Stunned, Lucretia nodded. “Thank you, Your Grace.”
“I must thank you, Miss Brent, for bringing it to my attention. I realize that must not have been easy for you.”
“I love Luce, Sampson,” Henrietta said suddenly. “Please do not send her away.”
A smile quirked his lips for a brief moment. “I am most pleased to see you so loyal to your governess, Lady Henrietta. You two have become friends, have you not?”
“Yes, indeed, Your Grace,” Lucretia replied, smiling, relief flooding her and calming her jangled nerves. “I am learning to love her as my own sister.”
“And I love her,” Henrietta declared. “Can we make her our sister?”
“I am afraid that is not possible, Sister.” His Grace smiled as he spoke, and his tone sounded apologetic. Lucretia liked him all the better for his kindness, for he could easily have erupted with outrage at his sister’s suggestion. Whenever possible, Lucretia sneaked quick glances at the Duke, unable to shake her fascination for him. He moved with a lithe grace that quite took her breath away, and his eyes – so utterly green and penetrating.
As though when he gazed into mine, he looked into my very soul.
She shivered with delight, once more wondering what it might be like to kiss him, to feel his strong arms around her. At that moment, his eyes met hers, and she quickly looked down at her plate.
Surely he did not read my thoughts, he does not know how much he fascinates me. Or does he know that I see his face before I sleep at night?Despite her inner reassurances, she worried that he did indeed know.
Henrietta pouted slightly, picking at her food and pushing the rest around on her plate. I will have to work with her on eating more. With considerable less tension, they continued their delicious meal, and the Duke himself seemed to be less constrained.
“I must inform you, ladies,” the Duke said, sipping his wine. “Now that I can leave my sister in capable hands, I must depart for a time.”
“To where?” Henrietta asked.
“I have other estates that I have not visited for some time, dear Sister,” he said, his tone light. “I cannot glean all I need from managers’ reports. To start, I plan nip across the border into Wales and inspect my estates there. Be at ease, I will only be gone for a few days.”
“I will miss you,” Henrietta said, her pout deepening.
“And I will miss you. But you have Miss Brent to look after you.”
“Your Grace,” Lucretia said, “do I have your permission to take Lady Henrietta into Tewkesbury? I have things I wish to purchase, and I think it will be good for Lady Henrietta to spend some time elsewhere.”
“Of course, you may. If there is anything the two of you need, just put it on my account.”
Lucretia and Henrietta smiled at one another. An instant later, one the Duke’s grooms burst into the room, almost hitting one of the footmen with the door.
“Your Grace,” he cried, “come quickly. The stable is on fire.”
Chapter 7
Cursing, Sampson threw his napkin on his plate and rose from the table, following after the groom. “What happened?” he asked, catching up to the man.
“I know little, Yer Grace,” he said. “Me n’ the lads came outta our dinner an’ saw d’smoke. D’lads what stayed wi’ d’horses be gettin’ d’ horses out whilst I ran to fetch ye.”
Passing two liveried servants, he pointed at them. “You two, come along. Hurry. Do you know how it started?”
“Nay, Yer Grace,” the groom replied, running alongside him. “But I knows it dint start by itself.”
Hurrying out of doors, Sampson found stable lads, and others of the staff, liveried footmen, coachmen, the head gardener, and even his steward, James, running out of the smoking stable, leading a horse in each hand. He recognized his own favorite prized stallion among them, and released a tiny pent up breath of relief.
“Get buckets!” he yelled. “Form a chain. Quickly now!”
As the household and outdoor staff grabbed buckets filled with water from the stable’s well and passed them from hand to hand up the line, Sampson seized a full one and ran inside the smoke-filled stable. Though hay and straw were never stored in this building, broken bales now lay against the walls. The straw and hay had caught, flames racing along the walls, fed by the dry grasses. Dumping the water on the hissing fire, he passed the empty along behind and seized the next full bucket.
Smoke filled his eyes and lungs, making him cough, tears flooding his eyes. But he kept dumping bucket after bucket of water on the blaze, dampening it, drowning it. Dimly, he saw a form with a rake in the midst of the smoke, spreading the hay and straw, pulling it outside where the fire could be stamped out. As the other person scattered the smaller fires, coughing nearly as much as he, he more easily drowned them with the water until the floor of the stable washed with filthy water, hay, straw and ash. Two others worked beside him, dumping the buckets on the now scattered flames.
“All the horses are out, Your Grace,” someone called to him.
“The fire is almost out, too,” he shouted back, his throat sore from the acrid smoke.
He and his dimly seen companion continued to scatter and drown the remaining fires and sparks until he found little more than an acute mess. As the smoke thinned out, he and the other person continued to cough and hack, trying to clear the smoke from their lungs. He glanced over at the person who risked life and limb to help, thinking it was the groom who came to fetch him – and cursed aloud.
