She broke off when Mr. Burke’s fingers drummed on the stack of papers beneath them. “The ‘gentleman’ in question is no gentleman.” A pause. “What of his wife? Would she not intervene?”
“She is dead.”
He rose and stood before the window at the rear of the room, his hands crossed behind his back. When he spoke again, his voice was gentler. “So you walked away. Quite literally. And after traveling some distance, I gather you found your way to Mrs. Fitzhugh, who sent you to us.”
It was not a question, so she felt safe in making no answer. He had mentioned Mrs. Fitzhugh the night before. The woman must run some sort of employment agency. One word from her and Rosamund’s story would unravel.
He turned back to the desk, opened a drawer, and withdrew a cash box, of the sort from which household expenses were generally paid. Rummaging beneath the blotter, he found a small key and fitted it to the lock on the box. “Under the circumstances, I suppose we ought not to expect your previous employer to forward your trunk,” he said, a wry twist to his lips that might have been either grimace or smile. “And you cannot go on rummaging for castoffs in my sisters’ wardrobe. An advance on your salary is in order, I believe.” Twisting the key with one hand, he opened the lid of the box with the other, then reached inside without looking. “Will that do?” he asked as he set a stack of coins in front of her. Five pounds, at least.
“You are very generous.” She did not reach to take the money until he had moved his hand away, not wanting to reveal how desperate she was. “Thank you, Mr. Burke.”
When he sat down again, both his expression and his posture had softened. No less a performance to produce the answers he wanted, however. He leaned toward her. “Are you certain you’re fully recovered from yesterday’s ordeal, Miss Gorse?”
“Quite.” She blinked away the tears that had sprung to her eyes and folded her hands in her lap, the money carefully contained within one palm. “Did you—did you wish to discuss your sisters’ program of study, Mr. Burke?” Dangerous, no doubt, to invite further questions. But his quiet concern for her, the scrutiny of his dark eyes, was more dangerous still.
She nearly heaved a sigh of relief when he settled back into his chair. “Was it Daphne’s suggestion to make use of the attic, I wonder? Or Bell’s?” His gaze left her face to travel to the far end of the room. “I suppose I haven’t made this place too welcoming of late,” he said, not waiting for her answer.
“Children learn better in an environment free of distractions.” She had no notion if it were true, but it seemed a sensible, governess-like position to take.
One corner of his mouth lifted. Still not a smile. In profile, his features were hard, angular. His eyes remained focused on some distant point. “Perhaps that explains why I was such a poor student.”
A contradiction sprang to her lips, and she pressed them tightly together to contain it. He had never been a poor student. Of that she was certain.
Her mouth was still in that same thin, disapproving line when he suddenly turned his head and looked back at her. He laughed. Rather wryly, to be sure, but nonetheless, a few of the harshest lines disappeared from his face, and his eyes twinkled. “Oh, very good, Miss Gorse. I confess I had my doubts about you. But another such frown and you’ll have me conjugating Latin verbs.”
She dared an answering smile, and his expression shifted again. A fire lit in the depth of his eyes and its warmth spread across his face. She found herself suddenly aware again of his shadowed jaw and the scandalously loose knot of his cravat. “Venisti, vidisti, vicisti,” he murmured, the smile still playing around his mouth.
She came, she saw, she conquered.
Rosamund straightened in her chair—when had she leaned toward him?—and said, “I’m afraid my own accomplishments run in a somewhat narrower vein, Mr. Burke. If you require instruction in Latin, I cannot satisfy you. Instruction for your sisters, I mean,” she added hastily.
He too sat more upright, although the warmth still lingered in his eyes. “French?”
“I—er, yes, of course. As well as the rudiments of both Italian and German.”
Surprise lifted his brow and slid as quickly away. “History? Geography? Mathematics?”
