A Mother For His Family

by Susanne Dietze

  “I was acquainted with that information.” Her mouth turned down in a fair imitation of her father’s disapproving grimace. “From the children.”

  How did the bairns know about Miss McManus and Mr. Robertson? John’s stomach twisted. It seemed the servants had not shown restraint, gossiping in front of his children. Here was yet another reason why he needed a lady in the house to oversee things.

  “I share your displeasure over the matter. However, I had expected to remedy the problem of a governess today, as we discussed this morning. Could we have not made this one work?”

  “No.” She started to chew her lip, then pressed her lips together instead. “What the children require is a governess of character and education. This woman today did not even use a handkerchief. I do not think she owns one.”

  Was that all? “We provide our servants with handkerchiefs.”

  “We’d need to provide her more than that before she could teach Margaret anything. She lacked knowledge of globes, French or history.” Helena’s eyes sparked. “But she knew plenty about flogging. I know it happens at boys’ schools, but I never expected to hear of it as a disciplinary option from a governess.”

  Neither did John. “Are you certain she said that? Mayhap you misheard—”

  “I did not mishear her.”

  “But she could be instructed of how things are done at Comraich—”

  “You married me for this purpose, and I ask you trust my judgment when I insist the woman is as I said—unsuitable.”

  John’s first response died on his lips. As did his second. Helena was right. Flogging wouldn’t be tolerated, and it sounded as if Miss Campbell wasn’t qualified. He’d wanted the matter resolved today, but no governess was better than the wrong one. And he must trust Helena to hire another, just as he handled the estate and his political issues. This was, as she said, why he married her.

  He sat back in his chair. “So what will you do?”

  “I shall make inquiries on the morrow.” Her lips twitched into a shy grin, a far different smile from those placid, frozen-into-stillness smiles she wore so much of the time. Her expression was not in the least flirtatious. Nevertheless, her little smile drew him in, and he craved another from her, the way the children hungered after desserts of cream ices and puddings. As if he could ask for more, please.

  What a ridiculous thing to think, considering their arrangement. He shoved the foolish thought aside. “And in the meantime? Until someone who uses a handkerchief can be found?”

  She didn’t look up at him, even though he’d used a teasing tone. “I thought I might teach the children.”

  “You?” The word blurted out before he gave it thought.

  “Whyever not?” Her shoulders squared. “I’m proficient at pianoforte and not too terrible with sums.”

  But she was the high-born Lady Helena. Catriona had never sat down with the bairns, not to read or spin a top or play a tune on the pianoforte. He’d not expected this duke’s daughter to lower herself to execute the duties of a governess. His surprise faded, replaced by a warm glow of pleasure under his waistcoat.

  “I think that would be delightful.” His words conjured another of her genuine smiles, the one he liked too much for his own good. He speared a bite of fish.

  “How did the candidate for governess come to be recommended to you?” Helena’s head tipped to the side. “She said it was not through a service.”

  The fish stuck in John’s throat, even as the plates were cleared. How pathetic he must seem to his new wife, arranging for an interview with an inept governess. But he had thought—oh, never mind. “She is the great-niece of the housekeeper, Mrs. McGill.”

  Helena’s lips twisted. “Now it makes sense.”

  “What?” He rose when she did.

  “Nothing of note.”

  He didn’t believe her. She held something back from him.

  Then again, he held something back from her, too. The blackmail letter, locked in the ornamental box upstairs. His secrecy was for her own good, however, not at all like a matter of household staffing. Before he could ask anything further about it, though, her brows lifted. “What is your habit after dinner?”

  “I bid the children good-night. Yesterday was different, with the wedding and lateness of the celebration. Would you care to join me in the nursery?”

  She nodded. Her hand was light on his forearm as he escorted her up the stairs to the nursery. Her closeness filled his senses, from the rustling fabric of her gown to the delicate scent of her perfume. Everything about her emanated femininity.

