The Duke's Governess in Disguise

by Claudia Stone

  The table had been laid out so that the quartet were all seated together at the top of the table. Emily, thinking that she was being rather clever, sat at the seat farthest away from the duke, leaving Cressida and James to sit at his right and left-hand side, respectively. What she hadn't thought, she realised with a sinking stomach, was that avoiding his gaze would have been far easier, had she sat directly beside him. Now, she was seated directly in his eyeline, and from the moment she took her seat, his cool, blue eyes fell on her often.

  "How has your day been thus far?" Hemsworth asked the children, as a cold collation of meats and breads was placed on the table before them.

  "Good," James replied, reaching out to snatch a bread-roll, which he then held covetously in his hand, like a puppy who had snaffled a bone. Emily winced; the young boy's table manners were not established enough to have him dining with a duke. She snuck a glance at Hemsworth, who seemed not to have noticed, and let out a soft sigh of relief.

  "Miss Smith read us Robinson Crusoe, after our lessons," James continued blithely, unaware of Emily's horror at his confession. "It's about a man who gets stuck on an island and he meets pirates and can—can—can—"

  "Cannibals," the duke helpfully supplied, with a wicked wink to Emily.

  She flushed with embarrassment; Hemsworth was quite obviously delighted by her discomfort, for he flashed her a wolfish smile.

  "What is a cannibal, Uncle Robert?" James asked, causing Emily to near-choke on a bite of ham.

  "'Tis a person who eats human flesh, like this!" the duke replied, spearing a piece of chicken with his fork and waving it in the air. He gave low, malevolent laugh, before he devoured the meat in one quick bite, much to the delight of the children.

  "What did it taste like?" James asked breathlessly, his eyes alight with excitement as he looked at Hemsworth.

  "Rather like chicken," Hemsworth deadpanned, and this time Emily could not hold back the bubble of laughter within her.

  "Ah," Hemsworth glanced over at her, a challenge in his eyes, "It seems our Miss Smith finds the consumption of human flesh most amusing. Would you care for a morsel, my dear?"

  He pushed the silver platter of chicken across to her and, feeling the eyes of Cressida and James upon her, Emily dutifully pierced a piece of poultry with her fork. This was ridiculous, she thought, as the two children shrieked with delight as she chewed—she was supposed to be instructing the children on table-manners, not encouraging high-jinx.

  It was the duke's doing, of course, though she could no more resist his boyish smile or mischievous ways than the children could. Once Cressida and James had tried their own taste of "flesh", the meal—mercifully--became a more sedate affair.

  Emily gently guided the children in their chatter, pulling them back from the distractions and tangents their young minds were inclined toward, and subtly assisted Cressida with holding her knife and fork correctly. The actions were almost subconscious, so she was startled to look up and find that Hemsworth was watching her, approval writ large upon his face.

  "Tell His Grace what else you learned today," Emily prodded James, desperate for a distraction from the duke. The little boy was happy to oblige, and he recounted his letters with aplomb.

  "Miss Smith said Mama and Papa would be proud of me," James finished, looking at Hemsworth for confirmation of this. So much hope showed on his little face, that Emily's heart almost broke at the sight of him.

  "Oh, they would," the duke obligingly replied.

  His handsome face wore a momentary look of pain—gone so quickly, that Emily could have sworn she had imagined it. The children, who were less observant, continued on this chosen topic, apparently delighted to discuss their parents with one who had known them intimately.

  "Did Papa know his letters?" James asked, very seriously.

  "Indeed he did," Hemsworth replied with equal seriousness, "He knew them very well, and he would have been pleased to see that you had mastered them too."

  James went pink with pleasure at this statement and Emily felt a jolt of gratitude toward the duke, for not patronising the young boy.

  "I miss them," Cressida said, in a whisper, her brown eyes focused upon the duke.

  The baldness of her statement—an unvarnished declaration of grief—seemed to touch Hemsworth deeply. He cleared his throat and blinked rather quickly, before he nodded his agreement.

  "As do I," he said, his voice hoarse with longing, "And I know that, wherever they may be, that they miss you both very deeply."

