Читать книгу The Governess Heiress - Elizabeth Beacon - Страница 12

Chapter Four

Fergus watched pupil and teacher bid each other goodnight. The dragon seemed almost soft-hearted so perhaps Poulson wasn’t as far abroad in his judgement as he’d first thought. Of course, she was still too young for the post and two years ago could hardly have been long out of the schoolroom herself. Take away the spotless wisp of lawn and lace perched on her shining golden-brown curls and he could take ten years off the ones he’d first put in her dish. Her assured manner and limited patience fooled him at the time, but a very different person was revealed by candlelight. This Miss Court might pretend to be at her last prayers, but her mouth gave her away. It was less certain than he imagined when he met her in the gloomy stables. The young lady under the front of a no-nonsense governess had soft and expressive lips to go with her pert nose and brown-velvet eyes. Miss Court was a shade under the average height for a woman and slim as a whip, with the sort of slender yet intriguing womanly curves even a blue stuff gown made high to the neck couldn’t quite conceal. A connoisseur of feminine beauty might not rank her a diamond of the first water, but she would be very pretty if she threw away that dire gown and ridiculous cap. It wasn’t right to long to discover the vulnerable and generous woman under her would-be stern exterior. He usually liked his lovers buxom and bold and wished his mistress was nearby to visit when the need arose, because it might arise right now if he wasn’t very careful where his thoughts wandered in Miss Court’s presence.

‘I promise to restrict myself to one glass, ladies,’ he said as Mrs Winch and her chicks rose, looking uncertain about this whole enterprise. As well they might, he told himself sternly. He blinked away a vision of the lovely young woman under Miss Court’s armour and stood up politely.

‘Very well, Mr Moss, we shall see you shortly,’ Mrs Winch said.

He caught a sceptical governess look from him to decanter and was tempted to live down to Miss Court’s low expectations and get roaring drunk before he staggered into his smallest drawing room and gave himself away as the owner of all this faded glory. He wasn’t prepared to do that, he decided, and if the truth ever came out he must remember to thank the starchy female for the disguise she’d thrust on him, because he wasn’t sure he wanted to be ‘my lord’ now he was here. His grandfather might have found the vast portrait of a Cavalier ancestor and family an aid to good digestion, but he did not. The Baron Selford portrayed so skilfully had an arrogance that must have had recruits rushing to join the Parliamentarian Army in order to escape his tyranny. A master painter had caught hints of rebellion in the man’s son and heir and a sidelong glance from the old lord’s lady said she didn’t blame her eldest one for wondering if he wanted to die for the same cause.

God forbid any child of his would ever look at him with such cool dislike in his eyes. If it wasn’t for his uneasy conscience about shirking his duty as Earl of Barberry for so long, he’d turn tail and catch the next tide to Ireland and his stepfather’s comfortable home. No, he had a chance to observe his estate and mansion as he never would in his own shoes. He girded Mr Moss’s loins and took him back to the Small Drawing Room by proxy.

‘Do continue, Miss Caroline,’ Fergus said as the piano playing stopped the instant he pushed opened the door. ‘I am very fond of Herr Mozart’s sonatas, at least when they are played with such a delicate touch,’ he added and the obviously very shy girl smiled and carried on.

He had expected his cousins to be haughty and aloof, but they were brighter and more thoughtful than most of their kind, which he put down to their own spirit and Miss Court’s influence. According to Poulson’s reports, the laziness of a junior partner he had dismissed the moment he found out how negligent he’d been meant these girls had had little real guidance before their young governess arrived to try and bring sense, order and a little compassion into their lives. Once more he found himself oddly drawn to the young woman who sat as far away from him as she could. The sooner he was installed in the land steward’s house and busy about the estate the better. Miss Court and Mrs Winch had his wards and his house in order and it was high time he could say the same for the land, and that would keep him out of Miss Court’s way until it was time to go away again or reveal his true identity.

* * *

‘Do you think Mr Moss will like the steward’s house, Miss Court?’ Caro asked Nell sleepily as they finally went upstairs, at long last.

‘I’m sure he will and he can’t stay here with us. That would be dreadfully improper in the Earl’s absence, or even with it now I come to think about it. For either gentleman to move into Berry Brampton, we would have to leave.’

‘I suppose so, but it’s such a long time since Mr Jenks decided to retire and live with his daughter. I know the house was cleared out and dusted when we were told a new steward was coming, but that was weeks ago. The whole house could be damp after this dreadful weather and all sorts of things might have happened while it was lying empty, don’t you think?’

‘Not if I can help it,’ Nell said with a weary sigh. ‘If Mr Moss couldn’t send a message to warn us he was coming, at long last, he must accept the fact his house needs airing before it is quite comfortable. Mrs Winch will have kept an eye on the place, so I doubt it will be as difficult to sleep there as you imagine. Mr Moss will not find the land in good heart, though. I suppose I should have found a discreet way to let his lordship know how bad things were before Mr Jenks admitted his sight was failing and left.’