Miss Brent lifted her apron to her face, coughing and wiping her eyes, leaning on the rake handle for support.
“What are you about, woman?” he shouted.
Lucretia peered at him through reddened eyes. “Your Grace?”
“You risked your life and health in here,” he snapped, trying to ignore the curious eyes of the staff watching him berate the governess.
“I have helped put out barn fires before, Your Grace,” she replied calmly. “I knew what to do.”
“That is not the point. You are a woman.”
“May I ask why it is only a man’s job to put a fire out, Your Grace?” she asked. “I believe I am as equally competent as a man to assist in saving your stable and property.”
Flustered, angry without knowing why, Sampson wanted to stamp his foot like a child in a temper tantrum. “You are my sister’s governess,” he grated. “You cannot risk yourself so.”
“Again, why not? I was in no danger.”
Instead of following through with his first impulse, he threw the bucket down in fury, and stomped from the stable. “Get that mess cleaned up,” he yelled to the grooms, in between bouts of coughing, heading to the house. “Once the smoke clears, get the horses back inside. I want to know how that fire started.”
Despite his rage, he noticed Henrietta with a bucket in her hand. No doubt, she, too, helped by passing water through the many hands to put the fire out. She scowled at him, clearly annoyed that he had yelled at her governess - her friend. Stomping past her, coughing, he entered the house. Glancing down, he discovered his waistcoat, muslin shirt, and silk cravat covered in soot and scenting of smoke. His breeches were once grey and now appeared black.
Only during a hot, soaking bath that his valet, Martin, ordered for him, clean once more and his lungs cleared, did Sampson realize the extent of what Miss Brent had done. Side by side with him, throwing her personal safety to the wind, she fought the blaze with a courage he never considered she might have. And afterward, he remembered with a slow grin, she respectfully defied him, sending him scurrying to the house in abject defeat.
“What a woman,” he sighed, resting his head against the edge of the tub.
“Your Grace?” Martin asked, standing discreetly nearby.
“Ah, nothing,” Sampson said. “Just musing.”
“Does Your Grace wish for your dressing gown?”
He opened his eyes, and glanced up at the tall grizzled valet who appeared younger than his forty odd y
ears. “Not yet, Martin. The hour is still early. Fetch me a clean shirt and breeches, any color will do.”
As his valet retreated to his dressing room to gather the necessary clothing, Sampson rose from the tub and dried himself off. Thus, clean and no longer smelling of smoke, he padded down the hallway and to the stairs toward his study, freshly dressed in a white muslin shirt and plain black trousers. Turning a corner, he recoiled.
Miss Brent, her red-gold hair damp and falling to her waist, wearing a white robe and nothing on her feet, gazed up at him, startled.
“Your Grace.”
“Lucretia?”
She glanced down at her obvious disheveled appearance, her cheeks flaming as hot as the fires in the stable. “Please forgive me, I had no idea – I thought –”
Fighting his urge to grin at her discomfiture, Sampson kept his expression coolly neutral. She is so damn pretty, and no less for being so blatantly embarrassed. Eyeing her near undress, he recalled his randy thoughts about her, and felt his own blush rising. “May I assist you, Miss Brent? Are you perhaps lost?”
“Why, no, Your Grace, I was just –”
“Ah, perhaps not. I expect that if you can handle a fire all by yourself, you would have no need of me.”
“That is not true. Putting out the fire was a combined effort from everyone here. It could have destroyed the entire stable, horses still inside it, instead of just burning some grass.”
Preventing his pleased grin from erupting, Sampson forced a frown. “Ah, yes, that is quite true. Yes, indeed. Well, my secretary is waiting. Good night.”
“Good night, Your Grace.”
He knew she stared at his back as he continued on down the corridor, his grin exploding into a guffaw of laughter once he entered his study.
“Your Grace?”
Roderick, his secretary, rose from his usual spot on a three-legged stool, his beloved ledger clasped in his arms.
Sampson waved him back into his seat, then took his own chair behind his desk. “Never mind, dear boy, never mind. What do you have for me?”
As Roderick droned on about crops, horses, receipts, and accounts, and the tenants, discussing gold crowns coming in and gold crowns going out, Sampson let most of it pass him by, almost unheard. His mind roamed to Miss Brent, her stunning eyes and thick fall of hair, her calm defiance, her fiery courage. He had never met a woman who intrigued him as the new governess did. Smiling, he remembered her blush and bare feet, thinking that even in her undressed state she stood up to him.
With a jolt, he realized Roderick’s droning voice had ceased. “Er, what?”
“I merely asked if Your Grace understood what selling ten horses to Earl Eckert would mean.”
“Please enlighten me, Roderick.”
