The Cinderella Countess

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The Cinderella Countess Page 9

by Sophia James


  ‘Save courage, I think, and fortitude, things for a while I was badly lacking. I bought another copy of Mrs Wollstonecraft’s book after my brother said he had returned the one you leant to me, just to keep. You were clever to think that it might be helpful.’

  ‘You are not the first young woman to need advice, Lucy, and you certainly will not be the last.’

  ‘See, that is what I mean, Miss Smith. Whenever you give advice it is with sense and vigour. I will miss you.’

  ‘I will miss you, too, but if you talk with your brother you’ll understand that he loves you with all his heart and that you are lucky to have such a protector.’

  Lucy nodded. ‘Most people are frightened of Thorn. His success scares them off, but he is also dangerous in a precise and measured way. He does not waste emotion, I suppose, or squander sentiment. He protects his family with all that he has and he does that well.’ Small fingers threaded around a lace handkerchief as she spoke, her nails still short and bitten.

  The family. All the expectations of great wealth and history heaped on one man. It was no wonder the Earl of Thornton was sometimes taciturn. But he could be funny, too, and sweet. She remembered waking up in the carriage after her disastrous episode with the wine, her head having creased his linen shirt. She liked talking with him. She liked the sense of possibility edged with a danger that was fascinating. He was not a man who would bore her.

  But she also knew her time with the Thorntons was coming to an end and that was as it should be. Lady Lucy would return to the country estate of Balmain and she would get on with her work in the poorer parts of London town, a few hundred miles away geographically, but a million miles apart in any other way that counted.

  She clutched her beautiful oil painting and bade the Earl of Thornton’s sister goodbye.

  * * *

  Lytton wondered what he was doing here. The Barretts’ ball was well appointed, well attended and well thought of, but he was troubled.

  Lady Catherine Dromorne stood with him, every piece of her in perfect place as she related to him details of the newest scandal of the ton. Not in a mean way, but in the way of a woman who could not countenance any behaviour that veered away from the narrow expectations of society, expectations she had been brought up with from the very cradle.

  He felt restless and on edge. It had been three weeks since he had last seen Miss Annabelle Smith. She had left the house without a glance back, his sister’s renewed health allowing no other necessary appointment in the future. Oh, granted, vague plans had been put in place to keep in touch, but her smile had been distant and forced.

  She had been glad to get away from them all, that much was plain.

  Lady Catherine’s voice broke into his reveries. ‘I can’t understand how Lord Macmillan could have imagined he would not have been seen with Mrs Julia Chambers at that time of the day in a busy street. As my father said, the end of the world as we know it is coming sooner than we think if people insist upon liaisons with such unsuitable others.’

  When had Catherine begun to parrot her father? he wondered. Lytton had never noticed this trait before. His mind returned to Annabelle Smith. Was it her circumstances that had softened his own attitude to those around him, allowing the person they were to triumph over the one everybody else thought them?

  Mrs Julia Chambers had been married to a man who was a bully and a cheat, his wealth never quite hiding the lowly lineage he had been raised from. He had seen Gregory Macmillan with the beauteous widow on a number of occasions lately and never thought much of it, for she always appeared well mannered and demure. He held no idea of the circumstances of her background, but, from Catherine’s words of warning, presumed that she certainly did.

  The same ennui that had been building now for weeks suddenly assailed him. He felt jaded and tired, the weary task of pulling the Earldom from shambles suddenly heavy. He wanted to disappear, away from society, away from expectations, away from the constant badgering of those whose own straits were needing regeneration as much as his own. Even the canning factory tonight held no joy for him, the constant demands arising from it part of the reason he felt so damned tired.

  The wreck of eighteen months of hard work, the sadness over the dreadful loss of his father, his sister’s ruin and Annabelle Smith’s lies fed into his defeat.

  He wanted more. Aurelian and Violet de la Tomber danced together in the middle of the floor and the gaze they bestowed upon each other was beguiling. He imagined them going home after this to their town house and falling into a large soft bed full of promise. It would be a happy night.

  He would sleep by himself.

  Weeks ago after the Susan Castleton fiasco that realisation would have been exactly what he did want, but tonight all it felt was lonely.

  ‘You are quiet, Thornton?’ Catherine’s voice was husky, one of the things he had liked about her right from the start.

  ‘Tired, I think.’ He tried to rally and asked her to dance even though it was the last thing that he wished to do. Once on the floor she gazed at him directly and his heart sank when he knew it was a waltz.

  ‘I am sorry about my father’s unexpected visit a few weeks ago. He took it on himself to organise my life and come to see you. Marriage is such an enormous step, do you not think?’

  She said this in a way that made it sound completely the opposite and all of Lytton’s defences were instantly raised.

  ‘We know each other too well,’ he countered, recognising that this was exactly the wrong thing to have said as soon as he had uttered it.

  ‘And you think that a negative?’ She watched him so closely that he changed tack.

