The Governess's Secret Longing Read online

  He should have left Emma’s forlorn state to do its work with Miss Yelverton, because his genuine fear he might tow Chris’s children’s lives off course sounded facetious even to him. Curse the woman for making him feel such a fool he could not find the easy charm that usually got him what he wanted from females who ought to know better. Trust him to find the one who really did know better at exactly the wrong moment.

  ‘Governesses are not antidotes for an employer’s bad behaviour, Sir Henry,’ she informed him snootily, then looked a little bit shocked by the fierce frown that hated form of his name brought on before he could order himself to stop it.

  He relaxed his knitted brows with an effort of will and offered her an apologetic shrug instead. ‘My late father was the only person who ever used that name for me,’ he admitted gruffly. Surely even she would have heard of the bitter battles father and son fought as soon as Harry was big enough to shout back at the old windbag and defy every paternal order to simply do as he was bid and not argue.

  ‘I am still not a bandage for hurts you need not cause in the first place. Your wards’ well-being should be your main concern from now on, Sir Harry,’ she told him severely.

  He supposed he ought to be grateful she had modified his title to the one he answered to instead of the one he was christened with. ‘Then do it because you love Emma. I know you must because she is a darling and has been ever since she opened her eyes on this bad old world of ours.’

  He was challenging her to lie now and gave her a very direct look. He hoped she would read in it how dear Emma and the other two little monkeys were to him while she was staring back at him like a rabbit mesmerised by a fox. He was not given to showing his true feelings to anyone, let alone a complete stranger, so he hoped his wards would be grateful to him one day. No, he didn’t. He never wanted the sort of guilt and grudge between him and his father to stand between him and Chris and Jane’s children. He wanted the best for them and it was about time he charmed Miss Yelverton into giving it to them.

  Chapter Two

  Viola reminded herself she was a teacher and should be used to hanging on to her temper against the odds, but Sir Harry Marbeck added up to a lot more odds than a class full of restless schoolgirls. And he was quite right, drat the man. She did love Emma Marbeck and she was deeply concerned about the girl’s future well-being, even before she had met her new guardian. Without the parents who loved her so much they sent her away for her own good, how could such a sweet-natured girl thrive in the kind of ménage Sir Harry Marbeck was sure to create around his three vulnerable wards? She shuddered to think of the rackety friends this man would invite into his home even with three young children in it.

  And don’t forget the loose women, Viola—apparently he specialised in encouraging them to be even looser than usual and enjoying all sorts of scandalous pastimes she did not even want to think about. Rumour said his latest mistress was the most sensuous beauty to light up the demi-monde in many a long year. Not that Miss Thibett encouraged rumours, but news of rakehells like Sir Harry Marbeck crept into the most unexceptional places and caused trouble. And this time he was here, doing it in person, and she was almost sure she wanted him to go away. Yes, she did; she wanted to go back to her peaceful and rewarding life here and forget all about him.

  So Viola took a couple of deep breaths and hung on to her composure. Sir Harry Marbeck was even worse than rumour whispered. He was far more handsome, more dashing and much more dangerously masculine than she let herself believe he could be when she heard the other teachers whispering and furtively giggling over his latest shocking misdeeds when Miss Thibett was not about to rebuke them.

  She thought even then what a puzzle it was he managed to get away with them all without being excluded from polite society. Because he laughed with his eyes, she decided now she had actually met him—that was how he crept under a woman’s best resolutions to resist him and chipped away at her composure until she only wanted to smile back at him like the village idiot.

  Or at least that was how he had managed it with her. But, no, that was wrong—he had not managed it yet and, if she resisted this plan of his well enough, he never would. He was not going to bend her to the formidable will she sensed under all that raffish charm and get her under his roof to be made a mockery of by his wild and wicked friends. Wouldn’t all those happily seduced mistresses he was credited with enjoying ever since he went up to Oxford laugh if they could see her playing the dowd in such exotic company?

  ‘Fond though I am of Emma, I cannot risk my reputation and bring disgrace on my family by residing under your roof, Sir Harry,’ she told him boldly because there was no point tiptoeing around the subject with a man who threatened to sweep her along in his wake like a force of nature.

  ‘I will do anything it takes to help my late cousin’s children feel safe and maybe even happy again one day, Miss Yelverton. I will even treat you as if you are old as the hills and ugly as sin if it will make you feel better, and I swear to you, hand on heart, I never seduce ladies of quality who do not want me to—especially ones who are under my roof to educate and look after my wards. You will have no need to fear for your reputation at my sooty hands.’

  That was all he knew, she decided, as she forced back a sigh and a happy little simper at the very thought of feeling molten and eager under the sure touch of those hands and to hell with her virtue. She was human, for goodness’ sake, and he was temptation incarnate; so many females had fallen for his careless charm and gilded good looks. It was the thought of an eager string of lovers lining up to be seduced by him that made her stiffen her backbone and resist this temptation to throw her bonnet over the windmill and go wherever he wanted her to.