When Rosamund’s mother had died, Charles had hired the granite-faced and silent Mrs. Sloane to be her companion. That woman’s sole redeeming virtue had been her lack of curiosity; no reader herself, she had not thought to forbid Tavisham Manor’s modest library. Rosamund’s chin lifted with a surge of fledgling defiance. “You may examine me if you like.”
He dipped his head, but not before she caught a flare of something in his eyes. “That won’t be necessary.” With restless motions, he began sifting through the papers on his desk. “You may return to your pupils, Miss Gorse. Make of them what you will.” He sounded relieved to be free of the responsibility.
She rose. He did not.
The lack of acknowledgment stung her pride—her foolish, foolish pride. Charles had not eradicated it as thoroughly as he had intended, it would seem. Instead of accepting her dismissal, as a servant would, she laid the fingers of her free hand on the very edge of the desk. “It’s an important case, then?” She nodded toward his papers. “Whatever you’re working on.”
Too important for him to be persuaded to put it aside in favor of her own?
He reached for the book he had closed earlier and began to thumb through it, giving her no opportunity to read his expression. “It was.” The words were edged with bitterness.
When he dipped his pen and said nothing more, she turned and walked to the door. But on the threshold, his voice gave her pause. “You will dine with me. And my sisters,” he added, but not before her pulse had begun to rattle in her veins. Although he was doubtless too absorbed in his work to see her reply, she nodded her agreement. What choice did she have?
Mr. Burke’s changeable nature did not bode well. It was one of the flaws in the Irish national character her brother had warned her about. She recalled the girls’ description of their brother as angry. Over the course of their brief acquaintance, she’d watched him shift from morose to mordant and back again in a flash. He seemed to take no particular pleasure in her company. Why then was he insisting on it?
The answer came before she had taken another step.
“I should be just as happy if you ate with your charges in the schoolroom. But Molly would resent having to carry the trays.” She heard paper rustle, the click of the pen against the ink bottle. “No doubt such matters are ordered differently in other families,” he said. “But you shall have to accustom yourself to our strange Irish ways.”
Chapter 6
Overhearing her huff of—surprise? outrage? perhaps a bit of both—as she left the room, Paris allowed himself the slightest of smiles. Miss Gorse, with her rudimentary Italian and her soft, well-manicured hands, had not been born to be a governess, he felt certain. A countess, perhaps…
Well, and suppose she had? he argued with himself. What of it? Even if her father were an aristocrat, he might have planned poorly and left his daughter at the mercy of the unforgiving marketplace. Many Irish households were eager for the supposed prestige an English governess conveyed, according to Mrs. Fitzhugh. And the world abounded with unscrupulous men waiting to prey on the vulnerable.
If he required proof of what Miss Gorse had told him about her previous post, he had only to think of the hole in her shoe. Did it matter that the shoe itself was an elegant little slipper designed for the sort of lady who never had to walk farther than the distance from the dining room to the drawing room? In some ways, that was the most damning evidence of all, a clear sign that she had fled without forethought, desperate to get away.
Nevertheless, it went against his nature to believe people. Years of courtroom experience had only exacerbated his skepticism. No one was ever entirely honest, and he knew, with the certainty of both a b
orn cynic and a well-trained lawyer, that she had not been entirely honest with him.
He might have dismissed her for it. But weeks of fruitless searching had taught him how difficult it was to find a governess willing to accept a temporary position.
And God knew, even if his parents didn’t, that his sisters deserved better care than he could provide. Daphne and Bell missed their mother and their elder sisters. Without the qualities imbued by those three very different women—Mama’s gentleness, Cami’s stability, Erica’s energy—the whole household suffered.
Besides, everyone had something about themselves they would rather not show to the world, including him. Why should Miss Gorse be an exception? Her blue eyes, clear as a cloudless summer sky, yet somehow opaque, gave the impression she was hiding, however. Hiding deep within herself. So deep that for a moment he had felt certain she was lost and needed help finding the way out…
What a load of fanciful rot! Cami could put it in one of her books. As if one’s eyes revealed such things. As if he were in any way qualified to guide a lost soul.