‘Oh, no, Miss Court, Jenks said he owed it to Grandfather to carry on managing the estate and he was so loyal to the family we couldn’t betray him, could we? He has such old-fashioned ideas—perhaps it’s as well Jenks had to go all the way to Yorkshire to live with his daughter so he can’t argue with everything Mr Moss wants to do,’ Georgiana said with a wise nod that left Nell trying not to smile at her unusual interest in estate management.

Georgiana enjoyed a combative relationship with the local squire’s eldest son. One day it might grow into something more and Nell thought them well matched. Persuading Lord Barberry that the heir of a mere squire would make a good husband for one of his wards would be a challenge, but not one she need worry about now Georgiana was fifteen and the lad a year older.

‘Yorkshire is not so very far away,’ she teased gently as she urged the sisters upstairs to the modest room they insisted on sharing, despite the many splendid bedchambers in this grand old house.

‘It is as far as Mr Jenks is concerned,’ Caro put in and smiled her thanks when Nell loosened her laces and helped her out of her simple round gown, then began brushing Caro’s thick blonde locks while their maid undid Georgiana’s gown.

‘You can’t help wondering why he agreed to go there in the first place though, can you?’ Georgiana observed with a frown and Nell wondered if it was odd that the man had finally left in such a hurry.

‘The love of family can lead us to the most unexpected places,’ Nell said with a shrug and a last look around. Becky had everything in hand and her charges looked so tired they should sleep soundly. Wishing them all a good night, she went to check on Lavinia and found Mary nodding in the dressing room.

‘Miss Lavinia hasn’t stirred all evening, miss. I’ve never known her so quiet or so little trouble,’ the maid admitted sheepishly.

‘You might as well go to bed now, Mary. If Miss Lavinia was going to take a chill, we would know by now and no doubt you’ll hear if she wakes up and needs you in the night,’ Nell told the maid with a nod at the truckle bed already set up in the narrow little room for her to sleep in and still be close if Lavinia needed her.

‘Thank you, miss,’ the young maid said dutifully.

Nell wondered why nobody found it odd Mary was Lavinia’s age and yet a maid had to be far more sensible and self-disciplined than the girl she was employed to wait on. ‘This isn’t a fair world,’ she murmured when she shut the door on her responsibilities for the night. ‘You ought to know that by now.’

She was only three and twenty herself and had taken responsibility for four young girls when she was barely of age. Looking back, she wondered why Mr Poulson picked her from the list of mature and experienced applicants for this job and decided it could only be because she wasn’t either of those things. Add Miss Thibett’s hard-won praise for Nell’s five years spent as a pupil teacher at her school and she supposed Mr Poulson thought she would understand her charges better and perhaps grow up with them. She recalled her giddy, schoolgirlish rush of excitement when she’d met Mr Moss’s deceptive blue eyes for the first time tonight and wondered if it might not be better if she knew a little more about men and their odd quirks and unlikely preoccupations.

Nell had grown up apart from her brother and she wondered why aristocratic gentlemen were so harsh with dependent children as she recalled the servants’ gossip about how little time the last Earl of Barberry had for his female grandchildren. Her uncle certainly didn’t have any for her. Parting her and Colm when her brother was old enough to be sent to school at eight years old was cruel. The more she pleaded with her uncle for one holiday a year or even Christmas together, the less he was inclined to grant them even a day. The memory of being desperately lonely in her late uncle’s house made her shudder even now. She’d cried herself to sleep for months after Colm had gone away and memories of how it felt to be alone and unwanted in an echoing house was one reason she’d agreed to apply for this job when Miss Thibett suggested she should. The thought of four lonely and abandoned girls got her here when Mr Poulson chose her for the post of their governess and memories of being unwanted by her own family made her grit her teeth and stay, although she wanted to run as far and as fast as her legs would carry her as soon as she met Lavinia’s hostile glare and realised the younger Selford cousins took their cue from her and had very good glares of their own.

Was she sorry she had stayed now? It had taken months of patience to wear their hostility down, but she truly wanted the best for them. She recalled the feel of poor Lavinia sobbing in her arms and letting out so much pent-up unhappiness and at least she understood her a little better now. If she didn’t have responsibility for these lonely girls she might have agreed to join Colm and Eve for the coming Season in London, though. Maybe there she would have found a gentleman quiet and steady enough to marry and make the family she’d always longed for with. Oddly enough an image of Moss interrupted her daydream and mocked her with a cynical smile. He might be right, if he was actually here and knew what went on in her head, because by the side of him her paragon did sound dreadfully dull.

