Lord Hunter's Cinderella Heiress

Two days. Just today and tomorrow. Her right leg calmed and she pressed her palm to her still-shaking left leg. In two days she would see Anna and sit in Mrs Petheridge’s cosy study with the chipped tea set and ginger biscuits, helping the girls who cried for home or who threw things, because she was good with them. She breathed in, her lungs finally big enough to let the air in, and the clamminess was only down her spine now and between her breasts under the scratchy shawl.

‘Your father has agreed to sell me Pluck as well. Will you miss her?’

The sofa shifted and creaked as Lord Hunter sat and she looked at him in shock.

‘What?’ Her voice was gritty and cramped and his golden-brown eyes narrowed, but he just crossed his arms and leaned back comfortably.

‘I went to look at her as you suggested and I have to admit she is a beauty. By the length of those legs she might even turn out to be half a hand taller than her mother, but time will tell. I’m hoping she will win me points with Petra. What do you think?’

Think. What did she think? That any minute now her aunt would come and sink her fangs into her for daring to talk with someone. What was he talking about? Petra and Pluck. He was taking Pluck, too. It had been her idea. Yes, yes, she would miss her, but she would be gone by then, just two days. Oh, thank goodness, just two days. Just two. Say something...

‘I think...’ Nothing came and her legs were starting to shake again.

‘Do you know I live right next to Bascombe Hall? Were you ever there?’

Why was he insisting? She wished he would go away! Bascombe Hall...

‘No. Mama and Grandmama didn’t get along.’ There, a whole sentence.

‘No one got along with your grandmama. She was an ill-tempered shrew.’

She stared in surprise. How did he dare be so irreverent? If she had said something like that...

‘That’s better,’ he said with approval, surprising her further. ‘I understand you inherited the property from your grandfather, but that your father is trustee until you come of age. Since she never made any bones about telling everyone she had disapproved of her daughter’s marriage to Sir Henry, I’m surprised she didn’t find a way to keep you from inheriting.’

‘She did try, but the best she could do was enter a stipulation that if I died before my majority at twenty-one, my cousin inherits. Once I’m twenty-one there is nothing she can do.’

‘Well, with any luck she’ll kick the bucket before that and save you the trouble of booting her out of the Hall.’

She pressed her hand to her mouth, choking back a laugh. Surely he hadn’t said that! And she hadn’t laughed... She rubbed her palms together as the tingling turned ticklish. That was a good sign; it was going away. Had he done that on purpose? He couldn’t have known.

‘I keep hoping she might actually want to meet me. Is she really so bad?’

His mouth quirked on one side.

‘Worse. I know the term curmudgeon is most commonly applied to men, but your grandmama is just that. You’re better off being ignored.’

Oh, she knew that.

‘Had you ever met my grandfather?’

He nodded.

‘He was a good man, very proper, but he was the second son and he only inherited it when your great-uncle died childless. Those were good years for us.’

‘Why?’ she asked, curious at this glimpse of the relations she had never met.

‘Well, the Bascombes control the water rights in our area, which means all our crops are dependent on them for irrigation and canal transport, and for those few blissful years we had a very reasonable agreement. When he died your grandmother made everyone in the area suffer again. Thankfully your father is trustee now, which means he has the final say in any agreement.’

‘But if I’m the heir, I can decide now, can’t I?’

‘Not until you’re twenty-one and by then you will probably be married, so do try to choose someone reasonable, will you?’

A flush rose over her face and she clasped her hands again. Charles’s smile shimmered in front of her, warm and teasing.

‘I don’t think I shall be married.’

‘Well, you’re still young, but eventually—’

‘No,’ she interrupted and he remained silent for a moment. He shifted as if about to speak, but she made the mistake of looking up and met her aunt’s gaze. Pure poison, Sue had said. She pressed back against the sofa and drank in some air. The man next to her shifted again, half-rising, but then the door opened and the butler announced supper.

* * *

Hunter smiled at the pretty little brunette who was chirping something at him. She didn’t require any real answers and he could cope with her flirtatious nonsense to her utter satisfaction with less than a tenth of his attention.

