The Master's New Governess (HQR Historical)

by Eliza Redgold

  Now she was staring at him.

  ‘Well?’ he asked softly.

  She backed away.

  Fear had come into her eyes, as if she were trapped. As if he might cause her harm, catch her in a net and seal her in glass.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she gasped. ‘I can’t accept this!’

  She tugged the butterfly comb from her hair, so strongly that the chignon collapsed. Her hair tumbled about her shoulders.

  She held it out, trembling.

  ‘Please. Take it! It isn’t right that you’ve given it to me. I—I don’t deserve it.’

  ‘Keep it.’ He raised his palms flat. ‘I want you to have it. It’s yours.’

  ‘No. I—I can’t!’

  She released it from her grip.

  The butterfly hair comb almost flew to the floor, but he caught it, just in time, as speedily as he had caught the butterfly in the woods.

  But in doing so, he had taken his eyes from Miss Wilmot.

  He heard the door slam.

  When he looked up, she had vanished from the room.

  He stared down at the hair comb.

  His brandy glass was nearby. With his other hand he picked it up. Drained it.

  Finding the butterfly hair comb had seemed to be some kind of strange sign.

  He didn’t want to catch her in a net. He wanted her to come to him, to alight upon his outstretched hand. He truly was becoming fanciful now.

  He stared at the ceiling, its ancient beams, the pale plaster.

  That kiss.

  He hadn’t planned on it. He would never have stepped over the bounds of propriety, lured her into his study for such a purpose. Yet when she had turned to him, reached for him, he’d been unable to fight the urge to take her in his arms. He had barely managed to hold back from seeking more when she’d kissed him, her full lips warm and soft.

  Dominic unclenched his fist.

  He dropped the jewelled butterfly from his hand.

  Chapter Seventeen

  O young lord-lover,

  what sighs are those?

  —Alfred, Lord Tennyson: Maud (1855)

  ‘Miss Wilmot! Miss Wilmot! You almost let the butterflies out of the vivarium!’

  ‘Oh!’ Maud exclaimed.

  With a slam she closed the glass door.

  ‘They would have escaped,’ Rosabel said, reproachfully. Her ringlets bobbed. ‘And they have only just hatched!’

  ‘Oh, dear.’ Maud bent down and peered through the glass into the vivarium. The ferns they had collected had grown bigger, more delicate and beautiful, and most of the white chrysalises were open now. The newly emerged butterflies were still fluttering among the plants; the small and large coppers, the blues, the fritillaries with their multicolours.

  ‘Are you feeling all right, Miss Wilmot?’ Netta asked, from where she was seated by the window, mending one of Rosabel’s white ruffled pinafores.

  ‘Yes. Yes, of course,’ Maud replied, flustered. ‘I’m perfectly all right. Thank you. I’m just a little tired.’

  Netta gave her a friendly, knowing look that told Maud it was all over the servants’ hall, as Maud had expected, that she had had dinner alone with Lord Jago in the grand dining room.

  Maud flushed and put her hands to her cheeks.

  Did they know that Sir Dominic Jago had kissed the governess?

  Or, more accurately, that the governess had kissed Sir Dominic?

  She put her hand to her lips. She had been able to think of little else, other than the sensation of Dominic’s mouth on hers. That searching, seeking pressure, as if he wanted to know everything about her. She had met his kiss with that same urgent, seeking desire.

  All night, it had not abated.

  Certainly, she was not doing justice to her employment as governess this morning. It wasn’t fair to Rosabel that her teacher was so distracted.

  She needed to be alone.

  She needed to think.

  ‘Netta, I want to go to the woods and collect some more ferns for the vivarium,’ she said, after a moment. ‘Would you mind looking after Rosabel for a little while?’

  ‘Not at all, Miss Wilmot,’ Netta replied promptly.

  ‘May I come with you, Miss Wilmot?’ Rosabel asked.

