The Cinderella Countess

by Sophia James

  Coincidence was often not the quirk of fate it purported to be. He had learnt that fact over his life many a time. Summoning his valet, he asked him to find Harold Roberts, the kitchen hand serving at the Stephens’s residence, and bring him to the town house.

  Energy suddenly filled him and he felt a shift in his world as he walked back inside, the small thin missive in his hand with its red wax seal, monogrammed and beribboned. Taking a book from his library which depicted the seals and crests of all the great families of the ton, he finally found the Huntington seal.

  Apart from the colours there had been some talk at the scene of the shape of a ship on the top of the crest. This family crest contained all the elements spoken of. Fury began to fill him and this was followed by pure and utter worry. If Huntington was behind all this, Lytton knew he would not stop trying to hurt Annabelle.

  But why would he? Tennant-Smythe’s connections to his sister had thrown him off track, but he suddenly saw that the truth in the Earl’s attempts on Annabelle’s life lay in another direction entirely.

  She had told him she felt someone had been following her and Shay had once mentioned seeing Huntington watching her in Regent Street. The Dowager Countess’s visit and letter was another clue in the correlation of a link between Annabelle and the family as was her own admission of travelling in France and of her parents never returning home. They died there, she had told him, and he had known she was not telling him everything.

  Annalena Tennant-Smythe had said her daughter had been killed along with her family while journeying in Europe and there had been more than a shake in her voice, too, hidden things as apparent as what she admitted.

  A granddaughter. A blue-eyed dimpled granddaughter in much the same mould as she herself must once have been.

  Swearing he stood, helping himself to a brandy and downing the lot. Did Annabelle know any of this?

  Other clues began to fall through the air. The family name was Tennant-Smythe and hers was Smith.

  My God, if she was the lost heiress, then Huntington might have a great deal of motivation to see her gone, especially given his grandmother’s lack of knowledge of her being here in England. How had he found out? How could have he known?

  From seeing her at Portman Square probably while attempting to get in to see his sister, for Larkin had spoken of a gentleman who failed to leave a card but who had come calling twice.

  That particular realisation had him thumping his glass down hard on the table. It was his fault Annabelle had been recognised. If he had never asked her to call on his sister, she might have simply stayed hidden in the streets of Whitechapel, just one of the thousands of poor who plied the area with their trade.

  Yet she deserved a place, a family, an awareness of who she was and how she had disappeared. She needed to be given the choice as to where she would turn next, options in a life that was at present becoming more and more difficult.

  But first he needed to find her. Money brought opportunity and he had a lot of it. He also had a reason now to make her listen and to tell her the truth of her past. It was not just for his sake now, this need to see her again, but for her own. He would begin with Mrs Rosemary Greene and then work his way through all of Annabelle’s acquaintances that he knew of.

  He was glad when Larkin announced that Roberts was waiting outside. Here was another source of information, another way of swaying this matter in his favour.

  When the lad was shown in Lytton asked him to sit. He did so with a look of concern on his face.

  ‘Don’t be alarmed, Roberts. You are here because I need to find Annabelle Smith and quickly. She is in danger and she does not know of it.’

  ‘Like the carriage accident and the fire, my lord. I said to my mother it did not look like coincidence to be hit twice like that and so quickly.’

  ‘Precisely. I think I know the man who is behind these attacks and I need to keep her safe.’

  Harold Roberts nodded. ‘She has left London for Oxford, my lord, and is currently residing in the house of my mother’s sister with her aunt. I will write you out the address.’

  ‘I won’t forget this, Roberts, and I promise I shall do everything in my power to make sure that she is not harmed.’

  ‘I know you will, your lordship. She needs a friend.’

  * * *

  An hour later Lytton was in Hyde Park near the Serpentine. He knew Lady Catherine Dromorne would be walking here as she did each Tuesday at about three o’clock in the afternoon and he needed to see her before he departed for Oxford.

  Spotting her standing over by the lake, he was relieved when she asked her accompanying maid to drop back and allow them some sense of private conversation.

  ‘I have been thinking of what you said, Thorn, about us being friends. Perhaps on my side there has been the want for more, but on yours—’

  He butted in. He had neither the time nor the inclination to make this any other than it was. ‘For me you were always just a friend, Catherine. A woman whom I enjoyed talking with.’

  ‘The thing is that now I find myself thinking that perhaps I should want more than only friendship.’

  God, Lytton thought, was she saying what he hoped she might be? Was she realising the lack in their relationship would never sustain them over years of union?

  ‘So I wondered if perhaps we might meet quietly somewhere, perhaps at your house, and we could...do more than kiss.’

  The shock of her suggestion coming hard on the heels of an easy road to freedom hit him.

  ‘Perhaps if we took our relationship to the next level we might discover important things, things we would both be thrilled with. I do not wish to lose you, Thorn, but I have heard rumours...’

  She stopped, colouring a little and turning her gaze away.

  ‘Rumours?’

  ‘That the Whitechapel healer has taken your fancy and you have installed her as your new mistress in your apartments in Kensington.’

