The Governess's Secret Longing Page 4

  She turned away to stare sightlessly out of the generous window at the sunny gardens below. Because I never felt a hint of the heat and edgy delight I feel at being even this close to you was the true answer, of course. The one she hit on instead was how destroying it felt to be reduced to an object for sale to the highest bidder. ‘I felt nothing for any of the gentlemen in question,’ she replied at last. ‘I might have settled for friendship and respect, but how could I respect a man my mother cozened into thinking I would be a quiet and biddable wife? I could not even like the ones who offered marriage when I would not take their less respectable offers and I almost forgot the one who thought he should try a yellow-headed chit since his last two wives were dark.’

  ‘Fool,’ Harry said scornfully.

  She almost smiled because he was quite right. ‘Yes, he was,’ she agreed with a sigh. ‘But dowerless girls attract fools and satyrs. Emma will be much luckier, and since you will never allow her to be pushed into marriage or preyed on by fortune hunters, I have no idea why you are worrying. She has years to go before there is any need to be concerned about her finding her feet among her own kind.’

  ‘It sounds as if I have every need to worry,’ he said with concern in his blue eyes that said he had read between the lines of her own tale of life as a dowerless girl in a commercial world and he might pity her if she was not careful. ‘Knowing how sternly independent you are, your mother’s desire to marry you off must have made life very hard for you at times.’

  Only at times, Sir Harry? she thought bitterly. She had not even told him about having to dodge advances that certainly did not involve marriage, or the near rape only a handy candlestick over the man’s head had averted. Or her hurt and shame when she had overheard a young man she almost believed she could marry confide in his friends he was only having a bit of fun before he settled down with the girl his family actually wanted him to marry. It was a puzzle even to her why the slights and disappointments of that time still felt raw and dark even now, like an open graze that had never healed. Pride, she told herself wearily, and what a prickly bedfellow it was. Now Sir Harry knew about those days, perhaps he would leave her be. Yet he was still standing by the desk where she had been sitting writing before he came in, as if he was trying to see the real Miss Viola Yelverton behind an averted face and closed expression.

  ‘At least I learned to be very careful what I said and did back then. It has stood me in good stead as a teacher,’ she said as lightly as she could manage to fill the silence as he let it stretch. It felt best to fill it with something. If not, she might forget herself completely and plead with him to understand how much she hurt during those long, lonely years when Marianne and Darius had gone and nobody else seemed to want to understand her. ‘And luckily for me my father believed me when I told him I was at the end of my tether with the whole wretched business and would rather hire myself out as a housemaid than endure one more Season on the marriage mart. So you see, Sir Harry, mine is a mundane tale and can tell you nothing about how life will be for your wards when they are old enough to be presented at court.’

  ‘It tells me a great deal about you, Miss Yelverton,’ he said softly, and there was something in his eyes that made her heart race even as her well-honed instincts stepped back in horror. ‘It makes me wonder if maybe you wear nothing-coloured gowns and a ridiculous cap as a disguise.’

  Thank heavens he had not seen her as husband-hunting Miss Yelverton with her gowns always cut a little too low for strict propriety on her mama’s orders and her hair primped into artful disorder to make her look even more available. The very idea made her shudder and be grateful for her nothing-coloured gown and the cap he thought so ridiculous. ‘Governesses must keep up a respectable appearance,’ she told him with a shudder for how vulnerable she had felt on all the fringes of society.

  ‘Not as respectable as that,’ he argued with a nod at her buff-coloured gown as if it was a personal offence. ‘I wager you retreated behind it the day you became Miss Thibett’s junior teacher instead of Mrs Yelverton’s most rebellious daughter.’

  ‘You have not met the other one,’ she argued with an almost smile, conjuring the image of Marianne dancing off to marry her soldier, never mind what anyone said to the contrary. ‘I did not retreat behind it,’ she argued, then blushed because he was right. ‘And what does it matter if I did?’

  ‘I hate waste,’ he said, as if that explained everything.

