The Lady's Deception

by Susanna Craig

  A good barrister was never speechless. Paris was an excellent barrister. His lips parted automatically to form a reply.

  When none came, he instead gave a sharp nod—Lord, but if his head meant to split in two, he wished it would just get on with the job—and left the room.

  Most of the first floor was taken up by a drawing room that spanned the house from front to back and in which the family did the greater part of both its working and its playing. At the rear of the room stood his father’s desk, surrounded by bookcases and faded botanical prints, some sketched by Erica when she was a girl. Occasionally, his father met with clients in that room. In theory, the half containing his desk could be partitioned from the rest of the space by a pair of folding doors that Paris had never in his life seen closed.

  If he had not imagined that time and disuse had rendered them immobile, he would have shut them now, though he could not say whether he hoped to close himself in or to close the world out.

  In any case, he held no illusions that mere doors would have kept him free of Molly, who once more entered without knocking, this time carrying a laden breakfast tray. Not waiting for instruction, she deposited the tray on his father’s desk and set about pouring steaming coffee. He took the cup from her with a nod that quickly transformed into a grimace.

  “Still got a head like a bear, Mr. Paris? Well, eat up,” she advised. “It’ll take the edge off.”

  Warily, he eyed the contents of the tray: fried eggs, oatmeal, and a dish of what he rather hoped was stewed fruit and not something worse. His stomach quickly joined his head in its protest. With a flick of his free hand, he waved the food away. “They have indeed made a schoolroom in the attic,” he said after swallowing some coffee. “Moved everything that wasn’t nailed down. That was the racket we heard.”

  She hoisted the tray to her hip. “Must’ve churned up a fair bit of dust too.”

  He could not entirely contain the twitch of amusement that rose to his lips as he recalled Miss Gorse’s explosive sneeze. “Indeed.”

  Molly sighed, presumably at the unwelcome addition to her workload. “May a body ask why?”

  “The new governess says it isn’t proper for children to have lessons in a drawing room.” He gestured about himself with the cup as he spoke.

  Dark liquid nearly sloshed over the rim but was ultimately kept within its proper bounds by the force of the housemaid’s glare. “I should think that’d be for you to say.”

  He almost nodded in agreement, then thought better of it, for the sake of both his head and his pride. He shrugged instead. “What do I know of educating young girls? I’ve given her full authority in the matter.” Or more accurately, he’d abdicated his own.

  Molly turned to leave. “Well, a bit o’ peace’ll be welcome enough, I suppose,” she said. “What will you do with yourself now, Mr. Paris?”

  “Work.”

  She paused to cast a glance over her shoulder, half scold, half worry.

  Clever and quick, Paris had been born to the practice of the law. Benefitted in equal measure by his father’s reputation and his own savvy, he had never lacked for important cases once he’d been called to the bar. Whenever the atmosphere of the courtroom had grown stale, he had let himself imagine the day he might be elected to the Irish Parliament. Then rumors of its dissolution had begun to swirl. Just a few months earlier, the Irish Bar had passed a resolution against legislation intended to join this once proud kingdom to its enemy.

  But by then, Paris no longer cared. Since the rebellion he’d found himself more and more drawn to the sort of work he once would have considered beneath him, defending clients no other barrister would touch. Devastatingly straightforward cases, they’d given him ample time to reflect on his mistakes. So many mistakes. So many cases. And so rarely was justice served.

  The law, his great passion, had become his penance. Some days, his punishment.

  A punishment he knew he deserved.

  The work was never-ending. Sometimes, he suspected that his parents had contrived to leave Daphne and Bell behind to give him some other occupation. A distraction. His mother in particular cherished the hope that he would begin to yearn for family ties. Love and marriage. Children of his own.

  Paris, however, knew better than to dream such dreams. Just as he knew that his sisters were far better off under someone else’s tutelage and care. Even the sort of governess who seemed more accustomed to giving orders than taking them.