Tomorrow he would have to return to Hunter Hall. It had been cowardly to escape the day after Tim’s funeral, but as he had watched his brother’s grave being filled with earth, the thought that it was over, all of it, pain and love, hopelessness and hope, had choked him as surely as if it was he being smothered under the fertile soil. He had needed some distance and the negotiations with Sir Henry over the fees for access to the waterways controlled by the Bascombe estate had provided an excuse to disappear. At least in this Sir Henry appeared to be reasonable, unlike his dealings with his daughter, and it appeared they would not be required to pay exorbitant waterway fees to the Bascombe estate, at least until the girl inherited.

No wonder Sir Henry had let drop that he was concerned his daughter, who would come into the immense Bascombe estate in four years, would be easy prey for fortune hunters. After her performance that afternoon Hunter had assumed that was because Sir Henry wasn’t confident he could keep such a mature little firebrand under control. But it was clear this girl would probably throw herself into the arms of the first plausible fortune-hunting scoundrel simply to escape this poisonous household.

He glanced down the table to Sir Henry’s daughter. She was barely eating, which was a pity because she was as thin as a sapling. She definitely didn’t look strong enough to have ridden Petra so magnificently that afternoon. In fact, if it hadn’t been for the fact that he knew she was an only child, he could easily believe this girl was a pale twin. No wonder she had recoiled at being called plucky. When she had entered the dining hall that evening he had stared with disorientation at a completely different person from the pert and intrepid horsewoman. A prisoner on the way to the guillotine had more jump in their step than the pale effigy that had somehow made her way to the sofa in the corner. Her skin had been ashen under its sun-kissed warmth, almost green, and he wondered if she was going to be ill. Perhaps someone petite might have looked fragile, but she just looked awkward.

He had almost started moving towards her when her aunt had reached her, and though he had only been able to make out part of her words, the vitriolic viciousness had been distressingly apparent and the coy comments to the Poundridges had almost been worse. She had humiliated the girl in public without compunction and Sir Henry had stood unmoved as a post.

It wasn’t until he sat down by her that he had noticed she was shaking and immediately he was back with his brother. Tim’s legs would leap like that at the onset of the attacks of terror; that was how he could tell it was starting. He hadn’t even been able to hold his one remaining hand or touch him because of the constant pain. All he could do was sit there with him until it stopped. Not that it had helped in the end. To see that stare in the girl’s face and the telltale quiver of her legs had been shocking. She had finally calmed, but he hadn’t. He was still tight with the need to do damage to that vindictive witch. That poor girl needed to get away from this poisonous house.

He glanced at the girl again. She still wasn’t eating, just sitting ramrod straight, staring down at her plate. But there was a stain of colour on her cheeks as the aunt leaned towards her. She was at her again, the hag, he thought angrily. Why doesn’t her father do anything about this? If she had been his daughter he would have ripped this woman’s head from her shoulders long ago.

Something the pink-festooned brunette said to him required his attention and he turned to her resolutely. This wasn’t his affair and it wasn’t as if he had been so successful helping the people who mattered to him. It had been his father’s death that had partially released his mother from her humiliation, not any of his puny efforts to protect her. And Tim... He might have saved his brother’s broken body from a French prison, but he had failed on every other level. This girl was just another of a multitude of cowed women, just like his mother, beaten down until they could no longer imagine standing up for themselves. There was nothing he could do to change the trajectory of her fate.

* * *

‘Are you really fool enough to try and flirt with Lord Hunter? Do you really think someone like him will be interested in you?’ Aunt Hester hissed under cover of the conversation. Her witch’s smile was in full bloom, the one she used while spewing hate in company.

In a year this would be her life, Nell thought. She would be eighteen and for three long years until her majority she would have to suffer the whip of her aunt’s tongue and her father’s anger and indifference. No, she couldn’t do that. She wouldn’t.

‘He doesn’t need your money, so don’t think you can snare someone like him just because you’re an heiress. Like mother, like daughter. That’s how your slut of a mother caught Henry, you know...’

Nell stood before her mind registered the movement.

