Chapter Fifteen
‘Hell and damnation!’ Bake rolled out of range of the flailing hand and its lethal weapon. ‘Eleanor, you only had to say stop—’
And then he saw her wide, sightless eyes, felt the tremor running through her stiff limbs and heard the same whispered, frantic words he had heard when she’d been trapped under him when the carriage crashed.
‘Eleanor, it is me—Blake. You are all right. I’m here—no one else.’
He got off the bed and scooped up her velvet robe, swathed her nakedness in it and got back onto the bed, held her against his chest.
‘Eleanor, sweetheart, you are safe. I promise.’
The candlestick fell from her hand onto the rumpled covers and she curled into his body with a little sob. ‘Blake? I am so sorry. Did I hurt you?’
Her voice was muffled against his chest and he felt dampness on his skin. She was weeping. He had made this brave woman weep when every disaster he had seen her weather before had been met with dry-eyed determination.
‘No,’ he said, ignoring the pain in his left shoulder where the solid base of the stick had thudded into the muscle. ‘Tell me, Eleanor. And tell me the truth this time. Who was it?’
He thought she was not going to answer him, that she had fallen asleep huddled in his arms. Then she sniffed and pushed herself away until she could slide onto the bed beside him. She scrubbed at her eyes with the back of her hand. The very clumsiness of the gesture yanked at his heartstrings as she pulled the robe tight around her and straightened her spine. But she kept her gaze fixed on her clasped hands and did not look at him.
‘My stepfather. But he didn’t...didn’t manage to...’
He saw her swallow.
‘To do more than try. I hit him with a water carafe and screamed, and Jane—who was my maid then—came in. He dismissed her the next day, but I never let him be alone with me after that. I locked my door at night and put the dresser in front of it. I carried a knife.’
He stayed quiet, forced himself to stillness, knowing from her tension that there was more. He had not listened to Felicity—had blundered in, talked over her, convinced that he had the answers, that he knew best. He was not going to make that mistake again.
‘It is not that I am afraid of you, I swear,’ she said, her voice low and vehement. She looked up—just a fleeting glance—then looked back down at her hands again. ‘I want... I wanted you to make love to me. I enjoy it when you kiss me, when you hold me. I thought it would be all right...’ Her voice died away, then lifted again. ‘I am so sorry.’
‘You have nothing to be sorry for. Nothing. It is a pity he is dead,’ Blake said. ‘There are some people for whom you feel dying once just is not enough.’
She moved abruptly.
‘Eleanor—it wasn’t...? He didn’t try again and you...?’
‘No, thank goodness, it was not me. At least I have no blood on my hands.’
She sounded a little stronger now, but Blake did not risk pulling her back against his chest.
‘He cornered me in the drawing room one evening. I thought he had gone out, so I was careless. I ran from him and tripped—landed on the hearth and broke my leg...high up, near the joint. I was screaming with pain and the fear of him, and I was lying on my knife so I couldn’t get to it. Then the servants rushed in. I don’t know what it was that killed him—perhaps the thought that I was going to tell everyone, the thought that they would assume he had pushed me? But he had a stroke, there and then, and died two days later.’
The words were pouring out now, and he realised that she had never told anyone the truth about this before.
‘Everyone supposed that I had tripped and he had been rushing to help me. I didn’t tell them otherwise—there was no point. Then Francis found out that there wasn’t much money to inherit and had to sell the house we were living in—it was not entailed, fortunately. We ended up in a rented house, and once my leg had more or less healed it saved money for me to become the housekeeper. With the limp, what else was there for me to do?’
‘Did Francis ever—?’ He had to hear it all now—get the whole festering mess out into the open so she could start to heal again.
‘No. He never gave me the slightest cause to be uneasy. Although he did so all the time simply by looking like a younger version of his father,’ she admitted. ‘He liked pretty things—good clothes, beautiful women, handsome men.’
Blake felt as though she had hit him again. He had dismissed her with as much arrogance as had her stepbrother, simply because she was plain and drab. And he suspected that the handsome men she’d spoken of included him—that she had been forced to watch while Francis frittered away their money, aping what he had seen as the glamour of Blake’s life.
‘I should have told you.’
She had been watching him while he had been lost in those painful thoughts, wallowing in his own guilt, while she needed comfort and reassurance—not his confessions.