  ‘You come along to the kitchen with me,’ Netta said to Rosabel, with a quick pat of her ringlets, before Maud could reply. ‘I think Cook is baking this morning. She’ll need your help with the saffron buns.’

  Immediately Rosabel jumped down from her chair. ‘Are they going to have currants in them?’

  ‘I believe so, Miss Rosabel. And she is making lemon tarts, I think.’

  ‘Perhaps we can go for a picnic, Rosabel, when I return,’ Maud said.

  Rosabel jumped up and down. ‘A picnic? Can Polly and Papa come, too?’

  Maud bit her lip. ‘If he wishes.’

  ‘Can we make some plum tarts for the picnic?’ Rosabel asked Netta.

  ‘It might have to be lemon tarts, not plum tarts, miss. The greengages and damsons aren’t ripe yet in the orchard. Got to wait for the summertime for those.’

  ‘We’re going to the seaside in the summer,’ Rosabel confided to Netta, as she took the nursemaid’s outstretched hand. ‘Papa is building a train line and Miss Wilmot is going to take me bathing in the sea.’

  ‘Is that right, Miss Rosabel?’

  Netta gave Maud a wink as she went out the nursery door. ‘You take your time, Miss Wilmot. You’ve had a busy few days.’

  As Rosabel left the nursery, hand in hand with Netta, Maud let out a sigh of relief.

  She had barely been able to concentrate all morning. It went entirely against the grain to neglect her duties as a governess, but she hadn’t slept a wink the night before. She’d tossed and turned, unable to sleep, until dawn had come. With her lambswool shawl wrapped over her nightgown, she’d watched the sun rise, golden and full, over the treetops of the green woods beyond. Then she had washed and dressed, aware all the while of every part of her body still yearning for the kiss they had shared. She had never imagined her entire body would flare into life, as if she were emerging from a chrysalis herself. That part of her that had been bruised and numb for so long had been awoken.

  She stared at the butterflies, fluttering in the vivarium.

  She hurried to her bedroom and seized her bonnet and butterfly net.

  She would walk in Pendragon Woods until she knew what to do.

  Surely, in that sanctuary, an answer would come.

  * * *

  Dominic stood at his study window. He felt like a sentry at a gate post, waiting for Miss Wilmot to come out of the woods.

  All morning he had watched for a sighting of her. The sun was bright, but there were clouds in the sky. She often took Rosabel out in the morning, he knew, but he hadn’t wanted to lie in wait for them on the lawn, nor had he thought it appropriate to go up to the nursery.

  But this morning, Miss Wilmot and Rosabel hadn’t gone butterfly-chasing or fern-hunting together. It had been much later that Miss Wilmot had appeared and hastened alone to the woods, and disappeared.

  Dominic fought down his urge to follow her yet again. He loathed the idea of her feeling pressured by him, but God knew, all he’d wanted was to go after her and take her in his arms again.

  He’d paced up and down the floor of the study, keeping the window in sight, awaiting her return. But he’d not seen her, only the copper-coloured butterflies that now he connected with her. He’d seen plenty of them, dancing across the lawn, as if tempting him to follow.

  He released a self-mocking laugh. He had been pursued by governesses and now all he wanted was to go in pursuit of one himself.

  He would not, could not. Every fibre of his body wanted to hold her again, but every fibre of his mind instructed him to wait.

>   To let her come to him, if she did.

  It was the only way.

  He swore under his breath. Waiting never had been his strong suit. He would rather build a train line than wait for a train.

  He’d vowed to himself that there would be no impropriety between them. He was keenly aware of the power imbalance between him, the master of the house, and the governess. He’d intended to make it clear to her that he wanted them to begin a relationship, one where they could be on equal ground. That was why he’d invited her to dine.

  He’d been unprepared for what it had led to.

  His energy coiled inside him as he paced faster.

  Now she might think he meant to entrap her by his invitation. That he was a hypocrite who declared he was weary of governesses with romantic ideas, but then made advances upon her. That he was a master of the house who used his position against a governess in his employ. That he was a man entirely without honour.

