded and so did Belle, this visit becoming more and more exhausting. She did not truly feel up to the task of reassuring a young, sick and aristocratic patient, but had no
true way to relay that to the Earl of Thornton without appearing ridiculous. Still, if his awful mother was there with more of her accusations she would turn and go.

  As they mounted the staircase the smell of camphor rose from her basket and Annabelle presumed the container in it had fallen over. Removing the fabric, she righted it and jammed it in more tightly against the wad of bandages at its side.

  The light was dimmer now and the noises from the street and the house more distant. The scent of sickness was present, too, her nostrils flaring to pick up any undertones of disease. Surprisingly there were none, a fact that had her frowning.

  ‘If you could wait here, Mrs Greene, it would be appreciated. My sister in her present state is not good at receiving strangers and one new face is probably enough for now.’

  Seeing Rose settled Belle followed the Earl through a further anteroom, which opened into a large and beautiful bedchamber, full of the accoutrements of ill health and all the shades half-drawn. There were medicine bottles as well as basins and cloths on a long table. Vases full of flowers decorated every other flat surface.

  At the side of the bed a maid sat, but she instantly stood and went from the room, though there had been no gesture from the Earl to ask her to leave.

  ‘Lucy?’ The Earl’s voice was softer, a tenderness there that had been missing in every other conversation Belle had had with him. ‘Miss Smith is come to see you. The herbalist I told you of.’

  ‘I do not want another medical person here, Thorn. I’ve said that. I just want to be left alone.’

  The tone of the voice was strong. A further oddness. If Lady Lucy had been in bed for this many weeks and deathly ill she would have sounded more fragile.

  She had burrowed in under the blankets, only the top of her golden head seen. Her fingernails were bitten to the quick, every single one of them, but there was no discolouration of the nail beds.

  ‘Miss Smith is well thought of in her parish of Whitechapel. She seldom visits outside her home area, so in this we are more than fortunate.’