From rags to riches

By the earl’s side!

Abandoned as a small child, Annabelle Smith has only vague memories of her past. Now living as a healer in London’s poverty-stricken East End, she receives a life-changing visit from the rich and imposing Lytton Staines, Earl of Thornton. He needs a cure for his ailing sister and helping him thrusts Belle into his dazzling life of luxury. But it’s Lytton who makes her world come alive!

SOPHIA JAMES lives in Chelsea Bay, on Auckland, New Zealand’s North Shore, with her husband who is an artist. She has a degree in English and History from Auckland University and believes her love of writing was formed by reading Georgette Heyer in the holidays at her grandmother’s house. Sophia enjoys getting feedback at facebook.com/sophiajamesauthor.

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The Cinderella Countess

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk.

The Cinderella Countess

Sophia James

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-08877-0

THE CINDERELLA COUNTESS

© 2019 Sophia James

Published in Great Britain 2019

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

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Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Epilogue

Extract

About the Publisher

Chapter One
London—1815

‘There is a man here to see you, Belle, but I warn you he is unlike any man I have ever seen before.’

‘Is he disfigured?’ Annabelle Smith asked from above her burner where a tincture of peppermint and camphor was coming to a boil nicely, the steam of it rising into the air. ‘Or is he just very ill?’

Rosemary Greene laughed. ‘Here is his calling card. His waistcoat is of pink shiny satin and he has ornate rings on every one of his fingers. His hair is styled in a way I have never seen the likes of before and there is a carriage outside in the roadway that looks like it comes from a fairy tale. A good one, with a happy ending.’

Annabelle glanced at the card. Lytton Staines, the Earl of Thornton. What could a man like this possibly want with her and why would he come here to her humble abode on the fraying edges of Whitechapel?

‘Put him into the front room, Rose, and make certain the dog is not in there with him. I will be there in a moment.’

Rosemary hesitated. ‘Do you want me to accompany you?’

‘Why should I require that?’

‘Our visitor is a young man from society and you are a young woman. Is not a chaperon needed in such circumstances?’

Belle laughed at the worry on her friend’s face. ‘Undoubtedly if this was society it would be needed, but it is not and he has probably come to purchase medicines. Give me five minutes with this brew and in the meanwhile offer him a cup of tea. If he asks for anything stronger than that, however, do not allow it for we need all the alcohol we have left for the patients.’

Rose nodded. ‘He looks rather arrogant and very rich. Shall I get your aunt to sit with him? I don’t think I feel quite up to it myself.’

Belle smiled. ‘If we are lucky, the Earl of Thornton might have second thoughts about staying and will depart before I finish this.’

* * *

Lytton Staines looked around the room he had been asked to wait in, which was small but very tidy. There was a rug on the floor that appeared as though it had been plaited with old and colourful rags and on the wall before him were a number of badly executed paintings of flowers. He wondered why he had come here himself and not sent a servant in his stead. But even as he thought this he knew the answer. This was his sister’s last chance and he did not want another to mess up the possibility of Miss Smith’s offering her help.

The woman who had shown him into the front parlour had disappeared, leaving him with an ancient lady and a small hairy dog who had poked its head up from beneath his chair. A sort of mongrel terrier, he determined, his teeth yellowed and his top lip drawn back. Not in a smile, either. He tried to nudge the animal away with his boot in a fashion that wasn’t offensive and succeeded only in bringing the hound closer, its eyes fixed upon him.

In a room down a narrow passageway someone was singing. Lytton would have liked to have put his hands to his ears to cancel out the cacophony, but that did not seem quite polite either.

He should not have come. Nothing at all about this place was familiar to him and he felt suddenly out of his depth. A surprising admission, given that in the higher echelons of the ton he’d always felt more than adequate.

The cup of tea brought in by a servant a moment before sat on the table beside him, a plume of fragrant steam filling the air.

For a second a smile twitched as he imagined his friends Shay, Aurelian and Edward seeing him here like this. It was the first slight humour he had felt in weeks and he reached for the softness of the emotion with an ache.

Dying became no one, that was for certain, and sickness and all its accompanying messiness was not something he had ever had any dealings with before.

‘Thank God,’ he muttered under his breath and saw the old lady look up.

He tipped his head and she frowned at him, the glasses she wore falling to the very end of a decent-sized nose and allowing him to see her properly.

Once she must have been a beauty, he thought, before the touch of time had ruined everything. His own thirty-five years suddenly seemed numerous, the down slide to old age horribly close.

With care he reached for the teacup only because it gave him something to do and took a sip.

‘Tea was always my mother’s favourite drink.’ These words came unbidden as Lytton recognised the taste of the same black variety his mother favoured and the frown on the old woman opposite receded.

As he shifted a little to allow the material in his jacket some room, the dog before him suddenly leapt, its brown and white body hurtling through the air to connect with the cup first and his waistcoat second, the hot scald of liquid on his thighs shocking and the sound of thin bone china shattering loud upon the plain timber boards of the floor.

The dog’s teeth were fastened on the stranger’s clothing. Belle heard the tear of silk and breathed out hard, wondering why Tante Alicia had not reprimanded her pet for such poor behaviour.

‘Stanley. Stop that.’ She hurried into the front room with horror. ‘I am so sorry, sir, but he loves the colour pink and your waistcoat is of the shade he is most attracted to.’

Her hands tried to dislodge the canine’s teeth from their sharp hold, but she had no luck at all. If anything, the expensive silk ripped further and she was pulled over almost on top of the Earl of Thornton in the ensuing tangle, her hand coming across the warm wetness at his thighs before he snatched it away.

‘Cease.’ His voice cut through the chaos and for a moment Belle wondered momentarily if it was to her or to Stanley that he spoke.

Tante Alicia’s terrier did just as he was told, slinking to the door and out of the room with his tail firmly between bowed legs, Alicia herself following.

Annabelle was left in a more compromising position, her balance precarious because of her desperate hope of allowing no more damage to a garment of clothing that looked as if it might be worth more than cost of this entire house put together.

‘God, but he has torn it badly,’ she said beneath her breath, further words dissolving into French and directed at her departing aunt.

She broke off this tirade when she realised its absolute inappropriateness and regained her feet, crossing to the cabinet by the window and proceeding to extract a pound note from her velvet purse in the drawer.

‘I will certainly pay for any damage, sir. I’d hoped Stanley might have been outside in the garden, you see, but unfortunately, he was not.’

‘He has a penchant for the colour pink because of a fluffy toy he had as a puppy?’ the man asked.

‘You speak French?’

‘Fluently. I presume that you are Miss Annabelle Smith? The herbalist?’

When she nodded he carried on.

‘I am Lord Thornton and I wish to employ your services in regards to my sister. She has been struck down with a wasting sickness and no physician in England has been able to find a cure for her.’

‘But you are of the opinion that I might?’

‘People talk of you with great respect.’

‘People you know?’ She could not stop the disbelief betrayed in her words.

‘My valet, actually. You were instrumental in allowing his father a few more good years.’

‘Yet more often I do not foil the plans of God.’

‘You are a religious woman, then?’

‘More of a practical one. If you imagine me as the answer to all your...prayers, you may be disappointed.’ She faltered.

‘I am not a man who puts much stock in prayers, Miss Smith.’

‘What do you put stock in, then?’

For a second she thought she saw anger flint before he hid it.

‘Brandy. Gaming. Horseflesh. Women.’

There was a wicked glimmer of danger in his gold eyes and Belle stepped back.

* * *

Miss Annabelle Smith looked shocked but he was not here to pretend. She had the most astonishing blue eyes Lytton had ever seen and when her fingers had run over his private parts in her haste to remove the dog from the hem of his waistcoat he’d felt an instantaneous connection of red-hot lust.

Hell.

Did the tea have something in it, some herbal aphrodisiac that befuddled his brain and bypassed sense? Because already he wanted her fingers back where they had only briefly rested.

He pushed the money she offered away and stood, his boot crunching the remnants of the teacup into even smaller parts, the roses once etched into the china now disembodied.

He could not imagine what had made him answer her query as to what he put stock in so rudely, but, he suddenly felt just like the dog—Stanley, had she called him?—all his hackles raised and a sense of fate eroding free will.

There was protection in the depravities of his true self and suddenly even his sister’s need for Annabelle Smith’s magical concoctions was secondary to his own need for escape.

But she was not letting him go so easily, the towel she had in her hand now dabbing again at his thigh.