  He rubbed his jaw. He was still unshaven. He’d barely slept. That kiss was enough to keep a man awake for nights on end. He had known intimacy with his first wife—of course he had—but that kiss with Miss Wilmot had been the most revealing encounter of his life.

  He knew now that the emotions he’d had as a younger man falling in love with Rosabel’s mother were a mere shadow of the real experience. He’d heard, of course, and witnessed men who fell in love and cast all propriety to the four winds. But he had never expected it to happen to him—and not with a governess.

  Then Miss Wilmot had arrived, with her chin high and her practical manner which he now knew disguised her romantic nature. Her fairy tales were full of longing, full of dreams and desires for a different kind of reality. She was not made to be a governess. She was a true artist, a storyteller of the greatest enchantment. He smiled wryly.

  He’d warned her off. Told her not to develop any romantic notions about him. He knew now that his aversion to any idea of remarriage had been to do with his own regrets. Then he, the confirmed widower, had been hit by the proverbial lightning bolt of which he’d always been so dubious. Could a man fall in love in such a way? It had never happened to him, even with Sarah, God rest her. That had been a mere youthful romance, whereas this was so much more.

  He was ready to move on.

  To discover what that kiss could become.

  In the woods, it had felt as if they touched, so vibrant was the attraction between them. But when they had kissed last night, it was as if they had communicated themselves, each to the other, through the touch of their lips. It was a sense of having met her, reached her and of her having reached him in a way no woman ever had before.

  It was a revelation.

  She had been badly hurt. She had not told him the facts, nor had he pressured her to do so. The expression in those deep green pools of her eyes had been enough.

  He clenched his fists in his pockets. The idea that something—someone—had hurt her, or caused her pain, was intolerable.

  He moved to his desk. Drummed his fingers. Perhaps work would take his mind off her, while he waited.

  He pulled open a drawer and winced.

  There was the black box that held the butterfly hair jewel.

  He slammed it shut, opened another and winced again. In it he had kept all the correspondence regarding employment of a new governess.

  Pulling out the file, he proceeded to leaf through the papers. A pile began to amass upon the green leather desk. By God, he really ought not to let his correspondence build up so. Perhaps he should employ a clerk. As he went, he dropped letters in the wicker wastepaper basket from governesses who had been unsuccessful in their applications and governesses who had been and gone. Yes, indeed, how he wished he’d chosen Miss Wilmot first—for so many reasons.

  There had been a break in the communication early on. He had put out the call for applicants and had received numerous letters from governesses, most sent to him directly. In one or two cases, the governesses had been represented by agencies, intermediaries who had provided introductions and letters of reference, but Miss Martha Wilmot had provided her own handwritten letter of introduction. It was after he had made those disastrous decisions to employ other governesses that he had turned back to his pool of applicants and chosen Miss Wilmot and renewed their contact.

  He picked up the letter to read it again and frowned.

  He ran his fingers through his hair. He realised now what it was about the letter that had arrived from her sister that had bothered him so much. It had been out of proportion. But it had nudged a memory in his brain, one he could not at first grasp. He was not entirely sure he had grasped it now.

  He laid down the piece of paper on the leather desktop and leaned back in his chair.

  Then he wrenched open another drawer and rummaged inside until he came to it, the piece of paper that Miss Wilmot had signed with her new fountain pen.

  Dominic swore.

  He’d watched her curve those letters, sign that name.

  There could be no mistake.

  He stared at the slip of paper, unseeing.

  Handwriting can alter, he told himself. Why, the pen he had given her probably ran across the paper with quite a different motion than whatever she had used to write with all those months ago. Which was perhaps why he had even bothered to note the odd discrepancy in her handwriting.

  For a moment, he wanted to tear it into pieces. To crush it in his fist and throw it into the fire, to not look any closer.