  “Did Miss Gorse happen to mention where she last was employed?” he asked.

  “Not a word of it to me, sir,” Molly replied as she crossed the threshold.

  Nor to him. She’d walked a long way yesterday, that could not be denied. He recalled the sharp contrast between the condition of her clothing and its quality. Not exactly well-suited to the schoolroom, and far better than he would have imagined a governess could afford. Where were the rest of Miss Gorse’s things? Why had she walked so far? Had something driven her from her previous post, and if so, what?

  The steady throb in his temples threatened to drown out those questions, despite their importance. He took another fortifying gulp of coffee and resolved to ask them as soon as she came downstairs. Yes, he trusted Mrs. Fitzhugh’s judgment; her employment agency had come highly recommended. But it never hurt to be thorough. Miss Gorse was, after all, quite young.

  Not at all what he had been expecting.

  Surely he could spare a few moments to look in on the schoolroom now and again. Observe the new governess at work.

  For his sisters’ sake. Of course.

  Chapter 5

  When Rosamund had responded to Mr. Burke’s peremptory summons by naming the hour she would be willing to meet, she had been thinking only of a way to gain time, acting instinctively to avoid a confrontation, or worse, a dismissal. Until she had seen his expression, the sardonic arch to one brow, she had not fully considered how such a retort might be received from a…well, a servant, she supposed. Or as good as.

  She had also neglected to consider the problem posed by the lack of a clock.

  Well, there was a clock. An ormolu mantel clock shaped like a bird nesting in some otherworldly plant. Broken, like so many other things that had been stuffed into the attic and forgotten for years. Why couldn’t Mr. Burke have forgotten about her, too?

  For a moment, she had actually let herself hope that the man had drunk enough last night to make remembering impossible. Though of course if he had, he surely would have stumbled when carrying her up the stairs, and then they would have ended up on the floor, dazed and breathless, their limbs tangled together…

  “Do you think my brother handsome, miss?”

  “I beg your pardon?” She shot a look at Bell, but could not bring herself to meet the girl’s gaze. She knew she’d been caught staring, once again, at the spot where he had stood. When he had appeared in the doorway, dark eyes narrowed, dark hair mussed, dark beard unshaven, she certainly would not have taken him for a barrister. A highwayman, perhaps.

  “All the ladies seem to,” Daphne said. “Some of them even go to the public trials and sit in the gallery, just to ogle him in that silly wig. Can you imagine anything more dull?”

  Rosamund reminded herself that her sole interest in Mr. Burke was his legal expertise. Her only concern was freeing herself from her guardian’s authority. “I’m sure his cases are fascinating,” she insisted, not quite sure whether she was defending him or the folly of her own sex. In any case, neither girl looked persuaded by the argument.

  “Maybe.” Daphne shrugged. “Anyway, that was mostly before the fighting.”

  Rosamund knew very little about what had transpired in Dublin last spring, beyond the London papers’ staunch reassurances that the Irish rebels had been easily routed and a French invasion thwarted. But yesterday’s walk through the compact city had made one thing clear: the upheaval would have
been felt here universally.

  “Before he joined the Knighted Irishmen,” Bell clarified.

  “U-nited,” corrected Daphne, annoyed. She was clearly on the verge of appending the usual eejit, then realized what she’d admitted and slapped her hand over her mouth instead.

  Rosamund only narrowly stopped herself from mirroring the gesture. Paris Burke was a member of the United Irishmen? But…but they were radicals. Traitors. Why, if that was true, he ought by rights to be in prison. Or…or dead.

  “Everything changed because everyone left,” Daphne explained flatly, glossing over her misstep. “First Cami, then Erica. Now Galen’s gone to Oxford. And I know it’s only right that Mama and Papa wanted to visit all of them, but…”

  Rosamund heard worry in Daphne’s voice, more than petulance. “You have one sibling still here.” Odd reassurance from one who knew, better than most, the woes that might befall a girl left alone in the care of her brother. She had no means to measure the strength of the Burke siblings’ bond except by the weakness of her own. Did Mr. Burke treat his sisters poorly? She would not exactly call his behavior toward them warm or loving. Neither had she observed any signs of fear in Daphne and Bell. Then again, even she had not always been afraid…

  Daphne shrugged. “Sort of. He’s different now. Too busy.”

