The Duke's Cinderella Bride. Carole Mortimer

‘You had no right to read my mother’s letters. No right! Where are the others?’ She moved to the desk, sifting agitatedly through the papers there, easily finding the other three letters written in the same hand as the one she already held. Letters which Lady Sulby had obviously been reading when Jane came into the room. ‘Does Sir Barnaby know about these letters…?’

      ‘Of course he does not.’ Lady Sulby sniffed scornfully. ‘I have kept them hidden from him these last twelve years. Why do you think I was so concerned when I saw you with my jewellery box yesterday?’

      Because the letters had been hidden there!

      ‘How dare you?’ Jane turned fiercely on the other woman, cheeks flushed, her eyes glittering deeply green. ‘You are not fit to even touch my mother’s things, let alone read her private letters!’

      Lady Sulby recoiled from that fiery anger, her hand held protectively against her swelling breasts. ‘Stay away from me, you wicked, wicked girl.’

      ‘I have no intention of coming anywhere near you.’ Jane faced the older woman unflinchingly. ‘I would not want to soil my hands by so much as touching you. I have tried so hard to like you but never could. Only Sir Barnaby has ever been kind to me here. Now I can only feel pity for him, kind and loving man that he is, in having such a vicious and vindictive woman as his wife.’

      ‘Get away from me, you horrible girl!’

      ‘Oh, I am going—never fear.’ Jane’s head was up as she walked to the door, her spine proudly straight. ‘Let me assure you that I shall leave here as soon as I have packed the few things that truly belong to me.’ Including her mother’s letters!

      Jane knew, as she hurried down the hallway to her tiny bedroom at the back of the house, that she was glad—relieved!—to at last have reason to leave Markham Park.

      No matter what the future held for her—where she went, what she had to do in order to survive—Jane knew it could never be as awful as the years she had spent at Markham Park under the knowing and cruel hatred of Lady Sulby.

      Chapter Four

      Hawk luxuriated in the heat of his bath, relaxing back in water that today was pleasurably hot and shoulder-deep—compliments of the fastidious Dolton, he felt sure.

      Hawk had risen early and dressed before going down to the stables to mount the horse he had instructed Dolton to have saddled for him, surprisingly enjoying the ride across the sandy beach, his mood lightening as the salty breeze whipped through his hair and drove the cobwebs from his brain.

      He had even allowed himself, briefly, to think of Jane Smith. The early-morning light had helped to put their encounter late the previous evening into perspective, thus making a nonsense of it—and of the sudden desire Hawk had felt for her. He had been bored—extremely so—and not a little irritated, and Jane, with her curvaceous body and sharp tongue, had presented a diversion from that boredom and irritation. Not necessarily a welcome one, he had acknowledged with a frown, but a diversion nonetheless.

      Hawk’s mood had been further lightened when he had returned from his ride to Markham Park and read the letter that had been delivered in his absence. It was only a weekly missive forwarded from his man of business in London, Andrew Windham, but the Sulbys could not know that. Without knowing the contents of the letter they had readily accepted Hawk’s explanation that they necessitated he leave immediately.

      Or at least as soon as he had bathed, Hawk acknowledged with a satisfied sigh as he sat forward to pick up the jug beside the bath and tip its hot contents over his hair, before washing it, musing as he did so on the fact that he would be away from Markham Park within the hour. The arrival of Andrew’s letter—a letter Hawk had so wanted to arrange himself—could not have been more fortuitous.

      He could be at Mulberry Hall by tomorrow. Back in Gloucestershire. In control of his surroundings and the people who inhabited them.

      And safely removed from that brief lapse of control he had known last night with Jane Smith…

      Hawk banned Jane Smith and her bewitching green eyes firmly from his thoughts as he stepped out of the bath to wrap a towel about his waist and use another to dry his hair. He would ring for Dolton so that he might help him dress and shave before being on his way. He would not even delay his own departure until Dolton had packed his belongings into the second coach, preferring to be away from here, from the Sulbys—from the temptation of Jane Smith?—as soon as was possible.

      It was not cowardice on his part but self-defence that made him so determined not to see or speak to Jane Smith again before he left. Desire was something one felt for a mistress, not a young, unmarried woman—in this particular case the orphaned daughter of an impoverished country parson, who would surely have marriage rather than bedding in mind.

      A bedding was definitely what he was in need of, Hawk mused as he strolled through to his bedroom. A good, satisfying tumble in bed with a woman of experience who would expect nothing from him in return but a few expensive baubles. Yes, that would dispel any lingering thoughts of Jane Smith firmly from—

      He turned incredulously in the direction of the bedchamber door as, after the briefest of knocks, it was flung open. The subject of his thoughts came hurtling through the doorway, her face flushed, her eyes over-bright, and that glorious red hair dishevelled, with wisps trailing loosely against her cheeks and down her creamy throat.

      ‘Oh!’ Jane Smith came to an abrupt halt, the colour deepening in her cheeks as she obviously took in Hawk’s state of undress.

      His first instinct was to pick up and quickly don the robe that lay waiting on a bedroom chair. His second instinct was to ask why should he? He was in the privacy of his bedchamber—a privacy Jane had rudely intruded upon—so why should he concern himself with her obvious embarrassment at his semi-nakedness?