  ‘It is not waste. You are the one who persuaded me that Emma and her brother and sister needed me when we were back in Bath, so who I am now matters far more than who I might have been once upon a time. I need to look the plain and upright governess under your roof to counter any rumours that might have followed me from my other life.’

  ‘As this is not my roof, don’t try to use it to get me off the subject. Your retreat from the world could leave the girls with a skewed view of how life is for a young woman, so maybe you ought to join in with the family now and again when Aunt Tam asks you to, instead of citing your position as an excuse to hide yourself away like a nun. If you want them to be relaxed about the prospect of womanhood and feel comfortable in their own shoes, would it hurt you to be sociable now and again?’

  ‘Probably not,’ she said with a shrug so he would not know it might.

  ‘Then I shall expect you to join Aunt Tam and the children next time they come to Chantry Old Hall to invade my kitchens and inspect the still room and generally turn the whole place upside down.’

  ‘Very well; is that all for now, then, Sir Harry?’ she asked with a bland, blank stare to say he was in the way and she wanted to finish her letter to her sister before her unexpected afternoon of leisure came to an end.

  ‘I think it is probably enough,’ he said with a smile that did wicked things to her insides again.

  More than enough, she silently challenged him. He had won again. It felt as if she had shown him things she did not want anyone else to know about, while he stood there as if he had no idea how much it had cost her to admit to such a humiliating and unattractive past.

  ‘As I am here, I might as well go up and see Lucy—next time she might truly need me and she must know that I will always come.’

  ‘You are as soft as butter with all three of your wards,’ Viola accused and heard a fond exasperation in her own voice she hoped he had not noticed. ‘Lucy is still naughty, and her brother and sister had to endure another duty visit despite being good last time and that is not fair,’ she told him sharply to cover it up. ‘If Lucy gets away with this, they might imitate her next time and get a bad name as ungovernable brats responsible for the mischief for miles around.’

  ‘Heaven forbid,’ Sir Harry said with a visible shudder. ‘I can hardly imagine Emma being an infernal brat, but even the thought of Bram being wicked as well is enough to bring even me out in hives. You have made your point, then, ma’am,’ he said. At least this time he went away with a polite half-bow in her direction and a sad shake of his head at the very idea.

  * * *

  Harry ran upstairs towards the sunny nurseries at the top of what he still thought of as Christian and Jane’s house, although it was Bram’s now. He paused on the half-landing to stare at the glorious view of the valley from the tall windows his cousin had put in to light the staircase and reveal the Cotswold Hills spread out like a bed full of lovers asleep under a patchwork of greens and gold. He tried to appreciate it as it deserved, but could not get Miss Yelverton’s story out of his head. She had a bad habit of being in there far more often than a governess should be, and lately she had started to tease his senses and intrigue him at all the wrong moments. Well, if he was being strictly honest, she had done that from the first moment he laid eyes on her in Miss Thibett’s neatly respectable garden.

  Now that Miss Yelverton had finally allowed him a glimpse of the woman beneath the dull-coloured gowns and unadorned spinster caps, he felt even more teased and intrigued. If she had only cast out silken lures and flirted with her eyes from beneath the delicious sweep of her curling gold-tipped lashes, he could have run in the opposite direction, but, despite that sad tale of her life as a poverty-stricken husband hunter, there was still an innocence about her that said, no, it was simply not her style to simper or sigh her way to a rich husband and secure future.

  In truth, his heart went out to the very young and far less defended Miss Yelverton he could see behind the woman she thought she was now. It almost made it worse when the voice of reason said her mother was quite right to try to establish her daughter well. Most of the aristocracy and gentry married for commercial reasons with a light veneer of romance. He was lucky that Bram’s existence spared him from making such a marriage. In exchange for his title and lands, he would have to ask for the promise of an heir and condemn himself to a lifetime of pretending Lady Marbeck was all he had ever longed for in a woman. The very idea made him shudder.

