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‘Hell,’ Blake said, sitting down again, against all his instincts to go and try to comfort her. He was the last person she would want to see.
He was trying his hardest not to feel guilty about any of this—he was not a soothsayer, after all, and he could hardly have foreseen that bizarre accident and its consequences—but his actions had certainly been the catalyst.
‘Indeed,’ the older man re-joined, tapping his papers into order. ‘Life is not kind to impoverished gentlewomen, I fear. Especially those whose worth is more in their character than their looks, shall we say?’
‘Why does Miss Lytton limp?’ Blake asked.
‘A serious fall three years ago, I understand. There was a complex fracture and it seems that she did permanent damage to her leg. Her stepfather suffered a fatal seizure upon finding her. I imagine you will want to be on your way, my lord? I am grateful for your efforts to make these notes legible. I can see I have some work to do in order to present Miss Lytton with a full picture tomorrow.’
‘I will leave you to it, sir.’
Blake shook hands with the solicitor and went out, braced for another encounter with Miss Lytton. But the hallway held nothing more threatening than scurrying domestics, and he let himself out with a twinge of guilty relief.
* * *
‘That is the last of the paperwork concerning Francis Lytton’s death.’ Jonathan Wilton, Blake’s confidential secretary, placed a sheaf of documents in front of him.
Blake left the papers where they lay and pushed one hand through his hair. ‘Lord, that was a messy business. It is just a mercy that the Coroner managed the jury with a firm hand and they brought a verdict of accidental death. Imagine if we were having to cope with Crosse’s hanging. As it is, he’s skulking in Somerset—and good riddance.’
Jonathan gave a grunt of agreement. He was Blake’s illegitimate half-brother—an intelligent, hard-working man a few months younger than Blake, who might easily have passed for a full sibling.
Blake had acknowledged him, and would have done more, but Jon had insisted on keeping his mother’s name and earning his own way in the world. It had been all Blake could do to get him to accept a university education from him. He had gone to Cambridge, Blake to Oxford, and then Jon had allowed himself to be persuaded into helping Blake deal with the business of his earldom.
In public Jon was punctiliously formal. In private they behaved like brothers. ‘Lytton was a damn nuisance,’ he remarked now.
‘What I ever did to deserve being a role model for him, I have no idea.’ Blake made himself stop fidgeting with the Coroner’s report. ‘He irritated me. That was why I was so short with him that evening, if you want the truth. I didn’t want him hanging round me at the club.’
‘Not your fault,’ Jon observed with a shrug as he slid off the desk and picked up the paperwork.
‘I could have talked to him—made him see he was acting unwisely.’
He couldn’t shake an unreasonable feeling of guilt about the incident, and Miss Lytton’s courage in the face of bereavement and financial ruin had made him feel even worse. He did not like feeling guilty, always did his rather casual best not to do anything that might justify the sensation, and he managed, on the whole, to avoid thinking about the last time he had felt real guilt over a woman.
Felicity...
The woman he had driven to disaster. The woman he had not realised he loved until too late.
As usual he slammed a mental door on the memory, refused to let it make him feel...anything.
There was a knock on the study door. Blake jammed his quill back into the standish. ‘Come in!’
‘The morning post, my lord.’
The footman passed a loaded salver to Jon, who dumped the contents onto the desk, pulled up a chair and began to sort through it.
He broke the seal on one letter, then passed it across after a glance at the signature. ‘From Miss Lytton.’
Plain paper, black ink, a strong, straightforward hand. Blake read the single sheet. Then he read it again. No, he was not seeing things.
‘Hell’s teeth—the blasted woman wants me to take her to Lancashire!’
‘What?’ Jon caught the sheet as Blake sent it spinning across the blotter to him. ‘She holds you responsible for her present predicament...loan of a carriage...escort. Escort? Is she pretty?’
‘No, she is not pretty—not that it would make any difference.’
I hope.
‘Eleanor Lytton is a plain woman who dresses like a drab sparrow. Her hair appears never to have seen a hairdresser and she limps.’ He gave her a moment’s thought, then added for fairness, ‘However, she has guts and she appears to be intelligent—except for her insistence on blaming me for her stepbrother’s death. Her temper is uncertain, and she has no tact whatsoever. I am going to call on her and put a stop to this nonsense.’
Blake got to his feet and yanked at the bell-pull. ‘Lancashire! She must be even more eccentric than she looks. Why the devil would I want to go to Lancashire, of all places? Why should I?’