  Cressida and James both smiled at this and for a while, the conversation continued. They begged Hemsworth for tales of their father as a boy—which the duke obligingly supplied—and for stories about their mother.

  "Your father told me that the instant that he saw your mother, he knew that he had to marry her," Hemsworth recounted. "Though it was difficult for him to persuade her to come away with him to England. She feared that it would be too cold, and so she told him that before she would agree, he would have to find her a cloak made of fur from a silver-fox."

  Emily bit her lip as she watched the two children hang on the duke's every word; she rather suspected that he was embellishing the story for their entertainment, but she too was enjoying his outlandish tale.

  "Now, a silver-fox is the rarest of all the animals," Hemsworth continued, "But your father was never a man to shirk a challenge. He left Milan determined to find this cloak and he travelled far and wide in his search, eventually ending up in the Ottoman Empire."

  "Really?" James breathed.

  "Oh, yes," Hemsworth was deadly serious, "He made it all the way to Buda,on the banks of the Danube, where he learned that the Pasha of Budin possessed such a cloak. The Pasha was reluctant to part with it, but your father challenged him to a sword fight, and honour would not let him refuse. Your father won, of course, but he had to flee Hungary with a brigade of Janissaries on his heels."

  "But he got the cloak?" Cressida pressed with a worried frown.

  "Indeed he did," Hemsworth confirmed, "And he returned to Milan and married your mother the next day."

  Hemsworth ended his story with a smile, though he did not relent to the children's requests for more.

  "Another day," he said, "I'm sure that Miss Smith has more lessons planned for the afternoon."

  Emily started at the mention of her name; she had been as enthralled as the children by Hemsworth's outlandish tale. The fact that she was their governess had clear slipped her mind.

  "Come, now," she said brusquely, pushing back her seat, "We must not take up any more of the duke's time."

  The children reluctantly obeyed, standing up from their seats and bidding the duke goodbye. They traipsed out the door ahead of Emily, who paused on the mantle to glance back at the duke.

  "Yes?" Hemsworth had been watching her.

  "Did he," Emily began, flushing a little, "Did he really go all that way?"

  "Heavens, no," the duke threw back his head and chortled, amused by her naivety. "He took himself to a furrier in some palazzo and paid hand over fist for the thing."

  "Oh," Emily could not help the sad sigh which escaped her.

  "You're disappointed?" Hemsworth raised an eyebrow, "If it makes you feel any better, he would have done all those things, if he'd had to. A man in love will do almost anything for the woman who holds his heart."

  Hemsworth held her gaze as he finished speaking and the look in his eyes—a dark, dangerous look—left Emily feeling awfully flustered. She could feel her colour rise and her heart beat a giddy tattoo within her chest.

  He is a practised rake, she chided herself, as she slipped away. Flirting to the duke was as natural an act as breathing was for everyone else; she must not read anything into it.

  Though, despite her own protestations, Emily felt a thrill of something she had never felt before and she allowed herself a moment to revel in it, before she raced back to the school room.

  An afternoon spent conjugating French verbs with the ch
ildren did little to distract her from her thoughts and Emily was quite relieved when Sally came to fetch the children for their dinner.

  "Is Lord Dunstable feeling alright?" the nursery-maid asked, with a worried glance at James, "Sometimes he gets wretchedly ill after a meal and I'm afraid the food at luncheon with His Grace was far richer than what he would have had up here."

  "He seems perfectly fine to me," Emily said, with a glance to James. The young lad was rolling on the floor with laughter, near apoplectic with mirth as his sister tickled him.

  "I'll keep a close eye on him anyway," Sally said firmly, ushering the children out the door.

  Emily frowned at the girl's concern; she did recall that Cressida had said something about James being ill when they had first arrived, but she had clean forgot about it. She hurried from the school-room to her own bedchamber to freshen up, then made her way downstairs to dinner, determined to find out all from Mrs Ilford.

  Dinner, a hearty cottage pie, served with early spring greens from the garden, was taken in a small room off the kitchen. The other servants ate at the long wooden table in the kitchen, but the higher-ups—as Mr Brown, the butler, had told her—ate alone.