  That said, he recalled Christian courting Jane and their secret smiles and furtive little touches which said they could not keep their eyes off one another. Nobody could accuse them of making a dynastic marriage or being less than deeply in love with one another from that time until the day they died together in that appalling, senseless accident. No, they were a blissfully happy exception; his parents’ marriage, on the other hand, proved what happened when a couple had not a shred of love to share between them, not even enough for the product of their ill-advised union.

  He had learned very young that marriage was a curse to be avoided at all costs and he supposed that made Miss Yelverton his soulmate in an odd way. They were both wary and battle-scarred by the marriage customs of their kind. Knowing she hurt under that front of serene indifference to the eyes of the world ought to make him forget his urgent need for the woman in his bed. Yet he did want her to know he did not think any less of her for escaping the life her mother had laid out for her.

  A goodly part of him wanted to take his wards’ governess in his arms and let her weep out the hurt and loneliness he heard in her voice as she described that time, as if he had forced the words out of her. He hated himself for doing it, yet he felt triumphant that she had let him see the woman under the cool disguise. Devil take it, the woman had him so confused he didn’t know what he wanted. He felt torn by so many contrary feelings it was as if she was half a dozen women at the same time, all of them complex and contradictory.

  And it had to stop; he reminded himself he never meant to marry and Miss Yelverton was not a young woman he could trifle with and move on. They would have to wed, and the blight of his parents’ marriage had settled on him too young to make it credible Sir Harry would ever love and adore a Lady Marbeck of his own. His mother departed when Harry was five years old, so he barely remembered her. Fifteen years older than Harry, it was his cousin Chris who made sure Harry was fed, amused and educated after Harry’s mother left.

  He stared down at this view Chris had loved so much and missed his cousin and Jane so fiercely it hurt. Garrard House was only open because of Miss Yelverton and his own wild reputation. It was his grand sacrifice for his wards’ sake—a burr in his stockings he could never quite forget while he was living in his grand house two miles away. If only she was as plain and invisible as she thought, his life would be much easier.

  ‘But still, confound the woman for being who she is instead of who she thinks she is,’ he muttered very softly. Somehow he would pretend he was as indifferent to her as she was to him. Now he came to think about it, that was odd. She was warm and natural with the children and Aunt Tam, and the servants liked her, so she could not be stiff and cold with them. Why was he the only one she watched as if he might turn and bite her? He had never tried to flirt with her or followed this feral tug of attraction to its logical conclusion by trying to bed her. Was it an old habit of brushing off any slightly eligible male before he could get any wrong-headed ideas about wanting to marry her? She had fended him off as if he was poisonous. Best not wonder any more in case he got overexcited and ran back down to try kissing her until their eyes crossed and they forgot to wonder why not.

  ‘Why are you standing there, Uncle Harry? I’m hungry.’ Lucy’s voice interrupted his thoughts and he gave her a warm smile she did not deserve.

  ‘You are always in a hurry for the next thing, my Lucy,’ he said.

  ‘Hurrying is the best way to get there.’

  ‘Hmm, but what a shame you are not as eager to be good. Why did I only just find out your Great-Aunt Tamara has gone to Lubley Lodge with your brother and sister to apologise for your bad behaviour again? You are meant to be thinking about your rudeness and it makes me sad to know you cannot be trusted. I have wasted a ride over here on a hot afternoon.’

  ‘Why?’ Lucy said with her head on one side to let him see what a charming child she was and how harshly she had been judged.

  ‘I do not eat or drink with cheats or dissemblers,’ he told her with a stern look. Miss Yelverton was right to worry—the little terror would become more and more of a handful if she was not checked.

  ‘What’s a dismemberer, Uncle Harry?’ Lucy said with a genuinely puzzled frown.

  He had to bite back a bark of laughter at her mistake, but best not answer that question and risk giving her nightmares. ‘A dissembler is a clever liar, Lucy, and I fear that word fits you all too well. After I had told everyone my Lucy would never be deliberately cruel or lie to get her own way as well. I did not want to believe you had been so rude to a lady your parents chose to be Bram’s godmother.’ For some odd reason that has always escaped me, he added in the privacy of his own head.