‘You will not speak about Mama. Not a word. Not ever.’

She hardly recognised her own voice. It was low, but the room fell into shocked silence. Her aunt’s face was turning the colour of fury, but Nell was far away. Soon the walls would collapse on her, but for a moment time had stopped and she could walk through this frozen little world out into the night and keep walking until she reached Keswick.

Then she saw Lord Hunter’s face. There was a smile in his honey-brown eyes and he raised his glass towards her and time moved again and she realised what she had done. Her aunt surged to her feet, which was a mistake, because she was much shorter than Nell.

‘If you cannot behave in a ladylike fashion, you will beg everyone’s pardon and retire, Helen.’ The words were temperate but the message in her aunt’s eyes wasn’t. I’ll deal with you later, they said.

Nell almost hung her head and complied, but looking down at the purply-red patches on her aunt’s cheeks, the thick lips tinted with the pink colour she favoured, she felt a wave of disgust, not fear. She took a step back and turned and curtsied to the others.

‘I apologise for not behaving in a ladylike fashion. I hope you enjoy the rest of your evening. Goodnight.’ She turned back to her aunt. ‘I will never listen to you again. Not ever. You have no voice.’

She heard her father bellow her name, but didn’t stop. She would leave for Keswick in the morning and she would never return.

Chapter One

London—1820

‘There’s no one there, miss,’ the driver of the post-chaise said impatiently as Nell stared at the empty house and the knocker-less door. How could this be? Her father’s last letter had been sent just two days ago and from London. As far back as she remembered he always spent the week before the Wilton horse-breeders’ fair in London, assessing the latest news and horses at Tattersall’s.

‘We can’t leave the horses standing in this rain, miss; they’ve come a long way.’

Nell turned back to the post-chaise. The driver was right. The poor horses had made excellent time over the last stage and they must be exhausted. But where could she go?

‘Do you happen to know where Lord Hunter resides?’

The words were out before she could consider and the driver cocked a knowing brow.

‘Lord Hunter, miss? Aye, I do. Curzon Street. You quite certain that’s where you’ll be wanting to go? Not quite the place for a respectable young lady.’

Nell breathed in, trying to calm her annoyance and fear. Nell knew memories were often deceptive, but she had found it hard to reconcile her memory of the troubled and irreverent young man with Mrs Sturges’s report of a noted Corinthian addicted to horse racing, pugilism and light women. Nevertheless, it was clear the driver shared Mrs Sturges’s opinion of her alleged fiancé’s reputation. Mrs Sturges might teach French and deportment, but she was also the school’s resident expert on London gossip, and when Nell had received the shocking newspaper clipping sent by her father, she had immediately sought her advice. Mrs Sturges had been delighted to be consulted on such a promisingly scandalous topic as Lord Hunter.

‘He is a relation of mine, so, yes, that is precisely where I’ll be wanting to go,’ Nell lied and leaned back into the chaise as it pulled forward. She, like the horses, was tired and hungry and just wanted to sleep for a week, but she was not going to back down now. She was twenty-one and financially and legally independent, and no one...no one!...was going to decide her fate any longer. She didn’t know whether it was her father or Lord Hunter who was responsible for the gossip in the Morning Post, but she wasn’t going to wait another moment to put a stop to it.

‘This here’s Hunter House, miss.’

Nell inspected the house as the postilion opened the chaise door. It looked like the other houses on the road—pale, patrician and dark except for faint lines of light sifting through the closed curtains in the room on the right. The hood of Nell’s cloak started sliding back and little needles of rain settled on her hair. She tugged her hood into place, wondering how on earth she was going to do this. She turned to the driver.

‘Will you wait a moment?’

The driver glanced at the sluggish drizzle and a little rivulet of water ran off the brim of his hat onto his caped greatcoat.

‘We’ll see if there’s someone in, but then we’ll have to get the horses to the Peacock Inn, miss. You can send for your trunk there.’

She almost told him to take her to the Peacock as well, but the thought of asking for a room in a London posting house without maid or companion was as daunting as bearding the lion in his den.