‘The sea bathing at Blackpool is reckoned quite good—if one overlooks the presence of half the manufacturers of Manchester at the resort,’ Jon said with a grin, ducking with the skill of long practice as Blake threw a piece of screwed-up paper at his head.
Chapter Three (#u805bc18e-a391-51fd-8faa-4fd5f9fff2a9)
‘Lord Hainford, Miss Lytton,’ Polly announced.
So he had come.
Ellie had known from the moment the idea had occurred to her that it was outrageous. In fact she had been certain he would simply throw her letter into the fire. But she had lain awake half the night worrying about getting herself and her few possessions to Lancashire, about how she could afford it, and how she would probably have to dismiss Polly in order to do so.
The loan of a carriage would save enough to keep her maid for two months—perhaps long enough for her to raise some more money and finish her book—and an escort would save them both untold trouble and aggravation on the road. She had written the letter and sent it to be delivered before she’d had time for second thoughts.
‘Good morning, my lord. Polly, I am sure his lordship will feel quite safe if you sit over there.’
‘Good morning. I feel perfectly safe, thank you, Miss Lytton. Confused, yes—unsafe, no.’ The Earl sat down when she did so, and regarded her with a distinct lack of amusement.
He looks like an elegant displeased raven, with his sharply tailored dark clothes, his black hair, his decided nose, she thought.
There had been no apparent soreness when he sat, so presumably the bullet wound was healing well.
‘Confused?’ Ellie pushed away the memory of the feel of his naked torso under her palm and folded her hands neatly in her lap.
‘I am confused by the reference to Lancashire in your letter, Miss Lytton.’
She had been right—he was not going to be reasonable about his obligations. Not that he would see it that way, of course. Probably he still did not recognise his responsibility in the way Francis had behaved. But why, then, had he called? A curt note of refusal or complete silence—that was what she had expected.
‘My lord—’
‘Call me Hainford, please, Miss Lytton. I feel as though I am at a meeting being addressed if you keep my-lording me.’
I will not blush. And if I do it will be from irritation, not embarrassment.
‘Hainford. My brother was your devoted disciple. He spent money he could ill afford copying your lifestyle and your clothing. He invested money he most definitely could not afford, and some he had no moral right to, in a scheme inspired by your dealings. And then, when he came to you for help and advice, you turned your back on him and neglected your friend for the sake of a card game.’
‘Francis was an adult. And an acquaintance, not a friend. I never advised him on his clothing, nor his horses or his clubs, and most certainly not on his investments.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘Are you implying an improper relationship, by any chance, Miss Lytton?’
‘Improper?’
It took her a heartbeat to realise what he was referring to, and another to be amazed that he would even hint at such a thing to a lady. Probably he did not regard her as a lady—which was dispiriting, if hardly unexpected.
‘Polly, kindly go and make tea.’ Ellie got up and closed the door firmly behind the maid. ‘No, I am not implying anything improper, and it is most improper of you to raise such a possibility to me.’
‘I am attempting to find a motive for your blatant hostility towards me, Miss Lytton, that is all.’
‘Motive? I have none. Nor am I hostile. I merely point out the facts that are at the root of my disapproval of your behaviour.’
Attack. Do not let him see how much you want him to help.
It had been dangerously addictive, the way he had stepped in after Francis’s death and arranged matters. She should have too much pride to want him to do so again. And, besides, the less she saw of him, the better. He was far too attractive for a plain woman’s peace of mind—unless one had a bizarre wish to be dismissed and ignored. There was this single thing that she asked of him and that would be all.
‘Why do you attempt to recruit me to escort you the length of the country if you disapprove of me so much?’
He sounded genuinely intrigued, as though she was an interesting puzzle to be solved. The dark brows drawn together, the firm, unsmiling mouth should not be reassuring, and yet somehow they were. He was listening to her.
‘I am impoverished thanks to my stepbrother’s foolishness and your failure to him as a...as an acquaintance and fellow club member. To reach Lancashire—where I must now be exiled—I face a long, expensive and wearisome journey by stage coach. The least you can do is to make some amends by lending me your carriage and your escort.’
‘Do you really expect me to say yes?’ Hainford demanded.
He was still on his feet from when she had got up to close the door and, tall, dark and frowning, he took up far too much space. Also, it seemed, most of the air in the room.
‘No, I do not,’ Ellie confessed. ‘I thought you would throw the letter on the fire. I am astonished to see you here this morning.’ She shrugged. ‘I had lain awake all night, worrying about getting to Carndale. The idea came to me at dawn and I felt better for writing the letter. I had nothing to lose by sending it, so I did.’
