Page 73 of A Cinderella to Redeem the Earl

‘Oh.’

‘She looked to be in fine fettle, if you are wondering,’ he said.

‘I was not.’ She tried to rein in her anger.

‘So you do not think she chose well?’

He seemed to understand her concerns without her saying anything. She sighed. ‘I do not know what to think. I feel as though it is a betrayal of my father. And yet she has a right to be happy. Perhaps in time I will get used to it.’ While she had seen no evidence of it, she sometimes had the sense that her mother and the Earl had known each other for a long time. As if they had secrets.

She could never forget how her father had collapsed during their last argument. It was hard not to blame her mother for his untimely death.

And then there was the way Mother had tried to marry her off to a rather elderly friend of her new husband. A man in need of an heir. Her mother could at least have stood up for her against her stepfather.

There was a pause, as if he was waiting for her to tell him more. For a moment, the full story was on the tip of her tongue. She swallowed the urge to unburden herself. While her mother might have sided with her husband against Pamela, making her life with them untenable, it was none of Damian’s business.

‘This part of the country is very beautiful,’ she said, instead ‘But rather hilly.’

‘It is. We will stop at Streatham to rest the horse and for us to take some refreshment.’

An extravagance. No doubt he could afford it, given how much he won from his fellow peers. It was too bad that she had joined his enterprise such a short time before he brought it to a conclusion. Still, all good things came to an end eventually and she had put away a nice little nest egg. One that would keep her comfortable for a long time into the future, if she was careful.

‘Will you miss Rake Hall when you leave?’

She really could not understand anyone wanting to abandon their ancestral home. Her father had been a younger son and had never owned a home of his own. The vicarage had been theirs as long as Papa lived and it had been very dear. Being forced to leave had been a terrible sadness.

‘I haven’t spent enough time there to miss it,’ he said.

‘But you did live there as a child.’

‘I think I mentioned before that I scarcely remember those days.’

‘Or you do not wish to?’

His grip tightened on the reins and the horse broke stride. ‘Easy,’ he said softly.

The horse settled.

‘I do not remember them,’ he said, his voice tight, ‘because they are more like a dream than reality. My life changed a great deal when we arrived in France.’

‘In what way?’

‘It is a long story of little interest and here we are at the Red Lion.’

They had indeed arrived at the inn. As they pulled into the courtyard of the old Tudor building with its timbered walls and red-tiled roof, an ostler ran to the horse’s head.

The man touched his forelock. ‘I got him, Yer Lordship,’ he said, looking at Pamela with curiosity.

How stupid of her. She should have asked Monsieur Phillippe to help her with her disguise before she left for Town. Or travelled in a closed carriage. Stupid indeed.

Damian jumped down and helped Pamela to alight.

The innkeeper bustled out and his eyebrows rose to his hairline as he saw Pamela.

‘Mrs Clark and I would like a private parlour,’ Damian said, using the name they had decided upon for his widowed cousin. There were several branches of Clark in his family.

The innkeeper bowed. ‘Certainly, My Lord.’

They followed the innkeeper inside.