  “Too angry,” her younger sister interjected in a hesitant whisper.

  “In any case, he’s made it clear he didn’t want to be stuck with us.” A challenge flashed in Daphne’s eyes, though it did not entirely mask her hurt. “That’s why he hired you.”

  Rosamund let her gaze wander to the window, streaked with grime like everything else. He hadn’t hired her. She hadn’t the faintest notion what she was about. And the girls—

  Wait. Was that a clock? On the face of some building in the distance? She reached up to clean a circle on the glass. Yes. Yes, it was. With narrowed eyes she could just make out the time: a quarter of ten. She wiped once more, then realized she was using Mr. Burke’s handkerchief to polish the window. The once-pristine linen was streaked with black.

  Balling the handkerchief in her hand, she turned back to her charges and mustered something she hoped would pass for a cheering smile. “Then we’d best get back to work.”

  When an hour and a half had gone by according to the distant clock, whose hands seemed to move not at all for stretches, then lurched forward alarmingly, she dismissed the girls to their luncheon. One floor below, she found the room where she had slept and slipped inside to wash her face and hands and to comb her hair. She longed to change into a fresh dress, but she hesitated to make free with the contents of the wardrobe without permission from someone other than Daphne and Bell. She could not help having to borrow one dress. Her own was filthy, perhaps beyond repair. But a change of clothes at midday would surely be considered lavish for a governess.

  With light, uncertain steps she descended to the first floor. The girls had shown her the drawing room that morning and explained how they often studied their lessons there while their father read, their mother sewed, or their eldest sister wrote. Sometimes all together. Rosamund had looked around the room—the largest in the house, surely, but not overlarge nonetheless—and had foreseen how quickly all would come to grief if she were expected to teach while their brother sat in judgment just a few feet away. So she had wondered aloud whether some other space mightn’t serve better as a schoolroom.

  In hindsight, perhaps, she had been rather foolish to leap on the girls’ suggestion of using the attic. She had an instinct for good hiding places, as it turned out. But she had a great deal to learn about being a governess.

  The door to the drawing room was ajar now, but not enough that she might peer inside. No footman waited to announce her. In fact, she’d seen no servants other than Molly and the cook. Rosamund raised one hand to knock, hesitated, and then heard the sound of a longcase clock in the room chiming the half hour. She could not, would not be late. Raising one arm, she rapped her knuckles twice on the door and waited.

  No one opened the door. No one called out, “Come in.” When she had counted to twenty, she knocked again, this time hard enough that the door swung inward a few inches more, giving her a view of the front half of the room: a pair of tall windows facing the street, groupings of comfortable furniture, a spinet. Cautiously, she pushed the door further and stepped across the threshold.

  “I’ll be with you in a minute.”

  Paris Burke’s voice, soft yet forceful, came from her left. She turned to face him, but he remained bent over some papers spread across a large desk, his pen moving swiftly while the fingers of his other hand traced down and across the spread pages of a book. This work occupied him fully for several moments more, and she had no choice but to wait. Punishment, she supposed, for her pert reply in the attic.

  Her gaze roamed over the rest of the room’s furnishings, the overstuffed bookcases, the amateur artwork adorning the walls. The Burkes seemed to be reasonably well-off; the room was neat and tastefully fitted up. Still, it looked quite as one might expect a room regularly occupied by a half-dozen members of the family might look. Here and there she spied a scuff mark in the wallpaper, a worn spot in the upholstery. Blemishes that would never have been permitted in the house where she had grown up.

  Well, no, that wasn’t entirely true. She had the vaguest sense that things might have been different when Papa was alive. Less strict. Happier.