With thoughts like that jostling about in her head wasn’t it just as well she wasn’t about to join the polite world as Miss Hancourt, heiress and elderly debutante? She stared into a mirror softly lit by the candle in the nightstick. Imagining what the so-called polite world would say about her behind her back made her shiver. They would laugh and call her a quiz, she decided, and glared into her looking glass as if they were already on the other side being airily amused by her.

Her father was wild Lord Chris Hancourt, lover of the most notorious woman of her generation and her partner in reckless death when they’d raced to a party in a land at war with Britain. What would Moss make of her shady history if the truth came out? Never mind him, the Earl of Barberry would dismiss her, heiress or not. The mud that stuck to her father’s name would finish his daughter’s career as guide and mentor to young girls. She hated the thought of all the snide whispers that would do the rounds wherever she went if she did as her family wanted her to and tried to ignore them for a Season.

In a decade or so, when Penny was old enough to be presented as the last of the beautiful Selford orphans, it might be time to consider what she would do with the rest of her life, but until then she had a job to do. Nell unpinned her flimsy cap, managed to unlace her dull blue gown without the aid of a maid and sat at the dressing table to unpin her hair and brush it the vast number of times Miss Thibett had always insisted on to transform it into a shining, silken mass that fell heavily about her shoulders and reached as far as her waist.

Was this the true Nell at the heart of Miss Court’s dreary plumage? The girl looking back at her seemed far too young to be the guide and protector of four vulnerable young ladies. She looked too uncertain to resist the charm and experience of a gentleman who wasn’t anywhere near as humble as the third son of a country squire ought to be. Her brown eyes were soft and dreamy as she stopped brushing and felt the silky thickness of those tawny waves tumbling around her like a shining cape. Her workaday locks felt sensuous and heavy and a little bit wicked against her shift, as if a lover might loom out of the soft shadows of this familiar room and run his hand over the silken ripple of it at any moment, then whisper impossible things in her eagerly listening ears.

Nell shivered, but it wasn’t from cold; the hand she pictured adoring and weaving a sensuous path through her thick pelt of shining hair to find the woman underneath was firm and muscular, but gentle and a little bit reverent. The owner of that hand was intent on her, his blue eyes hot as he watched the way her creamy skin looked through fine lawn and a veil of glossy golden-brown hair that didn’t feel ordinary any more. As she went breathless with anticipation his touch would get firmer and his gaze even more intent and wickedly sure she was ready for more.

No, here she sat, shivering with hot nerves and anticipation—like the caricature of a frustrated, dried-up spinster governess, longing for a lover in every personable man she met and never finding one to watch her with heat-hazed eyes as he stepped into her dreams and took them over. Nell snapped her eyes shut, squeezing her eyelids so tight it almost hurt. Then she took up her comb to part her heavy locks, ready to make plaits for the night ahead and forget imaginary lovers of any sort. She swiftly wound it into two thick tails of hair without looking at herself in the mirror, her fingers deft and driven to tighten the silky mass as her thoughts raced. Argh, but that hurt. She couldn’t sleep with hair that pulled at her scalp like a harsh saint’s scourge for sinful thoughts. She must begin again and pay attention to what her fingers were up to this time. That was it, her hair was tied easily enough for sleep and just tight enough to remind her to sin no more, even in her dreams.

Now for her formidably proper nightgown. Plain and buttoned sternly to the neck, made up from warm and practical flannel, it was a garment without a hint of sensuality. Let anyone find a hint of seductress in such a respectable get-up and she’d shout her true identity from the rooftops. She gave herself a severe nod, knelt to say her prayers and begged to be delivered from such silly fantasies, then got into bed. Staring into the night, she ordered herself not to dream of dark-haired, piratical gentlemen who could raise such silly fantasies in a spinster’s heart without even trying as she snuffed her candle and hoped for quiet sleep against the odds.

* * *

In a faded corner of the great city of London another member of the nobility was finding it impossible to sleep. ‘Thought I’d never get away from the jackals, Lexie,’ Lord Derneley told his wife as he settled into a grim corner of a wine cellar in this rotten old house on the Strand with a sigh of relief. It might not be much for a man born to splendour and great wealth, but at least it wasn’t the Fleet Prison.

‘So did I, my love,’ she whispered back, as if their creditors might manage to hear them even down here if she wasn’t very careful. ‘Lucky for us that my Aunt Horseforth is such a misery nobody will believe you’re here. I think she expects me to be an unpaid companion and skivvy for the rest of my life,’ she added gloomily.

‘She’s a dour old trout, but it’s the only port we have in a storm. At least everyone knows she can’t abide me and wouldn’t have me in her house if she knew I was here. I could always come out of hiding and scare her into an apoplexy.’