‘You would not have wanted to marry me, I know. But that wasn’t why—I honestly thought I would be able to...to overcome my apprehension or at least hide it.’
The idea that he might have taken her virginity while she struggled to hide her fear made him nauseous. And the realisation that he should have guessed—that her reaction after the carriage accident had been due to something far more serious, far deeper than simply a wariness about men—was no help either. Was he really the arrogant, selfish creature she had accused him of being all those weeks ago? Someone incapable of empathy and understanding other people while he strode through his privileged life, secure and superior?
* * *
Blake looked as he had done that morning he had arrived on her doorstep—bleeding, hiding pain and shock and what must have been churning emotions behind a façade of unsmiling control.
What was he thinking? Not that she had been asking for it, flaunting herself, teasing—all those ugly words her stepfather had thrown at her. His anger with the other man had been unfeigned, and he had been concerned about Francis and whether she had been forced to kill her stepfather in self-defence.
But he must be wondering whether he had married a woman crippled in mind as well as in body—one who would never be a proper wife to him, or a mother to his children. And he must have realised that she had kept this from him when she should have told him well before their wedding day.
What had Verity said about men when they were in a state of interrupted arousal? That it was actually painful for them? So he had to cope with that as well as whatever bruises she had inflicted with the candlestick—because she did not believe for a moment that she had not hurt him.
‘I am sorry,’ she said.
‘You are sorry? What for?’ Blake demanded. ‘You are not to blame.’
‘I should have told you.’
‘Not the easiest thing to talk about, is it? And you thought you could conceal how you felt. I understand.’
His smile, which was probably meant to be reassuring, was a trifle skewed, a bit quizzical.
‘And I hurt you. No!’ she said when he shook his head and rolled his shoulder to demonstrate that it was all right. ‘Verity said that when a man wants...um...and doesn’t...it hurts.’
She was probably crimson now, on top of tear-stained.
‘That is not a problem when one is distracted,’ Blake said. ‘And I think I can honestly say I was very thoroughly distracted by your story.’
This time his smile was unforced, intimate.
‘I...could we try again, Blake?’ He looked as though he might protest but Ellie hurried on. ‘If you want to, I mean. I know you probably don’t any more. But I think that now it will be all right.’
‘Are you just being brave about this, Eleanor?’
Blake sounded severe, but a rapid downward glance reassured her that his body was more than willing, even if he had doubts.
‘No. I think so long as I can move... It was when all your weight came down on me and I could not see your face that I panicked.’
‘You are calling me fat?’
It was all right. If he could tease her, then it was going to be all right. ‘Certainly not,’ Ellie said demurely and, heart thudding, slipped off the robe and held out her arms to him.
Blake was gentle, but not hesitant, and she found some corner of her distracted mind was thankful for his experience and his self-confidence. If he had been tentative, had acted as though she had something to fear, then she was sure the panic would have come flooding back. But when he did come down over her he kept the whole weight of his upper body off hers, left her arms free to do as she wanted. And she found that what she wanted was to hold him, tug him down so she could wrap her arms around his shoulders and bury her face in the angle of his neck as he began to ease into her.
Ellie began to rock with him, found she could open to him. It felt as though it ought to hurt, because there was a lot of him to fit, but somehow, although it felt strange, it didn’t. Blake surged, thrust, and there was a pinch, a yielding. He gasped out something she did not catch, and she was gasping too, holding his broad shoulders, lifting to meet his urgency.
She wanted something—something more, something just out of reach—and then she found it, and lost herself in the intensity of the sensation.
Blake went rigid, then thrust again.
‘Ellie...’
And then there were lights behind her eyelids, and fire in her veins, and magic—it had to be magic—because just for an endless second they were one person, and a moment ago they had been two.
* * *
Eleanor slept with the utter abandon of the very young or the totally exhausted. Blake sat up against the pillows and watched her as she lay curled against his side, one hand under her cheek, one arm flung across his stomach, her fingertips tantalisingly close to his very obvious arousal.
He found that much as he wanted her again he wanted her to rest more. He inched his hand down and lifted hers up to his chest, into a less provocative and provoking position.