  It crumpled in his hand. It became a ball. He looked at the fire, the coals now mere embers, and took aim.

  Then, before he knew what he was at, his hand was lowered and engaged in un-crinkling the paper to compare it to the letter.

  All handwriting had a slant to it. This handwriting on the letter leaned a little to the right. It was rounded, copperplate, but rather cramped.

  One thing was certain.

  It was not written by the hand of his current governess.

  His fist clenched as he again took up the handwriting sample that he had asked from her. He had witnessed her reluctance to form the letters of her first name. Now he knew why. It was patently clear.

  She was not Miss Martha Wilmot.

  He stared down at the papers spread over the desktop. He studied her signature again, held it to the lamplight to examine it more closely, as if it were a counterfeit banknote.

  Miss Wilmot was not the original applicant for the post of governess to Rosabel. That woman’s handwriting was completely different. Her signature was small and decorous. That of the governess upstairs, however, was curved, generous, even slightly flamboyant, with a touch of the artistic. The W looked practised: it almost seemed like wings. The handwriting fitted the woman he had come to know. She was an artistic being, a storyteller. And he knew it was her own hand. He’d watched her curve those letters himself, with the new pen she had obviously liked so much. Her innocent gratitude had been touching.

  The chair scraped as he pushed it back, dropped the papers down on the desk.

  Anger flamed in his gut. She’d lied to him. Deceived him. He strode to the window, but she did not appear.

  He swore beneath his breath. Who in damnation was she? Why had she come to him? How had she managed to use the other Miss Martha Wilmot’s name without the first Miss Wilmot appearing on his doorstep?

  He exhaled in a half-laugh, half-choke.

  She was a complete mystery.

  She was a complete impostor.

  Miss Martha Wilmot.

  But that was not her name at all.

  He went back and sat at his desk, studied again the papers that lay there, with those two sets of differing handwriting. He wanted to see something different, but no. There could be no mistake.

  The two papers lay there—proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that the woman he had held in his arms the night bef
ore was not who she pretended to be.

  It hit him like a horse-kick in his stomach. He considered himself a good judge of character and he didn’t like the feeling that he had been duped.

  It made no sense. She did not seem to be the kind of woman who would choose to be deceptive. He had tasted truth on her lips.

  She was of good character. He knew it to be so. It had made no sense that she had come to Pendragon Hall, based on a lie. Her warm, beautiful nature, beneath the calm and proper exterior. Her bravery and willingness to stand up for what was right, beneath the nervousness.

  A knock came at the door.

  ‘Enter.’

  ‘Good morning, Dominic.’

  ‘Averill.’ He bowed. ‘I wasn’t expecting you.’

  She swept into the room, looking enchanting in a blue dress and an elegantly trimmed bonnet. It looked as though it had come straight from Paris, and, knowing Averill, it probably had.

  ‘It’s such a lovely day,’ she said. ‘Won’t you come for a walk with me?’

  ‘I’m surprised you have the time,’ he said, managing to be civil, even though the last thing he wanted, just then, was to entertain a visitor. ‘I thought you have guests at Trevose Hall.’

  Averill toyed with the ribbons of her bonnet. ‘They have other pursuits this morning. In fact, some of them are out walking—in your woods, I believe, Dominic. You know you’ve always said neighbours could access them and they do border my lands, of course. It’s another thing we share.’

  Dominic hesitated. The woods. In his mind he could see Miss Wilmot there, among the trees. Her sanctuary, she had called it.

  Averill tucked her gloved hand into his arm. ‘Don’t dream of saying no, Dominic. You work far too hard. Fresh air will do you good.’

  ‘Have you taken up nature walks now, Averill?’ he asked drily.

  ‘I have a fancy for one today,’ she said. ‘I have a feeling we might chance upon something of interest to you.’

  ‘Is that so?’ He smiled briefly at her. She’d presumed too much from their friendship, but she’d gone to the trouble of arranging possible investors from London.