Sophia James - The Cinderella Countess

No one in his entire family was coping. His father’s death the Christmas before last had seen to that and here he was, bogged down by the responsibility of a title he’d little reason to like and a mistress who had just tried to kill him.

Once he had been free and unburdened. Now every man and his dog wanted a piece of him. Once the most reading he had done was to glance at the IOUs from the gambling tables where his luck never seemed to run out. Now it was writing reports, filling out forms and doing all the myriad other things a large and complicated estate required.

He had barely come up for air in weeks save in the bed of Susan Castleton, but that was now also lost to him. He couldn’t regret this even a bit, he thought, as he finished dressing and made his leave.

He’d spend the evening at White’s and when the place closed he’d go to Edward Tully’s town house. At least Derwent would understand his fading interest in a woman whom he, too, had once been intimate with.

* * *

‘You need to go abroad, Thorn, and escape your family.’ Edward’s words were said with the edge of strong cognac upon them.

‘Easy for you to say with your father still hale and hearty and an older brother who will take on the heavy mantle of the title.’

Edward laughed as he upended yet another glass of cognac and gestured to a servant going by to bring another bottle. ‘How are the marriage plans going?’

Lytton swore.

He’d confided in Lian and Edward about his intention to marry as a result of Lucy’s ill health, his own mortality staring him in the face. He now wished he hadn’t.

‘Wide hips and a passable face wasn’t it?’ Edward plainly saw a humour that Lytton himself did not. ‘The first girl you saw with both qualifications?’

‘I was drunk.’

‘More drunk than you are tonight?’

At that Lytton laughed. ‘More drunk and also happier, possibly.’

‘Well, Lian is happy and so is Shay. Perhaps a wife is the answer. A woman of substance. No shallow-brained ingénue or experienced courtesan.’

‘And where are those women?’ Lytton asked. ‘Shay found Celeste in the underbelly of Napoleon’s Paris and Lian’s Violet was thrown up from the greed of treason and lost gold.’

‘Stuart Townsend said he saw you this morning in a carriage with a woman he did not recognise, Thorn. He said she looked interesting?’

Lytton shook his head. For some reason he did not want to talk of Annabelle Smith. His whole family must have disappointed her today and he did not wish to continue the trend. He stayed silent.

‘And the fact that you will not speak of her makes it even more interesting.’

He stood. ‘I think I need to go home, Edward, and sleep. For a hundred years, if I only could.’

‘There’s a masked ball at the Seymours’ tomorrow evening. Come with me to that and blow away a few cobwebs.’

‘Perhaps I might. I will send you word in the morning.’

Outside the sky was clearer and the stars were out. A vibrant endless heaven, Lytton thought, enjoying the fresh air. He had meant to stay at Edward’s, but suddenly wanted to be home.

Annabelle Smith was due tomorrow again at the ungodly hour of nine and he did not want to miss seeing her. That thought worried him more than any other.

This morning Belle did not take her basket. Instead she brought a book, tied in blue ribbon and inscribed. Rose stayed at home.

The Earl of Thornton was waiting for her in the entrance hall when she arrived at his town house. Today there was no other servant present and he took her coat and hat himself and hung them on the brass pegs to one side of the front door.

A gash across his temple was the first thing she noticed.

‘You have been hurt?’

‘Barely,’ he answered and swiped at his untidy fringe.

‘It looks like more than that to me, your lordship.’

‘Your patient is upstairs, Miss Smith.’

She smiled at the rebuke. ‘And your mother?’

‘Is behaving in her room.’

‘Did your sister eat anything yesterday?’

‘More than she has in weeks. She imagines you to be of the occult. A blooded witch, I think it was she called you.’

‘There is strength in such imagination.’

At that he laughed out loud and dipped into his pocket. A ten-pound note lay in his palm. ‘For you. You have done more in fifteen minutes for my sister than all the other physicians put together.’

‘Oh, I could hardly take that much, your lordship. Ten pounds is a fortune and more than many people in Whitechapel might make in a whole year.’

‘It is not for you, per se. I thought you told me yesterday you use your exorbitant fees for good in your parish.’

‘I would and I do, but...’

He simply leaned forward to extract the velvet purse from the pocket of her coat on the peg and slid it inside before returning it. She could do nothing but concur.

‘Thank you. I shall send you receipts for exactly what I have spent each penny upon. Your lordship.’ She added this after a few seconds.

They had reached his sister’s sitting room now, the place where Rose had waited yesterday, and he stopped.

‘I think you would do better to see my sister alone today.’

Taking a breath, Belle nodded and went in.

This morning Lady Lucy was not hiding from her, but sitting in her bed gazing out of the window. She looked small and thin and pale.

‘I hear you ate both lunch and dinner?’

The girl turned to her, anger in her eyes.

‘As I am not used to being threatened, I deduced it good sense to eat something, Miss Smith. Just in case.’

‘Then you would not mind if I read to you, either?’ Pulling the ribbons from the book, Belle sat unbidden on the seat at the side of the bed and opened the first page.

Mary, the heroine of this fiction, was the daughter of Edward, who married Eliza, a gentle fashionable girl, with a kind of indolence in her temper which might be termed negative good nature...

* * *

Half an hour later she stopped.

‘Who wrote this?’

Belle was heartened by the question. ‘Mary Wollstonecraft. The writer truly believed that feminine imagination could transport women from cruel circumstance.’

Silence abounded, the tick of a clock in the corner all that could be heard in the room.

‘I want to gift this book to you, Miss Staines. I hope we might discuss its possibilities next time I meet with you.’

‘When would that be?’

‘On Wednesday. That should allow you some time to come up with an opinion. An opinion I would value,’ she added, seeing the dark uncertainty in golden eyes.

‘I am not sure.’

‘Eat and read, that is all I ask of you. Food for the body and for the mind.’

‘How do you know my brother, the Earl of Thornton?’

‘I don’t, really.’

‘Where did you meet him?’

‘He came to my house in Whitechapel and asked me to visit you.’

‘He paid you?’

‘Very well. More than I am worth, probably.’

‘Are you always so honest?’

‘I find facing life head on is the best possible way of escaping difficulty.’

‘My mother would not think that way.’

‘Sometimes one needs to find confidence inside without being swayed by the influence of others.’

‘You talk like Thorn. Do you know that? He cajoles everyone to do his bidding and he is so clever he can always find the words. Mama says he is like our father, but I do not think this is true. He is a thousand times better.’

‘You love him?’

‘Everyone does. But he is as unhappy as I am.’

Lord, this conversation was going in ways she had no idea of and Annabelle hoped with all her heart that the Earl of Thornton was not outside listening.