The Cinderella Countess

by Sophia James

  I put pen to paper to ask you, Lord Thornton, if I could purchase back from you the horse you won on a game of dice at the Derwents’ ball.

  My grandson, Albert Tennant-Smythe, Earl of Huntington, held no true right to place this steed as surety on the gambling table for the animal was my own personal property and one bred from the line of horses my late husband brought from France.

  As you might have gathered this mount was a favourite of mine and I dearly wish for it to come home. I will pay well for that privilege if you would name a sum.

  I realise this request is unusual, but as the ageing chatelaine of a family who has had their share of battles and disappointments I pray for some resolution.

  Yours sincerely,

  Dowager Countess Annalena Tennant-Smythe

  The woman was rumoured to have a backbone of steel, but in these words all Lytton could see was a woman at the end of her tether because of the poor actions of her family. In that, he felt a strong and shared understanding.

  Taking a fresh sheet of paper, he quickly scribbled out a message.

  Returned with my compliments

  Thornton

  He called in his butler.

  ‘Could you see that that horse I won at the gambling tables from Lord Huntington is sent back to Highwick Manor in Essex, Larkin? It seems that the animal did not belong to him in the first place and his grandmother would like it back.’

  ‘I shall speak with the stable master and manage that today, my lord.’

  ‘Could you also find out from the housekeeper how the women from Whitechapel are faring this morning and report back to me?’

  ‘I can answer that right away, my lord. Apparently they both slept very well by the account of the maid who was stationed there overnight. However, Miss Smith had a sizeable gash on her leg and the older woman has awoken with a cough. This morning Miss Smith, accompanied by Mr McFaddyen, has returned to Whitechapel to see a friend and to look for a lost dog. A Mrs Rosemary Greene is the name of the friend by all accounts.’

  God, did Annabelle Smith ever stay just where she would be safe? Did she not think that one day of rest might not be enough after the fright they had had yesterday?

  ‘Could you call the carriage around, Larkin.’

  * * *

  Belle saw the carriage from a distance and knew it to be the Earl’s. The borrowed dress she had on was of a brighter shade than she usually wore and her hair had been placed up by one of the Thornton maids into a style emulating the wealthy. The differences had left her on edge, her life from before gone and this new one confusing.

  When the conveyance stopped the Earl strode towards her with pace and she excused herself from the company of Mrs Hammond, an older woman who lived three doors up.

  ‘I had not thought you would have been here so early, Miss Smith?’ His glance took in her clothes and hair and he frowned. The housekeeper had brought them from Portman Square for her and she wondered if perhaps the woman should not have.

  ‘I came to see if Stanley was about, your lordship. My aunt is fretting over his loss.’

  He ignored that and asked his own question. ‘How is your leg? The one hurt in the fire?’

  So he knew about that, too. The Earl did not miss much.

  ‘Much better.’

  ‘Yet you are limping?’

  He looked towards what was left of the house, the downstairs room fire blackened and smoke damaged. No one would live there for a long while and, apart from a few pewter bowls and some cutlery in the ashes, nothing else had survived.

  ‘You could salvage only this?’

  ‘We might find more. When we came from France we had almost as little.’

  ‘You told me you came to England because it was dangerous there?’

  ‘Moret-sur-Loing was close to Paris. Tante Alicia thought I should be safer away from it all and, at twelve I thought so, too. I am thirty-two now. Ancient.’ She smiled to soften the point.

  ‘Hardly that. You must know you are beautiful.’

  With her un-straight tooth and her wide eyes? But he was not joking, she also realised, the compliment given with meaning.

  He did not touch her, but something changed right then in the space of a second. An acknowledgment of regard. A proclamation of intent. His golden glance bored into her own without looking away, the force in them magnetic.

  ‘Why was the Bible you lost yesterday so important?’

  A different query from what she expected. ‘It was my mother’s and I don’t have much else to remember her by.’

  ‘Were her eyes the same colour as your own?’

  Suddenly Belle knew that they had been and it was like receiving an unexpected gift. ‘They were. I had forgotten that.’

  ‘Sapphire-blue with a hint of grey.’ His words were said softly, almost as a caress, out here in the open of White Street, out here under the regard of others about them.

  Her heart tripped fast, beating in her throat. ‘Thank you for all you have done for us, your lordship. I am trying to find other accommodation here, though, so you can have your rooms back.’

  ‘Thorn. My friends call me that. As I don’t use this place you can stay for as long as you wish.’

  She shook her head. ‘If you could put up with us for just a few days longer I am certain we will be able to find other lodgings, your lordship.’

  ‘Thorn,’ he said again and she smiled.

  Chapter Ten

  Even in hand-me-downs and with the bruising to one eye still apparent, Annabelle Smith was breathtaking. Her beauty was not just external either. It was also in her voice and in the way that, with the odds against her, she could still see the possibilities in life.

  He would never be bored in her company.

  He would never lack conversation.

  He would never be able to take her to his bed and make her his wife.