  ‘I haven’t. That is an untruth.’

  ‘She is apparently very beautiful and clever. You were seen fighting for her honour on the streets not long ago. It seems that Lord Huntington came off much the worse for your intervention?’

  He could say nothing of Lucy and her relationship with Tennant-Smythe and so he had to allow Catherine to believe that it was for Annabelle’s sake that he had gone into battle.

  ‘It got me thinking, you see. I would not wish for a milksop husband who could not protect me. I found your behaviour quite arousing, Thorn, arousing enough to want to have this conversation with you.’

  God. He did not quite know how to go on from here.

  Nothing was progressing as it should. His intentions. His future. His hope for a simple way out of a relationship that was becoming increasingly fraught.

  He wanted Annabelle. He wanted to sit and talk with her and take her in his arms and kiss her. He wanted her blue eyes and her dimples and her softness and the way she managed people, with care and with kindness.

  ‘I admire Miss Smith greatly.’

  ‘I imagine that most people do. She is, after all, skilled at the arts of healing and is a herbalist of some note.’ A coldness crept into her voice and Lytton brought the matter to hand.

  ‘Whatever it takes for you to release me from my promise of a marriage I will do it. I do not love you like that, Catherine, and I never will. One day you might be thankful for my honesty.’

  ‘But not this day, Thornton. I think you have played me as a fool.’

  ‘It was not my intention to do that and I am sorry.’

  ‘I am, too. Mama has advised me that I should hang on to you no matter what. She does not think I shall ever receive a better offer.’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I do not know any more. There is no handsome rich suitor waiting for me to turn you down and my options are dwindling.’ />
  My God, he suddenly thought. This is what I would be stuck with for ever were I to marry Catherine. Compromise and disappointment. And just like that he could no longer do it, no longer pretend anything.

  ‘I will not marry you, Catherine, on any grounds at all and we need to find a way forward that allows us both some dignity.’

  ‘My father will be furious.’

  ‘But it is not his life he is ruining. It is ours. What would you want to do most in the world if anything were possible?’

  ‘Travel. Get away from my parents. I would like to go to Europe like your sister, see the sights, learn about the world.’

  ‘I would pay for you to do that if you would break off the betrothal. I could make it possible for you to join Prudence and her husband in Italy.’

  ‘How much would you pay?’

  He should be frowning at her about-turn, but he wasn’t. Instead he understood just how narrow was his miss with disaster and how close he had come to allowing responsibilities to dictate his happiness.

  His mother and father had hated each other and so had his grandparents. Every single generation of Thorntons that he could remember were tarred with the same brush of disappointment and this was the tragedy in his blood, the true curse of the Earldom.

  ‘Send me a receipt, Catherine.’

  ‘My withdrawal from being linked to your name will be on the grounds that I no longer found you suitable. Perhaps you began to bore me and I felt a lifetime in your company would be unsustainable.’

  ‘I’d agree to anything.’

  ‘I will say you were simply not the man I hoped you to be and that I made a lucky escape.’

  ‘I should not refute it.’

  Lytton in truth did not care what she said as long as it allowed him his freedom.

  ‘Then this is goodbye.’ Tears were sliding down her cheeks.

  He nodded and left her in the park in the sunshine before sending messages to both Aurelian and Shay.

  * * *

  They came quickly and were both curious.

  ‘I am no longer promised in any way to Lady Catherine Dromorne and the relief is so great I have been walking on air. She will go travelling and no doubt slander my name across the ton, but I do not care. All I can see is freedom.’

  ‘We didn’t think you would go through with it, Thorn, for your heart was so plainly not in it.’ Shay’s words were quietly said.

  ‘And that is what brings me to the reason for this meeting. I think Huntington was the one who was trying to get rid of Miss Smith. His grandmother, the Dowager Countess, came to see me yesterday and there were things she said that got me thinking.’

  ‘And the point of all this?’ Shay looked puzzled.

  ‘I think he is dangerous to Annabelle. He has tried to kill her twice and something tells me he will try again.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Annabelle Smith is somehow entwined with the Tennant-Smythe family. After doing some research I discovered that the Dowager Countess’s daughter was lost with her husband in a carriage accident on the coast in the south of France. The thing is there was a young daughter travelling with them and she was never heard of again.’

  Aurelian helped himself to a drink. ‘But you think you may know what happened to her, Thorn?’

  ‘At a guess I would say it is Annabelle Smith, but she has gone to ground. Before she disappeared I intimated that I wanted to marry her, Shay, and she refused.’

  A whoop of delight was not what he expected.

  ‘Finally. Right from the first moment of seeing her Celeste and I knew she was the one for you. So where is she now?’

  ‘In Oxford. I got her address today and am leaving London in two hours.’

  ‘To bring her back here?’

  ‘No. To reunite her with her grandmother. I sent the Dowager Countess a message just before you came.’

  ‘And Huntington?’

  ‘Is in London with a broken nose and arm. For this moment he will be going nowhere.’