  Doubt scuttled the memory. If it was a memory. Charles would have told her it was a figment of her imagination. Would have explained that things were now as they had always been, that he had ordered everything just as their father would have wanted it done.

  The walls and chairs and carpet of the drawing room were insufficient to hold her attention for long. Her gaze persisted in wandering back to Mr. Burke, though she would not allow herself to stare. She had called him a highwayman in her thoughts, and given what his sisters had revealed, perhaps she hadn’t been far off the mark. A United Irishman. A dangerous rebel against the Crown.

  Well, she’d hoped to find someone ruthless, hadn’t she?

  When he had visited the schoolroom, he had been fully dressed, but now he sat, most shockingly, in his shirtsleeves; his cravat had worked loose and he had cast his coat over the back of another chair. Though he had not looked up from his work, she could see enough of his face in profile to realize he still had not shaved. The strange intimacy of that scruff of beard, ink black like his hair, startled her almost more than his state of undress. As if she were peeping at a man just roused from his bed.

  The gentlemen of her acquaintance did not appear so in front of ladies. Charles would have insisted that Mr. Burke was no gentleman. But recent events had not exactly increased her faith in her brother’s opinion.

  With a rough noise in his throat, a sort of exasperated-sounding laugh, Mr. Burke shoved the book away and tossed his pen onto a tray, then ran one hand through his already disordered hair. Unruly waves fell over his brow and brushed his collar, and her first prim thought was that he ought to visit a barber and have it tamed.

  So why did her fingertips tingle with the unexpected desire to smooth one silky blue-black wave from his dark eyes?

  Pushing back from the desk, he came to his feet and fixed her with an assessing look. “Do sit down, Miss Gorse.” With one hand he snatched his coat from the nearby chair, while motioning her toward it with the other.

  She wanted to decline. It would mean giving up some of the aloof dignity that a standing posture conveyed. It would mean moving nearer to him. But something about his voice made him difficult to refuse. She suspected he lost very few cases.

  As he shrugged into his coat, she seated herself facing him, her spine rigid, not touching the back of the chair. Though he was of average height and slender build, Mr. Burke had the presence of a much larger man. He reminded her of an actor who had once brought his
traveling troupe to perform at Tavisham Manor when she was fourteen. Charles, who had happened to be visiting at the time, had sent him away and tried to persuade her she wanted nothing to do with such amateur spectacles. But even a glimpse of the man through the drawing room windows had been riveting.

  She could not exactly blame the women of Dublin for haunting courtrooms to catch a glimpse of the handsome barrister.

  Tugging a sleeve into place, he seated himself at the desk again. “Have you a great deal of experience with children, Miss Gorse?”

  No pleasantries. No pretense at conversation. And how was she to answer such a direct attack? For a moment, she could only watch as he idly straightened the papers on the desk with the fingers of one hand. She could not meet his eye. But the longer she hesitated, the more damning the truth would be. “No, sir.”

  “Any experience?” He spoke with the assurance of a man who was accustomed to asking questions and having them answered.

  She swallowed. “In my—in my last, ah, situation, there were two children. A boy and a girl. Of an age with your sisters.” Shading the truth, people called it. God forgive her.

  “And why did you leave that post?”

  “I, ah—”

  “Were you dismissed?”

  “I was not.” She jerked her chin up and met his gaze at last. His eyes were indeed black—or such dark brown as to make no difference. But not cold, as she had imagined them from a distance. Sharp. Lively. And every bit as compelling as the rest of him. “I left. The children’s father seemed to imagine that I—” Heat rose in her cheeks and she let her eyes drift from his face again. “That he was entitled to certain liberties.”

  For a moment, Mr. Burke sat perfectly still, perfectly silent. Then—

  “His name, Miss Gorse?”

  She did not think he meant to inquire after a reference. “The gentleman in question is a person with a great deal of power, sir. I cannot—”