Lara Temple - Lord Hunter's Cinderella Heiress

‘Your father has agreed to sell me Pluck as well. Will you miss her?’

The sofa shifted and creaked as Lord Hunter sat and she looked at him in shock.

‘What?’ Her voice was gritty and cramped and his golden-brown eyes narrowed, but he just crossed his arms and leaned back comfortably.

‘I went to look at her as you suggested and I have to admit she is a beauty. By the length of those legs she might even turn out to be half a hand taller than her mother, but time will tell. I’m hoping she will win me points with Petra. What do you think?’

Think. What did she think? That any minute now her aunt would come and sink her fangs into her for daring to talk with someone. What was he talking about? Petra and Pluck. He was taking Pluck, too. It had been her idea. Yes, yes, she would miss her, but she would be gone by then, just two days. Oh, thank goodness, just two days. Just two. Say something...

‘I think...’ Nothing came and her legs were starting to shake again.

‘Do you know I live right next to Bascombe Hall? Were you ever there?’

Why was he insisting? She wished he would go away! Bascombe Hall...

‘No. Mama and Grandmama didn’t get along.’ There, a whole sentence.

‘No one got along with your grandmama. She was an ill-tempered shrew.’

She stared in surprise. How did he dare be so irreverent? If she had said something like that...

‘That’s better,’ he said with approval, surprising her further. ‘I understand you inherited the property from your grandfather, but that your father is trustee until you come of age. Since she never made any bones about telling everyone she had disapproved of her daughter’s marriage to Sir Henry, I’m surprised she didn’t find a way to keep you from inheriting.’

‘She did try, but the best she could do was enter a stipulation that if I died before my majority at twenty-one, my cousin inherits. Once I’m twenty-one there is nothing she can do.’

‘Well, with any luck she’ll kick the bucket before that and save you the trouble of booting her out of the Hall.’

She pressed her hand to her mouth, choking back a laugh. Surely he hadn’t said that! And she hadn’t laughed... She rubbed her palms together as the tingling turned ticklish. That was a good sign; it was going away. Had he done that on purpose? He couldn’t have known.

‘I keep hoping she might actually want to meet me. Is she really so bad?’

His mouth quirked on one side.

‘Worse. I know the term curmudgeon is most commonly applied to men, but your grandmama is just that. You’re better off being ignored.’

Oh, she knew that.

‘Had you ever met my grandfather?’

He nodded.

‘He was a good man, very proper, but he was the second son and he only inherited it when your great-uncle died childless. Those were good years for us.’

‘Why?’ she asked, curious at this glimpse of the relations she had never met.

‘Well, the Bascombes control the water rights in our area, which means all our crops are dependent on them for irrigation and canal transport, and for those few blissful years we had a very reasonable agreement. When he died your grandmother made everyone in the area suffer again. Thankfully your father is trustee now, which means he has the final say in any agreement.’

‘But if I’m the heir, I can decide now, can’t I?’

‘Not until you’re twenty-one and by then you will probably be married, so do try to choose someone reasonable, will you?’

A flush rose over her face and she clasped her hands again. Charles’s smile shimmered in front of her, warm and teasing.

‘I don’t think I shall be married.’

‘Well, you’re still young, but eventually—’

‘No,’ she interrupted and he remained silent for a moment. He shifted as if about to speak, but she made the mistake of looking up and met her aunt’s gaze. Pure poison, Sue had said. She pressed back against the sofa and drank in some air. The man next to her shifted again, half-rising, but then the door opened and the butler announced supper.

* * *

Hunter smiled at the pretty little brunette who was chirping something at him. She didn’t require any real answers and he could cope with her flirtatious nonsense to her utter satisfaction with less than a tenth of his attention.

Tomorrow he would have to return to Hunter Hall. It had been cowardly to escape the day after Tim’s funeral, but as he had watched his brother’s grave being filled with earth, the thought that it was over, all of it, pain and love, hopelessness and hope, had choked him as surely as if it was he being smothered under the fertile soil. He had needed some distance and the negotiations with Sir Henry over the fees for access to the waterways controlled by the Bascombe estate had provided an excuse to disappear. At least in this Sir Henry appeared to be reasonable, unlike his dealings with his daughter, and it appeared they would not be required to pay exorbitant waterway fees to the Bascombe estate, at least until the girl inherited.

No wonder Sir Henry had let drop that he was concerned his daughter, who would come into the immense Bascombe estate in four years, would be easy prey for fortune hunters. After her performance that afternoon Hunter had assumed that was because Sir Henry wasn’t confident he could keep such a mature little firebrand under control. But it was clear this girl would probably throw herself into the arms of the first plausible fortune-hunting scoundrel simply to escape this poisonous household.

He glanced down the table to Sir Henry’s daughter. She was barely eating, which was a pity because she was as thin as a sapling. She definitely didn’t look strong enough to have ridden Petra so magnificently that afternoon. In fact, if it hadn’t been for the fact that he knew she was an only child, he could easily believe this girl was a pale twin. No wonder she had recoiled at being called plucky. When she had entered the dining hall that evening he had stared with disorientation at a completely different person from the pert and intrepid horsewoman. A prisoner on the way to the guillotine had more jump in their step than the pale effigy that had somehow made her way to the sofa in the corner. Her skin had been ashen under its sun-kissed warmth, almost green, and he wondered if she was going to be ill. Perhaps someone petite might have looked fragile, but she just looked awkward.

He had almost started moving towards her when her aunt had reached her, and though he had only been able to make out part of her words, the vitriolic viciousness had been distressingly apparent and the coy comments to the Poundridges had almost been worse. She had humiliated the girl in public without compunction and Sir Henry had stood unmoved as a post.

It wasn’t until he sat down by her that he had noticed she was shaking and immediately he was back with his brother. Tim’s legs would leap like that at the onset of the attacks of terror; that was how he could tell it was starting. He hadn’t even been able to hold his one remaining hand or touch him because of the constant pain. All he could do was sit there with him until it stopped. Not that it had helped in the end. To see that stare in the girl’s face and the telltale quiver of her legs had been shocking. She had finally calmed, but he hadn’t. He was still tight with the need to do damage to that vindictive witch. That poor girl needed to get away from this poisonous house.

He glanced at the girl again. She still wasn’t eating, just sitting ramrod straight, staring down at her plate. But there was a stain of colour on her cheeks as the aunt leaned towards her. She was at her again, the hag, he thought angrily. Why doesn’t her father do anything about this? If she had been his daughter he would have ripped this woman’s head from her shoulders long ago.