The Cinderella Countess

by Sophia James

  Men like him did not change their spots. No, they went on to grimmer and grimmer crimes and she pitied anyone who had to weather that ride. She had seen this a number of times in Whitechapel. The desperate wives and mothers worrying if every day that their wayward son or husband lived might be their last. Happiness was not that golden easy glow that the stories talked of. It was the small satisfactions that came in tiny victories. A loaf of bread that was not mouldy. A shilling over at the end of a long hard week. A child who recovered quickly from a cough that had been worrying. A husband who returned home late after a fight, a little worse for wear, but still alive.

  The Thorntons were immune in some ways to tragedy and exposed to it in other ways. Lady Lucy’s innocence had counted against her just as her brother’s success and arrogance had counted against him.

  His sister would not take him into her confidence. Belle was pleased, at least, that the girl had spoken to her about what had happened for there was a release in confession.

  Her pregnancy would be almost eight or nine weeks along. Soon it would show. Already there were times when she caught the red cheeks of expectancy and the curves that were softening. But Thornton was no fool. He would not be hoodwinked for much longer, either, and when he knew that Belle had not confided in him there would be hell to pay.

  The Earl was the one doling out for her services and when he asked her for a diagnosis for his sister which she knew he would, she would have to lie.

  ‘I think that Mrs Wollstonecraft’s book has helped me, Miss Smith. There is a way I can get on with my life after all, for I would hope I am not about to be abandoned or become penniless like the heroine in the story. Perhaps I can become more like you and help in your clinic. You could teach me the rudiments of herbal medicines and I could feel useful again.’

  ‘All those things are possible, Miss Staines, but not probable. Your family is wealthy and of good standing and I know for a fact that your brother would do anything in his power to see you happy.’

  ‘But I cannot move in the circles I once did. Society will turn its back on me when they know.’

  ‘Then turn your back upon them first. Lives can be lived with passion and joy in places away from the ton. You can certainly help in my clinic after the baby arrives, but for now with your compromised health you will need to be taken care of. Your brother can do that and will. It might be hard for you to tell him and even harder for him to hear, but he is a good man and a strong one. I know that he will want you to be in the best place you can be and I think you know this, too. Deep down.’

  The small nod heartened her. ‘But not yet. Not quite yet.’

  ‘Very well.’

  ‘You will come back to see me?’

  Belle made herself smile. ‘I promise it. Until you no longer need me at all.’

  A small thin hand closed around her own and they sat in silence, the sunlight slanting through the curtains until Lucy fell asleep. With care Belle untangled her fingers and stood. Lady Lucy was so young and trusting. A woman in Whitechapel would never have fallen for the drivel that Lucy had told her of nor would she have been lured into a quiet building and allowed him everything.

  Once was enough to become pregnant. Every young girl of her acquaintance knew this as gospel.

  The unfairness of life wrung deep. Was this what had happened to her all those years before? Had she been the product of such a union? A child without the strong ties of family that Lucy could at least lay claim to? A child of indifference and mistake? A child to be thrown away like rubbish? And then forgotten? For ever.

  Oh, granted, she had loved Tante Alicia, but she had missed having a parent, one who might have played with her and laughed at all the things she’d seen young mothers and their children be amused by. She had seldom mingled with other children, never been taken to the places where they were. At first she had been ill, Alicia had said, and she did remember that. Then she had been confused. Her world had changed in a way she could not quite fathom and the memories of before had faded. Now it was just the ghosts of houses and the speech of people from long ago that remained.

  She’d walked through life without being truly connected. That thought made her sit up, her heart beating louder, the truth of it disconcerting. But why should she think this now when last week she had been perfectly content doling out remedies and making potions?

  It was because of the Earl of Thornton. He made her want things she would never have, things like permanence and a safe haven. He made her imagine that there could be another life just waiting around the corner. A life she would have had if...

  My God, she was going crazy, but suddenly an inkling of what had been once for her flourished, the visits to the Thornton town house unleashing other memories. A grand house and servants and a garden that went on for ever into the distance, its edges surrounded by water. An old lady was there, too, with a kind face and a generous body, her eyes the exact same colour of her own.

  But no one could tell her of that time and so these known things had slipped back into the hidden, crouching there in hope that the light would fall upon them and reveal the truth.

  A knock at Lucy’s bedroom door startled her.

  ‘The Earl would like to speak with you in the library, miss, when you are finished here.’ The young servant delivered his message and waited.

  ‘Miss Staines is asleep. I will follow you down now.’

  A moment later she was being shepherded through to a room towards the back of the house, one whole wall a set of doors that led out to the greenest garden Belle had ever seen. The Earl was there, standing on the lawn, a small snatch of sunlight on his hair as he turned.

  ‘How is my sister today?’ He asked this as he strode back into the room and latched the door. Shadows fell where sunlight had been only a moment before.