Was she deranged? What female would think this acceptable? With horror he felt a renewed rising in his cursed appendage and knew that she had seen the betrayal of his body in her instant and fumbling withdrawal. The white towel was stained brown in tea.

‘I thought...’ She stopped and dimples that he had not known she had suddenly surfaced. ‘I am sorry.’ With determination she stuck the cloth out for him to take and turned her back. ‘You may see to yourself, Lord Earl of Thornton. I should have understood that before.’

His title was wrong. She had no idea how to address a peer of the realm. He rubbed at his thighs with speed and was glad of the lessening hot wetness.

Taking in a breath, he realised how much he had needed air. She still had not turned around, her shapely bottom outlined beneath the thin day dress she wore. There were patches at a side pocket and the head of some straggly plant stuck out of the top.

She smelt of plants, too, the mist of them all around her. Not an unpleasant smell, but highly unusual. Most ladies of his acquaintance held scents of violets, or roses, or lavender.

‘I have finished with the towel, Miss Smith.’

He was amused by her allowance of so much privacy.

‘Thank you.’ She snatched it back from him and the awkward maiden became once again a direct and determined woman, no air of humour visible.

‘I would need to see your sister before I prescribed her anything. Proper medicine does not enjoy guesswork and a wasting sickness encompasses many maladies that are as different from each other as night is to day.’

‘Very well. She is here in London for the next week, seeing specialists, so if you would have some time...’

‘Pick me up here at nine tomorrow morning. I need to prepare some treatments but...’ She hesitated and then carried on. ‘I do not come cheap, my lord Earl. Each consultation would be in the vicinity of three pounds.’

Lytton thought she held her breath as she said this, but he could have been wrong. ‘Done. I will be here at nine.’

‘Good day, then.’

She put her hand out and shook his. He felt small hardened spots on her fingers and wondered what work might have brought those about.

Not the soft pliable hands of a lady. Not the grip of one either. The one ring she wore was small and gold. He felt the excess of his own jewellery with a rising distaste.

A moment later he was in his carriage, leaning his head back against fine brown leather. He needed a stiff drink and quickly.

‘White’s,’ he said to the footman who was closest, glad when the conveyance began to move away from the cloying poverty of Whitechapel and from the contrary, forceful and highly unusual Miss Annabelle Smith.

* * *

His club was busy when he arrived and he strode over to where Aurelian de la Tomber was sitting talking to Edward Tully.

‘I thought you were still in Sussex with your beautiful wife, Lian?’

‘I was until this morning. I am only up here for the day and will go home first thing tomorrow.’

‘Wedded life suits you, then. You were always far more nomadic.’

‘The philosophy of one woman and one home is addictive.’

‘Then you are a lucky man.’

Lytton saw Edward looking at him strangely and hoped he’d kept the sting out of his reply. It was getting more and more difficult to be kind, he thought, and swallowed the brandy delivered by a passing servant, ordering another in its wake.

He was unsettled and distinctly out of sorts, his visit to the East End of London searing into any contentment he’d had.

‘I’ve just had a meeting with a woman who concocts medicines in the dingy surroundings of Whitechapel. Someone needs to do something about the smell of the place, by the way, for it is more pungent than ever.’

‘Was the herbalist hopeful of finding some remedy for your sister?’

Edward looked at him directly, sincerity in his eyes.

‘She was.’ Lytton said this because to imagine anything else was unthinkable and because right now he needed hope more than honesty.

‘Who is she?’ Aurelian asked.

‘Miss Annabelle Smith. My valet recommended her services.’

‘She cured him? Of what?’

‘No. She prolonged the life of his father and the family were grateful. I can’t quite imagine how he paid the costs, though.’

‘The costs of her visits?’

‘Three pounds a time feels steep.’

‘Had you given her your card before she charged you?’

Lytton nodded. ‘And I would have been willing to pay more if she had asked.’

‘The mystery of supply and demand, then? How old is she?’

‘Not young. She spoke French, too, which was surprising.’

That interested Aurelian. ‘Smith is not a French name?’

‘Neither is Annabelle. There was an older woman there who did appear to be from France, though. An aunt I think she called her after their dog attacked me.’ He loosened the buttons of his jacket to show them the wreckage of his waistcoat.

‘A colour like that needs tearing apart.’ Edward’s voice held humour, but Aurelian’s was much more serious.

‘I have never heard of this woman or of her French aunt. Perhaps it bears looking into?’

‘No.’ Lytton said this in a tone that had the others observing him. ‘No investigations. She is meeting Lucy tomorrow.’

Edward was trying his hardest to look nonchalant, but he could tell his friend was curious.

‘What does she look like?’

‘Strong. Certain. Direct. She is nothing like the females of the ton. Her dress was at least ten years out of date and she favours scarves to tie her hair back. It is dark and curly and reaches to at least her waist. She was...uncommon.’

‘It seems she made quite an impression on you then, Thorn? I saw Susan Castleton a few hours back and she said you were supposed to be meeting her tonight?’

‘I am. We are going to the ballet.’

Susan had been his mistress for all of the last four months, but Lytton was becoming tired of her demands. She wanted a lot more than he could give her and despite her obvious beauty he was bored of the easy and constant sex. God, that admission had him sitting up straighter. It was Lucy, he supposed, and the ever-close presence of her sadness and ill health.

He wished life was as easy as it used to be, nothing in his way and everything to live for. One of his fingers threaded through the hole in his waistcoat and just for a second he questioned what ill-thought-out notion had ever convinced him to buy clothing in quite this colour.

It was Susan’s doing, he supposed, and her love of fashion. Easier to just give in to her choice of fabric than fight for the more sombre hues. He wondered when that had happened, this surrender of his opinion, and frowned, resolving to do away with both the excessive rings and the colour pink forthwith.

Miss Annabelle Smith was contrary and unusual and more than different. He could never imagine her allowing another to tell her what to wear or what to do. Even with the mantle of poverty curtailing choices she seemed to have found her exact path in life and was revelling in it.

Belle awoke in the dark of night, sweating and struggling for breath. The dreams were back. She swallowed away panic and sat up, flinting the candle at her bedside so that it chased away some of the shadows.

The same people shouting, the same fear, the same numbness that had her standing in the room of a mansion she had never recognised. She thought she hated them, these people, though she was not supposed to. She knew she wanted to run away as fast as her legs could carry her and although she could never quite see them she understood that they looked like her. How she would know this eluded sense, but that certainty had been there ever since she had first had the nightmares when she was very young. Sometimes she even heard them speak her name.

The sound of the night noise from the street calmed her as did the snoring of her aunt in the room next door. At times like this she was thankful for the thin walls of their dwelling, for they gave her a reason to not feel so alone.

The visage of Lytton Staines, the Earl of Thornton, floated into her memory as well, his smile so very different from the clothes he wore.

She remembered the hardness of male flesh beneath the thin beige superfine when her fingers had run along his thighs by mistake. Her face flamed. God, she had never been near a man in quite such a compromising way and she knew he had seen her embarrassed withdrawal.

The incident with the spilled tea this afternoon began to attain gigantic proportions, a mistake she might relive again each time she saw him which would be in only a matter of hours as he was due to collect her in the morning at nine. She needed to go back to sleep. She needed to be at her best in the company of Lord Thornton because otherwise there were things about him that were unsettling.

He was beautiful for a start and a man well used to the exalted title that sat on his shoulders. He was also watchful. She had seen how he’d glanced around her house, assessing her lack of fortune and understanding her more-than-dire straits.

She wondered what he might have thought of her paintings, the flowers she lovingly drew adorning most of one wall in the front room. Drawing was a way for her to relax and she enjoyed the art of constructing a picture.

In her early twenties she had drawn faces, eerie unfamiliar ones which she had thrown away, but now she stuck to plants, using bold thick lines. The memory of those early paintings summoned her dreams and she shook off the thought. She would be thirty-two next week and her small business of providing proper medicines for the sick around Whitechapel was growing. She grimaced at the charge per visit she had asked the Earl to pay, but, if a few consultations with the sister of a man who could patently afford any exorbitant fee allowed many others to collect their needs for nothing, then so be it. Not many could pay even a penny.

He’d looked just so absurdly rich. She wondered where he lived here in London. One of the beautiful squares in the centre of Mayfair, she supposed. Places into which she had seldom ventured.

Would it be to one of those town houses that he would take her in order to tend to his sister? Would his family be in attendance? Alicia had told her the Earl had mentioned a mother who enjoyed tea.