With a vigorous shake of his head, he forced his attention back to the papers before him, an important case that might have been his, if circumstances had been different. Instead another barrister had taken it to trial and lost in spectacular fashion. Sometimes Paris amused himself—if amusement it could properly be called—with laying out the arguments he would have made. If circumstances had been different.
He could not say how much time had passed when shouted voices pulled his fitful attention from Blackstone. The noise was coming from the small garden behind the house. Pushing away from the desk, he rose and went to the window. A damp, gray morning had slid imperceptibly into a damp, gray afternoon, though it was not raining at the moment. He could only conclude that Miss Gorse’s schedule included exercise at… He tugged his watch from his waistcoat pocket. Three o’clock already?
In any case, the girls and their governess were playing cricket.
Well, playing might be an exaggeration. Miss Gorse was bowling, and the longer he watched, the more convinced he became that she had never even watched the sport before. Bell waved the bat about; there was hardly space in the back garden to swing it properly. Why hadn’t the three of them gone into the large and lovely garden at the center of the square? Though since Daphne appeared to be more interested in coaxing the neighbor’s cat through the wrought-iron fence than she was in fielding, perhaps a narrower compass for their game was best.
In an extraordinary act of sportsmanship, Miss Gorse called out words of encouragement to Bell, then screwed up her face in concentration as she prepared to bowl. Was she actually closing her eyes? Not that it mattered much. Bell almost certainly had her eyes closed waiting for the ball to come her way; Galen had never managed to break her of the habit. The first genuine smile in…oh, months…slipped across his lips as he watched Miss Gorse release the ball. Bell swung the bat wildly, elbows jutted out at fierce angles.
“Brilliant!” he exclaimed under his breath at the unexpected crack of contact. And then—
Strange how everything seemed to freeze: Bell’s and Miss Gorse’s arms upraised in celebration. The ball at the zenith of its arc. Then a rush of noise and motion: the ball’s sharp descent, Daphne’s scream of warning to Miss Gorse, who was oblivious to the danger. He was away from the window before the ball struck her, down the stairs and into the garden before either Bell or Daphne had reached her side.
He had expected to find her collapsed on the ground, in much the same posture as the night before. But she was sitting up, one hand and arm covering half her head, the other hand outstretched to his littlest sister.
“I’m all right, Bell. Truly,” she insisted, though she sounded pained. “I’m so proud of you.”
“Eejit, eejit, eejit,” Daphne was muttering as she came within earshot.
He was on the point of reprimanding her when Miss Gorse said gently but with surprising firmness, “What did I say about calling your sister rude names, Daphne?”
Daphne stopped a few feet away, her face set in a fierce frown. “I wasn’t talking about Bell.”
“Daphne Burke.” The voice that could compel a noisy courtroom to silence only made his sister fold her arms defiantly over her chest. “Go to your room. I’ll deal with you later.”
With a jut of her chin, she flounced away. Bell burst into tears, dropped the bat, and followed her. Ignoring them both, Paris sank to one knee beside Miss Gorse. “How bad is it?”
She shook her head, the slightest of movements, and her free hand turned from welcoming Bell to warding him off. “How could you, Mr. Burke?”
He rocked onto his heels. “How—how could—?” he echoed, bewildered. “What?”
“Could you not see that Daphne was upset? She needed…she needed…comfort. From her brother.” That little speech seemed to require a great deal of effort.
“Comfort?” Clearly, the blow had rattled the woman’s brain. “You’re the one who’s been injured, Miss Gorse.”
“I’m fine,” she repeated, though the words were no more convincing this time. “Besides, Daphne was right.” What he could see of her face was curved into a feeble, self-deprecating smile. “I ought to have been more attentive.”
In his experience with such matters, which was not insignificant, innocent people were far more likely to shoulder blame than guilty ones. Why was she so ready to accept responsibility for an unfortunate accident?