Not a lion, she mused, trying to recall what Lord Hunter had looked like. Too dark for a lion. Too tall and lean for one, too.

Whatever the case, he was unlikely to be happy about her appearing on his doorstep at nine in the evening. However, if he had a hand in this outrageous stratagem, he didn’t deserve to be happy. She still found it hard to believe the handsome and wealthy rake described by Mrs Sturges really wanted to wed her at all, especially after her shocking behaviour four years ago, but it was equally hard to believe a columnist would dare fabricate such a libellous faradiddle.

She climbed the last step, gathering her resolution, when the door opened and golden light spilled out and was immediately obstructed by a large shadow. She stepped back involuntarily and her shoe slipped on the damp steps. She grabbed at the railing, missed and with a sense of fatality felt herself fall backwards. She instinctively relaxed as she would for a fall from a horse, adjusting her stance, and she managed to land in a crouch on the bottom step. She pushed to her feet and brushed her gloved hands, glad the dark hid her flush of embarrassment. The figure at the top of the steps had hurried towards her, but stopped as she stood up.

‘That was impressive.’ His deep voice was languid and faintly amused and she glanced up abruptly. Apparently she did remember some things about her betrothed.

‘Lord Hunter...’

‘Impressive, but not compelling. Whatever is on offer, sweetheart, I’m not interested. Run along, now.’

Nell almost did precisely that as she realised the driver had been true to his word and was disappearing down the street at a fast clip. She drew herself up, clinging to her dignity, and turned back to the man who was thoroughly confirming Mrs Sturges’s indictment.

‘That’s precisely the issue, Lord Hunter. I am not interested either, and the fact that you don’t even recognise the woman that according to the Morning Post you are engaged to only confirms it. Now, may we continue this inside? It’s cold and I’m tired; it was a long drive from Keswick.’

At least that drew a response from him, if only to wipe the indolent amusement from his face. The light streaming past him from the house still cast him into a shadow, but she could make out some of the lines of his face. The dark uncompromising brows that drew together at her greeting, the deep-set eyes that she couldn’t remember if they were brown or black, and the mouth that had flattened into a hard line—he looked older and much harsher than she had remembered.

‘Miss Tilney,’ he said at last, drawing out her name. ‘This is a surprise, to say the least. Where is Sir Henry?’

‘I don’t know. May we talk inside? It is not quite...’ She paused, realising the irony of suggesting they enter his house to avoid being seen on his doorstep. His lips compressed further, but he stood back and she hurried into the hall, her heart thumping. Everything had been much clearer in her mind when she had been driven by frustration and anger and before she had made a fool of herself tumbling down the steps.

‘This way.’

He opened a door and she glanced at him as she entered. She went towards the still-glowing fireplace, extending her hands to its heat and trying hard not to let her surprise show. How had she managed to forget such a definite face? Had she remembered him more clearly, she might have reconsidered confronting him alone. She had vaguely remembered his height and the bruised weariness about his eyes; even his irreverence and his tolerance of her skittishness. But she hadn’t remembered that his brows were like sooty accusations above intense golden-brown eyes or the deep-cut lines that bracketed a tense mouth. If she had grown up he had grown hard. It was difficult to imagine this man being kind to a scared child.

‘Lord Hunter,’ she began. ‘I—’

‘How did you get here from Keswick?’

She blinked at the brusque interruption.

‘I came post. What I wanted to say was—’

‘In a post-chaise? With whom?’

‘With a maid from the school. Lord Hunter, I—’

‘Is she outside?’

‘No, I left her with her family in Ealing on the way. Lord Hunter, I—’

He raised a hand, cutting her off again.

‘Your father allowed you to travel from the Lake District to London and come to my house in the middle of the night, unattended?’

He spoke softly but the rising menace in his voice was unmistakable.

‘My father knows nothing about it. Would you please stop interrupting me?’

‘Not yet. What the...? What do you mean your father knows nothing about it?’

‘My father sent me a letter on my birthday informing me I have apparently been betrothed for four years. I wrote back and told him I most certainly wasn’t. His response was to send me this clipping from the Morning Post.’ She fumbled inside her reticule for the much-abused slip of paper and shoved it at Lord Hunter. He took it, but didn’t bother reading it.