  ‘She is sleeping.’

  ‘What do you think ails her, Miss Smith?’ There was a stillness in the words, a hesitation. Belle got the impression he had not truly wished to ask her this at all.

  ‘It is complex, your lordship.’ She struggled for time, trying to conjure up some ailment that might have fitted Lucy’s symptoms and failing.

  ‘Try to make it simple, then.’

  When she looked at him she understood that he had guessed far more than Lucy might have thought he would, but in this situation her professional loyalty had to lie with her patient.

  ‘I think she needs time and tenderness. I think it may have been an infection that has resolved.’

  A shutter crossed his golden eyes, an intensity replaced by indifference. She was sad to see it, but there was no other path for her to take. She had made a promise and she always kept her promises.

  ‘Will you visit her again?’

  ‘I shall, but I will not charge you, your lordship.’

  This time he did not argue, but rang a bell that was on his desk and waited for the servant to come.

  ‘Could you see that Miss Smith finds her way out, Harrison? If you need the carriage—’ He stopped as she interrupted him.

  ‘No. I am quite fine.’

  ‘Then goodbye.’

  So final. So emotionless. She was just another person supplying a service to an aristocratic family who must have countless need of things each and every week.

  ‘Oh, and, Miss Smith...?’

  She turned.

  ‘Here is your book. Lucy said that she has finished with it.’

  Belle stepped up to take it, making certain not to touch him inadvertently, and then she walked out.

  Chapter Five

  Damn. Damn. Damn. She had lied to him about his sister, for he understood that she knew far more than she let on. God, even he could now see that Lucy was with child and for a woman used to the various symptoms of a physical body such a knowledge must be staring Miss Smith right in the face.

  When might others know
of it? How many weeks did he have to find his sister a husband and make certain that she was safe? Had Lucy talked to Annabelle Smith and related the truth of how it had happened? That was another worry, the concern softening as he thought of her keeping Lucy’s confidence when he had asked his questions.

  She would not gossip. He knew that of her instinctively and was relieved. But she would lie to him, without a blink, bald lies that covered other mistruths. Her voice. Her past. Her fear of carriages and her confession that she thought herself plain. What was it she had said to him in her drunken state?

  ‘Belle. You can call me that. Everyone else does. It means beautiful in French, but I do not think she should have named me such for I am not.’

  Did she believe that, truly? And who was the ‘she’ who had named her, for this was not said in the way one might speak of a parent? Another person entirely, then?

  He wanted to call her back and ask. He wanted to walk with her to the carriage and have one last ride in the manner of friends. More than friends? But he could not. He knew she would never flourish in society, a woman with no ties at all to the complex and convoluted world of the ton. It would be unfeasible and wrong to hope for it.

  He should have kept the book with its fragile blue ribbons and its ridiculous ideas. No, not ridiculous, he corrected himself, but difficult. It would be a long time before the inequality that Mary Wollstonecraft spoke of between women and men was righted and these were concepts that Lucy in her brittle state of mind and body did not need to grapple with.

  The day fell down upon him, a darkness settling. Annabelle Smith was gone from him with her mistruths and her lies.

  The Earl of Dromorne had approached him yesterday about a union between himself and his eldest daughter. Lady Catherine was a lovely girl, a friend, but he had no inclination to follow up the proposal further. He could do a lot worse, he knew that, for she was gracious and beautiful, competent and interesting. But he could not imagine her in his bed, writhing beneath him, her face flushed with sweat and desire.

  Instead he saw Miss Annabelle Smith there, her long dark hair around him and those dimples, which seldom showed, full blown upon her face. He wondered what she would taste like, feel like, smell like. They had barely touched, but each time they had there had been a shock of connection, a red-hot blaze of lust and a surprising intimacy. Her fingers upon his thighs in the drawing room, trying to wipe off hot and scalding tea, her hand beside his in the carriage, warm and small, her head against his shoulder, the breath of her tickling his neck as she lay asleep after her disastrous reaction to one and a half small glasses of white wine.

  He smiled. He did not know one other person with that sort of intolerance to alcohol.

  Perhaps he would instruct Shay or Aurelian to ask around about them, after all. They must have come to England quite a while ago, he deduced, given that their practice of making medicines would have taken a goodly time to establish.

  Annabelle Smith and her Tante Alicia did not seem like outsiders in Whitechapel, a place that seldom took to strangers with any sense of pace or ease.

  But Miss Smith held information that could ruin the reputation of the Thorntons and as such it behoved him to take precautions. If he found out things about her that were not salutary, could he use them as blackmail should she try the same with him? Would he want to? As she’d left today she had looked at him with a sense of betrayal in her sapphire-blue eyes, the light of them dimmed by comprehension. She knew she did not belong, every bit as much as he did, in the elevated world of the ton.