  ‘She said I am a fidget and Aunt Tam was a fool to take me to see her since I am obviously too young and silly to know how to behave myself in polite company,’ Lucy said sulkily.

  ‘And after your great-aunt gave you the benefit of the doubt by taking you there as well?’

  ‘There you are, then. You agree with me.’

  ‘No, that I do not,’ he almost shouted, then hastily got his temper back under control. He could hear his father’s cold fury in his own voice and it horrified him. Now he only had to swallow a sick feeling at the very idea he could take after the man he spent most of his life trying not to follow in any way but the obvious one and he would be himself again. He refused to lose his temper with Chris’s children, especially this one.

  Lucy was too young to have strong memories of their parents, and that was going to be a lifelong sadness for both of them. ‘A careless comment by a lonely old lady should not make you behave badly, Lucy. Now you have tried to get around your punishment for doing so by inviting me here when you knew you could not leave the nursery. I am hurt that you tried to use me in such a sly way. Do I always have to doubt your word from now on?’ he asked.

  ‘This is our house, not Aunt Tam’s, or Miss Yelverton’s, or yours. It’s my home, so I can do what I like in it,’ Lucy raged, as if being found out had fuelled her fury. Temper tears shone in the dark eyes she’d inherited from her father, but there was something deeper and more difficult to cope with behind them. Harry felt stupid with the apprehension that he would not find the right things to say if that something broke free and landed them both in the suds.

  ‘You can stop that nonsense, young lady,’ he said clumsily, praying for inspiration when he had not even known he could. ‘You are six years old, not a grown-up lady like Miss Yelverton and your Great-Aunt Tamara, and even if you were a royal princess, you would have to do as you are bid until you are many years older and wiser than you are now, and never mind who owns what.’

  Lucy screwed up her face and got ready to wail and stamp her feet at being thwarted, and Harry felt his ears starting to hurt in anticipation.

  ‘You deserved every word of Sir Harry’s rebuke, Lucy Marbeck, so stop it right now, unless you would like to go to bed right away and stop there without any supper,’ Miss Yelverton told her youngest pupil as she ran up the stairs to find out what the noise was.

  Harry wanted to kiss her feet for interrupting, but instead smiled sheepishly and shrugged to admit she was a lot better at this than he was. She looked warm and a little bit flustered after climbing two flights of stairs in such a hurry, and he felt a flip of need in his belly. It threatened to turn rampant as he eyed her parted lips and slightly quickened breath and wanted everything he could not have. Fool, he chided himself and concentrated on watching Lucy instead. Her tears had dried up so rapidly he realised she must be able to turn them on and off at will. He was secretly impressed by her acting and a lot warier about falling for it in future.

  ‘I dare say if you behave yourself for the next week Sir Harry will come to tea with you and your brother and sister at the end of it. If you are not too busy, of course, Sir Harry?’

  ‘If you can manage the gargantuan effort of behaving yourself for such a long time I will be so impressed I shall invite all three of you to take it with me at Chantry Old Hall, as well as Miss Yelverton and your Great-Aunt Tam,’ Harry told Lucy. He managed to hide his smile as he watched her measure the effort that would cost her against the allure of being spoilt by his cook and most of his staff for a whole afternoon.

  ‘What’s gar...gargantuan?’ she asked warily.

  ‘It means making a huge effort, a giant labour.’ Just like the one he was making not to burst out laughing at her mangling of the word. Miss Yelverton’s carefully blank expression told him she was having the same problem, and there he was, back admiring her far more than he ought to and wanting to kiss her far too much for his comfort and her propriety.

  ‘It will be very hard,’ Lucy said with a heavy sigh.

  Again he wanted to laugh, but she would be insulted, and, naughty or not, he did not want her hurt. ‘But not impossible?’ he asked seriously.

  ‘No,’ she admitted at last.