She had not addressed him properly. She had realised this soon after he had left because she had asked Milly, the kitchen maid, if she knew how one was supposed to speak to an earl. The girl had been a maid in the house of a highly born lord a few years before.

My lord Earl was definitely an error. According to Milly she could have used ‘my lord’ or ‘your lordship’, or ‘Lord Thornton’. Belle had decided when she saw him next she would use the second.

At least that was cleared up and sleep felt a little nearer. She had prepared all the tinctures, medicines and ointment she would take with her to see Lord Thornton’s sister so it was only a case of getting herself ready now.

What could she wear? The question both annoyed and worried her. She should not care about such shallow things, but she did. She wanted suddenly to look nice for the mother who enjoyed tea. That thought made her smile and she lay back down on her bed watching the moon through undrawn curtains.

It had rained yesterday, but tonight it was largely clear.

As she closed her eyes, the last image she saw before sleep was that of the Earl of Thornton observing her with angry shock as she had wiped away the hot tea from his skin-tight pantaloons.

Chapter Two

Miss Smith was sitting on the front doorstep of her Whitechapel house when his carriage pulled up to the corner on the dot of nine. She held a large wicker basket in front of her, covered almost entirely by a dark blue cloth.

The oddness of a woman waiting alone outside her home and completely on time had Lytton waving away the footman as he jumped down to the ground.

Miss Annabelle Smith appeared pleased to see him as she stood, her hand shading her face and the odd shape of her hat sending a shadow down one side of her cheek.

‘I thought perhaps you might have decided not to come,’ she said, her fingers keeping the cloth on her basket anchored in the growing breeze.

The heightened notice of her as a woman he’d felt yesterday returned this morning and Lytton shoved it away.

‘My chaperon will be here in just a moment as Aunt Alicia would not settle until I agreed to have her with me. I hope that is all right with you, your lordship?’

She knew, now, how to address him. He found himself missing the ‘my lord Earl’.

‘Of course.’ The words sounded more distant than he had meant them to be. She looked tired, dark circles under her eyes, and there was a cut on her thumb. He hoped the injury had not come about in the preparation of his sister’s medicines.

Pulling the three pounds he had ready from his pocket, he offered them to her.

‘If it is too much I quite understand,’ she said, but he shook his head.

‘I can afford it, Miss Smith, and I am grateful that you would consent to attending my sister at such short notice.’

The same velvet purse he had seen yesterday came out of her pocket, the notes carefully tucked within it.

‘It will be useful to buy more supplies for those who cannot pay. There are many such folk here.’

‘You have lived in this house for a while?’

‘We have, your lordship. It is rented, but it is home.’

‘Yet you do not speak with the accent of the East End?’

She looked away, distracted as the same woman he had seen yesterday joined them, busy fingers tying the ribbons on her bonnet.

‘This is my friend, Mrs Rosemary Greene.’

‘We met briefly yesterday. Ma’am.’ He tipped his head and the older woman blushed dark red, but was saved from answering as Annabelle Smith caught at her arm and shepherded her towards the conveyance. When the footman helped each of them up Miss Smith took a deep breath, giving Lytton the impression she did not much wish to get in. He took the seat opposite them as the door closed, listening to the horses being called on.

‘Did you ever read the fairy tale Cendrillon by Charles Perrault, your lordship?’ Her dimples were on display, picked out by the incoming sunshine.

‘I did, Miss Smith.’

‘Your carriage reminds me of that. Ornate and absurdly comfortable.’

‘You read it in French?’

‘When I was a child I lived in France for a time with my aunt.’

The traffic at this time of the morning was busy and they were travelling so slowly it seemed as if all of London was on the road.

The silence inside the carriage lengthened, their last exchange throwing up questions. She did not give the impression of one born abroad for her words held only the accent of English privilege and wealth. How could that be?

He hoped like hell that any of his extended family would not converge on his town house this morning, for he wanted to allow Miss Smith some time to talk with his sister by herself. His mother would be present, of course, but she was lost in her own sadness these days and appeared befuddled most of the time. Today such confusion would aid him.

It was as if Lucy’s sickness had ripped the heart out of the Thorntons and trampled any happiness underfoot. It was probably why he had taken up with Susan Castleton to be honest, Lytton thought, her sense of devil-may-care just the attitude he had needed to counter the constant surge of melancholy.

Miss Smith was watching the passing streets with interest, her fingers laced together and still. When they went around a sharp corner, though, as their speed increased he saw her grasp at the seat beneath her, each knuckle white.

‘It is perfectly safe. My driver is one of the most skilled in London.’

Blue eyes washed over him and then looked back to the outside vistas.

‘People more usually come to see me, your lordship.’

‘You don’t use hackneys, then?’

‘Never.’

This was stated in such a way that left little room for debate and Mrs Greene caught his eye as he frowned, an awkward worry across her face.

Portman Square was now coming into view, the façade of his town house standing on one corner. He hoped that Annabelle Smith would not be flustered by the wealth of it, for in comparison to her living quarters in Whitechapel it suddenly looked enormous.

As they alighted an expression unlike any he had ever seen briefly crossed her face. Shock, he thought, and pure horror, her pallor white and the pulse at her throat fast. His hand reached out to take her arm as he imagined she might simply faint.

‘Are you well, Miss Smith?’

He saw the comprehension of what she had shown him reach her eyes, her shoulders stiffening, but she did not let him go, her fingers grabbing at the material of his jacket.

Then the door opened and his mother stood there, black fury on her face.

‘You cannot bring your doxies into this house, Thornton. I shall simply not allow it. Your valet has told me you were in the company of one of your mistresses, Mrs Castleton, last night and now you dare to bring in these two this morning. Your father, bless his soul, would be rolling in his grave and as for your sister...’

She stopped and twisted a large kerchief, dabbing at her nose as she left them, a discomfited silence all around.

‘I am sorry. My mother is not herself.’

It was all he could think to say, the fury roiling inside him pressed down. He needed Annabelle Smith to see his sister, that was his overriding thought, and he would deal with his mother’s unexpected accusations when he could.

* * *

The Earl of Thornton kept mistresses and his mother thought she and Rosemary were fallen woman? The haze of seeing the Thornton town house dispersed under such a ludicrous assassination of her character and if there had not been a patient inside awaiting she would have simply insisted upon being taken home.

This behaviour was so common with the very wealthy, this complete and utter disregard for others, and if the Earl had somehow inveigled her into thinking differently then the more fool she.

It was why Belle had always made it a policy to never do business with the aristocracy, her few very early forays into providing remedies for the wealthy ending in disaster. They either did not pay or they looked down their noses at her. However, she’d had none of the overt hatred shown by the Earl’s mother.

Well, here at least she had already been paid, the three-pound fee tucked firmly into her purse.

The Earl looked furious, the muscles in his jaw working up and down and as they entered into the entrance proper he asked them if they might wait for just a moment.

‘Yes of course, your lordship.’ As Rosemary answered she drew Annabelle over to a set of comfortable-looking armchairs arranged around a table, a vase of pastel-shaded flowers upon it that were made of dyed silk.

Belle sat in a haze, the smell of polish and cleaning product in the air. Everything was as familiar as it was strange and she could not understand this at all. She had seen a house just like this one in her dreams: the winding staircase, the black and white tiles, the numerous doors that led off the entrance hall to elaborately dressed and furnished salons, portraits of the past arranged solemnly on the walls up and down the staircase.

‘What on earth is wrong with you, Belle? You look like you have seen a ghost.’

‘I think I have.’

‘I cannot believe the Earl’s mother would have thought we were doxies.’ Rose looked horrified as she rearranged the red and green scarf draped about her neck into a more concealing style.

‘She has probably never seen one before and I suppose we dress differently from the people who live around here.’

Belle hoped the woman would not return to find them again just as she prayed she could have asked for her coat and hat and left.

But she’d been paid well for a consultation and the carriage outside had rumbled on already down the street. Their only avenue of escape was the Earl. He suddenly came down the passageway to one side, another servant accompanying him.

‘My sister’s suite is this way. There is a sitting room just outside if Mrs Greene would feel comfortable waiting there.’

Rose nodded and so did Belle, this visit becoming more and more exhausting. She did not truly feel up to the task of reassuring a young, sick and aristocratic patient, but had no true way to relay that to the Earl of Thornton without appearing ridiculous. Still, if his awful mother was there with more of her accusations she would turn and go.

As they mounted the staircase the smell of camphor rose from her basket and Annabelle presumed the container in it had fallen over. Removing the fabric, she righted it and jammed it in more tightly against the wad of bandages at its side.