  ‘I could not live under your roof, Sir Harry,’ she told him as coolly as she had it in her to be when the very sight of him was heating up bits of her she had refused to allow to be heated during four weary years on the Dorset—then Bath—marriage circuit before she came here. ‘Your intentions could be pure as driven snow towards me, but society would never believe it.’

  ‘Am I really as bad as you paint me?’ he asked with a frown that said he had no idea how tempting his golden looks and sleekly powerful masculine form were to the opposite sex.

  He must be lying to himself about the potent spell he cast over even the most resistant female if he truly doubted it. Somehow that felt more dangerous than a cocky grin and a proud-of-himself shrug. No, she refused to be charmed into doing what he wanted despite her scruples.

  ‘I suppose I must be if you have heard of my sins even under such a respectable roof as this. Confound them for getting in the way of the most sensible arrangements for the children’s future I can think of, but nothing I say will undo them now,’ he added, as if he was regretting being a pleasure-seeking gentleman of fabled good looks and excellent fortune just this once.

  There was silence while they both thought about that very significant barrier to what she had to admit was a solution to Emma and her little brother and sister’s immediate needs for their home and a good education. Viola remembered all too well how it felt to be lonely and apart from her own elder brother and sister. Her heart ached for the three much younger children who had been deprived of the love and security they had always known in one fell blow. They might be packed off to school or found a governess who would expect the children to behave like pattern cards or face a beating. At least she had been sixteen and still had her mother and father when Darius and Marianne left home to pursue love and life as older siblings must.

  All the same, her memory of the gnawing loneliness she felt then whispered it was wrong of her to turn her back on Emma and two even younger children. It stopped her telling him an emphatic No and marching back inside to inform her headmistress of her decision. Instinct whispered he was uniquely dangerous to her and caution ordered her to leave a much more formidable lady to make it clear to him Miss Yelverton was not to be persuade
d, so he might as well go away again.

  ‘Would it be better if you and the children lived in their own home instead of my house?’ He interrupted her thoughts as if he had been thinking up cunning ways to change her mind while she was busy resisting his appeal to her stupid senses. ‘My formidable maiden aunt has moved into Chantry Old Hall in order to give the children her own peculiar version of comfort and daily irritation. If she was living at Garrard House as well, would that satisfy you I sincerely want the best for my wards? Her presence and a couple of miles of distance from my polluting company ought to silence any gossip, and I have already been wondering if the children would feel more settled in their own home rather than rattling about in mine.’

  ‘I suggest you ask the lady if she is willing to disrupt her life again before you make fixed plans, but I suppose it might work,’ she said doubtfully. She saw a flare of triumph in his bright blue eyes and, confound the man, he could see she was almost ready to agree to the impossible.

  * * *

  In the end, it was two weeks before Sir Harry Marbeck’s messenger rode up to Miss Thibett’s school with three missives, one addressed to Emma, one for Miss Thibett and another for Miss Yelverton. Secretly, Viola felt pleased at least one woman had held out against his strong will for so long. Miss Marbeck must have given in to him in the end, though, since Viola’s letter was brief and businesslike and confirmed Sir Harry Marbeck’s offer of the position of governess to his wards. How stupid of her to long for it to include something more personal than the list of conditions for her employment that he had now complied with, plus another of the ones he now expected her to agree to in her turn.

  She must promise to stay at Garrard House for a period of no less than two years to provide the children with some much-needed stability. She had a month after commencing her employment to judge the strengths and weaknesses of each child and produce a plan for their education and a list of any extra lessons she thought they would need. She would be entitled to half a day off every week and two weeks’ leave every year to allow her to visit family. He had named a very generous salary and informed Miss Yelverton she was not to argue, as, in view of the extra responsibility of overseeing the welfare and everyday lives of his wards, she would be earning every penny.

  * * *

  Ah, there was a touch of the personal among so much impersonal, then, and what a fool she was to cling to it like a shipwrecked mariner as the carriage made the final push up the wandering Cotswold road as they neared Garrard House and new lives for her and Emma. At least when they got there Emma forgot her sadness for a moment and gave a squeak of delight at the sight of her home—a fine, tall house built from local golden stone with tall sash windows designed to let in light and air as well as provide a splendid view. The house was set in wide gardens and the carriage had to wind up a neatly curved drive to get there, which made it clear to Viola that Mr Christian Marbeck must have been a rich man in his own right, as his cousin had inherited the grander family mansion even higher up in these hills. Garrard House commanded a magnificent view of the valley below and probably even over the top of the nearby hills so you could see beyond them to the Severn Plain from the windows of the main floor and above. It was no wonder that Emma loved the place, but Viola knew it must be bittersweet to come back without the hope of seeing her loving parents on the steps waiting to welcome her.

  ‘Uncle Harry!’ Emma shouted with enough excitement in her voice to banish the tears Viola had been anxiously watching gather as she wondered how on earth to distract the girl from this first sad homecoming.