Those curls nestling around her head sharpened her features a little—made her look almost elfin, like some faery overlooked and left sleeping after a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. She had washed off all that confounded rice powder and her freckles were once again on display for him to count—a labour as endless as counting the stars in the Milky Way. She had a few dusting across her breasts as well...
Yesterday had been shattering. First the wedding, then the reception, then Eleanor’s appalling story, and finally the unexpectedly good experience of making love to his new wife. His expectations had been low, his level of anxiety about hurting or frightening a virgin high. He should have guessed from what he had already known of her that she would be not so much apprehensive as terrified.
Last night had been a revelation as much of his own lack of perception as of Eleanor’s past. He suspected that married life was going to be one long series of revelations—not all of them enjoyable.
Against his side his wife stirred, wriggling closer, then stilled again, a slight smile on her lips.
‘Dreaming of me?’ he murmured, but she was sound asleep.
She had been so brave, and so responsive, and so passionate in the end. He’d had to go on instinct with her, desperate not to hurt her, and it seemed he had succeeded.
Lord, but he had been angry with her last night over those confounded shoes. And furious with himself for letting her think it mattered so much that she turned herself into a pattern-book countess. And under it all she had been steeling herself to endure what she had feared so much.
He had proposed to this woman on an impulse. She’d needed help, he’d been aware he really ought to marry, and Eleanor was intelligent and good company. He had thought they could have an amiably companionable marriage that would not involve deep feeling or the risk of hurt on either side.
Now he wondered if he had made a serious mistake. He had a wife now—one who expected more from him than a title and status. Eleanor had been in trouble, but she had been fiercely independent and her life had been her own. Now, as a married woman, a member of the ton, she had no independence, no free will.
It was in his power to make her very unhappy indeed if she became emotionally attached to him, because he had no emotional attachment to give her in return. So she must not be allowed to get attached—or to see the void, the lack in him which could only hurt her.
His stomach rumbled, which made her stir a little, jerking him out of his brooding. Blake grimaced, and glanced across at the clock. Seven—which went with the amount of light in the room. He hated having the curtains drawn right across, even in the depths of the winter. They’d had no supper last night, all thought of food having vanished in the heat of that row.
He would order a large breakfast and make certain she ate it all. Eggs and cream and hot chocolate—that was what she needed to build her up, he thought, looking at the way her ribs showed even with the weight she had put on recently.
A large breakfast and then the doctor to come and look at her—make certain she had done no damage to her hips and joints. She was his now, and he was going to look after her.
Eleanor stirred again, shifted, and climbed onto him as though he was a large bolster in the bed. Her head was on his stomach now. One hand was clenched and jammed against his armpit and the other draped across his ribs. Her breath tickled and he found himself smiling. Then he felt the flutter of eyelashes against the sensitive skin of his belly.
‘Your stomach is rumbling,’ she said, her voice muffled.
‘I am hungry. My wife was cross with me, and then seduced me so I missed my supper.’
She gave a little snort and then kissed him, shifted, found his navel and kissed that too, then opened her eyes properly. ‘Oh, my goodness. Is it always like that?’
Blake levered himself up on his elbows to look over her body. ‘No. It is all your fault, and now you will have to help me subdue it before we can have any breakfast.’
‘Are you sure?’
He nodded and reached down, pulled her up for a kiss, then tumbled her over. ‘Do you remember what to do?’
‘Of course—but I expect we will have to practice.’
She was laughing at him. He could see the gilt flecks in her eyes sparkling as they always seemed to when she was amused. He recalled one young lady confiding in him that it was fatal for anyone with pretension to beauty to laugh because it made lines, and lines led to wrinkles. She had lowered her voice on the word, as though it was an obscenity, or perhaps a contagious disease. He hadn’t thought anything of it, but now, looking down at Eleanor’s smile, he thought how sad it was...that girl denying herself the expression of happiness.
Surely sex was safe enough? Keep her happy in bed and perhaps she would not notice the things he could not give her?
‘Oh, yes. Practice is absolutely compulsory,’ Blake said, and proceeded to demonstrate.
* * *
‘Blake, you are making me feel like a Périgord goose being stuffed for foie gras,’ Ellie protested as he refilled her cup with chocolate.
He glanced around the room, saw it was temporarily empty of staff, and smiled. ‘I worry that you will blow away like thistledown at any moment.’