The light was dimmer now and the noises from the street and the house more distant. The scent of sickness was present, too, her nostrils flaring to pick up any undertones of disease. Surprisingly there were none, a fact that had her frowning.

‘If you could wait here, Mrs Greene, it would be appreciated. My sister in her present state is not good at receiving strangers and one new face is probably enough for now.’

Seeing Rose settled Belle followed the Earl through a further anteroom, which opened into a large and beautiful bedchamber, full of the accoutrements of ill health and all the shades half-drawn. There were medicine bottles as well as basins and cloths on a long table. Vases full of flowers decorated every other flat surface.

At the side of the bed a maid sat, but she instantly stood and went from the room, though there had been no gesture from the Earl to ask her to leave.

‘Lucy?’ The Earl’s voice was softer, a tenderness there that had been missing in every other conversation Belle had had with him. ‘Miss Smith is come to see you. The herbalist I told you of.’

‘I do not want another medical person here, Thorn. I’ve said that. I just want to be left alone.’

The tone of the voice was strong. A further oddness. If Lady Lucy had been in bed for this many weeks and deathly ill she would have sounded more fragile.

She had burrowed in under the blankets, only the top of her golden head seen. Her fingernails were bitten to the quick, every single one of them, but there was no discolouration of the nail beds.

‘Miss Smith is well thought of in her parish of Whitechapel. She seldom visits outside her home area, so in this we are more than fortunate.’

‘Where is Mother?’

‘I asked her to stay in her room.’

‘She is being impossible this morning. I wish she might return to Balmain and leave me here with you. How old is Miss Smith?’

‘See for yourself. She is right here.’

The blanket stilled and then a face popped out from the rumpled wool. A gaunt face of wrecked beauty, the hair cut into slivers of ill-fashioned spikes.

Belle hoped she did not look surprised, the first impressions between a patient and a healer important ones.

‘You are not too...old.’ This came from Lucy.

‘I am thirty-two next week. It seems inordinately old to me. But what is the alternative?’

Unexpectedly the young woman smiled. ‘This.’

‘Perhaps,’ Belle said quietly. ‘When did you last eat?’

‘I am no longer hungry. I have broth sometimes.’

‘Could I listen to your pulse?’

‘No. I don’t like to be touched.’

‘Never?’ Surprise threaded into her words. ‘Who has examined you then?’

‘No one. I do not allow it. It can be seen from a distance that my malady is taking the life from me. All sorts of medicines have been tried. And have failed. One doctor did touch me against all my will and bled me twice. Now I just wish to die. It will be easier for everyone.’

Belle heard the Earl draw in a breath and felt a huge sorrow for him.

‘Could I sit with you for a moment, Miss Staines? Alone?’

‘Without my brother, you mean. Without anyone here. I do not know if...’

But the Earl had already gone, walking like a ghost towards the door, his footsteps quiet.

Belle waited for a moment and closed her eyes. There was so much to be found in silence. The girl’s breathing was fast and a little shallow, but there was no underlying disease in her passageways. She moved her feet a lot, indicating a nervous disposition. She could hear the sound of the sheets rustling and Lady Lucy sniffed twice. She was coming down with a cold, perhaps, though her constitution sounded robust.

Opening her eyes, Belle looked at her patient directly, the golden glance of the Earl’s sister flecked with a darker yellow.

‘Why do you lie, Miss Staines?’

‘Pardon?’ A shocked breath was drawn in with haste.

‘There is no disease in your body. But what is there is something you need to speak of.’

‘You cannot know this.’ These words were small and sharp.

‘Today I shall run camphor across your chest and peppermint under the soles of your feet. If I was you, I should then begin to take an interest in the world. Tomorrow I shall return with different medicines. A week should be enough for you to start getting up again and then we can face the problem that is the true reason why you have taken to your bed.’

‘Problem?’

‘Think about it. Your family is suffering from the charade you are putting them through and if the physicians they have dispatched to attend to your needs have never delved deeper into the truth of what ails you then that is their poor practice. But it is time now to face up to what has happened to you and live again in any way that you can.’

‘Get out.’

Belle stood, her heart hammering. ‘I am sorry, but I will not. Only with good sense can you face what must come next because, believe it or not, this is the way of life. A set back and then a triumph. Yours will be spectacular.’

‘Are you a witch, Miss Smith? One of the occult?’

‘Perhaps.’ Her reply came with a fervour. This girl needed to believe in her words or otherwise she would be lost. ‘Magic is something that you now require so I want you to unbutton your nightdress and I will find my camphor.’

* * *

Ten minutes later she was downstairs again and the Earl of Thornton had recalled his conveyance.

‘I am sorry I cannot accompany you back to Whitechapel, Miss Smith, but I have other business in the city. You said that you’d told my sister that you would be back on the morrow so I shall make sure my conveyance is outside your house again at nine.’

‘No. Tomorrow we shall find our own way. But have the maid bring up a plate of chicken broth with a small crust of bread for your sister. Tell her that such sustenance will do her good and I will be asking after how much she has eaten.’

‘Very well. Thank you.’

The Earl did not believe that his sister would deign to eat anything. He was disappointed in her short visit, too, Belle could tell, the smell of camphor and peppermint the only tangible evidence of her doctoring. He imagined her a quack and a charlatan and an expensive one at that and would continue to do so unless his sister took her advice.

She tipped her head and turned for the pathway, unsurprised when the door was closed behind them.

* * *

Once home she sought out her aunt where she sat in the small alcove off the kitchen.

‘I recognised the Earl of Thornton’s house, Tante Alicia. I think I knew one just like it.’

Her aunt simply stared at her.

‘It was similar to the house in my dreams. The one I told you about.’

‘I always said that you were an auld one, Annabelle, a traveller who has been here before in another lifetime.’

‘Who are they, Alicia? The people I remember who are dressed like those at the Thornton town house.’

‘I have told you again and again that there are no ghosts who stalk you and that I do not know of these people you see.’

‘Then who were my parents?’

‘I never met them. I took you in when a nun from the convent in the village asked it of me. A sick child from England who was placed in the hands of the lord when a servant brought her there, to the church of Notre-Dame de la Nativité. Maria, the nun, was English herself and spoke with you every day for years until your French was fluent and you could cope. That is all I know. I wish there had been more, but there was not. I’d imagined you would stay with me for only a matter of weeks, but when no one came back to claim you and the months went on...’ She stopped, regathering herself. ‘By then you were the child I had never had and I prayed to our lord every day that the situation would continue, that I would not have to give you up because that would have broken my heart.’

They had been through all this before so many times. It all made perfect sense and yet...

Today Lady Lucy had made perfect sense to her as well, hiding there in her bed in a darkened room where no one could get to her. She had stopped eating. She had ceased to want to live. The anger in Belle surfaced with a suddenness that she did not conceal.

Everyone was lying.

Her aunt.

Lady Lucy.

Even the handsome Earl of Thornton with his succession of mistresses and his bitter mother.

Taking leave of her aunt and walking to her own room, Belle lifted up a paintbrush, dipping it in oil and mixing it with red powder after finding a sheet of paper.

Nothing was real. Everything was false. She liked the banal deceiving strokes she drew as they ran across the truth and banished it. Lives built on falsity. Paintings borne on fury. Lady Lucy was young and well brought up. Belle wanted to kill the man who had left her the wreck that she was, but as yet there could be only the small and quiet steps of acceptance before the healing began.

* * *

Lytton spent the afternoon entwined in the arms of the beautiful widow Mrs Susan Castleton in the rooms he had provided for her in Kensington.

She had impeccable taste, he would give her that, but what had been wonderful, even as recent as last week, now was not.

His mother’s words had stung and the look on Miss Annabelle Smith’s face had stung further.

Why did the healer have to be so damned unusual? His sister had gulped down the broth and the crust and asked for a cup of tea to finish her lunch with. She had not eaten properly in weeks and now after a ten-minute visit with the contrary Miss Smith she was suddenly pulling herself out of the mire. Lucy thought she was a witch and had told him so, a woman of fearful evil and unspeakable power. She did not wish for her to visit again.

Well, if a witch could cajole his sister into re-joining the real world then so be it, and her alchemy would certainly be welcome in his town house after the disappointing efforts of all the other renowned physicians. He would be asking her back.

‘You are so very well formed, Thornton.’ The whisper in his ear had him turning, Susan’s chestnut curls trailing across his chest when she tweaked his nipple, her body nudging his own in further invitation.