  ‘Giving you a clean slate to fashion a reunion?’

  ‘And to make sure that Annabelle has her rightful place again. The grandmother is a fierce woman. I doubt when Annalena Tennant-Smythe knows the whole story of his attempts on her granddaughter’s life that a broken nose and arm are all the Earl will be left with. I have sent her a letter telling her of my plans to see Annabelle and I hope she might join me on the journey north.’

  * * *

  Two hours later he drove north with all haste, the horses his finest and the promise of more on the road to Oxford. The Dowager Countess sat beside him and in his hand was the bracelet of turquoise that he had given to Annabelle a week before.

  * * *

  Belle sat down against the south side of the wall beyond the garden to find some shade and leaned against it.

  Here for a moment she was alone and unwatched. Here the sadness that had accompanied her since leaving London could be allowed some release as the thickness of sorrow choked away breath and pretence.

  He was lost to her now, the Earl of Thornton, gone perhaps to marry a woman he had been long promised to. The tears came quietly, rolling down her cheeks in a stream of bewilderment. One finger covered her lips and she felt him there, real and warm, his breath against hers and his golden eyes watching closely.

  It seemed as if the air she took no longer was enough and that she might die of the sadness and of her empty unending future. Her hand closed across her mouth to stop sound. This is what aloneness felt like. She huddled around its pain until there was no feeling left and the spent emotions had run their course.

  Then she stood and wiped her eyes and her face on the material of her skirt, replacing agony with a tight smile. The world would see only this. She had been abandoned once and she could weather it twice, she swore it under the grey summer skies.

  * * *

  She returned half an hour later to the house of Mrs Roberts’s sister where two rooms had been set aside for herself and her aunt. Mary Humphries was kind and hospitable, and although the dwelling was small it was scrupulously clean and very central to the town.

  They could stay here for a little while or at least until the cough her aunt had been afflicted with had lessened. Then they would travel further north. Away from London and from Lytton Staines, the Earl of Thornton. Away from the possibility of her ever seeing him again.

  The knock on the door came at around six o’clock just as they were sitting down for some soup and bread.

  ‘I am not expecting anyone at all,’ Mary said as she got up to answer it. ‘Though sometimes Mr Browne from up the street pops in for a quick conversation. He has been lonely since his wife died so perhaps I could ask him in to join us.’

  Annabelle smiled and thought again what a good person Mary Humphries was. Alicia simply frowned and resumed drinking her soup. Her aunt had closed in on herself after the fire in Whitechapel and had not welcomed human discourse of any sort ever since. Another worry. Her world was falling to pieces and she had no way of stopping it.

  Lytton’s voice at the doorway made Belle stand, shock running across her body in small tremors, her heart almost jumping from her chest. In a house this size he looked huge and important and vital. The travelling clothes he wore underlined his intent and when he removed his hat his hair fell in all the shades of gold and brown across the whiteness of his collar and an artfully arranged neckcloth.

  ‘Ladies.’ A lord of manners and charm. ‘I am very pleased to find you here.’ He looked directly at her.

  She could not speak, any reply frozen in her throat. The last time they had met he had discussed marriage. Today he was all business and formality. Her hand gripped the back of the chair so that she would not fall.

  ‘I wonder, Mrs Humphries, if you allow me a few minutes alone with Miss Smith and her aunt? My carriage is available outside
to take you to any eating establishment in Oxford that you might name and partake in a meal with the compliments of myself, the Earl of Thornton?’

  ‘Of c-course, your lordship.’ Mary Humphries was flustered, allowing the Thornton manservant to lead her out of her own dining room and closing the door snugly behind them.

  Then there was only silence and disbelief and that same longing that had been present in every single meeting between them so far.

  Swatting it away, she took a step towards him.

  ‘Why are you here, my lord? What could you possibly want with us here in Oxford?’

  Alicia stood beside her, jarred out of mental ennui. It was like those hour glasses with the sand sifting through time, one second empty and the next completely full, turned into the new position, brought back in to life.

  ‘She will not marry you, Lord Thornton. She cannot.’

  ‘Tante.’ God, this was going far worse than even she could have imagined it, Thornton’s glance hardening at her aunt’s words, the line of his mouth tighter.

  ‘I have brought a visitor with me, Annabelle. I think she is someone who you need to meet.’

  An old woman then came in to the room before she could say yes or no, helped in by one of Thornton’s servants.

  ‘This is the Dowager Countess of Huntington, Annalena Tennant-Smythe.’

  Annalena? The name in her mother’s Bible?

  The newcomer was beautiful, her eyes blue and clear. Her hair was silver white and tied beneath a small hat into a chignon, the strands catching the light so that they glinted.

  ‘Hello, my dear. You may not recognise me, but I think... I think I would always know you.’ Tears had pooled in her eyes and her voice shook. ‘When you were little you used to call me Nannalena.’

  Nannalena? The echoes of the name were there from long ago and Belle strained for more of the memory.

  Come back to me, little one, come back when you can.