  ‘The Thornton estate is consuming my time, Catherine, and I cannot see it changing much for at least a year.’ He saw her shaking her head and knew what she might say next, how she might try to cajole him into another option or of how she would be happy to wait. ‘I will be in the Americas on business for a few months as well. Edward Tully is going over as my representative and will need a hand. I have promised him one.’

  ‘I have heard differently. It is whispered by solid sources that you are after a bride.’

  He swore under his breath as he almost lost his step. Who the hell had told her that? He’d made it very clear to her father that he was not interested in marriage and he knew instinctively that Edward, Aurelian or Shay would not have said anything of his ridiculous outburst about marrying the first girl he saw. Had someone else overheard it?

  ‘Right now business keeps me frantic and so does the family.’

  He was relieved when the music came to a stop and he was able to escort Catherine Dromorne back to her friends and make his own way to find a drink.

  Aurelian waylaid him as he went.

  ‘You look harried, Thorn. Is Catherine Dromorne still after your hand in Holy Matrimony?’ There was humour in his tone.

  ‘Her and half-a-dozen others. I shouldn’t have come tonight, for I am not in the mood for flirtation and innuendo and definitely not for marriage.’

  ‘Lady Thomasina Dutton was asking after you before. She has never seemed to me to be a girl who was vapid.’

  Lytton drew his hand through his hair and swiped it back from his face. He had been smitten by Thomasina Dutton some while ago, but tonight even her beautiful face and endearing personality were undesirable. None of the women here appealed to him, none made his heart beat faster or his mind imagine things that were far more intimate.

  He shut off the thoughts that lingered on a face with dimples and sapphire-blue eyes. Not for me. Not ever for me.

  If he did not marry, then his younger brother’s children could take over the title.

  For a moment he felt displaced and dizzy, the room swirling around him in colour and movement and himself in the middle of it all, still and foreign and lost.

  ‘Let’s have a drink.’ Lian’s words came crashing
into the silence and brought him back and he was grateful to be able to follow him to stand in the outside air on a balcony to one end of the room.

  ‘What the hell is wrong with you, Thorn? You looked like you might fall over back there. Is the sickness Lucy has been afflicted with contagious?’

  That question at least made him smile.

  ‘No, and she is recovering daily.’

  ‘The healer from Whitechapel did her job, then?’

  ‘Seems to have.’

  ‘Where is she now? Do you still see her?’

  ‘Why should I? She was Lucy’s physician, not mine.’

  ‘A sore point, then? A raw nerve? Shay said he was much taken with the woman though she had no stomach for the drink. He said you took her home to Whitechapel by way of Hyde Park and spent three hours getting her there?’

  ‘What are you saying, Lian?’

  ‘The things that you are not, Thorn. I saw her this morning, by the way, in Regent Street, carrying a hefty basket. Lord Huntington was walking past and he looked most taken by her appearance. You might have competition, though he is the last man Miss Annabelle Smith needs to know at all. Remember him from school? He was a bully and a cheat.’

  ‘He gave Edward a bloody nose the first time he met him and dragged all of us behind the sheds at one point or another. His uncle was some sort of boxing expert, if I remember rightly, and had taught him well.’

  ‘Thank God we are no longer schoolboys.’ Lian smiled and turned to look over the garden and the lights that had been placed on the small pathway.

  ‘You looked happy tonight on the dance floor, Lian. Being married suits you. It suits Shay as well.’

  ‘It does. It’s like finding a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Gold I was becoming less and less sure I’d find, I might add.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘I’d given up on thinking true love could ever be mine, but it can arrive on the single beat of the heart or an unexpected shaft of light and it can be unsettling.’

  ‘You speak as if you think I should know this?’

  ‘Catherine Dromorne looks like a rainbow tonight.’

  ‘But she is not mine.’

  ‘Then find your truth, Thorn, without compromise. Only you can know what is within here.’

  His hand touched his chest, a small gesture with a large honesty attached to it.

  Lytton finished his drink, refusing the next one from a passing footman.

  ‘My life at the moment is busy, Lian. I haven’t got time for further complications of the heart.

  His friend’s laughter was not comforting and he was about to say something when Edward Tully came out of the crowd, carrying a note.

  ‘It’s for you, Thorn. It’s just been delivered.’

  ‘Hell.’ He could only think of one reason why a message would come to him here in the middle of the night and in the middle of the ball. Lucy had returned from Balmain two days ago to stay in the city for a week and she had not been feeling well.

  Clutching the missive, he gave his leave to both Lian and Edward and made for the door.

  * * *

  Annabelle Smith had come in the carriage he had sent to Whitechapel arriving on the town-house doorstep after one in the morning, her hair bundled at her neck and her cheeks rosy from sleep. Her aunt accompanied her.

  She barely gave him notice as she asked after his sister.

  ‘How long has she been ill?’

  ‘Since this morning. She had stomach cramps and felt unwell.’

  ‘Why did you not call for me earlier?’

  ‘Lucy was sure it was only something she had eaten. She did not want a fuss.’

  ‘Well, she is about to get one now, your lordship.’ There was a sort of fear in her eyes, a worry that immediately transferred itself to him.

