The Earl Who Escaped

Lady Ella Cartwright stood dutifully at the bottom of the stairs next to her sister, Fern, her hands demurely folded. Outwardly, she was the picture of calm and serene compliance. But inwardly, she waged war, a tumult of emotions seething beneath her calm
exterior.

“Hmmm,” Lady Vivian
Sanbridge murmured with a narrowed-eyed glare. Her stepmother was no fool and
surely saw through Ella’s charade.

They both knew the truth…Ella’s compliance was a fraud and her stepmother only pretended to care
about her stepdaughters. But neither could outwardly accuse the other. They had to pretend peace and harmony.

“Tell them, Mother…”
her stepsister, Melisandre, huffed from behind her mother, her arms crossed and bottom lip stuck out. “Tell them that I know I left the ivory-handled brush on my dressing table and now it’s gone.”

“Hush,” her stepmother
soothed automatically, her gaze never leaving Ella’s.

Ella posed her features into a sympathetic mask. “Are you certain, Melisandre? Perhaps it fell?”

“I checked everywhere.”
Melisandre pointed an accusing finger over her mother’s shoulder, her brown
eyes growing hard and angry.

“Your dressing room?”
Ella asked in a false attempt to appear helpful. Melisandre’s dressing room was, in fact, Ella’s childhood bedroom. Ella had been moved to a tiny back
bedroom in order to make way for Melisandre’s mountain of dresses, shoes, and
jewelry.

Melisandre huffed. “Of course I checked my dressing room.” Her lip curled into a sneer. “We all know
you took it, Ella. Why you insist on denying these things is beyond me. Why don’t you just admit what you’ve done and take your punishment?”

She had no intention of
saying any such thing. Nor did she plan to be punished. “Sister dear, why would you say such things about me?”

Fern looked at the
ceiling, knowing full well that Ella had absolutely taken the brush. She and Fern each had their subtle ways to protest their stepmother’s tyranny. Thieving happened to be Ella’s. Fern’s was far more direct.

Melisandre threw up her
hands, her much larger arms and embellished sleeves looking like wings behind their stepmother. It wasn’t that Melisandre was overly large. She was likely perfectly sized, but it was more that Ella and Fern weren’t well fed. They were
both small by comparison.

“I say those things about you because they are true. You’re a horrible, no good, dastardly—”

“What’s that?” Ella and
Fern’s father called from the top of the stairs, and all four women turned to meet his gaze, Melisandre falling silent.

Ella kept her perfected
veneer solidly in place. She’d learned long ago that her father was not an ally in this quiet war being waged under his roof. At first, he appeared sympathetic
enough, hugging her as she’d complained about their stepmother’s cruelty, even
as he told her to get along with their new family. That blending the two
together would take time.

But he seemed to turn a
blind eye to her and Fern’s inferior clothing, their lack of food, their simple rooms, and the fact they had almost no lessons. After nearly a decade of living under her stepmother’s rule, Ella had learned to fight back subtly and with
plausible deniability, a lesson Melisandre had never learned. She didn’t have to. Her mother smoothed away all of Melisandre’s sins. “She’s accused me of
stealing her brush, Papa. As though I don’t have my own.”

“Of course you do,” her father answered, coming down the stairs. “It was a present I gave you last year for your birthday.”

“Exactly.” She gave her
father a bright smile. “Which makes it more precious than any jeweled piece.”

“The brush wasn’t jeweled,” Melisandre pouted. “It was ivory.”

“Oh, of course. I must have forgotten what it looked like,” she lied, knowing full well that the brush
was tucked under a loose floorboard beneath her bed.

Her stepmother’s lip
curled into what could only be described as a sneer even as she spoke for her
father’s benefit. “If Ella says she did not take it, then she did not.”

Her stepmother, on the other hand, knew how to play her part well with her husband. She told him all
the things he wished to hear, and then did exactly as she wanted with Ella’s father seeming none the wiser. The woman absolutely thought that Ella had taken the brush, and she’d do her utmost to prove her theory and then punish Ella. But the countess would do so quietly…

Another swell of anger
rose inside Ella. How did her father not notice that all the pin money went to Melisandre? Or that Melisandre received all the new dresses? All the lessons?

“Of course my sweet Ella didn’t take your things, Melisandre. We’re a family, after all.” He smiled
at his two daughters, Fern giving him a glare back. If Ella played the game, Fern froze everyone out with stoic silence and icy glares.

Her father didn’t respond, however, and his eyes rounded and his shoulders hunched, wracking
coughs seizing his lungs.

Ella truly winced then.
There was no acting. Despite everything, she loved her father, and besides—what
would life be like without him? Would her stepmother toss them out? Marry them
off to some toads?

Ella stepped closer, wrapping
her arm about her father’s shoulders as he gasped for breath. “Relax,” she whispered. “Try to breathe.”

“My Ella,” he said
between coughs, his head coming to her shoulder. “My sweet Ella.”

Melisandre snorted, a sound
Ella pointedly ignored. When her father had recovered, he straightened, looking at his wife, the disagreement over the brush already forgotten. “When does Lord
Pembroke arrive? I’m anxious to meet my heir.”

“Soon. No later than a
fortnight,” she answered, placing a hand on his arm. They all knew the truth. Her father was dying. It was only a matter of time.

One might think that her stepmother’s light touch on her father’s arm meant that she cared, but Ella knew the truth. All her sneaking had earned her loads of valuable information
over the years, but none better than what she’d gained two nights prior. Her stepmother had a plot. She was going to attempt to marry Melisandre to Lord
Pembroke, soon to be the new Earl of Sanbridge. She’d already falsified at least one letter to Pembroke, using her father’s seal and suggesting that Pembroke should marry Melisandre. Lady Sanbridge would do all in her power to
maintain her control over the earldom. Lying to the heir was just the beginning.

Ella didn’t recall ever
meeting Lord Pembroke and, if she had, it must have been when she was very small, before her mother passed away. Which is why she didn’t feel the least
bit sorry for her own plans.

Ella gave her first
real smile of the morning. She had a plot as well. And it was her best yet. She wasn’t just going to steal a silly brush, or even a dress that she reworked into her own. No.

She was going to pull
off the biggest heist of her life: she planned to steal Melisandre’s groom. And it was going to be magnificent.