The explanation grew clear when she added—no, begged, “Please, do not punish your sister.”
Did she fear the girls needed protection from him? Evidently, she had not yet discovered that salutary neglect was more his family’s style. Though in his case, it might better be described simply as neglect.
“Surely you are not suggesting that Daphne be allowed to speak to her governess in such a manner?” he said, testing.
Her head dipped lower, hiding her expression entirely. “She spoke without thinking. She was frightened, that’s all.”
“And so—” He bit off the next words. And so was I.
The realization shocked him. Frightened? For Miss Gorse?
Her heavy blond hair had slipped from its pins to caress her swan-like neck. He recognized the base impulse that urged him to gather her body against his, to press his lips to the curve of her throat and capture the wild thrum of her pulse. That impulse had nothing to do with fear.
But still, his heart rattled in his chest. Oh, yes. He was afraid.
“And so was I, Miss Gorse,” he said, when he could be certain the words would come out in his customary mocking tone. “It would be a great inconvenience to have to seek out another governess.”
She twisted her head to fix him with one disbelieving eye. Splat! A cold raindrop pelted her cheek and rolled away like a tear.
“It’s about to come down in earnest,” he predicted. “Allow me to help you to your feet.”
Too late. As he rose, the scattered drops became a heavy shower. Wrapping his hand around her forearm, he lifted as she scrambled to get her feet beneath her. When she proved a trifle unsteady, he gathered his resolve and settled his other arm around her. His hand fitted neatly to the curve of her waist, as it had the night before. Dangerously comfortable. Carefully, he led her toward the house across ground that was already growing muddy and slick. By the time they reached the door, they were soaked. “Molly,” he bellowed as soon as they were inside. “Fetch some towels to Miss Gorse’s room.”
“I can make it from here,” the governess said, reaching out to lay her palm against the stairwell wall to balance herself, since the hand on the bannister side was still clutching her head.
He knew he should let her go.
He did not.
“Forgive me, Miss Gorse,” he said. “But I’d rather you didn’t go tumbling down into the kitchen.”
“You mean,
you’d rather not have to carry me up again.” Her voice was a curious mixture of teasing and embarrassment.
Fighting the instinct of his right hand to pull her closer, he gripped the bannister more firmly with his left instead. “I can think of worse fates,” he said, intending to sound reassuring. But even his voice no longer seemed to be quite within his control. The words left his lips as a seductive murmur.
She made no answer, but once they were inside the room, she slipped from his supportive arm and made her way unaided across the floor. Heavily, she sat down on the bed that had been Cami’s. On the threshold, he hesitated. No desire to leave. No pretext to stay, either.
Well, then, he would invent one. “Will you permit me to look at your injury?” he asked. “I wish to reassure myself you are not seriously harmed.”
She hesitated. Finally, for answer, she removed her hand from her face and let her arm sink slowly into her lap. He came to stand beside her. The room was dim. With fingers he half-expected to tremble with foolish anticipation, he reached up and touched her, the lightest brush along her jaw, urging her to turn toward the comparative brightness of the rain-streaked window. She complied readily. Too readily. He had no chance to relish the petal softness of her skin. No excuse to linger.
Expecting to see the bloom of a black eye, he looked down in surprise at her unmarked face. Seeing his confusion, she reached up with one hand to lift the damp hair away from her brow, revealing a gash at her temple, surrounded by an angry-looking welt.
Stepping to the washstand, he wetted the corner of a towel in the washbasin and returned to dab away a trickle of blood. She winced. Gently, he laid the cool cloth over the wound, then reached for her hand where it lay in her lap. He settled her palm over the cloth, then rested his own hand lightly over hers for a moment.
When the compress was secure, he sank onto his haunches beside the bed in order to meet her eyes. Pain mingled with uncertainty in their blue depths. But her gaze was focused, clear. “Headache?” he asked.
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