  ‘We will see her alone if you would like to wait. This is women’s business.’

  ‘Certainly.’ He was almost glad for it.

  Annabelle Smith tried to reassure him as he sat on the small sofa in the parlour attached to the bedchamber. ‘It will be as it will be. No amount of worry will make it different. The child is in God’s hands now.’

  ‘But your own competence must count for something, surely.’

  ‘It does, but it is early on in the pregnancy and sometimes a baby is simply not viable. I have seen this many times before.’

  He was unsure how much a statement like that helped, but attempted to dredge up the rudiments of belief. ‘Thank you.’

  She simply looked at him then, a stillness settling between them.

  ‘Should I call others as well, Miss Smith? The family physician?’

  ‘No. We are enough and also we are very...discreet.’

  He swallowed. He knew that was why he had called her, Miss Annabelle Smith with her healing skills and her independence. There would be no gossip after this, whatever happened. The chatter could be contained, isolated, and the reputation of his sister could be saved. Unless she died. That thought hit him hard and he stood even as Miss Smith and her aunt left him, the bag they carried between them large and full.

  Perhaps it was a punishment, this, a penalty against a family whose patriarch had simply shot himself after gambling away the Thornton country estate. A retribution that came at a price: the price of the life of a bastard child and his mother.

  He sat down again suddenly and weighed up the balance sheets. If he had been less honest, he might have kneeled to pray, but he was sure an omnipotent God would only see the falseness in such an action. It had been years since he’d truly believed in anything save the pursuit of money and to start beseeching a deity in a final hour of need seemed an empty hope and disingenuous to boot.

  But he did whisper something under his breath. ‘Please.’ Whether it was directed at Miss Belle Smith or to the celestial power above he could not quite at that point fathom.

  * * *

  The clock struck five and Belle looked around the library, surprised by the time and its passing. Her aunt had been taken home in the Thornton carriage and Lucy was sleeping, tucked upstairs gently in a bed that was warm and safe and hers.

  ‘There was no chance?’ The Earl asked this from the seat opposite in his downstairs library.

  ‘None. I tried.’

  ‘I know.’

  Silence resumed.

  ‘Will my sister recover?’

  ‘She will recover as well as any woman can after the loss of a child, no matter what its history.’

  ‘Of course.’

  He’d had lemonade brought up from the kitchens and slices of fruit bread. She was grateful for it.

  It was almost companionable here, in the very early morning before the house began to move, books all around them and a muted dawn on the grass outside. Time between time. She often felt like this after the death of a patient, only a thin line separating the quick from the dead.

  ‘No matter how much you think you know, it can never be enough to save them all.’ The words slipped out, unbidden.

  ‘But you tried and that is the difference.’

  ‘One day, years and years on, there will be ways found to save them, these very little ones.’

  She saw the leap of surprise in his eyes and she wondered why she might have told him this. Goodness, the Thorntons had thought her a witch when first she had come here and proclamations like this probably did her cause little good. But she needed to talk, too, needed to assuage the loss and find acceptance, the grief raw in her words.

  ‘It’s the young patients that stay with you, I think. The promise of what might have been and now will never be. The loss of all those years.’

  She tried to keep the utter desolation from her voice, but failed.

  ‘At least your work is honourable,’ he said finally. ‘At least you try to fashion a better w
orld, a happier one, and if you can’t then what is left is still enhanced because of your caring.’

  She liked his explanation and smiled. ‘I sometimes think that it takes pieces of me, little pieces that I can’t recover. Tante Alicia says she deliberately does not let this happen, but I... I do not seem to be able to help it.’

  Sipping on her lemonade, she looked at him directly. This morning she couldn’t be bothered hiding from him, she needed to say what she said and he was the person here to listen. An earl or not, he was still a brother. A brother who had lost something as well.

  He sat forward, his legs long and folded. His boots were of a shiny black leather and his buckles were silver, the metal embossed with a coat of arms. Small details that would for ever stick with her.

  ‘My job takes pieces from me, too, and it is nowhere near as honourable. To save a life, even to try to save one seems to me to be unparalleled.’

  The light had changed now, creeping in a more distinct form across the perimeter of the garden, changing shadows.

  ‘If you would like to stay here at the town house, a room can be readied?’

  ‘No. Thank you.’

  ‘Then I almost hesitate to mention payment for tonight’s services, for what price does one place upon a life?’

  ‘I did not save one.’

  ‘But Lucy is safe. You made sure of that.’

  The tears that she had held back all night suddenly began to fall and she swiped at them angrily, not wishing to give into the sorrow.

  He did not move forward and for that she was grateful. Right then she did not need the physical.

  ‘I cried for my father.’ His words. A shared confession. She was certain he had told nobody else in all the world such a thing.

  She looked up and into his soul, bared there before her.

  ‘I hated him for doing it, for killing himself in the bed of a mistress after gambling away the family estate. How could that be tempered? How could I fix it?’

  ‘The ruin of a family name? Like tonight? Again?’

 

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