Lord Hunter's Cinderella Heiress

by Lara Temple

  ‘I was merely going to thank you for allowing me to drive your beautiful horses, Lord Hunter.’

  ‘I should have known you would find a way to put me in the wrong again.’ He sighed and jumped down from the curricle.

  Nell scooted over to where he was waiting to help her descend, holding down firmly on a smile. She jumped lightly to the gravel drive, inspecting the bustling courtyard. It took her a moment to realise Lord Hunter was still holding her hand and a flush of warmth, like embarrassment, spread up her arm, tingling in her chest and cheeks. The urge to pull back to safety was so strong and so distinct from the heady feeling of freedom she had experienced during the drive that she forcibly resisted it and looked up to meet his eyes.

  It wasn’t just the impression that he was enjoying some private joke that struck her, but a considering look that found an immediate answering chord in her, a warmth that was deepening into heat as he assessed her. She wasn’t used to men looking at her like that and she had no idea what to do with the tingling that was spreading through her like a rash, making her very aware of her skin, of the tightness of her pelisse, even of the uneven cobblestones under her feet. Then he turned away and she was released.

  She had been right. He was not to be trusted.

  Once inside he led her into a private parlour at the back and through the mullioned windows Nell caught the view of a garden rich with flowering bushes and beyond it a glimpse of a stream lined with weeping willows.

  ‘What a lovely garden,’ she said and immediately regretted it. The look of slight surprise on Lord Hunter’s face indicated one did not normally gush about the ambience at posting houses.

  ‘Why, thank you, miss,’ said a deep voice behind them. ‘The garden’s my wife’s pride and she’s always pleased to have her labour appreciated. Good morning, Lord Hunter. Some of the house best for you and some lemonade for the lady.’

  The burly innkeeper placed a tray on the table and rubbed his hands on his apron.

  ‘That’s perfect. Thank you, Caffrey.’

  ‘Do you know him?’ Nell asked curiously once he left.

  ‘I know most innkeepers on the posting roads,’ Lord Hunter answered casually. ‘It’s useful.’

  ‘For what?’

  He pushed her glass of lemonade towards her.

  ‘Are you always this inquisitive?’ he asked and the sting of the implied criticism sent an inevitable flush of heat up her throat and cheeks.

  ‘For racing,’ he said and she looked up. He was regarding her thoughtfully. ‘In answer to your question, and at risk of providing more grist for your critical mill, during my profligate youth I accepted any and all wagers for curricle races and Caffrey here was well recompensed by us flighty youths to turn our teams around with all speed and efficiency. Not to mention that he won quite a bit on the back of my successes and he never begrudged me my losses. Gambling builds bonds between men...and women, for that matter.’

  Nell cradled her lemonade. She didn’t know whether to be grateful for his attempt to smooth over the uncomfortable moment or annoyed that he saw through her so easily.

  ‘Do women also gamble on curricle races, then?’

  ‘Not in public, or at least not respectable women.’

  ‘Sometimes I truly wish I wasn’t.’

  ‘That’s because you haven’t seen the other side of the equation. Believe me, not being respectable is no guarantee of a happy life.’

  He would know, too, she thought with sudden rancour.

  ‘Nothing is a guarantee of a happy life. I would settle for an interesting one.’

  ‘I seem to recall you said you enjoyed the school you attended. Weren’t you happy there?’

  Had she said anything about the school? Perhaps she had, but she was surprised he would remember any details of that meeting years ago. That was rather bad luck because it probably meant he remembered her horrific behaviour during that dinner. People tend to remember the bad more than the good.

  She sighed.

  ‘I am very, very happy there and truly I have nothing to complain about. I know how lucky I am. Which is precisely why I want to go back there once everything is arranged at Bascombe.’

  ‘You want to go back? To school? Aren’t you a little old for that?’

  ‘Not to study. Though I suppose one is never too old to study. It is like trying to empty an ocean with a teaspoon; there is always so much more to know. But, no, I teach.’

  ‘You teach. I understood you were just boarding with your schoolmistress and that she has been paid handsomely for keeping you. Do you mean to say she has made you work?’

  There was a sharp bite in his voice and it raised her own inner temperature. It felt very much like her father had been reporting on her to this man, as though she was an investment.

  ‘She did not make me work. What on earth would I do there year-round? Stare at the walls? Or course I worked. If you must know, I am not only a teacher, but I have invested my pay and part of my allowance in the school and I am now a partner...’

  The gold in his eyes darkened into amber.

  ‘I see. She took your fees, your allowance, your salary and your labour and gave you an alleged share in a girls’ school in the wilds of the Lake District. A very enterprising schoolmistress. There surely is a great deal to learn from her.’

  Nell stared at the transformation from the easy-going rake to this man who looked as though he was about to pounce across the table and rip someone’s head from their shoulders. As always, just watching anger gather was emptying her from the inside, draining her enjoyment of the ride, the horses, the freeing informality of his company. The only difference was that she was watching it happen, watching herself like a timid wren perched on the windowsill. She could almost see the colour fade from her face and lips; could see inside herself to the sand grating under her skin.

  He must have also marked the change and he reached towards her across the table.