God, she was insatiable. When he had first met her he could barely believe his luck, but now...now he wondered if she might squeeze all the life from him and leave him as much a wreck as his sister.

‘I want to eat you up. All of you.’

Her words were so like what he had just been thinking that he pushed her from him and sat up.

He didn’t want this any more, this salacious liaison so far away from what he knew to be right. Even a few weeks ago he would have found such passion exciting. Now all he wanted to do was escape.

‘I need to go, Susan. I am not sure if I shall be back.’

If this was too brutal for her then he was sorry for it, but he disliked lying. To anyone.

‘You joke, surely, Thornton. We have been here all afternoon feeding off one another.’

The further reference to food made him stand and find his clothes. Fumbling with the one ring he wore today, he twisted it from his finger.

‘It is worth the price of the rent on this place for at least another year. I thank you for your patience with me, but now it is finished. I can’t do this any more.’

Tears began to fall down her cheeks. ‘You cannot possibly be serious, Thornton. I love you, I love you with all my heart and—’

He stopped her by placing a finger across her generous reddened lips.

‘You loved Derwent a year ago and you loved Marcus Merryweather before that. There will be another after me.’

As he walked away, garments in hand, she picked up a vase and threw it at him hard, the glass smashing against the side of his head and drawing blood as it shattered.

‘You will regret this, I swear it. No one will ever make love to you in the way I have, especially one whom you might take as a wife. They are all cold and wooden and witless.’

Hell. Had Aurelian or Edward said something publicly of his plans to be married before the end of the Season? He hoped not. If that happened he would have a hundred mamas and their chicks upon him, courting him with guile and hope.

The day that had begun strangely just seemed to get stranger. He could feel warm blood running across one cheek and yet he couldn’t go home because his mother was prowling through the corridors of his town house and Lucy had spent almost the entire morning crying.

His younger brother was in trouble again with his school and Prudence, his oldest sister, was in Rome seeing the sights with her new husband. He would have liked to talk with her, but she was not due back for at least a few months, skipping out of England with a haste that was unbecoming.

No one in his entire family was coping. His father’s death the Christmas before last had seen to that and here he was, bogged down by the responsibility of a title he’d little reason to like and a mistress who had just tried to kill him.

Once he had been free and unburdened. Now every man and his dog wanted a piece of him. Once the most reading he had done was to glance at the IOUs from the gambling tables where his luck never seemed to run out. Now it was writing reports, filling out forms and doing all the myriad other things a large and complicated estate required.

He had barely come up for air in weeks save in the bed of Susan Castleton, but that was now also lost to him. He couldn’t regret this even a bit, he thought, as he finished dressing and made his leave.

He’d spend the evening at White’s and when the place closed he’d go to Edward Tully’s town house. At least Derwent would understand his fading interest in a woman whom he, too, had once been intimate with.

* * *

‘You need to go abroad, Thorn, and escape your family.’ Edward’s words were said with the edge of strong cognac upon them.

‘Easy for you to say with your father still hale and hearty and an older brother who will take on the heavy mantle of the title.’

Edward laughed as he upended yet another glass of cognac and gestured to a servant going by to bring another bottle. ‘How are the marriage plans going?’

Lytton swore.

He’d confided in Lian and Edward about his intention to marry as a result of Lucy’s ill health, his own mortality staring him in the face. He now wished he hadn’t.

‘Wide hips and a passable face wasn’t it?’ Edward plainly saw a humour that Lytton himself did not. ‘The first girl you saw with both qualifications?’

‘I was drunk.’

‘More drunk than you are tonight?’

At that Lytton laughed. ‘More drunk and also happier, possibly.’

‘Well, Lian is happy and so is Shay. Perhaps a wife is the answer. A woman of substance. No shallow-brained ingénue or experienced courtesan.’

‘And where are those women?’ Lytton asked. ‘Shay found Celeste in the underbelly of Napoleon’s Paris and Lian’s Violet was thrown up from the greed of treason and lost gold.’

‘Stuart Townsend said he saw you this morning in a carriage with a woman he did not recognise, Thorn. He said she looked interesting?’

Lytton shook his head. For some reason he did not want to talk of Annabelle Smith. His whole family must have disappointed her today and he did not wish to continue the trend. He stayed silent.

‘And the fact that you will not speak of her makes it even more interesting.’

He stood. ‘I think I need to go home, Edward, and sleep. For a hundred years, if I only could.’

‘There’s a masked ball at the Seymours’ tomorrow evening. Come with me to that and blow away a few cobwebs.’

‘Perhaps I might. I will send you word in the morning.’

Outside the sky was clearer and the stars were out. A vibrant endless heaven, Lytton thought, enjoying the fresh air. He had meant to stay at Edward’s, but suddenly wanted to be home.

Annabelle Smith was due tomorrow again at the ungodly hour of nine and he did not want to miss seeing her. That thought worried him more than any other.

Chapter Three

This morning Belle did not take her basket. Instead she brought a book, tied in blue ribbon and inscribed. Rose stayed at home.

The Earl of Thornton was waiting for her in the entrance hall when she arrived at his town house. Today there was no other servant present and he took her coat and hat himself and hung them on the brass pegs to one side of the front door.

A gash across his temple was the first thing she noticed.

‘You have been hurt?’

‘Barely,’ he answered and swiped at his untidy fringe.

‘It looks like more than that to me, your lordship.’

‘Your patient is upstairs, Miss Smith.’

She smiled at the rebuke. ‘And your mother?’

‘Is behaving in her room.’

‘Did your sister eat anything yesterday?’

‘More than she has in weeks. She imagines you to be of the occult. A blooded witch, I think it was she called you.’

‘There is strength in such imagination.’

At that he laughed out loud and dipped into his pocket. A ten-pound note lay in his palm. ‘For you. You have done more in fifteen minutes for my sister than all the other physicians put together.’

‘Oh, I could hardly take that much, your lordship. Ten pounds is a fortune and more than many people in Whitechapel might make in a whole year.’

‘It is not for you, per se. I thought you told me yesterday you use your exorbitant fees for good in your parish.’

‘I would and I do, but...’

He simply leaned forward to extract the velvet purse from the pocket of her coat on the peg and slid it inside before returning it. She could do nothing but concur.

‘Thank you. I shall send you receipts for exactly what I have spent each penny upon. Your lordship.’ She added this after a few seconds.

They had reached his sister’s sitting room now, the place where Rose had waited yesterday, and he stopped.

‘I think you would do better to see my sister alone today.’

Taking a breath, Belle nodded and went in.

This morning Lady Lucy was not hiding from her, but sitting in her bed gazing out of the window. She looked small and thin and pale.

‘I hear you ate both lunch and dinner?’

The girl turned to her, anger in her eyes.

‘As I am not used to being threatened, I deduced it good sense to eat something, Miss Smith. Just in case.’

‘Then you would not mind if I read to you, either?’ Pulling the ribbons from the book, Belle sat unbidden on the seat at the side of the bed and opened the first page.

Mary, the heroine of this fiction, was the daughter of Edward, who married Eliza, a gentle fashionable girl, with a kind of indolence in her temper which might be termed negative good nature...

* * *

Half an hour later she stopped.

‘Who wrote this?’

Belle was heartened by the question. ‘Mary Wollstonecraft. The writer truly believed that feminine imagination could transport women from cruel circumstance.’

Silence abounded, the tick of a clock in the corner all that could be heard in the room.

‘I want to gift this book to you, Miss Staines. I hope we might discuss its possibilities next time I meet with you.’

‘When would that be?’

‘On Wednesday. That should allow you some time to come up with an opinion. An opinion I would value,’ she added, seeing the dark uncertainty in golden eyes.

‘I am not sure.’

‘Eat and read, that is all I ask of you. Food for the body and for the mind.’

‘How do you know my brother, the Earl of Thornton?’

‘I don’t, really.’

‘Where did you meet him?’

‘He came to my house in Whitechapel and asked me to visit you.’

‘He paid you?’

‘Very well. More than I am worth, probably.’

‘Are you always so honest?’

‘I find facing life head on is the best possible way of escaping difficulty.’

‘My mother would not think that way.’

‘Sometimes one needs to find confidence inside without being swayed by the influence of others.’

‘You talk like Thorn. Do you know that? He cajoles everyone to do his bidding and he is so clever he can always find the words. Mama says he is like our father, but I do not think this is true. He is a thousand times better.’

‘You love him?’

