The Governess Was Wanton

by Julia Kelly

  They lay like that, tangled together, their bodies shimmering with sweat and hearts pounding as one, for a long time.

  Asten’s entire adult life had been methodical and planned. Rarely was he shocked by anything that happened around him.

  Except now a woman lay in his arms.

  No. Not a woman. The woman.

  He’d thought to distract himself from her temptations by chasing after the mysterious woman in the garden, but the moment he kissed Mary Woodward he understood that night at the masque had been a fantasy keeping him from the inevitability of falling under the influence of this woman’s charms. Mary was here and now, all solid, earthy woman—beauty and flaws, flesh and blood.

  He should have known the first time she quirked an eyebrow at him and deftly chided him for being late for their appointment that he wouldn’t be able to resist her. He’d bottled up all of his desires, thinking they would keep him safe from becoming the man his father had been. What he hadn’t understood was this was more than the pure lust he’d watched his father succumb to time and again. What he felt was more powerful than simple, covetous desire. He wanted all of her—her impertinent wit, her easy confidence, her steadfast loyalty. He’d given up on ever finding such a fantasy of a woman, and yet nothing was more real than the play of his hands over the curve of her waist or the little gasp of surprise that deepened into a moan of pleasure when he plunged into her.

  Now they lay in bed, Asten running his fingers along the soft length of her arm as their breath slowed. She had her head on his chest, her glorious hair spread out down her back. Skin touched skin. All felt right. She felt right.

  He’d resisted looking for another wife for years even though he knew it was his duty as an earl to secure an heir—cousin-in-waiting be damned. After Lucinda, even thinking about marriage felt like inviting misery back into his home. With Mary, however, he could see the glimmers of a future. The edges were still fuzzy, as though he were looking through a stereoscope that wasn’t quite in focus, but it was there. He’d chosen a life of loneliness for a long time, but he could change his mind—and would—for the woman he trusted, wanted, and loved.

  Asten’s eyes snapped open as realization dawned on him. He was in love with his daughter’s governess.

  Except she was so much more than just a governess. In the short weeks that she’d been in his home, she’d taken charge and put his life back in order with him hardly noticing. She’d brought him and his daughter closer and showed him the damage that Lady Laughlin had tried to do to Eleanora. She’d opened his eyes and opened his heart. She’d made him see that he—a man of thirty-eight—was in love for the very first time.

  He loved her, and he would marry her if she’d have him.

  He felt her stir against his chest as his decision bloomed through him like the breaking dawn. Tomorrow he would ask her—no doubt having to convince her that it wasn’t in jest. If he knew Mary, she’d protest that the idea was insanity. She was far too practical for flights of fancy, and he could be almost certain that it had never crossed her mind that he might fall for her. He’d have to convince her that he was earnest because the alternative was losing her, and he didn’t think he could survive that.

  That night, however, he wanted a few uninterrupted hours in his bed when she was just his.

  “You dozed off for a moment,” he murmured when she shifted to look up his body.

  “I can’t imagine why,” she said with a wry smile.

  He searched her face, looking for any sign that she felt the monumental, earth-moving shift that he’d just experienced, but as always her expression was guarded. She could be so careful, this woman he loved. He’d spend a lifetime showing her that she didn’t have to be cautious any longer.

  “Will you stay?” he asked as he dropped a kiss to her forehead.

  She shifted to her elbow to look up at him, her full lips open in an unasked question. He traced the line of her jaw with the tip of his finger, happy just to be able to touch her now. What he wouldn’t give up to make sure he could touch her like that every day for the rest of his life.

  “Please stay,” he said.

  She paused before giving a little nod. “Just for a little while. You don’t want to frighten the scullery maid when she comes in to light the fire.”

  He leaned down to kiss her, her lips opening easily.

  “I’ll wake you before then,” he said as he pulled back and settled her against him. He watched her close her eyes, her hand on his chest, fingers splayed, grounding him.

  This was what he wanted, he thought as he drifted off. If only he could hold on to this moment for the rest of his life, he’d be a happy man.

  Mary slipped out from between the covers, careful not to disturb Eric while he slept. Even in the dim moonlight coming through a crack in the heavy velvet curtains, she could make out the handsome planes of his face and the soft curve of his smile. He looked so peaceful, so perfect, and she was about to walk away from him.

  Her heart pounded as she forced herself to slip on her dressing gown. Putting on her night rail would take up too much time and risk waking him. She needed to leave his room this instant, because if she didn’t, she might never work up the will to leave again.

  Carefully, she let herself out and closed the door behind her with a quiet click. Taking the servants’ stairs, she stole up to her own bedroom, shutting the door behind her with as much resolution as she could muster. Then she sagged against it.

  “What have I done?” she asked the empty room.

  She was a fool. For all of her speeches to herself about how she would never overstep the boundaries of her position, she had. She’d broken her own rules and now she was going to have to pay the consequences.

  The affair stopped now. They wouldn’t have an understanding or an arrangement. Just as she knew that she wasn’t ever going to be any man’s wife, she wasn’t going to be any man’s mistress either. Not even a man she wanted with such force that it almost laid her flat.

