His Cinderella Bride. Annie Burrows

he make any attempt to stop?’

      ‘I was too busy diving into the ditch myself to notice.’ Hester shifted from one foot to another, drawing Emily’s notice to the greenish sludge that was oozing out between the uppers and the soles of her ancient walking boots.

      ‘You must get those boots off at once,’ Emily said, promptly dropping to her knees so that she could untie the sodden laces.

      ‘They’re done for,’ she pronounced as the mud-clogged sole peeled away in her hand as she tugged one boot from Hester’s foot.

      Hester shivered violently, then sank abruptly on to Emily’s chair. ‘At least I’m not,’ she said, passing a shaky hand across her mud-streaked face. Her mind had been so preoccupied by the news that had sent her scurrying from the house as soon as she could slip away unnoticed, that she hadn’t paused to check for traffic before stepping out into the rutted lane. She didn’t know what had made her glance up. She certainly hadn’t heard the curricle approaching over the noise of the wind that was buffeting her ears.

      Seeing a vehicle bearing down on her had been a shock. Far more shocking was the look of blistering fury that emanated from the driver’s night-dark eyes. It had pinned her, for a split second, to the spot, until the unbelievable sound of his foul language triggered her indignation, and from somewhere deep inside the instinct for self-preservation had kicked in.

      ‘I honestly believe if I was not such a good swimmer…oh, not that there was much water in the ditch, I don’t mean I would have drowned,’ she explained at Emily’s puzzled look. ‘And that was half-frozen. Just slushy enough to cushion my fall…no…I mean that it was all those hours I spent diving into the tarn at Holme Top that gave me the expertise to dive out of the way before his Lordship had the chance to crush me.’

      ‘Don’t make it sound as if he did it on purpose, Hester,’ Emily reproved. ‘Just because you decided not to like the man before even meeting him.’

      It was all very well for Emily to take the moral high ground, but she hadn’t had all her plans overturned by the arrogant, cold-blooded…lecher! For the past three weeks, ever since he had written to inform her uncle Thomas of the date he was going to visit, and decide which one of her cousins was going to have the dubious honour of becoming his wife, the household had been rather like an ant hill after a mischievous boy has poked a stick into it. Her aunt and cousins had embarked on a shopping spree for clothes that had her uncle practically tearing his hair out at the prospect of the bills, leaving her to placate staff who were already braced for a family house party that included her imperious aunt Valeria the very same week. There was no putting off a marquis. Telling him that the date was inconvenient and could he please come another time, or saying that no, there wasn’t sufficient room to accommodate the friend who had been spending Christmas with him. Oh, no. She’d simply had to devise a way of squeezing them into a house already crammed to the bursting point with assorted guests, their servants and horses.

      She smiled a little maliciously to herself. Just wait till he tried to get to sleep in the rooms in the North Wing that she had persuaded her uncle to open up for his sole use. On learning from her aunt Susan that the marquis, whom she had met on several occasions, was a tall man, she had taken great delight in having the so-called Queen’s bed made up for him in the abandoned Tudor apartments. His legs would overhang the end of it by miles if he tried to stretch out flat. If he did manage to doze, propped up against the mound of pillows she’d provided, the noise from the uncarpeted servants’ attics directly above him would be sure to disturb him. If he lasted the full week he’d declared he intended to stay, she would be surprised. A man of his wealth was used to the finest of everything. He had only to snap his fingers and whatever he wanted was handed to him on a plate. Naturally she hadn’t needed to meet him to decide that she loathed him.

      ‘You haven’t heard the worst of it yet.’ Hester’s hazel eyes glowed almost amber with the heat of her indignation. ‘While I was struggling to climb out of the ditch, his groom sauntered over to tell me off for frightening his lordship’s horses and perhaps even costing him the race.’

      ‘No.’ Emily sat back on her heels, suitably appalled.

      ‘Yes. And do you know what he was doing? Backing his team up so that they blocked the gateway. So that his friend had no chance of overtaking him. When he saw his groom trying to help me, he told him to stop wasting time and get back to where he belonged.’

      Hester neatly omitted to tell Emily that at the time the marquis called his groom to heel, she was physically attacking the man. She had the volatile temper to match her red hair, and when the groom had implied his master’s horses were of far more value than a mere woman, she had seen red. She had only intended to slap the man’s face, and wipe off the impudent grin he’d been wearing since the moment he had come upon her, sprawled face down in the mud at the lip of the ditch she’d just clambered out of, her skirts tangled round her knees. He’d dodged her slap, laughing, and she’d snapped. Forgetting she was a lady, that he was merely a servant, that she was on a public highway for anyone to see, she had launched herself at him, pummelling his chest with her clenched fists, kicking at his shins with her disintegrating boots.

      It had taken his lordship’s exasperated voice to cut through her humiliated rage and bring herself back to a sense of what she owed her station in life. Hitching up her dripping skirts and battening down her temper, she had squelched across the lane to confront the author of her disaster.

      ‘Just what do you think you are about?’ she had demanded. ‘Taking a blind bend at that speed—you might have killed somebody. A child might have been playing in the roadway. A farm cart might have been going down into the village.’

      ‘But they weren’t.’ He lifted his left eyebrow a fraction. ‘Let us stick to the facts of the case.’

      ‘The facts,’ she spat, justifiably incensed by the brusque tone that accompanied his irritated expression, ‘are that I had to take such drastic action to save my skin that everything I had in that basket is now crushed at the bottom of that ditch.’

      His only response was to sit a little straighter while he ran his eyes swiftly over her. ‘Not to mention the loss of your bonnet, the ruination of your stockings…’

      Hester had gasped, feeling her face grow hot. The fact she wore no bonnet was obvious, since the wind was whipping her hair round her face, but when had he been able to catch so much as a glimpse of her torn stockings? She had tried to tuck some of her hair behind her ears, suddenly acutely aware of the picture she must present, but her movements had been jerky with embarrassment. The bulky, muddy cuff of her coat had flapped against her cheek and she knew that, in trying to tidy herself up, she had only succeeded in daubing her face with muck. While she had prayed for the road to open up and swallow her, so that she would not have to endure another second of the Marquis of Lensborough’s coldly withering gaze, his groom had gone off into fresh gales of laughter at her expense.

      ‘God give me strength,’ she heard the marquis sigh as his mouth twisted in disgust.

      How dare he! How dare he look down his nose at her as though she were something he wished to scrape off the sole of his glossy Hessians. She glared at the offending footwear for a second. He probably gloated that his valet could achieve a shine he could see his arrogant face in. And what if those tightly fitted buckskins, that multi-caped driving coat and the supple gloves cost more than her uncle spent on his own daughters’ clothes in a year? His manners and morals were straight from the gutter. She didn’t care what anyone else thought of his reasons for coming to The Holme. He was despicable through and through.

      She hadn’t bothered to disguise her disdain, and he hadn’t liked it. When their eyes finally met, hers flashing with contempt and his black with fury, he had gripped the handle of his whip and sworn at her yet again.

      Who knew how long the stand-off might have lasted if they had not both turned at the sound of a second vehicle approaching?

      ‘And then he just whipped up his t…team,’ Hester told Emily through teeth that were still chattering with a combination of cold, and shock, and temper, ‘and t…took