‘Everyone does. But he is as unhappy as I am.’

Lord, this conversation was going in ways she had no idea of and Annabelle hoped with all her heart that the Earl of Thornton was not outside listening.

‘Why are you so unhappy?’

The least she could do was to bring the focus back on her patient.

‘I have become a mere nothing.’

The heroine’s words from the book. Lady Lucy had been listening after all.

Belle lowered her voice. ‘Motherhood is the furthest thing from nothing that I know of.’

Her patient started at that and blanched noticeably. ‘Have you told him? My brother?’

‘No.’

‘Please do not. I need to think...’

With care Belle placed her hand across thin fingers. ‘I give you my solemn oath that I shan’t speak of your condition to anyone.’

‘Thank you.’

When she looked away Belle rose, tucking the book into the folds of cloth on the bed so that it would not fall.

‘I will see you on Wednesday.’

Outside she found Lytton Staines where she had left him, a drink in hand.

‘I hope this visit will be as successful as your last.’

‘I shall see your sister again next week, your lordship. There will be no payment required.’

‘Miss Smith,’ he said, a sound of exasperation in the word.

‘Yes, your lordship.’

‘I am an earl. Ten pounds is nothing at all to me and I shall pay you exactly what I think you are worth.’

‘Are you made of money, then?’ For a second he stood so close she could feel the whisper of his breath against her cheek as he replied.

‘Yes.’

She almost liked his certainty and his arrogance at that moment. He was a man who valued honesty just as his sister had said and he was kind. Of all the attributes in people, that, to Annabelle, was the most important.

‘I will also accompany you home.’

‘It is not necessary. I am quite capable of getting myself back to Whitechapel.’

‘I know you are, but I would like to see you safe.’

‘Very well.’

She stepped back and he led the way downstairs, the wound on his left temple beginning to discolour. She would have offered to tend it, but something told her that he would decline such an invitation.

A rich man, a brother, a son, an earl. A man with mistresses and with enemies. A man of generosity and cleverness, too. So many things that she now knew of him as well as so many things she did not. She wondered just what he might think of her?

‘Is my sister going to recover, do you think?’

He asked her this as the carriage slid away from the curb. Today it travelled slowly and she thought the Earl had had some hand in that, for he had been speaking with the driver just before they left.

Instead of answering his question she found one of her own. ‘How did your father die?’

Her words were bare and shock ripped across his face.

‘Why do you wish to know that?’

‘Your sister said something that made me wonder.’

‘What did she say?’

‘She said that you were a thousand times better than he was.’

‘Hell and damnation.’

She could not believe that she had heard the Earl swear in front of her and thought he might apologise for it, but instead he turned to look out of the window as he spoke again.

‘He killed himself.’

He had asked her if she was a religious woman once and said that he did not put much stock in prayers. But she could see it did mean something, after all, for shock was etched on his face. He believed his father consigned to hell just as his sister did. A permanent banishment. An unchangeable tragedy.

‘When did this happen?’

‘Two Christmases ago. He gambled, you see, and lost. At least when I sit at the tables, I win.’

‘What did he lose?’

‘Balmain, the Thornton family estate. I got it back for him by the luck of a full flush a week later and he was not thankful.’

‘The sins of the father are to be laid upon the children.’

‘Words from the Bible?’

‘And from William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice.’

‘You are a mine of information, Miss Smith. From witchery or just plain and constant reading?’

‘What do you think?’ She couldn’t add his title, not even if her life had depended on it, for here in the carriage there was a sort of equality that simmered between them and an energy that she had never felt with another.

‘I think you watch people and listen with your heart.’

‘You do that, too, my lord.’

This time he only smiled.

* * *

Belle steeped medicines and pounded tinctures and she charged nothing to a hundred patients who could afford very little. She brought warm clothing and blankets for the babies and she found packs of cards and puzzles for those with time to while away at the very endings of their lives. She paid for shoes that were not scuffed to within an inch of their existence and found oranges and fish fresh from the stalls in the market on Whitechapel Road. She noted down everything, every small and tiny charge, and sent the Earl of Thornton her reckoning two days before she was due to visit next.

Within an hour she had a message back.

That’s the best ten pounds I have ever spent.

She was pleased for such an assurance. His handwriting was strong and flowing, the b’s and p’s were fluted in a way that made her smile. She brought the paper to her nose and breathed in, the scent of ink the only thing discernible.

What had she wanted it to smell like? Him?

Swallowing, she placed the note down carefully on her desk and crossed to the mirror, peering at herself once she was there.

She was not beautiful, nor perhaps even mildly pretty. Her hair was unremarkable and she had a tooth that did not sit at the same angle as the others. Her eyes were also far too blue to be restful.

She spoke well, she read widely and she helped others. These were her attributes. Searching her mind, she probed for the other distant truth that lay hidden well away from sense.

She wanted the Earl to like her. With more than respect. More than esteem. She was enough of a woman to have read the books on filial love, and on lust and on sexual endeavour. She had devoured Fanny Hill by John Cleland and read the compendium of poetry by the Earl of Rochester, clandestinely, under her bed sheets at night. The novel Justine had come into her hands through a bookseller in London for whom she had made medicines and she knew the erotic works of the Greek poets Strato and Sappho. She was no prude even if she was still a virgin.

But she was lonely.

She was also thirty-one, almost destitute, nameless, without family, and inclined to strange dreams at night that made her question her sanity come the morning.

The sum of being abandoned sat on her like a weight, altering worth and condemning certainty. No man had ever come near her in the way of a suitor. Did she repel them or was she simply repellent?

These thoughts of wanting more and wanting it with a man like the Earl of Thornton were witless and unwise.

He had only ever looked at her in the way of an oddity, a woman who did not fit into any of the boxes the men of the ton needed their women to inhabit.

Appearance was not important to her and yet she was drawn to Lord Thornton’s beautiful face with an ache. The wealth of a person was also a factor that had held no real weight. Yet the Earl’s pounds had paid for things she would never have been able to procure otherwise, things that eased the wretched life of those struggling with very survival.

A conundrum and a puzzle.

She should take heed of his mother’s warnings and make certain that she was soon gone from the lives of the Thorntons. Yet she couldn’t. Lady Lucy needed her and, if truth be told, so perhaps did the Earl. To make him happier. To bring a smile across the sadness in his eyes.

They were right, these poets and novelists of long ago. The erotic hopes of a body were hot and heady things. Her hands ran across her breasts, nipples standing hard and proud.

She was not immune after all to the charms of men. No, she shook her head and rephrased. Not men, but one man. The enigmatic and beautiful Earl of Thornton. She knew it was stupid. But there it was. Unarguable.

* * *

Lytton smiled at the letter Annabelle Smith had sent him. Fish and stockings, blankets and coats were not things he usually read of, but each item here had been qualified with the person who had received it and that was what made it fascinating reading.

A young child with a chest complaint that was ongoing, a housewife pregnant for the eighth time in one of the winding and narrow alleys off the Whitechapel Road. An old soldier without a leg who was nearing sixty and needed a pack of cards to fill in the hours of a lonely day.

Numbers had always been simple things for him and if his father had squandered the coffers of the Thorntons’, then he had refilled them ten times over. Easily. But these pounds that he had accrued also lacked depth, no story behind them save that of an investment.

His mother’s voice brought him from his thoughts and he watched as she came into the room, a book in hand.

‘Have you seen what your healer has left Lucy?’

He looked up and shook his head as the small tome with blue ribbons was delivered with force to his desk.

‘Mrs Mary Wollstonecraft writes that men and women need educational equality and is critical of conventional women. If one were to believe in her premises, where would society be? Washed up, I tell you, each wife and mother attending to her own needs and not to those of her husband and her children. Books like this are a disgrace, Thornton, and one you need to be aware of and forbid when the insidious opinion comes beneath your own roof, crawling into your sister’s consciousness.’

For a moment he looked at Cecelia and wondered when it was his mother had changed from a gentle parent into this one? The death of his father, he supposed. It could not have been easy for a woman who would listen so carefully to gossip.

‘Perhaps returning to Balmain would be a good thing for you? Lucy’s sickness has not been easy for any of us.’

‘You cannot think I might leave her? My God, she is still at death’s door.’

‘I think we both know that is not true. She is eating again and her countenance is rosier. Certainly, we have passed the point of no return and Miss Smith has done wonders for her.’

‘Wonders?’ The word was whispered. ‘It is witchcraft she has employed and who knows how long such things truly last?’