‘You really are the most extraordinary creature,’ Hainford said.
Ellie opened her mouth to deliver a stinging retort and then realised that his lips were actually curved in a faint smile. The frown had gone too, as though he had puzzled her out.
‘So, not only am I a creature, and an extraordinary one, but I am also a source of amusement to you? Are you this offensive to every lady you encounter, or only the plain and unimportant ones?’
‘I fear I am finding amusement in this,’ he confessed. ‘I feel like a hound being attacked by a fieldmouse.’
He scrubbed one hand down over his face as though to straighten his expression, but his mouth, when it was revealed again, was still twitching dangerously near a smile.
‘I had no intention of being offensive, merely of matching your frankness.’
He made no reference to the plain and unimportant remark. Wise of him.
‘You are unlike any lady I have ever come across, and yet you are connected—if distantly—to a number of highly respectable and titled families. Did you not have a come-out? Were you never presented? What have your family been doing that you appear to have no place in Society?’
‘Why, in other words, have I no good gowns, no Society manners and no inclination to flutter my eyelashes meekly and accept what gentlemen say?’
‘All of that.’
Lord Hainford sat down again, crossed one beautifully breeched leg over the other and leaned back. He was definitely smiling now. It seemed that provided she was not actually accusing him of anything he found her frankness refreshing.
You are entirely delicious to look at, my lord, and lethally dangerous when you smile.
‘If you want it in a nutshell: no parents, no money and no inclination to become either a victim of circumstances or a poor relation, hanging on the coat-tails of some distant and reluctant relative.’
‘A concise summary.’ He steepled his fingers and contemplated their tips. ‘My secretary will tell me I am insane even to contemplate what you ask of me...’
‘But?’ Ellie held her breath.
He was going to say yes.
Hainford looked up, the expression in his grey eyes either amused or resigned, or perhaps a little of both. ‘But I will do it. I will convey you to Lancashire.’ His gaze dropped to his fingertips again. ‘If, that is, we do not find ourselves compromised as a result.’
‘Polly will come with us.’
‘A maid? Not sufficient.’
‘Lord Hainford, do you think I am plotting to get a husband out of this?’
He looked at her sharply.
‘Because I am not looking for one—and even if I were I have more pride than to try and entrap a man this way. A maid is a perfectly adequate chaperon. No one knows me in Society. I could be observed in your carriage by half the Patronesses of Almack’s, a complete set of duchesses and most of the House of Lords and still be unrecognised. I can be your widowed distant cousin,’ she added, her imagination beginning to fill out the details of her scheme. ‘A poor relation you are escorting out of the goodness of your heart.’
His mouth twisted wryly.
Yes, she realised, he had been wary that she was out to entrap him. From what she had heard he was exceedingly popular with the ladies, and had managed to evade the ties of matrimony only with consummate skill.
‘I could wear my black veils and call you Cousin Blake,’ Ellie suggested helpfully.
A laugh escaped him—an unwilling snort of amusement that banished his suspicions—and something inside her caught for a moment.
‘You should write lurid novels for a living, Miss Lytton. You would be excellent at it.’
‘You think so?’ she asked eagerly. ‘Oh, I see. You are teasing me,’ she added, deflated, when he shook his head.
‘What? You would aspire to be one of those ink-spattered blue stockings, or an hysterical female author turning out Gothic melodramas?’
It seemed he had forgotten the quill in her hair and the ink spots on her pinafore when they had first met—clues that might well have given her away. But then, Lord Hainford had had other things on his mind on that occasion.
‘No, I have no desire to be an hysterical female author,’ she said tightly, biting back all the other things she itched to say.
Ranting about male prejudice was not going to help matters. Hainford’s reading matter was probably confined to Parliamentary reports, the sporting papers, his investments and Greek and Latin classics.
That little stab of awareness, or attraction, or whatever it was, vanished. ‘When do you wish to set out?’
‘How long do you need?’ he countered. ‘Would six days give you enough time?’
‘That would be perfect. Thank you... Cousin Blake.’
He stood. ‘I will be in touch about the details, Cousin Eleanor.’
‘Ellie,’ she corrected, rising also.
‘I think not. Ellie is not right for the character you will be playing in this little drama. Eleanor is serious, a little mournful. You will drift wistfully about under your floating black veils, the victim of nameless sadness...’