“By selling him such stock, Lord Eckert can create his own stud, and thus compete against you in the markets. I understand he pays you a fortune for them, but so does he make a new one. My rumor sources tell me he plans to sell mounts to the army, just as you do.”
“What, then, do you suggest?”
“Do not sell to him, Your Grace. Find an excuse to put him off.”
“He will be angry.”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
Sampson stared into the fire, contemplating the picture Roderick had just drawn to him. Somehow, Roderick knew the earl had made such plans, and yet he himself had not heard the rumors of Eckert’s ambition. The Breckenridge horses had the kind of reputation that made others envious and greedy.
“Very well,” he said. “Cancel the contract. Make whatever excuse necessary.”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
He tried once again, as Roderick’s voice continued, to bring the new governess back into his thoughts. Yet, she proved as elusive as she was courageous. With a sigh, he yanked his attention back to the task at hand with regret.
* * *
Both Oliver and George were to ride with Sampson to Wales, as George wished to make inquiries of a potential buyer for his cattle. Oliver, of course, refused to remain behind. Thus, an hour after dawn, two days after the stable fire, he sat his fine stallion with two liveried footmen and his steward, James, behind him. Knowing that Wales could be a dangerous place these days, he was armed with his blunderbuss. He had heard rumors of unrest among the working class in Wales, and thus rode prepared for possible trouble. Impatient to be off, his green eyes scanned the horizon, watching for his friends.
“There, Your Grace.”
Following James’s pointing finger, Sampson saw the telltale dust rising like smoke that indicated a party rode toward them. Grunting, he curbed his restless mount with a firm hand on the reins, thankful the horse survived the fire. None of the valuable animals were either injured or killed, but he ground his teeth in anger when he recalled the groom’s report, given just the evening before.
“The fire do be set, Yer Grace,” Chester, a groom, told him. In his hands lay a half-burned candle. Sampson, long ago, gave orders that no one was to enter the stable with any kind of open flame. Only one small lantern was permitted to burn near the door, and only when someone was in there to supervise it. To this day, none had ever violated his commands under pain of whipping.
“Do we have a traitor in our midst?” he asked his steward, the solid man who had served him since he was a boy.
James, steward, close friend, and ducal confidante, shook his grizzled head. “I rather doubt it, Your Grace.”
Glancing around surreptitiously, he jerked his head for Sampson to follow him away from the others. When at last none could overhear their conversation, James continued. “I cannot always trust what the servants say to my face,” he said. “Thus, I have a man among them who informs me of what I do not hear. Mr. Kirkwood and I share such information that we come across.”
“And what do my steward and my physician hear?”
James shrugged. “Are they content with their lot, do they wish they worked for some other lord or Duke, are they unhappy with the food, are they loyal to you, Your Grace.”
Sampson gazed at the approaching riders. “And are they?”
“As far as my little bird knows, yes, they are, Your Grace. All will follow you to hell and back. Many grooms love the horses in the stable, and would never risk killing a prized Breckenridge for the sake of burning down the structure.”
“And none hold grudges against me for a slight, real or imagined?”
“They are simple men, Your Grace. If they have food in their bellies, a clean place to sleep, a few coins in their pockets, they are happy.”
“Do you believe our arsonist came from the outside?”
James nodded. “I do, Your Grace.”
“We must accept that then. But, James, tell your little bird to keep a sharp watch just the same. Perhaps our outside arsonist planted one of his own among my loyal staff.”
Outrage gleamed in James’s brown eyes, and he nodded. Together, they rode back to the waiting footmen and outriders as Oliver and George approached with their own servants accompanying them. As the pair of them greeted him with reckless salutes and grins, Sampson asked James and Oliver to wait as he pulled George to the side.
“What means this?” George asked, his blue eyes laughing.
“I would ask you the same thing.” Sampson leaned against the pommel of his saddle, eyeing his friend.
“Am I to guess what you are talking about? Well, then let me see–”
“My governess.”
George’s expression froze, mid-laughter. “I say, Sampson –”
“I will not lecture you on the correct behavior of a gentleman,” Sampson snapped, his green eyes blazing. “But if you wish to manhandle a woman, you manhandle your own. Do you understand me?”
“You are the one who does not understand.”
“I see enough. Keep a civil tongue in your head and your hands to yourself while on my property. The woman serves me and my sister, and I will not have you accosting her like a hound seeking a bitch.”
“I
say –”
“You say nothing,” Sampson snarled.
Kicking his stallion into a fast gallop, Sampson led the way across the green rolling hills toward the west, toward Wales, his entire band on his heels. As he rode, his rage faded away, and he wondered at his own instinctive desire to protect Miss Brent. Given her fierce courage in handling both George and the fire, he wondered if she needed his protection at all.
The Extraordinary Tale of the Rebellious Governess: A Historical Regency Romance Novel Page 5