  "More cabbage, Mr Harley?" Mrs Ilford questioned, as she placed a mountainous plate of food before the valet. Mr Brown, whose own plate was piled considerably less high, frowned at the housekeeper's fussing.

  "I couldn't possibly," Harley replied politely, "You've given me enough to feed a small army."

  "Aye, she has," Mr Brown grumbled, "While some of us have not fared quite so well as you."

  "Now, Mr Brown," Mrs Ilford chided, her soft cheeks flushing pink, "You know how big meals upset you so, and I am nothing if not a slave to your digestion."

  The butler made a sound halfway between a grunt and a cough, before he continued eating—but not without a territorial glare to poor Mr Harley.

  "Speaking of digestion," Emily said, as the conversation lulled, "I was speaking with Sally, and she told me that young Lord Dunstable suffered quite badly with stomach maladies, when he first arrived."

  "Aye, he did," Mrs Ilford frowned darkly, "I had two of the nursery maids down here, accusing me of all sorts. I said to them, so I did; If you think my cooking is what's making Lord Dunstable ill, then why isn't his sister sick too? They ate the same meals, but only the little lord took poorly after them."

  "Was he very sick?" Emily asked; she could not imagine the nursery maids taking on the fearsome Mrs Ilford unless the boy had been very ill.

  "Oh, aye," Mrs Ilford nodded, "We had to call in Dr Wedgewood. He said, that if he didn't know us better, he'd think the poor wee mite had been poisoned with arsenic."

  Poisoned? Goodness, that was quite an outrageous statement for a doctor to make.

  "I know," Mrs Ilford said, taking Emily's look of shock for one of outrage on the housekeeper's behalf, "Imagine him thinking me foolish enough to put a bottle of arsenic beside the pepper. I soon told him where to go, believe me."

  Emily did believe the housekeeper, for Mrs Ilford had metamorphosed from a perfectly pleasant middle-aged woman into a fearsome battle-axe before her eyes.

  The conversation stalled completely after that, and it was only when Mr Harley effusively praised the cottage pie, that Mrs Ilford returned to her cheerful self.

  Emily returned to her room, later that evening, to ponder all that she had learned. There was something rather suspicious about James' attacks of illness. Mrs Ilford had inadvertently pointed out the crux of the matter during her grumbles; why had only James taken ill and not Cressida? If the doctor suspected that it was something in the boy's food which had made him ill, then his sister would have been affected to.

  It rather felt, Emily thought with a gulp, that something sinister had occurred. But who would want to poison a little boy? And more importantly why?

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  8

  The next day, Rob spent the morning inspecting his lands, with his land-agent, Mr Hawkins. His mind should have been on tillage yields, crop rotations, and ditch drainage, but his thoughts insisted on drifting toward one thing—Miss Smith.

  A fit of jealousy, more suited to a child than a duke, had inspired Rob to invite the children to dine with him yesterday. He had wanted the brief satisfaction of knowing that he too had broken bread with the delectable Miss Smith, but instead, he had got something he had not imagined.

  A sense of peace and fulfilment.

  Speaking with Cressida and James about their parents had been like a balm to his aching soul. He had not realised what being a guardian truly entailed, until yesterday. He was not just the person who was charged with ensuring that the children were fed and clothed, he was the curator of memories of their parents.

  Whilst recounting tales of his own boyhood with Michael, Rob had felt his grief lift substantially. It was good for both he and the children to talk about and remember the late Viscount and Viscountess Blakefield, and Rob wondered why on earth he had tried so hard to wallow in his sorrow in lonely London. He would, he decided, share all his tales of Michael with the children. Though actually, he thought with a frown, some would have to wait until the children were older, and even then, a lot would have to be shared with only James.

  He grinned a little, recalling some of the escapades that he and Michael had been involved in during their years at Oxford. Their debauchery had only descended further upon their arrival in London—young bucks with fortunes at their disposal—and Rob had assumed that they would spend the rest of their days as the ton's most notorious hellions.

  Michael of course, had deviated from Rob's plan, and happily made himself a tenant for life upon meeting Sofia, but Rob had assumed that he would never fall so far from his chosen path.