  But just as she couldn’t be with Eric, she also couldn’t trust herself to stay away. She had to leave. Lord Blakeney’s courtship of Lady Eleanora seemed secure, and if the man had any intelligence at all, he’d ask for the girl’s hand in a matter of days rather than weeks. Her charge would be married by the end of the season. Mary wasn’t needed any longer. It was time for her to move on or else she’d be left behind, forced out, forgotten.

  It didn’t take her long to pull her small trunk from under her bed and her valise from the top shelf of the cabinet and fill them. She stopped only a couple of times to tilt her head back and fight the tears that threatened. As a rule, Mary didn’t cry, and she wouldn’t start now. But no matter how she tried to stomp them down, the waves of emotion kept coming. Eric had made her feel special, different, loved. It had been too long since she believed anyone capable of loving her. The scars of her own mother’s abandonment were too deep. Eric was an earl. One day he would decide he needed a legitimate heir. He would marry again, and Mary would be set aside. Giving him up for another woman—watching him walk away—would rend her heart in two. That was why she must leave now before he could hurt her.

  And so she snapped the clasps closed on her trunk and her case and made her way downstairs. When she reached the first floor of the servants’ staircase, Chaucer began to bark on the floor above her. Mary froze until the pup settled down again. Breathing a sigh of relief, she made her way to the silent kitchen and unlatched the door, hoping Warthing would forgive her for her leaving the house unsecured for a few hours.

  She’d already managed to get her trunk out into the mews when a sound stopped her. She whirled around and saw her charge standing in the entrance to the kitchen in her night rail, watching her with open curiosity.

  “Lady Eleanora, what are you doing awake?” she asked, her heart pounding.

  “I woke an hour ago and have been unable to f
all asleep again. I was reading in bed when Chaucer barked, so I thought I’d investigate,” Lady Eleanora said. “Are you making a quick getaway?”

  Mary straightened, more than aware that even if she were to drop her things and run, she wouldn’t get far in her long skirt and thin boots. “Isn’t that what all getaways should be?”

  The young woman cocked her head to the side. “It depends on what you’re escaping from. Have I done something wrong?”

  The tears threatened to well up again and she lurched forward to grasp Lady Eleanora’s hands. “Not at all. This has nothing to do with you, I promise.”

  “Then why would you leave? Everything’s been so much better with you here.”

  The decision to leave Eric had been hard enough. Leaving his daughter, whom she’d come to love over their short weeks together, only made it sting more.

  “The time has come,” Mary said. “You’re already so much the young lady you’re meant to be.”

  Lady Eleanora fixed her with her wide, green eyes that mirrored her father’s. “But how am I to do this without you?”

  “You’re more than capable of navigating your season. You didn’t really need me at the masque. You captured Lord Blakeney’s attention all on your own, and I believe he’s quite smitten with you. You’re clever and kind, and he’d be a dolt to let you go.”

  Lady Eleanora dipped her head. “It isn’t Lord Blakeney I worry about. It’s us.”

  “Us?” she asked.

  “You don’t know what this house was like before you came. It was quiet all the time. My father thinks that we were close, but we’ve barely seen each other since I’ve been old enough to be out of short dresses. Outside of our lessons, he spent all of his days in Parliament because I was a grown girl. And then Lady Laughlin came along and everything became so much worse. Having you in the house made him wake up.”

  Mary’s chest constricted. Her body and heart longed to stay, but her mind knew she couldn’t. She must leave now or risk winding up abandoned once again.

  “I’m so sorry,” she whispered as she started to turn.

  “At least tell me where you’re going!”

  Lady Eleanora’s request made her stop. She shouldn’t. The less her charge knew the better.

  “I would like to write you if there’s any news—” Lady Eleanora blushed. “Any news about Lord Blakeney.”

  Her better judgment fell away. “I’m going to Chelsea to the home of my friends Dr. and Mrs. Fellows. They’ll take me in until I find another position.”

  This time it was her charge’s turn to squeeze her hand. “You’ve been very kind to me, Miss Woodward. I wish you luck.”

  Lady Eleanora stepped back over the threshold and shut the kitchen door, leaving Mary in the misting early morning. Refusing to look back, she gripped her valise and went to the street to hail a cab. The driver hopped down and fetched her trunk before helping her in and settling her luggage at her feet.

  “Number 23 Hans Crescent, please,” she said to the driver.

  As they rumbled off, she settled against the tufted leather seat, wrapping her wool coat a little tighter around herself. She wasn’t sure whether it was the crisp air or what she’d just done that chilled her more. Either way, she couldn’t stop her body from trembling during the short ride from Belgravia to Chelsea.

  When the cab stopped at Hans Crescent, the driver helped her unload her things. As the cab rumbled off, Mary knocked hard on the door of No. 23, regretting only that she had to wake the home’s residents. It took just two rounds of knocking before she heard the scrape of the lock’s tumblers and the door swung open.

  Edward Fellows stood there, bleary-eyed in his dressing gown and slippers. He took one look at her, and his weariness seemed to morph into worry. “Mary, what’s wrong?”

  “Why are you opening your own door?” she asked, not prepared for the sight of her friend yet.