‘Being grateful might bolster hope, Mama. Miss Smith is a woman who is an accomplished healer and there is no more to it than that.’

‘She knows things.’

‘Pardon?’ Lytton looked up.

‘Lucy says that she can read her mind and find out exactly what she is thinking. She says it is unsettling.’

‘Yet she still wishes to meet her. She told me so this morning, so it cannot be too uncomfortable.’

‘Your father would not have allowed it. Such a one in the house. He would have told her to leave the moment she tried to inveigle herself in to our family affairs and sent her packing back to Whitechapel where she belongs.’

‘He is dead, Mama. And has been for a good year and a half.’

‘Someone shot him. Someone broke into Balmain and shot him. I know it.’

For a second horror slid down the back of his neck. His mother was going mad and he had not noticed. How long had she been like this? He had been so busy trying to save the estate he had given his mother’s mental state little thought but Lucy must have known as well as David and Prudence. No wonder his oldest sister had disappeared off abroad and his brother was playing up at school.

A tumbling house of cards, he ruminated, and walked across to Cecelia, taking her hand as he led her to a seat by the window.

‘I want you to go back to the country. I will bring Lucy up in a week or two and spend some weeks there as well. You need to rest, for this has all been more than trying for you.’

Unexpectedly his mother nodded. ‘Perhaps you are right. I could garden and tend to my flowers and walk a little. The glade is always beautiful at this time of the year. When Lucy returns we can follow quiet pursuits.’

Patting her hand, he was glad as she calmed. ‘The carriage will be readied in the early afternoon and the family physician will accompany you just to be certain. Everything will be arranged so that you will not have to worry again and your great friend Isabel will be thrilled to have you back.’

After his mother had gone Lytton did another hour’s work to see to all the details of her journey before picking up the book and wandering into Lucy’s room. He found her up in an armchair that was slanted towards the sun. She wore a thick nightdress tied at the waist and her feet were bare.

‘It is fine to see you up again.’

Her smile brightened when she noticed him and brightened further when she glanced at the book he was carrying. ‘Mama took it away.’

He handed it back to her. ‘The stuff of treason, she thinks.’

‘What do you think?’

‘I have not read it, but there are movements afoot to cast more light on the inequalities of women. A lot of it makes sense.’

She undid the blue ribbons and found a dog ear on the top of one page.

‘Listen to this.’

With exaggerated care she read a few pages to him, her voice trembling with the tale of the woman she spoke of. When she had finished she placed the opened book on her breast and looked over at him.

‘It is saying that women need to have their own opinions and they are just as valuable as any a man might have. The story is a sad one and one of deceit and lies as the heroine and her friend try to come to terms with their life in a madhouse. Miss Smith says she wants to hear my opinion on the trials of women when I see her next.’

‘Well, it seems that you certainly hold one. Do you like Miss Smith?’

‘I think at first she frightened me. But she is strong. She does not take nonsense easily.’

‘Nonsense like witchcraft?’

‘You have been speaking with Mama? I made the mistake of telling her that perhaps Miss Smith was a witch when I first saw her and she took up this thought and would not stop speaking of it. I didn’t realise how much anger she suddenly seems to be full of, though Prudence had warned me of it before she left.’ She hesitated for a moment and then continued. ‘I was wondering if I could ask Miss Smith to stay for morning tea when she comes. I know how busy she is, but the cook could make her famous scones and we have the raspberry jam from last year’s crop at Balmain.’

‘Of course. I won’t need the carriage so she can be taken home in it afterwards.’

‘Will you be here to join us?’

Lytton shrugged his shoulders. ‘I have a meeting in the city which is important.’

‘But if you can be here, would you?’

‘I will try.’

* * *

In the afternoon Lytton visited the Thornton family banker and was reassured by the state of the finances. He knew the numbers himself, of course, but since attaining the Earldom he had been very careful to check every detail of his investments. He did not trust anyone.

He had a family to look after, thousands of acres of land to tend, servants and workers to provide for. The days of being careless were over, he had accepted that on the death of his father.

The keeping of a mistress was a lot less persuasive than it had once been as well. Susan Castleton had sent him copious notes trying to win back his favours, but he had replied to none of them.

He had heard from Edward how his name had been slandered by her in society, but that was the least of his worries. After the weeks of his sister being so sick, to have a glimmer of light in the future was gratifying and he did owe it to the unusual Miss Annabelle Smith.

Her vibrant blue eyes watched him in memory and for just a second he wondered what it would be like to have her beneath him tumbling into his bed.

The shock of that brought him to a standstill. There was no way in the world that he could enjoy her like that. The next woman he bedded would have to be his wife and she would need credentials and breeding that were incomparable to become a countess.

Still, the vision of Annabelle Smith naked with her dark curtain of hair falling around them was hard to shake off. Was she a virgin? Had she any experience with the pleasures of the flesh? God, even that thought had him hardening, here in the street with the daylight of London all about him and myriad shoppers walking past.

He could teach her everything he knew, every nuance of desire.

‘Thorn.’ The voice came through a haze and he turned to find Summerley Shayborne crossing the street to reach him.

‘You look preoccupied.’

He smiled. ‘I’ve just come from the bank.’

‘Good news?’ Shay knew of the trouble he’d been in last year with the estate when things had been turned upside down.

‘Everything is fine and long may it stay that way.’

‘You’re the new and shining light of the financial world, I hear. An earl who seems to be able to pinpoint a lucrative investment without comparison? Most peers are holding on to the family plot by their fingernails, but it seems your latest project has just come through with flying colours.’

‘The canning factory outside London? People need to eat and preserved fruit and vegetables are within the budget of most. Every large town in England by the end of the year will sport such a factory. Come in with me as a partner. I’ll get Lian and Edward on board as well.’

‘You’re serious?’

‘I am.’

‘When can we draw up the contracts?’ Shay looked excited.

‘Next week. But keep it quiet for I don’t want someone else beating me to the post.’

‘Have a drink with us now, then. Celeste is at the town house and we would love your company.’

‘Very well.’ He hailed his carriage and they both piled in.

Lytton had always admired Shay’s wife. She was tough in a way that intrigued him and beautiful enough to take his breath away every time he saw her.

She also was nothing like the bride that the ton had thought the lauded Summerley Shayborne, Viscount Luxford, would choose for himself.

* * *

‘You said you would come to Luxford in the early summer, Thorn, but you didn’t.’ Celeste looked puzzled.

‘I’ve been at Balmain for quite a few weeks because my sister has been sick. We have only just returned to town.’

‘I’ve heard that just lately she is making some sort of a recovery?’

‘I hope so. I have engaged a healer to try to coax her out of bed where she has been languishing. Miss Annabelle Smith from Whitechapel is her name and she seems to be making quite a difference.’

‘The herbalist? She is the woman my lady’s maid was speaking of so highly the other day, Summer. I should very much like to meet her. Is she at your town house this week seeing your sister?’

‘Tomorrow she is, but only very early. At nine. She keeps unusual hours.’

‘Could we call in? It might be my only chance to talk with the woman and she sounds more than fascinating.’

‘Well, I don’t see why not.’

Lytton had organised a meeting for the morning, but he supposed he could cancel it. His thoughts from earlier on had not left him and he felt...anxious. He could not quite imagine Annabelle Smith chatting about things with his sister and Celeste over jam scones and a cup of tea. He wondered, too, if Celeste had read any of the writings of Mary Wollstonecraft?

* * *

It was her birthday.

Well, her birthday as Tante Alicia had deemed it given she was four when she had turned up in the French village without any past whatsoever.

The third of July. A hot morning in the village of Moret-sur-Loing when a nun had delivered a sick child to the house of the local healer and pleaded for the girl to be taken in.

This much she did know for Alicia had retold this story over and over and never a mention of the people who had abandoned her.

Annabelle had celebrated today with a new pair of stockings and a fresh orange. She had also fashioned her hair a little differently this morning, doing away with the heavy scarf and pinning it about her face. The curls escaped, of course, but rather than detracting from the whole picture she thought that they added to it. For some reason today she felt lighter and happier than she had in months and the sun above was a part of that, too.

She hoped Lady Lucy had read the book she had given her. She hoped she had kept eating, too. If she had, then the change in her from last week to this one should be more than noticeable.

A carriage standing before the Thornton town house had Belle frowning. She did not recognise it and hoped that there were not visitors who would take away time she would have with the Earl’s sister. The horses were most handsome and the liveried driver on the box seat tipped his hat at her.

‘Morning, miss. It’s a fine day outside, to be sure.’