  Now, however...

  He found his mind drifting back to yesterday's luncheon, when he had watched Miss Smith behave so gently with the children. Her unselfconscious manner and natural, motherly instincts had stirred a rather foreign feeling within him. It was only later, as he had tossed and turned in his bed, that he had realised what that feeling was: broodiness.

  The shock of this had led him to tread downstairs, clad only in his night shirt and banyan, to the library, where he had poured himself a rather large glass of brandy.

  He was not the type of man to have matrimonial inclinations, let alone to feel stirred by the idea of watching a woman tend to his offspring. An unbidden image of a small, dark haired boy—not unlike himself—seated upon Miss Smith's lap had flashed across Rob's mind's eye, and he had swiftly poured himself another drink, to quell the desire within him.

  Once he had near finished the bottle of brandy, he had stumbled back to bed, and awoken determined to put Miss Smith from his mind.

  He had thought that a day out riding the land, and not cooped up inside playing family with the governess, would clear his mind. However, as mid-afternoon arrived and his stomach growled with hunger, Rob rather felt that he would prefer to be at the dining table, laughing and joking with Miss Smith and the children.

  "That's enough, I think, for today, Mr Hawkins," Rob said, as they left one of his tenant's cottages, the roof of which was in dire need of repair.

  "Yes, your Grace. Thank you, your Grace," Mr Hawkins duly parroted, doffing his cap to the duke, before turning his steed toward home. Rob would have made the journey back to Hemsworth House, but his stomach rumbled loudly again and he decided to make for the village of Dottington, which was closer.

  The Dog and Duck, complete with eponymous mongrel asleep outside the door, was the best pub in Dottington. That there were no other contenders to the title within the sleepy village was neither here nor there, for Robert could not imagine that any other establishment could match the fine ale and warm welcome provided by The Duck.

  "Your Grace," Marian Hooper, proprietress of the pub and leading lady of many of Rob's fantasies when he was a young lad, greeted him with a friendly smile as he entered.

  Time had been very kind to Maria
n, Rob observed, as he offered her a smile of his own. Her red locks were pinned back from her face, which gave no hint of her fifty-odd years and her bosom, Rob blushed a little, was still as ample as it had been when he and Michael had so admired it, many moons ago.

  "Glass of ale and a leg of mutton," Rob said, leaning against the bar and surveying the other patrons. It was, he noted, rather empty, though given the time of day, that was no surprise. The only other customer, an elderly man, sat in the corner by the fireplace, nursing a pint of ale. Marion chattered easily to him about the village, as she poured his drink, before disappearing to warm a leg of mutton for him.

  "I'll just be a minute, your Grace," she called, as she bustled away to the kitchen.

  "Eh," the lone man by the fireplace looked up, "Is that the duke?"

  Even from halfway across the room, Rob could tell that the man was deep in his cups. He blinked against the dim light, swaying in his seat, before rising onto unsteady feet and making his way over to Rob.

  "Name's Christopher Gallant, your Grace," the man said, finishing his sentence with a slight hiccup, "I was the driver for Lord Dunstable, before..."

  Gallant could not finish his sentence, though it had nothing to do with drink. The old man blinked back tears, before offering Rob an apologetic, watery smile.

  "Excuse me, your Grace," he said with a sniff, "It's just I've worked at Blakefield since I was a wee lad and a'fore I drove for Lord Dunstable, I drove for his father. I watched him grow from a boy to a man, and now he's gone, and it's all my fault."

  To Rob's discomfort, Gallant broke down into great, heaving sobs, which wracked his thin body. Rob waited, making what he hoped were comforting sounds, for the man to gather himself together before he replied.

  "Do not blame yourself," Rob said, reaching out to offer Gallant a hearty slap upon the shoulder, "It was an accident, there was nothing you could have done to prevent it."

  He knew that his words probably sounded hollow and offered little comfort to the man's guilty conscience, but he meant them sincerely. It was not this man's fault that the carriage had lost its wheel on the steep descent from Blakefield House and blaming himself would not do anyone any good.