‘You will just have to keep me pinned down,’ she whispered, delighted when colour came up over his cheekbones. Making Blake blush was delicious. The fact that she could make a joke about being pinned down was almost as good.
‘I have sent for Dr Murray,’ he said as he handed her the strawberry conserve. ‘I want him to make certain no damage was done yesterday by that shoe.’
He could have said, make certain that you did no damage, Ellie thought, biting back her immediate response that she did not need to see a doctor. She had to admit he would have been perfectly justified. The thought made her keep silent.
‘He is very good,’ Blake assured her. ‘Young, trained in Edinburgh. A Scot. You will like him.’
Liking a doctor was a new concept. Her only encounter with the medical profession had been over her broken leg, when there had been numerous ham-fisted and agonising attempts to set it, and it had not left her feeling very kindly towards it.
‘Yes, Blake,’ she said obediently, and was rewarded by a very suspicious look.
Dr Murray turned up so soon after they had finished breakfast that Ellie suspected Blake had summoned him at some ungodly hour before she was dressed, and that even if it had been two in the morning, with the intelligence that the new countess had a mild head cold, the doctor would have hastened to Berkeley Square.
Her faint irritation with Blake vanished when she found Dr Murray was cheerful, sensitive and did not talk down to her—all novelties in her experience of the medical profession. He examined her dispassionately through her shift while chatting of the difference between London and Edinburgh, the weather, the latest ludicrous fashions—all interspersed with questions.
‘How does it feel if I press this joint? Could you lean as far to the right as possible? Had you ever tried a raised shoe before?’
While she was behind the screen, dressing again, he said, ‘There are two options. You can persist with the raised shoe and everything will gradually but painfully adjust, or you can go back to ordinary shoes and accept the limp. As it is, there will be soreness for some days, but you have done no damage.’
‘If I learn to walk with the raised shoe then whenever I do not wear it—?’
‘You will be worse off than you are now,’ he finished for her. ‘You will be reliant on the shoe.’
‘In that case there is no question. I will go back to how I was before,’ Ellie said as she came out from behind the screen. ‘I could always walk with very little discomfort, whether I was barefoot or wearing shoes. Now, there is something else I want to ask you.’
She smiled inwardly as she sat down and gestured for the doctor to take a chair. He was bracing himself for a new bride’s blushing enquiries about some intimate matter, she was certain.
‘Is there any reason why I cannot learn to ride?’
Dr Murray had an open, freckled countenance which, she suspected, he had had to school into the proper impassivity for a medical man. She let her smile show, finding she liked him for all kinds of reasons—not least because he was as liberally freckled as she was and just as plain.
‘No reason at all,’ he said. ‘But I would wait until the soreness from yesterday’s experiment has passed. Is there anything else you would like to...er...ask me?’
‘Nothing whatsoever,’ she said, and had to get her expression under control. Whatever questions she had about ‘...er...’ she was certain Blake would be able to answer them very satisfactorily. ‘I would be grateful if you could reassure my husband that no lasting damage has been done.’
Dr Murray bowed himself out—no doubt to be cornered and interrogated thoroughly by Blake.
Ellie sent Polly away and wandered around her new bedchamber—a room she had spent virtually no time in at all.
Tomorrow, Blake had announced, they would set out for Hampshire. A day late to ensure that she was rested.
She knew it would probably be a while before he would relax and stop treating her as though she was fragile, but he would come to see that she was not soon enough. Last night, and again that morning, he had lost that careful control eventually, and those moments had been as precious to her as the pleasure he had given her body. It was so intimate—experiencing the man stripped to his essential animal nature and yet retaining his tenderness, his instinctive care for her.
Blake did not love her, and she still could not fathom why he had married her, but he was making her very happy and she was determined to make him happy in turn. He was her dream come true—even though she had still to discover the depths and the intricacies of the man if he would only let her.
She shivered, thinking about her casual words to Verity about his inner darkness and her friend’s alarmed reaction.
She could grow to love him so very easily, she thought, meeting her own gaze in the mirror. Perhaps she was already falling—tumbling past the point where prudence and self-preservation might keep her safe. The realisation was sobering. Blake could break her heart without the slightest inkling that he was doing so.