‘No, no, Derneley, don’t do that. Her grandson will come down from Scotland and put me out on the street before she’s cold if you do and you’ll starve to death down here without me. There’s nowhere else for us to go now the creditors are after you as if you murdered someone instead of taking their horrid loans when we ran out of things to sell. Heaven knows I got nothing but snubs and refusals to acknowledge they even knew me for my pains when I tried to visit my friends,’ she said mournfully and even her selfish, careless lord looked humble and almost defeated for a moment, before his true nature reasserted itself.

‘Have you found anything worth selling yet?’

‘No, her grandson’s man of business has everything locked up that isn’t already in the bank. He doesn’t trust me,’ she said, sounding very put out.

‘If we could only lay hands on a few hundred guineas we can slope off to Italy and at least be warm while we think what we’re going to do next. Right now I can’t even afford a decent bottle of wine, for if there were ever any in here someone drank it years ago.’

‘If only Lord Chris hadn’t deceived poor Pamela so badly we’d have all the Lambury Jewels in our possession now and none of this would have happened.’

‘Except if he wasn’t dead she wouldn’t be either and if you think we’d have got a single jewel out of her, you’re more of a fool than I thought. Chris was a lot more cunning than we gave him credit for being once she’d got him under her spell though, wasn’t he?’ Lord Derneley sounded almost admiring for a moment. ‘Who would have thought he’d be able to palm her off with paste versions of the emerald and sapphire sets after she had the rubies tested to make sure they were real the moment he handed them over.’

‘Everyone said the rubies were cursed and it turned out to be true, didn’t it? My poor sister was dead within six months of wheedling the wretched things out of him. And he never even pretended to hand over his wife’s diamonds to her, so he must have put them somewhere for that horrid little girl to find.’

‘We could make far better use of them,’ her lord said thoughtfully, ‘but nobody said a word about the Lambury Jewels turning up when young Hancourt came into that blind trust thing, did they? You could be on to something, Lex,’ he added and his wife stared at him in wonder.

‘You mean we could find them?’ she said.

‘I daren’t show my face, but that tough your sister used to play with when Chris wasn’t looking might track them down for you if we promise to share.’

‘No, he’s dead and I was too frightened of him to go anywhere near him if he wasn’t. I might be stuck upstairs waiting on my nip-cheese aunt most of the time, but I suppose I could find out when they were last seen if I get her talking about the old days long enough, but are you sure we’ll be able to find them, my love?’

‘Why not? And we have nothing to lose, do we?’

‘No, we’ve already lost it,’ her ladyship said gloomily, the fabulous wealth her lord inherited the day he came of age seeming to haunt her for a moment. ‘They only let me leave Derneley House in what I stood up in and they searched me for anything valuable before they even let me do that,’ she remembered mournfully.

‘You can keep a ring and one of the small necklets when we sell the rest,’ her lord said almost generously.

‘Thank you, my love,’ she said meekly.

‘Hmm, it might work, but Hancourt’s too tough a customer for us to get anything out of him and he knows us too well.’

‘Yes, and he must be dangerous with all those scars and fighting in all the battles he survived when Gus Hancourt sent him off to be killed in the army,’ her ladyship said matter of factly, as if she saw nothing very wrong in the late Duke of Linaire’s heartless scheming to gain his nephew’s fortune.

‘Cunning as well—think how he deceived us. He was only a secretary when he came to Derneley House to take my father’s books away. He must be hiding that sister of his somewhere though, because she certainly ain’t doing the Season, is she?’

‘No, I would have heard. Aunt Horseforth may not go out much, but she corresponds with half the old dowagers of the ton.’

‘I dare say the Hancourt wench is as plain as her mother was then, or he’d have insisted she came to town by now.’

‘I wish Pamela never met their father, but she and Chris would have had far more beautiful children together if he’d been able to marry her.’

‘You’re the aunt of the wench Hancourt married though, ain’t you? You must call at Linaire House when she and Hancourt get back from the north and make sure he feels a pressing need to write to his sister. That way we’ll be able to find out her address and somehow get her to lead us to the jewels. Chris must have realised how plain she would turn out to be and he knew a man needs a good reason to wed an antidote. Lady Chris could never have hooked the son of a duke without the Lambury Jewels and the old man Lambury’s fortune as bait. The diamonds would set us up nicely and the old man gave them to Chris’s wife after the marriage, so they weren’t part of the settlements and he could leave them to his daughter if he wanted to.’

‘You’re so clever, Derneley,’ his wife said with an admiring sigh. ‘I can’t imagine how I’m to make that horrid boy of Chris’s so worried he’ll give her address away by writing to her, though.’

‘Oh, really, Lex, do I have to think of everything?’ her lord said sleepily and waved her away so he could sleep after a strenuous day of escaping his creditors and looking for new money to waste.