  “I couldn’t sleep so I was writing in my surgery. Are you well?”

  “I’ve—” Finally, the tears began to fall.

  He hurried her inside, pulling her luggage in after her. With the firm hand of a man used to comforting patients in their most desperate times, he led her through to the kitchen where his cook was already bustling around, baking bread and readying the house for the day.

  “Sit here and warm up by the fire,” he directed her. “I’ll go get Elizabeth.”

  Mary did as she was told, tears still rolling down her face.

  After a moment, the cook slid a cup of tea across the table to her. “Here you are, miss. Tea makes everything better.”

  She gave a choked half laugh. How could a cup of tea make this better? She’d fallen in love with her employer. She’d willingly gone to his bed, asking him to kiss her and encouraging him to love her. Then she’d left because, of the two futures she could see for herself, this was the less painful. But that didn’t mean it was going to be easy.

  But she was an Englishwoman through and through and she accepted the cup of tea because, in truth, it couldn’t make things worse.

  She was just raising it to her lips for her first sip when Elizabeth swept into the kitchen. Her friend—wearing only a plain blue dress—took one look at her and gathered her into a hug.

  “What happened?” Elizabeth asked.

  The tears began with renewed strength. “I love him.”

  “Oh, my dearest,” her friend said, putting her hand on Mary’s head as she held her to her breast like a sick child.

  “I love him, and I left him,” she sobbed. “I know that doesn’t make any sense.”

  “It makes perfect sense,” said Elizabeth. “Now why don’t you tell me what happened from the beginning?”

  Chapter Eleven

  Asten couldn’t stop fidgeting as he sat in his library, a book abandoned next to him on the worn leather sofa. First it was his leg that wouldn’t stop bouncing. When he controlled that, his fingers began drumming on the sofa’s arm. Catching himself again, he stretched and scrubbed a hand over his face. It was time for him to admit that he was waiting with the worst sort of impatience for the woman who had altered his world’s axis to appear.

  He’d woken up reaching for Mary in the warm fog of the morning, but the other side of his bed had been cold. He’d bolted up, only just stopping himself from throwing off the covers. Of course she wasn’t there. She’d said that she would steal away before the maids arrived. He wouldn’t have cared if they’d seen them in bed—what did a few days really matter if he intended to make her his wife?—but he respected that her position was a delicate one. She would face scrutiny and perhaps even accusations that she’d intentionally seduced him. If anything, it couldn’t be further from the truth. She’d simply been her brilliant self and he’d fallen right there at her feet. Now if she’d just appear he could continue worshipping her.

  He’d just caught himself fiddling with his pocket watch chain when the library door opened. He jumped to his feet, ready to greet Mary with all the joy that threatened to burst from him, but it wasn’t her standing in the doorway. It was his daughter.

  “Hello, Papa,” Eleanora said, gliding into the room with a serenity and sense of purpose she hadn’t shown in months. The change that had come over her in just the few weeks since Mary had joined their home was remarkable, although Mary would no doubt tell him that it had more to do with Eleanora’s own confidence than with anything else. Asten was prepared to keep his own counsel with just a smile to concede that he believed she was being far too modest.

  “Good morning,” he said. “Aren’t you usually in lessons at this time of day?”

  Not much longer if I have anything to say about it. He fully intended to make sure that Mary never had to worry about teaching another day in her life if she didn’t wish to.

  “That’s the thing, Papa. I can’t seem to find Miss Woodward anywhere,” his daughte
r said.

  All of his cheeriness rushed away at once. “What do you mean you can’t find her?”

  She shrugged. “I went up to the schoolroom but she’s not there. It’s unlike Miss Woodward. She’s always so prompt.”

  Not there. The words reverberated through his entire body as he tried to stave off the dread that was now filling him. Mary wouldn’t have shirked her responsibilities. It wasn’t in her nature. Not when she was devoted to his daughter in every way.

  But what if I scared her off?

  “Perhaps she stayed in bed late,” he said, doubting his own words.

  It wasn’t until then that Asten realized his daughter was watching his every move carefully. There was no reason for it, but all at once it was as though she’d been able to look straight into his soul and what she found was disappointing.

  “It’s unlike Miss Woodward to spend the day lazing around,” said Eleanora.

  The memory of Mary spread out on his bed under him, long legs a delicious contrast to the stark white of his linens, flooded his mind. An ache shook his body, and he gripped the arm of his chair to resist the urge to press his hand hard to his heart. She couldn’t be gone. It would be too deep a wound for him to bear if she was.

  “Papa, are you quite all right?” asked Eleanora.

  Before he could answer, the front door bell sounded through the house. Eleanora’s brows rose, and she crossed the library to peer out the window into the street.

  “Who is it?” he asked.

  “Would you like to hazard a guess?” Eleanora asked.

  Only one woman would call this early and elicit that sort of dry, unamused tone from his usually generous daughter. Lady Laughlin.

  Asten’s head pounded. Everything was wrong. Mary was nowhere to be seen, his daughter was once again distant, and the baroness was on his doorstep. He needed to think. He needed to restore the balance in his life before anything else spun out of control, and the fastest way to do that was to find Mary. Everything else was inconsequential.