  Lytton pushed a pile of work across in front of him and sat down at his desk. He was the guardian of a lot more than simply his life. He was not kind. He had already told Annabelle that when she had said he was. Business required a hardness and he was a highly successful businessman. It was just the way it was and the way it would have to be.

  He opened his drawer and found her note listing all of the ways that she had spent her ten pounds. The difference between them was encapsulated in this little message. Annabelle Smith cared about everyone while he protected his family. While she saw ten pounds as a veritable fortune he could spend that in the blink of an eye. On a bottle of perfect wine or on a new pair of boots. Or simply by throwing it on to the gambling table and not really caring if he ever got it back. She’d written a thank-you note, something he doubted he’d ever do. Things came to him easily and without much effort. The horse from Huntington was one example. He could sell it at the Thursday auctions for a hundred pounds at Tattersall’s or he could hold on to it to breed more colts and recover the money ten times over.

  His world was bound by nothing and Miss Annabelle Smith’s world was bound by everything.

  He folded her note carefully and tucked it into the ornate wooden box where he kept things he did not want to lose, wondering about the connotations of such a choice even as he closed the lid.

  * * *

  ‘I think I lived somewhere else before coming to you, Tante Alicia. I saw a glimpse of a life I used to have when I was at the Thornton town house.’

  Her aunt frowned heavily and shooed Stanley off her lap. When she stood Belle saw that her back must be sore again and that the knee she had hurt last summer falling over the front step was also playing up.

  Part of her wanted to take back the words and allow her aunt some rest, but the other stronger part just could not.

  ‘I saw a woman in my mind, too. An old woman who had eyes the same colour as my own. I need to know more, Tante Alicia. I need to know what these memories mean and who these people are.’

  ‘Sometimes it is better just to leave the past alone, Annabelle. Things happen for a reason and to drag them all up again can be futile and hurtful. The future is there before you, to be met with enthusiasm and eagerness. I should concentrate on that if I was you.’

  ‘Hurtful? For me, you mean?’

  Her mind whirled at this new small piece of information and then seized on another bit of the puzzle. ‘You said I was sick when I came to you? How sick?’

  ‘Sick enough to die had you simply been left.’

  ‘To die of what?’

  ‘An injury.’ Alicia said this loudly, but caught herself as her voice rose further. ‘Someone had hit you, hurt you on numerous occasions. These are the truths that can wound, Belle, honesties that are pointless and avoidable.’

  Belle stepped back, the summer air chilling as the possibilities of what had happened to her funnelled down. ‘Did the nun who brought me to you say who had wounded me?’

  ‘She did, but...’ Her aunt stopped mid-sentence, indecision written across her face.

  ‘Who was it? I have to know.’

  ‘Your father. He was a violent man by all the accounts of those at the inn in which they had stayed.’

  ‘They?’

  ‘Your mother and him. It was your mother, not a servant, who brought you to the Notre-Dame de la Nativité and implored the nuns to look after you. She had been hit herself, Sister Maria said, but she would not stay for any doctoring. It was you she wanted protected and safe.’

  So much new information and so unexpected. So many facts that she hadn’t had before. A picture of a family in turmoil. It was hard to take it in. No wonder her aunt had kept her silence.

  ‘But you don’t know their names?’

  ‘I do not. I promise you.’

  ‘Or any information as to where they went next? The mother and father?’

  ‘None.’

  ‘What of the innkeeper? Would he know?’

  ‘There was a fire there the following winter. Both the innkeeper and his wife and any records they may have kept perished in it.’

  A further untraceable end. Another way of finding out nothing.

  ‘I have not told you this before, but your mother did leave a Bible with Sister Maria. There was no front-piece in it though, no signature. It was a
simple clean copy like a thousand others of the same ilk.’

  ‘Is it here still?’

  ‘Yes.’ Alicia walked across to the bookcase at the end of the room and drew out a small burgundy-covered tome, placing it into Belle’s outstretched hands.

  An Anglican Bible. The King James version. It felt so ordinary, but it wasn’t. Her mother had touched this once, as she had handed over a broken daughter. Was it a message of hope or of religion or scripture? Looking through it, she saw there were no turned-down pages, no special places that had been made different. When she brought it up to her face there was only the smell of ink and age. Dust was there, too, the passing time gathered in leather.

  ‘I’ve looked many times myself, Annabelle, for a clue. There are none.’

  But there were, Belle thought. She was Anglican and she was loved. By a mother who had tried her best to save her and then disappeared. By a woman who could not protect herself, but would ensure her daughter’s well-being.

  The enormity of such a discovery had her sitting. If this message of love was the only thing she ever found out about her past, it would be enough. To know she was wanted. To understand that even in violence devotion had won.

  ‘Would Sister Maria still be alive, do you think?’

  ‘I don’t know. Perhaps?’