  ‘Never mind. It’s none of my business, Nell.’

  But it was too late. The wren had breathed in, filled, and was fast transforming into whatever avian species strongly disliked having their nest threatened. It was one thing to poke fun at her, but the way he had spoken of Mrs Petheridge...as if he knew her, which he didn’t. He had no right! She could feel the heat in her cheeks; it still grated, but this grating felt good. It felt like talons ready to rip into something soft and yielding. It felt powerful.

  ‘You just know everything, don’t you!’ she interrupted, surging to her feet, bumping the table and sending lemonade sloshing onto the tablecloth. ‘Let’s just assume Nell is a naïve little girl who people can order about as they see fit. Well, I will not sit here while you make facile assumptions about me and the people I love. If this outrage is because you are worried I have frittered away what you very prematurely presume to be your property, let me tell you that I meant what I said—I have no intention of marrying you and I have, in fact, already made a substantial profit when we sold one of our properties to the Blaketon School for Boys. If you ever insult Mrs Petheridge again, who was the first person since my mother who actually loved me, I will...’

  She groped futilely for a retribution sufficient to the offence.

  ‘I’m going to see if the horses are rested. And I don’t want any more lemonade!’

  She stopped before she further ruined the grand effect of her tantrum. She wished he had yelled back because the way she felt now she just might have yelled some more herself, but he just sat there, looking at her with a strange look of concentration on his face, as if trying to understand a voluble foreigner. It wasn’t quite as rewarding as she had hoped a tantrum would be. She turned towards the door but he reached it before her and started opening it. He didn’t speak and his eyes were downcast, but in the firmly held line of his mouth she caught the faintest quiver and
a different kind of outrage slammed through her.

  ‘Are you laughing at me?’ she demanded, her voice rising further.

  He surprised her by closing the door again and leaning back against it. There was definitely laughter in his eyes and she began to flounder, desperately trying to cling to the firm boulder of her outrage as something stronger was doing its best to knock her off it and into a fast-moving current.

  ‘Only at myself. Just telling myself to remember this when I am next struck by one of my now-rare chivalric impulses. My only defence is that I did mean it for the best. Forgive me?’

  Her boulder turned out to be a soap bubble and it burst and she sank into the current. She tried not to, because although she wasn’t used to cajolery as a means of getting her to yield, she still knew it for what it was. This was what this man did. He could charm an innkeeper and a groom just as he had once charmed a frightened and lonely girl, and now an angry and nervous young woman. She took a step back, finding the safety of the shallows, but still very aware of the current tugging at her.

  ‘Of course. We should be on our way.’

  She shouldn’t have sounded so grudging because clearly he wanted more from her. He reached out and raised her chin, and she forced herself to meet his gaze, hoping she looked both forgiving and unaffected, whatever that looked like. There was a challenge in his eyes and even in the shift of his thumb on the slight cleft in her chin. Then it rose to briefly skim the scar below her lip and once again the rush of inner heat pulled at her, towards him, and she almost turned her head to catch the slide of his finger with her mouth when he dropped his hand and turned to open the door.

  * * *

  Hunter had had every intention of putting her in the carriage for the second part of the journey. But though the carriage had arrived he led her past it to the curricle where Hidgins waited, ignoring her surprised look and his own mixed feelings about subjecting himself voluntarily to another stretch of her less-than-complimentary comments and this increasingly uncomfortable physical urge to cross the line into her private domain. He was used to flirting, but only with women who knew the rules of the game where it was an equal exchange. Here he was crossing a strict line in the sand as if it was merely a polite suggestion. If he wasn’t careful the next thing he would be doing was giving in to this foolish urge to kiss her and he would likely end up with a boxed ear or, worse, more firmly engaged than ever.

  For the first few minutes of the drive the discussion was distinctly stilted until Hidgins broke the awkwardness by telling Lord Hunter he had met Lord Meecham’s groom in the stables and had a good chat about that time they raced to Brighton overnight.

  ‘Ah, those were the days.’ The groom sighed gustily.

  ‘You moaned the whole way,’ Hunter reminded him curtly. He wasn’t in the mood for Hidgins’s attack of nostalgia. He didn’t know what he was in the mood for at the moment. Or if he did, it wasn’t likely to be realised. It was his fault for trying to soothe the chit when she had turned into a spitting kitten and her fault for shifting from one mood to another with a mercurial agility that would have done the most temperamental of his mistresses proud. She had surprised him in there, flying to her schoolmistress’s defence as if he was bent on rape and pillage when all he had been thinking of was her own good. She clearly didn’t want or need his protection, which was fine with him.

  For once Hidgins didn’t take the hint.

  ‘It was December! It rained the whole way!’

  ‘Oh, the poor horses! They must have been quite frozen through!’ Nell said and Hunter tried to resist the way his muscles relaxed at this sign that she had obviously calmed down. It was one of his iron rules not to let women’s moods rule his, but he was letting this woman...this almost-schoolgirl, he corrected...do just that.

  ‘You needn’t worry. The punch thawed them out quite nicely once we made it to Brighton.’

  ‘You give your horses punch?’

