by Emily Larkin
She also discovered that he smiled whenever their eyes met.
Each time their gazes caught, her heart would give a little leap, and after her heart had leapt Pip would look back at her sewing and remind herself that Lord Octavius smiled at everyone like that. Don’t be flattered by it, she told herself sternly, and, Don’t you dare become smitten with him—and then she’d look up and it would happen all over again: smile, leap of heart, silent scolding.
It was rather annoying.
Pip tied off the last seam, set aside her needle, and reached for the two sticks she’d chosen. “May I be of assistance, Miss Toogood?” Lord Octavius asked.
Her heart gave another of its foolish little leaps, even though she knew his offer was nothing more than courtesy. “If you wish.”
Lord Octavius moved to sit alongside her. He helped her feed the sticks into the channels she’d sewn. Their fingers brushed more than once. Pip’s heart stopped making little leaps and instead began beating altogether too fast. I’m twenty-five years old, she reminded herself. I am past the age of blushing. To reinforce this message, she surreptitiously tapped the table. Three times for cool cheeks. Three times for being too old to blush.
The three taps helped, as they always did.
At last the sticks were in place and the string was tied. Lord Octavius examined the kite’s construction. “Perfect,” he announced. “But I’d expect nothing less from a Toogood.”
I’m twenty-five and I do not blush, Pip told herself, but it was too late; her cheeks were warm. Not because of Lord Octavius’s words, but because of the way he was smiling at her, not just with his mouth, but with his eyes as well.
That wasn’t the sort of smile he gave just anyone, was it?
It didn’t feel as if it was. It felt as if his smile was especially for her, warm and teasing and friendly.
Which was a very foolish thing to think.
“I’m hardly perfect,” Pip said, and busied herself with clearing away the scraps of cloth and thread.
“I refuse to believe it,” Lord Octavius said cheerfully, and then he moved around the table to help Edie finish her kite.
They went for a walk while they waited for the paste to dry. Pip took the Reverend Gilbert White’s book with her. “‘A vast hill of chalk, rising three hundred feet above the village; divided into a sheep-down, a high wood, and a long hanging wood called a hanger,’” she read aloud. “‘The down is a pleasing parklike spot, commanding a very engaging view, being an assemblage of hill, dale, woodlands, heath, and water.’” She looked up from the book. “Shall we fly our kites up on the sheep-down when the paste has dried?”
Both girls looked to the viscount for this decision, but he declared that he couldn’t possibly decide without seeing the sheep-down first.
So they climbed the hill, all three hundred feet of it. Pip was out of breath by the time they reached the top. She was relieved to see that the men were, too. In fact, Newingham put on quite a show for the girls, huffing and puffing, making them giggle.
Pip watched while she caught her own breath.
Lord Octavius came to stand beside her. “A penny for your thoughts, Miss Toogood.”
Pip hesitated. There were a dozen replies she could have made, but she decided to tell him the truth: “I think that today is probably one of the happiest days of the girls’ lives.”
Lord Octavius looked at Edie and Fanny. “You think so?”
“Yes.” She’d never seen the girls in such spirits, their faces flushed with exertion and laughter and the simple joy of being alive. “I’m glad Lord Newingham came to visit. I hope he’ll do so again. Usually they’re so wary of men. Frightened, almost. I’ve never seen them laugh like this.”
Lord Octavius said nothing. A frown gathered on his brow while he watched the girls.
“They’re not frightened of you,” Pip said hastily.
He transferred his frown to her. “Are they frightened of their father?”
Pip hesitated again, because the girls were afraid of the baron’s anger, his brusque impatience, his disparagements and his criticisms. “Of course not,” she said, but she heard an uncertain note in her voice, and if she heard it then Lord Octavius most likely heard it, too. “The baron has little patience for children,” she hastened to explain. “Which is . . . understandable. Many fathers are the same.”
Lord Octavius continued to frown at her. Did he think she was criticizing her employer?