  The grief in that realisation nearly brought him to his knees and he imagined simply taking her by the hand and running away, from England, from the Earldom, from everyone who knew them.

  The sound of barking broke the spell as a small wiry terrier ran towards them, part of his back almost hairless and one ear singed.

  ‘Stanley?’ Annabelle’s voice was choked up as she knelt down to put her arms about the wildly excited dog. ‘Not all is lost, then.’ When she picked him up his squirming body made her borrowed gown dirty and his tongue ran across her face.

  If he forgot everything else in life, Lytton vowed he would never forget this one particular moment, out in the sun, after a fire, when life began to beat again in the face of tragedy. This was what he was missing, what he had always been missing: joy, honesty and laughter, wealth even in poverty.

  ‘Would you ride with me in my carriage, Miss Smith, and I will take you and the dog back to your aunt?’

  She looked at him for a few seconds as though deciding what to do.

  ‘First I need to get these things.’ Her hand gestured towards the meagre pile of reclaimed possessions.

  ‘Mr McFaddyen will watch over the house and try to find more. He will bring them to you later.’

  ‘Very well.’ She followed him over to his conveyance and placed Stanley on the seat before getting in. After speaking to his guard, the Earl got in, too and closed the door, this time taking the seat next to her.

  Silence shrieked around them, only the noise of the dog licking itself breaking the tension. He could feel the line of her thigh against his own and took in a breath. He was running out of time to be cautious and to be careful. Catherine Dromorne’s promised twelve weeks were being eaten up day by day and the amount of minutes he might have alone with Annabelle Smith was limited. He did not know whether he should be honest with a confession as to how he regarded her or to lead with actions.

  He chose the second and took her hand in his, a small ha
nd with two broken nails and the turquoise bracelet above it on her wrist.

  He did not speak. He merely looked at her and she looked back. It was not surprise on her face he saw, but something much more intense. An ordained purpose, perhaps, or simply acceptance. Her tongue licked the dryness of her lips and she tipped her head back against the cushioned leather of the seat.

  In invitation and in knowledge.

  Carefully he ran one finger across her cheekbone, high and delicate, before lowering it on to her lips, tracing the outline and knowing the shape. He needed to be careful, to slow down, to not frighten her.

  ‘Can I kiss you, Annabelle?’

  Question sat in her sapphire eyes.

  ‘I will not hurt you, I promise.’

  A foot became six inches and then there was nothing between them save warmth. She still had her eyes open, the blue in them threaded with caution.

  ‘This is just for us,’ he whispered, claiming her mouth under his own and as soft as he could make it.

  He had meant to barely kiss her, to see what she would allow, to settle nerves and find the boundaries. But he couldn’t. One touch had released a desperation for he wanted things he’d never had before, things like honesty and trust. Grace was there, too, and decency and charm, unfamiliar and strange.

  He adjusted his angle and came in deeper, the quiet kiss becoming more fierce. And then she kissed him back, leaning closer, volatile, mercurial and surprising.

  She was not the timid and restrained woman he might have expected. No, she was brave, her hand entwining around his arm and holding him there. The breath she took was shaky, but her eyes were bold, slashed in blue directness. The slam of connection intensified, his body hardening under promise.

  God, he was in a carriage careening through the busy streets of London and none of the curtains were drawn. He broke off the kiss and pulled back, panic building as he realised how close he had come to losing control.

  Miss Annabelle Smith was a witch after all and, closing his eyes for a moment, he tried to regain composure. When he opened them he saw she was watching him intently with a heavy frown on her brow. She gave the impression of being as astonished as he was by what had just happened.

  ‘I am sorry.’ Her words.

  Laughing out loud, he laid his head back against the seat and felt relief settle.

  * * *

  He saw humour in what had just occurred? How could he possibly think her wantonness and her lack of restraint was funny?

  ‘The very last thing you need to be, Annabelle, is sorry.’

  She could not understand what he meant by that, but the conveyance was slowing and the building she and her aunt were currently staying in was just around the corner. Her lips felt swollen and warm, the possibility of a world opening to her that she had never before glimpsed apart from in her illicit books.

  They were right, those authors, about the heat of blood and the rising of desire, each emotion tempered with a loss of self that was shocking. If the Earl had not pulled back and broken the kiss, where would it have led? Belle knew that she would have had no way of calling a halt. Even now she twisted her hands into each other to stop her reaching out, glad when Stanley crawled into her lap and caused a distraction.

  What would happen next?

  He had not sounded angry, but then again he could hardly be pleased, either? When the carriage stopped he reached out for the door to open it.

  ‘I hope your aunt is pleased to see the return of her dog,’ he said and picked up Stanley, waiting till she had alighted before handing the animal back to her.

  He would not come in? He would say goodbye here? Would she see him again tomorrow? She could not ask. With a forced smile she simply tilted her head.

  ‘Thank you for the ride home, your lordship.’

  His golden eyes darkened as she gave him her formal goodbye. ‘It was my pleasure, Miss Smith,’ he answered and watched her as she went through the golden doors of the Bishop Building.