  Then she looked up at him, casting that shy smile. It transformed her entirely. Not that she was not beautiful when she bore that fixed smile, but when her true smile curved her lips, she was no longer like a magnificent artwork, a cold sculpture. She was enchanting.

  He did not know how long he had been smiling back, or when he’d patted her tiny hand, resting on his forearm. But her fingers felt so warm and natural there, he left his hand atop hers.

  “Papa, at last.”

  He startled. Dropped Helena’s arm. With too much haste, perhaps, but the children—Margaret and Callum, at least—frowned at his hand on Helena’s.

  Perhaps they were unready to view a sign of affection between him and their stepmother. Perhaps he’d confused Helena by touching her. He’d certainly confused himself. Affection of any sort was not part of their arrangement.

  “Ready for bed, I see.” He hurried from her side into the main room, where the four children waited in their nightcaps and dressing gowns. Bending away from Margaret’s glare, he hauled Louisa into his arms. She smelled of milk and soap.

  “Papa.” She sighed. “I’m sleepy.”

  “Not me.” Alex’s dressing gown billowed about his legs as he ran circles around John. “I’m a ship in the sea. Ach, a storm.” He flung himself into John’s side.

  “Time to come ashore.” John wrapped an arm about his heir’s waist and hauled him off the ground. Alex squealed.

  “Me next.” Callum jumped on John’s back, yanking his neck cloth and almost knocking him off balance. Margaret dashed behind John, and at once Callum’s weight lessened. Bless her for boosting her cousin’s rump, so he wasn’t pulling John backward. But Callum’s small hands still held John’s neck cloth like a leash.

  “My throat, Callum.” John’s request was gurgled. At once, the pressure moved from his neck to his shoulders. “Enough, monkeys. To bed with you.”

  “Never,” Alex cried. “You can’t leave, Papa. No more London.”

  “You must stay with us.” Callum squeezed.

  “I’m here for a while yet.” But he couldn’t ignore the pinch to his conscience.

  The boys slid to the ground, and he was left with naught but Louisa in his arms. He kissed her plump cheek, under the ruffle of her nightcap.

  “Rest well.” Then he bent to Margaret for a kiss, then Alex.

  Callum scowled. “No kisses for me.”

  “Fine, then. Off you go to say your prayers.”

  The children scattered to their separate rooms.

  “Good night, then.” The small voice behind him drew his gaze.

  Helena lingered inside the threshold, staring at him. He’d forgotten all about her. How thoughtless. Guilt pricked his abdomen and warmed his earlobes.

  “Forgive me. Did you wish to kiss the children? I shall call them back.” His tone was apologetic, but even to his ears the offer sounded weak.

  “No.” Her thumbs fidgeted at her waist and she stepped backward, as if in a terrible hurry to escape him.

  Little wonder, the way he’d ignored her. “Helena—”

  “Good night, my lord.”

  “John,” he corrected her, but she had disappeared into the darkness of the hall.

  One step forward, two steps back. Lord, help us fin
d ease in this arrangement, before we both come to regret it.

  Chapter Six

  Do not run. You are the lady of this house. You are a duke’s daughter. Helena forced her gait to an appropriate speed as she traversed the hall to her suite of rooms, but her legs quivered with the urge to sprint to her bedchamber. To hide.

  And maybe not come out again until the children were grown.

  What had she expected? That the children and staff would accept her from the moment John brought her here from the kirk? That she would be included? That she would be forgiven enough to be part of a family again?

  She shut her chamber door behind her and sank against it. Barnes wasn’t here, mercifully. She’d ring for her once she’d recovered herself. Shoving off from the door, she crossed to the window and rested her aching head against the cold pane.

  You could have joined in the frolics in the nursery, instead of standing there like an outsider.

  But she was an outsider. Besides, what could she have done? Climb atop Callum? Ridiculous. She was a lady. The lady of the house. When her parents bid her and her sisters a brief, polite good-night, there was no tangling of limbs, no shrieking like urchins.