  ‘Don’t you?’

  Her outrage transformed into a delighted smile in another shift that caught him off guard.

  ‘Oh, I actually believed you for a moment. Though I suppose if someone had placed a wager on it you might have done so.’

  ‘You wrong me. There are some things I don’t wager on, the welfare of my horses being one of them.’

  ‘And what else?’

  He glanced at her for a moment. All the haughty fury had flown and she now merely looked as curious as a schoolteacher’s dream pupil and he had no idea why that should be just as unsettling as her surprising show of temper and why he actually felt he should be careful what he told her. This was no schoolgirl, however inexperienced. She was actually trying to catalogue and analyse him and he was damned if he was going to be the object of whatever academic exercise she was engaged in.

  ‘What else what?’ he temporised.

  ‘What else won’t you wager on?’

  ‘What I consider to be certainties, like the probability that you will find some new and creative way of insulting me again before we reach Welbeck.’

  ‘But I have never insulted you.’

  ‘Quite right. It is just that I am sensitive—I forgot. Hidgins remarks on it all the time, don’t you, Hidgins?’

  ‘That I do, sir. It’s a fair shame the way I have to tippy-toe around him, miss.’

  Nell laughed.

  ‘I promise I shall do the same for the rest of the drive. Especially if you let me drive again,’ she added, her voice rising hopefully.

  ‘After the next toll you can take the ribbons. For a stretch.’

  As before she glanced quickly back at Hidgins with a complicit smile and Hunter didn’t have to see his groom’s face to know he was grinning. He relaxed, but kept his own smile at bay. She was actually right; he was being far too sensitive. There was no call for this instinctive need to repel her curiosity. Her inquisitiveness and over-sharp wit were just the signs of a young woman let out for the first time from a confining environment and eager to explore the world. There was no reason to let it unbalance him. He should remain focused on his objective of easing out of this engagement as smoothly and painlessly as possible, and for that he needed her co-operation and her trust.

  Chapter Six

  Welbeck Manor was a sprawling Tudor structure which each generation but the last two had added to with a great deal of vigour and very little architectural grace. It had been four years since Nell’s last trip to Wilton, but the tingle of happiness as they crested the rise was wonderfully familiar. She sighed as the curricle rolled up the wide drive and the view of the house disappeared behind a clump of old oak. Before the fiasco of the betrothal she had fantasised about meeting Charles dressed in her new finery and, if not dazzling him, at least showing him that she, too, had attractions worthy of being considered, even if they were primarily pecuniary. But now she was arriving at Welbeck an engaged woman in the eyes of the world. Engaged to a handsome, charming man who by all accounts made Charles’s mild flirtations look monklike by comparison.

  She glanced at the striking profile of the man beside her. She had no doubt if she were to tell him what was going through her head those brown-gold eyes would fill with contempt. He might be easy-going on the surface, but with every light-hearted comment she heard the echo of another thought, something firmly withheld. She didn’t know whether there was ruthlessness or pain there, but whatever the case, that side of him would probably have no sympathy for her childish dreams. He would certainly be contemptuous of her plan to pay for a bridegroom. If only Charles could come to see her as a woman. Maybe even as a desirable one...

  Impulsively she placed her hand on Hunter’s arm.

  ‘Could you stop, just for a moment? There is something I would like to ask you before we arrive.’

  Hunter checked his horses and with a quick nod Hidgins went to stand at the horses’ he
ads.

  ‘Well? Cold feet?’ Hunter asked with a quirk of his mouth, but his eyes held the same considering look she had seen before.

  ‘Not precisely. I have a favour to ask. I was wondering if you would... If when we arrive at Welbeck... Oh, this is difficult!’

  ‘Come, it can’t be that bad. Out with it. What would you like me to do?’

  ‘Flirt with me.’ As his brows drew together she hurried on. ‘Just a little. I mean I know we aren’t really engaged, but everyone will think we are and I don’t want them to think...’

  She rubbed her hand to her forehead, trying to chase away her discomfort.

  ‘Look at me.’

  His voice was calm, but there was an edge to it and there was no amusement in his eyes now.

  ‘I would have thought that such a request goes against your plan of calling a halt to the engagement. Unless you have another reason...’

  He trailed off as the blush that had started in her chest flowed upwards like lava escaping Vesuvius. Still, she tried to sustain his gaze. She had foreseen contempt and it came.

  ‘I see. The real reason why you wanted to come to Wilton,’ he drawled. ‘So, I am to earn my keep this week.’

  She looked down, feeling childish and strangely hollow.

  ‘You don’t have to. I just thought...’

  ‘It is quite clear what you thought, sweetheart. Very well. It’s no hardship on my part. As long as we keep to our agreement, never let it be said I don’t provide value for money. Now we should move on. Hidgins!’

  Hidgins hurried back to his perch and they drew forward. Nell felt her anticipation dim. She hadn’t meant to insult him and she wasn’t precisely certain how she had done so.

  They drew up in front of the house and she kept her eyes down as he dismounted and came to help her down. She started towards the steps, but he moved to block her path, raising her chin so that she was forced to look up. The contempt wasn’t there any more, just that serious look.