“I mean no disparagement of the baron!” she said, even more hastily.
Lord Octavius’s frown deepened. He glanced at the girls, and then back at her. He lowered his voice and said, “Miss Toogood, may I speak privately with you for a moment?”
Pip’s heart sank. He was going to reprimand her. Which was no less than she deserved. “Of course,” she said woodenly.
They retreated a dozen paces, still within sight of Newingham and Mr. Pryor and the girls, but out of earshot.
Pip’s chest was tight and the rapidity of her heartbeat had nothing to do with the hill they’d just climbed; it was entirely due to dread. She composed her face into an expression of polite attention and braced herself to accept Lord Octavius’s censure with humility, but the emotion she felt wasn’t humility; it was mortification. Mortification that a man she was attracted to was going to scold her as if she were an errant servant—and that was her pride talking, because she was only one step up from a servant, and while it was a large step to anyone employed in a household, it was a very small step to someone such as Lord Octavius, looking down at her from all the lofty height of his pedigree.
In his eyes, she undoubtedly was no better than a servant.
Lord Octavius didn’t immediately speak. He frowned out over the sheep-down, clearly selecting just the right words to highlight her failings. Then he looked back at her. This time, when their eyes met, her heart didn’t give that foolish leap; it contracted slightly.
“I know this is an impertinent question, Miss Toogood, but I must ask whether the baron has behaved inappropriately towards you.”
Pip’s dread transformed into astonishment. “I beg your pardon?”
“Have you ever felt threatened by him?”
Pip shook her head, not in answer to his question but as an expression of her surprise.
Lord Octavius took her headshake for a no. His eyebrows lowered and he searched her face intently. “Are you certain? He’s never made you feel the slightest bit uneasy?”
Pip hesitated, and then admitted, “A few times. But I don’t know why. He’s never said or done anything to warrant it. It’s just my imagination.”
He shook his head. “It’s not your imagination.”
It was her turn to frown. “What do you mean?”
He glanced at Newingham and Mr. Pryor and the girls, and then back at her. He lowered his voice: “He practices droit de seigneur.”
The statement was so shocking that it took a moment for Pip to process it. Her mind stumbled over the words, translated them, and then rejected their meaning.
Lord Octavius flushed. “It means, uh, . . .”
“Master’s rights,” Pip said, and then she flushed, too.
They both looked away, as if the sheep-down demanded all their attention, but Pip’s attention wasn’t on the pastures spread before her, it was on the words Lord Octavius had uttered.
Droit de seigneur.
It sounded pretty enough in French, but the meaning was ugly: rape.
“I beg your pardon, Miss Toogood,” Lord Octavius said, still staring out over the sheep-down. “I know this is improper of me—I’m little more than a stranger—but I need to . . . to warn you, and to make certain that you’re safe.”
“What makes you think that I’m not?”
He glanced at her then, and her heart gave that familiar, foolish little leap when their eyes met. “Have you sensed nothing among the servants? Have there been no incidents that have given you cause for concern?”
Pip worried at h
er lower lip with her teeth for several seconds. “There was something in London,” she admitted. “A maidservant with a bloody nose. I never saw her again and . . . the baron had a bruised face.”
He nodded, as if this wasn’t a surprise. “Is that all? There’s been nothing else?”
Pip thought some more. “When I first arrived here, the housekeeper told me to stay away from the corridor where the baron has his rooms. I thought nothing of it, because of course I wouldn’t go there, but . . . perhaps she was warning me away from him?”
“Perhaps,” Lord Octavius said. “What about the maids? Have they said anything?”
Pip shook her head. “I have very little to do with the servants. My only contact with them is when—” She stopped speaking. Her lips parted in a silent Oh of realization.
“What is it?” Lord Octavius asked.
“Every evening one of the maids comes to help me with my buttons. When she leaves, she tells me to lock my door for the night. I thought she just had a nervous disposition, but perhaps . . .”