  Besides, no one wanted her. They’d all ignored her.

  And it wasn’t just the children. The housekeeper, Mrs. McGill, was unfriendly because Helena hadn’t hired her niece, that unsuitable Miss Campbell.

  A dim light from a handheld lantern bobbed below her window. Helena stepped back. It wouldn’t do for one of the servants to see her staring out the window with a baleful expression. Or hanging from her husband and stepchildren laughing, for that matter. Even if it meant she’d feel this alone for the rest of her days.

  You deserve it, Helena. You deserve a lonely, empty life. Mama might never have said the words aloud, but her distant silence before Helena married had said enough. Helena was unlovable. She’d thought if she obeyed her parents and married, Papa would approve, Mama might forgive, and Helena would feel cleaner inside somehow, but marrying hadn’t changed anything, after all. Why should she have expected who she now was on the outside to change whom she was inside?

  I thought You forgive, Lord. Was I wrong? What was that feeling of love at the church yesterday? Was it fancy, or is there more for me there if I return? Could You love me?

  Then again, why would God love her? Papa, ill as he was, would probably never see her again, but after the wedding, he couldn’t get away from her fast enough.

  Helena rubbed her cold arms. Tomorrow she must begin searching for a new governess, and she also had letters to write to her friend Frances Fennelwick and her sisters and Mama, but not her grandmother, who would be furious at Helena once she heard some made-up story from Papa that Helena had become enamored of Tavin’s neighbor and there was no stopping her headstrong ways. She would write of her new home, the weather and the village. She’d say nothing of her feelings.

  She should sleep, but her emotions continued to churn inside her, making her limbs quiver. She paced to shake them out, but it only seemed to make the matter worse. Should she ring for Barnes and tea? She wasn’t thirsty. Mayhap if she had something to read, she’d relax. The library would have something tedious to dull her senses, no doubt. And it was far preferable to fretting over her thoughts. She took up the lone candle sputtering at her bedside and returned to the hall.

  It was dark and empty—how long had it been since she’d escaped the nursery? Longer than she thought. Her candle cast grotesque shadows as she tiptoed down the hall and around the corner. Her sisters, Maria and Andromeda, would have clung to Helena had they been here, certain Comraich’s dark, damp stones held ghosts. Silly widgeons—

  Another pang of loneliness tightened Helena’s stomach. Would her sisters ever be allowed to visit her here?

  Of course not. There would be excuses based on the distance, but the truth was, her parents wouldn’t want the girls influenced by their wayward elder sister.

  Did the Bible say anything about being lonesome? Wasn’t there a woman in its pages who had been uprooted from her home by marriage? Whither thou goest, I will go, too, or something like that? Had the woman’s husband loved her? Or had she been as alone as Helena would always be?

  Her desire for a musty tome disappeared. Mayhap John had a Bible in his library.

  A cry rent the hall’s stillness. One of the children.

  She hurried to the nursery, where a single lamp cast a comforting, gold glow over the walls. The boys’ door was ajar, and Helena rushed inside.

  One of the boys sat up in bed, his hands over his mouth. Iona whimpered at his feet, while Agnes patted his shoulder as one might thump the head of a large dog. “Go back to sleep, Master, ’afore you wake the others.”

  Alex.

  Helena had never ministered to a frantic child before. Perhaps she should leave.

  Instead she rushed to Alex’s bed. “Poor dear.” She rested her hand on his miniscule knee. A quick glance assured her Callum slept on in his bed, which was no doubt for the best.

  Agnes’s fists flew to her hips. “Now look what ye’ve done, Master, but gone and disturbed ’er ladyship.”

  “Nonsense, Agnes.” Helena perched on Alex’s bed, her thumb tracing lazy circles over his kneecap. Did her touch bother him? She only did what she would have wanted done to her, but it was difficult to tell, the way he stared at her, gasping through his fingers.

  “Now then. Does something ache? Or was it a bad dream?”