‘And rather than communicating your...distaste in a more traditional manner, you chose a melodramatic gesture like appearing on my doorstep in the middle of the night?’

Although his flat, cold voice shared nothing with her aunt’s deceptively soft but vicious attacks, Nell felt the familiar stinging ache of dread and mortification rising like a wave of nausea. She gritted her teeth, repeating for the umpteenth time that Aunt Hester had no power over her and that she was no longer a child. She was twenty-one and very wealthy and she was done being treated like chattel.

‘Do you find it more melodramatic than concocting this engagement behind my back and keeping it from me for four years? You have no one to blame but yourself!’

That might have been going too far, Nell told herself as his stern face lost some of its coldness, but she couldn’t tell what the increasingly intent look on his face portended.

‘Clearly,’ he said, still maddeningly cool. ‘Where are you staying in town?’

Some of her bravado faded at the thought of the disappearing post-chaise.

‘Nowhere yet. I thought Father was in town, but the house is empty and the post-chaise is taking my trunk to the Peacock in Islington.’

The gloves jerked in his hands again.

‘I see. And now that you have delivered your message in person, what do you propose to do?’

Nell had no idea. She was miserable and confused and hungry and she wanted nothing more than to sit down and cry.

He moved away from her and for a moment she thought he might just leave her there and her shoulders sagged, almost relieved. But he merely strode over to the bell-pull and gave it a tug. At least in this her memory had been accurate—he walked lightly, unusually so for someone of his size, but it just added to that sense of danger she had not associated with him at all from their meeting all those years ago.

‘Sit down.’

He tossed his gloves on a table and took her arm, not quite forcing her, but it was hard not to step back and sink into the armchair. It was as comfortable as it looked and for a moment she contemplated unlacing her shoes and tucking her cold feet beneath her, leaning her head against the wings, closing her eyes... Perhaps this would all just go away.

He stood above her, even more imposing now that she was seated. Neither of them spoke until the door opened.

‘Biggs, bring some...tea and something to eat, please.’

‘Tea?’

Nell almost smiled at the shock in the butler’s voice. Lord Hunter glanced at him with a glint of rueful amusement just as the butler caught sight of Nell. All expression was wiped from the butler’s face, but something in his stoic expression reflected the brief flash of amusement in his master’s eyes and Nell didn’t know whether to be relieved by this first sign of some softer human emotion from the man she was engaged to.

‘Tea. Oh, and send Hidgins to the Peacock and ask him to retrieve—’ He broke off and turned to Nell. ‘Let me guess—you gave them your real name, didn’t you? I thought so. To retrieve Miss Tilney’s baggage. Discreetly, Biggs. But first have him drive by Miss Amelia to tell her to wait up for me; I will be by within an hour with a guest for the night.’

Nell started protesting, but the butler merely nodded and withdrew.

‘I can’t stay with you!’

‘Don’t worry; I never invite women here and certainly not my betrothed. I will take you somewhere a damn sight more respectable than the Peacock is for a country miss with no more sense than to try to stay at one of the busiest posting houses in London without a maid or chaperon. You may not want to marry me, but I’m damned if I am going to have the woman whose name has just been publicly linked with mine create a lurid scandal through sheer stupidity. I admit your father and I agreed on the engagement four years ago, but I understood he would discuss it with you and inform me if there was any impediment to proceeding and that in any case it wouldn’t be relevant until you came of age.’

‘Because I wouldn’t inherit Bascombe until then, correct?’ she asked, not concealing her contempt.

He breathed in, clearly clinging to his calm.

‘Correct. I don’t see anything outrageous in wanting to ally the Bascombe and Hunter estates. I admit I should have probably discussed the matter with you myself, but since you disappeared from Tilney and since I was in mourning at the time, it seemed sensible to let your father discuss the issue with you. I had no idea he hadn’t done so and I had nothing to do with that gossip in the Morning Post. Believe me, I am suffering as much as you from that nonsense.’

Nell shrugged, her anger dimming, but not her depression.