  And there he was, Sir Harry Marbeck, looking very different from the urbane and assured gentleman who made her heart skip like a dizzy fool back in Bath. This less contained and more vital-seeming Sir Harry was holding the dark-haired little girl clinging to his side like a monkey with one arm while a boy a couple of years older held his other hand and tried to pretend he was far too grown up to be openly delighted to see his big sister. Sir Harry’s once immaculately arranged but now sun-lightened curls were ruffled by wind and little fingers and his neckcloth disarranged by the little girl’s slightly grubby hands as she clung around his neck as if he was her rock in a stormy sea. He looked warm and human and far more magnificent than when he was in full fashionable fig and fine as fivepence. No wonder the littlest Marbeck was hanging on to him as if she never intended to let go while she sucked the thumb of her other hand and stared at the carriage with her big sister in it with wide dark eyes. There was something else there as well, a challenge, from the look of her stubbornly set mouth, for this governess lady she had been told was coming to teach her lessons she had no desire to learn.

  ‘Oh, Uncle Harry! I am so pleased to see you,’ Emma told him as she tumbled out of the carriage before anyone had time to step forward and pull down the steps or offer her a hand down.

  ‘Welcome home, little love,’ he said softly as Emma hurtled up the shallow wide steps to wrap her arms around his narrow waist and hug into him and all her family at once.

  Somehow he managed to brace himself against the force of a half-grown girl throwing herself at him with such enthusiasm, keep the other girl safe and not let go of the boy. Viola watched with awe as this man she had told herself was a lightweight, who flitted through life charming everyone but never really meaning it, proved he was so much more. Damnation, now she would have to take him seriously and admit what a danger he posed her. She already longed to be part of that group as they stood there like a safe little unit that she had forced apart with her ridiculous scruples about living under the same roof as a rake. Oh, curse it—she should never have come here. Should never have signed that promise to stay two years; never have blithely accepted his more than generous terms of employment.

  Now she was regretting being so wilfully blind to his potent masculine appeal and her own weakness before she had even stepped down from the luxury of his fine carriage. She was already counting this off as her first day towards freedom and safety, and what a beginning this was for her new life as a governess. She steeled herself to step down in a far more collected manner than her eldest pupil and plastered a cool smile on her face as she met Sir Harry’s rueful gaze.

  ‘Welcome to Garrard House, Miss Yelverton,’ he said, as if this was just one more day, and he was right, wasn’t he? For him it obviously was. ‘This little minx is Lucy and this young gentleman is Master Bramford Marbeck. I hope you are going to make your best bow to Miss Yelverton, Bram, since I cannot quite manage one at the moment and one of us ought to bid a lady welcome in form.’

  The boy did so without letting go of the man’s hand, and that was when Viola had to acknowledge the love between these children and their unlikely guardian was not born of guilt on his part and need on theirs—it was a custom long established between them. He must have been an important part of their childhood to have their love and confidence, and he had probably been their beloved Uncle Harry since they were old enough to be aware they had one. Now the wretched man was forcing her to see the deep feelings he tried to hide from the wider world when she had been trying to fool herself all the way here that he had none.

  She had told herself she was safe as a marble statue in his dangerous company, for all the appeal he could have to her well-guarded heart. The danger of him doing any damage to it had made her form a paper version of him in her head after he left Bath to persuade Miss Marbeck to move down here and live with her great-nephew and great-nieces so that their new governess need not fear for her good name under Sir Harry’s roof. Now that the real man was standing here with his three adored wards unmistakably adoring him right back, the paper version was no more than a few tatters on the wind. Miss Viola Yelverton was in deep trouble over a man who would never want her back.

  Dignity, Viola, she ordered herself as she dipped him a half-hearted curtsy in reply to his welcome and gave Bram a more sincere one as she met the little imp’s eyes with a rueful look. Lucy was glar
ing at her new governess as she held fast to her beloved Uncle Harry—as if she thought Viola a rival for his affections. The little girl would soon find out her mistake, and Viola stepped forward as a lady with iron-grey hair and steely eyes stepped out of the front door and fixed Viola with a gimlet gaze.

  At least there were going to be plenty of challenges in her new life to take her mind off the master of Chantry Old Hall—a place Viola sincerely hoped was a lot further away than the couple of miles Emma had told her about on the way here.

  Chapter Three

  August 1814

  ‘Good afternoon, Miss Yelverton,’ Sir Harry said from the doorway of the sunny sitting room at Garrard House where Viola was writing to her sister.

  Somehow she managed not to jump, but why had her senses not prickled to warn her he was near so she could put up all her barriers in time? Better erect them now, then, she told herself bracingly. She took a long, slow breath to ward off the stupid feeling of breathless delight that always threatened to overwhelm her when he was nearby, however hard she told it not to. ‘Good afternoon, Sir Harry,’ she replied and wished her heart would stop pounding like one of his precious racehorses at the gallop. She laid down her pen and watched him as if he had interrupted a vital task and she was impatient to get back to it.

  ‘I had a letter from Lucy,’ he explained. ‘Inviting me to nursery tea,’ he went on with a slight frown, as if he was wondering why she was down here in the middle of an afternoon instead of upstairs with her pupils.

  ‘I see,’ Viola said limply and wished he was the sort of guardian who ignored messages from his wards.

  ‘I cannot disappoint a lady,’ he said and frowned further at her carefully blank expression, indicating that perhaps those words did not sound quite right to him either.