  Alex hiccupped and nodded. Helena wiped his eyes with the lace-edged handkerchief she kept tucked up her sleeve.

  “What happened in your dream?”

  “I was in the water. There was a kee-ask who pulled me doon and I could nae breathe.” He lifted his knees and buried his head between them.

  “A what?”

  “Kee-ask.” Curled as he was, his words were muffled. “I knew I shouldna gone to her, but she looked like Mither. When I got closer I saw she was gray with the tail of a salmon and no’ like Mither anymore. She’d come to take me under the water.”

  The creature sounded something like a mermaid. A kee-ask must be a creature of folklore, then. Poor boy, seeing his mother’s face turn into something horrible.

  Helena smoothed Alex’s nightshirt over his shoulders. “I have nightmares sometimes, too.”

  He peeked up at her. “What about?”

  Frederick Cole’s handsome face flashed through her mind. Blue eyes, startling in their contrast to his near-black curls.

  “Monsters. Same as you. But I know they cannot hurt me.”

  “Because they are no’ real.”

  In her case they were, but she smiled anyway.

  “I don’ want to dream of my monster again.” Alex’s breath was shuddering and deep, a good sign he had cried himself out.

  The sensation she’d experienced in the kirk—of peace and love and yearning—swelled in her bosom, and she cupped Alex’s damp cheek with her hand. “I’d pay all the gold and silver I possess to never dream of my monster again, either, and to save you from yours.”

  Fabric rustled, and she turned to check Callum, but the boy slept on in his bed. Instead, her husband stood against the doorjamb, watching her.

  Now it was her turn to cover her mouth with her hand.

  * * *

  John pulled the nursery door shut as softly as he could, glad for Helena’s candle to illuminate the hall. “I think Alex should rest well enough now.” The poor laddie had been drowsy when they left, with the comfort of Iona curling on the coverlet at his feet.

  “I hope so.” She held her candle steady, but tension rolled from her. After their awkward parting earlier tonight, it was little wonder.

  Mayhap her unease also had to do with the monster she told Alex she dreamed of, but he couldn’t ask her about that. Not now, perhaps not ever. Still, he wouldn’t ignore the o
pportunity to get back on even footing with her. “Would you care to join me for a brief moment? I was working in the library, and the fire is still warm in the grate.”

  The strain eased from her mouth. “I was on my way to the library when I heard Alex.”

  He released a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. After leading her to the library, he indicated his favorite pair of wing chairs beside the fire, where his nightly cup of tea sat, cold and unfinished beside today’s letter from his friend Lord Carvey.

  Carvey reported an increase in pressure for John to add to the bill he wished to bring before the House of Lords. There were more demands by those who believed he could see it accomplished but did not wish to help him formulate it—except for Carvey, of course.

  He didn’t mind setting the letter aside for the night. Not at all. He offered Helena a tentative smile. “Alex had a bad dream, I take it?”

  “About a kee-ask. What is that?”

  “Ceasg.” As he spelled it aloud, he bent to poke a wee bit more life from the embers. “A mythical water wraith. I wonder where that came from.”

  Her tongue snaked out to lick her lips, as if she tasted words she wasn’t sure she should speak. Then her head tipped to the side. “He said the head of the creature resembled his mother. I think perhaps my being here brought back memories of grief. I’m sorry, if that is the case.”

  Of course the children missed their mother. He missed her, too. At least, the way she was at first. He missed the normalcy in his household that he, himself, had helped destroy.

  As ever, he was one sorry fool. But there was no need for Helena to apologize. “His nightmare is not your fault.”

  Her furrowed brow conveyed her disagreement. John rested his elbow on the arm of the chair and leaned his chin on his hand, the better to study his new wife. Any fool could recognize the pain darkening her eyes. What a dramatic second day she’d had as Lady Ardoch.

  And she didn’t even know about the blackmail letter.

  Was she grieving over her life in London? Her eyes spoke of her losses. Of guilt. She even seemed to feel guilty about Alex’s dream.