She smiled back at him and made her way up the steps, the door opened by a servant she had not met before.

‘The master is expecting you, miss. He is in the blue salon. I will take you through.’

Dispensing with her coat and hat, she followed him and heard the conversation between a group of people getting louder by the moment.

She stopped and the servant looked around.

‘I think there has been a mistake. I am here to see Miss Staines only. I have been attending to her medical needs.’

‘You are Miss Smith, are you not?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well then, you are to come right this way.’

Belle straightened down her skirts as she went, a sort of dawning horror rising in her stomach. She did not wish to meet other guests of this house. She would not be accepted by anyone in society and surely the Earl of Thornton would know this.

The door opened. The Earl stood by the mantel with two strangers, a beautiful woman and a tall and handsome man. When the Earl saw her he excused himself and came to her side.

‘I thought before you went upstairs to see my sister you may like to meet Lord and Lady Luxton.’

Belle took in a breath. This was a situation she had not come across before and she was silent as she watched for cues.

‘Miss Smith.’ The woman spoke first. ‘I am Celeste Shayborne and I have heard much about your ministry in Whitechapel. My husband is most interested in hearing about it, too.’

As if to underline this as a truth the man beside her nodded.

‘It seems your fame proceeds you, Miss Smith.’ Lord Luxford spoke now for the first time, though Belle wondered at his tone. He did not sound quite as pleased as his wife. The social conventions worried her.

Should she curtsy before this lord as she spoke or was that unnecessary?

‘Mine is a small clinic but in an area where there are many supplicants. I am quite perplexed that you have even heard of it.’

* * *

She used her voice like a weapon, Lytton thought, the low and husky tone surprising, but not as surprising as the King’s English that she now spoke. Her voice had never held tones of the East End, though, and had always sounded quite refined.

If he had closed his eyes just then, it could have been any one of the titled and well-brought-up ladies of the ton talking. He saw the interest in Celeste’s eyes and the curiosity in Shay’s.

‘Who are your parents, Miss Smith?’ Celeste was never one to refrain from trying to decipher a puzzle and she asked the question baldly.

But Miss Annabelle Smith failed to answer, turning to him instead and finding a query all her own.

‘I do hope your sister has recovered a little in the days since I have seen her, your lordship?

Now this was interesting, Lytton thought. There were secrets here and he could tell that Celeste had determined it exactly the same.

‘Miss Smith gave Lucy a copy of the Mary Wollstonecraft book, Celeste, and my sister has been most taken by the things the author wrote of.’

‘Oh, I, too, have read her books and most heartily agree with the sentiments in them.’

* * *

Belle did not feel quite up to arguing for the rights of all women no matter what their station in life so she stayed quiet. She was feeling her way here and the truth of her being from Whitechapel’s mean streets felt like an enormous stumbling block. She had not recognised this in the company of the Earl or even of his sister. But when society came crashing down upon her in a refined drawing room as it had here there was no getting away from it.

She did not fit.

A headache had begun to form behind her eyes and she prayed to God that the jagged lines of a worse malady did not reappear. Not until she could get home at least. She felt sweat run between her breasts and the fine beading of it on her top lip.

The Earl saved the day by asking her if she wanted a drink, leading her across to a cabinet where an array of bottles stood on top of a polished mahogany counter.

She had never tasted true liquor in all of her life and searched for something non-alcoholic.

‘The white wine is very good.’ The Earl lent down and said this quietly.

‘Only a small glass, please.’

He poured it with the sort of ease people used to heavy drinking must be wont to do. She did not really know, for her aunt was a teetotaller and any alcohol in the house was reserved for medicines. The devil’s brew, her aunt had often said, and there was enough evidence around Whitechapel for them to believe in such a truth.

A cup of tea would have been welcome, but she felt she could not ask. The smile she sported hurt her cheeks and she wondered how much longer she could manage to keep it up. She wished she might excuse herself and go upstairs to see her patient.

‘Celeste and Shay are friends of mine.’

‘I see, your lordship.’

‘Very good friends.’

She looked up and caught his glance. What did he wish her to say? And what was he telling her?

The tumble of the unexpected was confusing, terrifying even, and she measured her breaths with a rigid count. These people knew of her and her clinic, they understood she was from poorer stock and they were still attempting to be friendly. She took a sip of the wine and then another, surprised by the strength of its taste.

Still, it was wet and it gave her something to do. In a moment she had finished the lot.

‘Would you like more?’ A frown dashed into golden eyes as she nodded.

‘Thank you.’

This time she drank more slowly as he led her back into the room. It was relaxing her now, this white wine. For the first time in ten minutes she felt as if she might be coping.

‘Where did you learn your healing skills, Miss Smith?’

Celeste Shayborne’s voice had the lilt of another country in the words. French, perhaps. She recognised the cadence.

‘My aunt is a herbalist. She taught me.’

‘It must take a long time to learn?’

‘Years and years. I am still learning now and Tante Alicia is sixty-three and she says she does not know it all yet either. She has tried her hardest to teach me, though, in the hope that such knowledge will not be lost and I could be the one to hand it down to the next generation.’

Goodness. Had she said too much? She tried to remember every word she had uttered and found that she couldn’t, a barrier between her and the world.

It was the wine. Placing her near-empty glass down on a table, she wished again that she could have asked for tea or coffee, anything to neutralise the rising warmth that was worrying.

Control was slipping and with it reserve.

‘Your aunt is French?’ Celeste Shayborne clapped her hands. ‘Do you speak the language?’

‘A little,’ she said before she thought, for Lytton Staines had heard her using it on that very first day they had met after Stanley had torn his waistcoat. He would know that what she said was a lie, but she did not want the next questions that might rise with such an honesty.

The Earl’s voice broke her panic and she was pleased for his words.

‘I think something non-alcoholic might be useful.’ He poured a large glass of lemonade and handed it over.

Relief flooded into panic. She would be all right now. She would manage.

Exhaustion swamped gratitude and then sadness overcame that. So many emotions in so very few seconds she could hardly keep up. If she were at home she would lie down with a pillow across her head to keep out the daylight and she would sleep until the headache left her. Sometimes she took sulphate of quinine if it were severe, or cinchona bark or valerian. But there was nothing here that was remotely like anything she needed. She could see Celeste Shayborne looking at her with a frown in her eyes and even the Earl gave the impression of worry.

‘I am quite all right. It’s only a headache and I have them all the time. The wine was strong, too, and it’s still early in the morning...’

A further glance from Thornton told her that her admission had been unexpected, inappropriate even, and her words tailed off. Shaking her head, she tried hard to find a balance.

‘Perhaps on reflection I might be wise to leave. It seems that today is not a good day and I think I may need to go home and sleep.’

Another faux pas and had she just spoken completely in French?

‘I think my headache is worsening and when that happens I am never good company.’

Goodness, now she was switching languages, the words blurring into each other, skipping over tenses and trailing into gibberish. She could not be quite sure she had pronounced any of them properly.

‘So I bid you au revoir.’ She had not seen Lady Lucy as she had promised, but did not feel at all up to it. She would come back tomorrow when she felt she might manage.

The Earl’s arm was around her waist now and she allowed him to lead her to the door. Once in the entrance hall he found her hat and coat and then took her out to the carriage that he had asked to be brought around. Inside the conveyance, cocooned in silence and the comfort of the squashy leather seats, she breathed out.

‘I am sorry.’

‘For what.’

‘For creating a spectacle. For being vulgar.’

‘I hardly think you were that, Miss Smith. Entertaining is more the word that comes to mind.’

‘You are kind.’

‘Often in life I am not.’

She ignored that. ‘Your friends were kind, too.’

‘Have you ever drunk wine before?’

‘No.’

‘God.’ His laughter was not quite what she expected.

‘I hope as a consequence you don’t want your ten pounds back now for I have spent it already.’

‘I know of that. You sent me a note, remember. I did not realise that small sum of money could purchase so much. I commend you, Miss Smith.’

‘Belle.’

‘Pardon.’

‘Belle. You can call me that. Everyone else does. It means beautiful in French, but I do not think she should have named me such for I am not.’

‘Hell.’

‘You are swearing again, my lord Earl. I’m not sure you should. It is more than rude and, while I am not a high-born lady, I am still a woman.’

He knocked on the window and the conveyance stopped. ‘Take the long road around London for at least an hour, Barnes, and stop at the next shop that sells lemonade.’

‘Lemonade, my lord?’

‘In a very large bottle.’

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