  Once she was inside Tante Alicia was delighted to see Stanley.

  ‘I think it is a sign, Belle, a sign that from now on things will get markedly better.’

  Annabelle tried to enjoy her happy premonition, but then excused herself to wash up after the labour of sifting through the ashes of their former home. She needed time to try to understand the way her body had responded to the Earl’s, for a distance that hadn’t been there before was suddenly, a detachment and reserve that felt worrying.

  Would he say anything of her behaviour to his friends? Would they laugh together about the sheer absurdity of such an exchange, feeling sorry for a woman so patently unsuitable?

  Tante Alicia had seen Stanley’s return as a sign that things from here could only improve, but the Earl had hightailed away with an unseemly haste and she had no idea when or even if he would be back.

  * * *

  Edward Tully turned up at Portman Square about twenty minutes after Lytton had returned home.

  ‘I come bearing gifts.’ He handed over a parcel.

  ‘What is this?’

  ‘I have purchased a ticket to go to the Americas at the end of next week and, as I am going to be away for a while, I thought you might like to have this.’

  Opening the present, Lytton smiled. He had always admired a small statue that Edward had commissioned three years ago, a bronze of a horse on its hind legs whickering into the wind.

  ‘I thought it denoted freedom, Thorn, and was keen for you to have it. You seem shackled lately by your life and this is a reminder of what it could also be.’

  The muscles on the stallion were well defined and the mane of hair running down his back was magnificent.

  ‘I’d heard you sent your winnings at the gambling table from my brother’s ball back to the Huntingtons’. The gossip is that Albert Tennant-Smythe is more than furious at the gesture for it has painted him in a bad light. Be careful of him, Thorn, for he is a man of limitless anger as well as a spiteful temper. By the way, I was speaking with someone the other day and they said that Lucy had been seen in his company a few times. Did you know that?’

  This was the second time he had heard this and a sharp shock reverberated down his backbone. Why had he not followed this up before when Beatrice Mallory had informed him of it?

  He knew the answer.

  Annabelle Smith had taken up all his thoughts of late and was continuing to do so. He wondered if he should speak to Edward about his feelings, but decided not to. The kiss from today still burnt into his conscience and it had taken a will of steel not to follow her into her accommodation and try to discover if she felt the same.

  If she did, what could he truly do about it and, if she didn’t... God, it would break him. He gulped down more brandy and put one hand on the shiny surface of the bronze.

  ‘I will look after it until you get back, Ed. It’s too much of a gift to just give me.’

  Edward Tully laughed. ‘You have always been one of my best friends, Thorn, ever since those first early years when we were consigned off to school together. For me the statue has been a guide to a new and braver direction. I hope it might work the same for you. I also want you to take the keys of my house in case you have need of some...privacy.’

  ‘Privacy?’

  ‘Privacy to find out exactly what it is you do seek in a bride. A bolt hole, if you like, away from the strident gaze of society and family.’

  ‘Thank you.’ He took the set of keys and laid them down next to the statue of the stallion.

  After Edward had gone Lytton collected the bronze and placed it at the front of his desk in his library. He could look at it there. Everything was changing. Ed was off to America, Aurelian and Shay were married happily and he seemed stuck.

  He would visit Lady Catherine Dromorne tomorrow and talk to her. He couldn’t believe she’d still want to marry him if he
told her that he didn’t love her in the way she deserved. He would also agree to any condition of breaking their understanding as long as it left him free.

  Then he would go up to Balmain and try to find out exactly how well his sister had known the despicable Lord Huntington. If the answer was what he thought it might be, he would leave for Highwick and have it out with the bastard. Then he would return to London and offer Miss Annabelle Smith the best possibility he could. Not marriage, obviously, but a form of something semi-permanent that might do just as well. Not a mistress, for that was too uncertain, but a long-term consort with provisions for financial redress if anything at all went wrong. Provisions to look after her aunt. Provisions to fund a clinic. Provisions to allow her independence. Provisions for children if they were to have any.

  Calculated. Logical. Eminently generous.

  Lytton nodded. Perhaps the bronze of Edward’s was clarifying his thoughts after all and he was pleased for it. The offer of the use of his house might also come in handy.

  * * *

  When he went to see Annabelle Smith the next day he found her alone.

  ‘Your aunt is not here?’

  ‘She went with Rose and Stanley for an excursion to the park. For some sunshine, I gather.’

  My God, he could not believe his luck. He thought he might have had to ask her for another carriage ride in order to find some time alone and here they were, undisturbed.

  Shutting the door behind him, he leaned back against it, trying to think of just where to begin. Her eyes were of endless blue.

  ‘Annabelle.’ She frowned a little at his use of her Christian name. ‘I know yesterday you must have been surprised when I kissed you, frightened even, but—’

  She interrupted him. ‘I wanted to kiss you. I wanted to kiss you as much as you wanted to kiss me.’

  Such an open confession made him smile. Could it be this easy? He crossed the room to stand beside her, but didn’t touch.

  ‘Would there be any chance of me kissing you again? Today?’