“She’s been warning you,” Lord Octavius said, sounding quite certain. “Have you been locking your door?”
Pip shook her head.
“From now on you must.”
“Of course,” Pip said, in automatic response to the authoritative note in his voice, and then, “But are you certain? Because there are many reasons for bloody noses, and no one’s actually said that the baron—”
“I’m certain,” Lord Octavius said grimly. “When I say Rumpole practices droit de seigneur, I’m not guessing; I know he does.”
Pip wanted to ask how he knew, but that conversational pathway belonged to the “here be dragons” category. Or, more accurately, the “here be subjects too inappropriate to discuss with a man who is practically a stranger” category. “Do you think I’m in danger?” she asked instead.
“I don’t know. But Newingham says the girls’ governesses rarely stay more than a few months, and that worries me.”
Pip looked across at the viscount. He was gesturing as he talked—at the sky, at the sheep-down, at the valley beyond. Edie and Fanny were hanging on to his words. “What about the girls? Are they safe?”
“I don’t know,” Lord Octavius said again. “But I do know that I don’t want you in this household, and I think it would be better if the girls weren’t in it, either. Baron Rumpole is . . .” His lip curled contemptuously. “Not a pleasant man.”
“No, he’s not.” It was an admission Pip shouldn’t have made about her employer, not to anyone.
Lord Octavius glanced sideways at her. “How does he treat you?”
Pip grimaced briefly. “As if I’m the lowliest creature alive, but he does that to everyone in his employ. He’s very proud of his breeding.”
Lord Octavius snorted. “Breeding? He hasn’t any.”
Pip almost laughed out loud. Fortunately, she managed to smother the sound. She looked out across the sheep-down, rather than at Lord Octavius. “There have been a few times when he’s made me feel . . . I don’t know how to describe it, but sometimes he looks at me in a way that makes me feel quite uncomfortable.” She gave a helpless shrug. “I’m sorry, I can’t explain it, and it probably is just my imagination.”
“It’s not your imagination,” Lord Octavius said, his tone grim again. “You must be careful, Miss Toogood. Good God, if he should try—” His face twisted. “It doesn’t bear thinking of. You must leave immediately. Today!”
“Today?” Pip shook her head. “I can’t do that.”
He took a step towards her. There was urgency in his gaze. He looked as if he wanted to grip her shoulders and shake her. “You must.”
“It’s impossible,” Pip told him. “Even if I wished to leave—and I don’t know that I do—I’d need to secure a new position first, and that would take weeks.”
Lord Octavius frowned prodigiously at this.
“While you’re here, I’m safe,” Pip pointed out. “Rumpole wouldn’t dare do anything when there are guests in the house. It would be the height of rashness.”
Lord Octavius’s prodigious frown didn’t abate. “Will you at least allow me to teach you how to defend yourself?”
Pip’s eyebrows rose, and so did her voice: “Defend myself? You mean . . . physically?”
He nodded. “A few moves that you might use to protect yourself, if you have need to.” It was an exceedingly irregular offer, and Lord Octavius knew it. His cheeks colored faintly, but his gaze didn’t drop. “Please, Miss Toogood?”
Pip took several seconds to think about his suggestion—but really, why was she even pausing to consider it? Irregular or not, she was going to say yes. Not merely because she wanted to learn how to protect herself, but because she wanted to learn from him, to spend time with him. “Thank you,” she said. “That would be very kind of you.”
The color in his cheeks mounted, as if it embarrassed him to be called kind.
Pip looked across to where the girls stood. If Lord Octavius taught her how to protect herself, there would be no need to find another position. She could stay—and aside from foolish daydreams of falling in love with marquises’ sons, that was what she most wanted: to stay with Edie and Fanny. They didn’t need another governess; they needed her.
The next governess might not foster their tentative confidence. She might not listen to them and encourage them and teach them that they were valued. She might not love them. And the next governess might fall prey to Baron Rumpole—and that was another reason to stay. How could she leave, knowing what she knew? How could she let some other woman walk into that?
Resolve grew in her. Yes, she would learn Lord Octavius’s method of fighting off unwanted advances, but she wouldn’t leave; she’d stay.
Lord Octavius was watching the girls, too. “What kind of father is the baron?”
“The kind who belittles and bullies and browbeats. The girls are afraid of him. I wish . . .”
“You wish what?”
She wished a great many things, most of which were too foolish to voice out loud. “I wish I could give them a home where they’re loved,” she said. “Everyone deserves that.”
Silence fell between them for a moment. High above, a skylark sang. “Did you have such a home?” Lord Octavius asked.
As questions went, it was startlingly personal—and wholly inappropriate for a conversation between two people who barely knew each other.
“Yes,” Pip said. “Did you?” Which was even more inappropriate, given that his status was so much higher than her own.
“Yes. I’m fortunate in my family.” Lord Octavius gazed out across the sheep-down, his expression almost meditative. “Extremely fortunate. I could as easily have been born the son of a shepherd as the son of a marquis, and while I don’t doubt that shepherds are good fathers, they can’t give their children what my father was able to give me.”
Pip stared at him. What an extraordinary statement for a nobleman to utter.
Lord Octavius glanced at her. His eyebrows lifted. “What?”
Pip thought she’d just heard him admit—in a roundabout way—that while his station in life might be higher than most men, it wasn’t because he was better than them, merely that he was luckier.
That was what he’d said, wasn’t it?
“That’s not a sentiment many of your peers would agree with,” Pip said. In fact, she doubted that any of them would agree with it. In her experience, aristocrats believed themselves superior by virtue of their breeding, not their luck.
Lord Octavius lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “Wait until you meet my grandfather. He holds very strong views on the dangers of hubris.”
“Your grandfather? You mean . . . the duke?”
He nodded.
Pip couldn’t think of anything to say in response to that. She was too disconcerted, but she wasn’t certain what disconcerted her the most—that a duke could think hubris was a bad thing, or that Lord Octavius thought she might actually meet his gran
dfather.
What she did know was that this was the strangest conversation she’d ever had in her life.
“Luncheon?” Lord Newingham called out. He and Mr. Pryor approached at something close to a gallop, the girls running at the viscount’s coat tails like lambs after their mother.
Pip took a second look. No, the girls were literally hanging on to Newingham’s coat tails—and the viscount didn’t appear to mind at all. In fact, he was laughing.
“We’ve decided we’re as ravenous as wild beasts,” Mr. Pryor informed them as he bounded past. “Race you to the bottom!”
Chapter Eight
In the afternoon, they walked back to the sheep-down with the kites. Newingham demonstrated how to launch them into the air and the girls watched with earnest attention. It hurt Pip’s heart to see how eager they were and yet how cautious, how afraid of making mistakes and bringing criticism down upon their heads.
Mistakes were made and the kites did fall from the sky, but Newingham only laughed and offered cheerful encouragement—and then the magic happened: the kites stayed aloft and the girls ran back and forth across the sheep-down, shrieking with laughter. Pip’s heart no longer hurt; it expanded with joy.
She flew her kite, too, and it swooped high in the air, an apron given freedom on the end of a piece of string. She found herself thinking that if aprons could be joyful, this one was.
Finally she stopped, breathless and laughing. Someone clapped loudly. “Bravo!”
It was Lord Octavius.
Her heart did its foolish little leap. Heat rose in her cheeks.
“May I?” he asked.
Pip handed over her kite and hoped that he attributed the blush to exertion.
She watched him while he flew the kite. It was impossible not to notice how fine he looked. Not fine in terms of his attire, although everything he wore was of the best quality, but fine in a corporeal sense, in terms of flesh and bone. The buckskins had molded themselves to his muscular thighs, the cream, gold, and green waistcoat was snug across his torso, and the tailcoat had clearly been designed to showcase the breadth of his shoulders. He shone with health and vigor, a strong and energetic male animal.