“You want to die with me?” he had asked, even in his weakened state, he had smiled at her, his dry, pale lips cracking with the effort.
“Yes.”
“You read too much Shakespeare, my love,” he had murmured, his eyelids growing heavy. “To die for a man is a great and terrible waste of a beautiful woman. I want nothing less than for you to throw yourself away for my sake. You must promise me that you will live. Kiss handsome men and have fat babies. Travel. Write. Do everything you told me you wanted to do.” He had smiled again at this, though his eyes had closed.
How could she have stood on the bow of the ship only days prior and felt that surge of hope? It felt like a betrayal of the man she loved to feel anything but soul-deadening grief in his absence. No matter what he had said, no matter how he had entreated her not to cry for him, it felt wrong.
How could she leave him?
The white-marble headstone that stood at the base of the oak tree on the hill would have withered roses on it now. The last ones she had laid there the day before her departure. The thought of him, lying beneath the damp, cool earth, all alone with no one to water his grave with tears, shook her.
I’ve abandoned him!
Bitterly, she prayed that her life at Vicewood would be a torment. She prayed that her days there would be a perpetual penance for her lack of devotion to Conor’s grave. Earnestly, she vowed to make the manor her cloister cell, there to dwell forever on the memories of her love.
Conor’s words echoed back to her, “You read too much Shakespeare, my love.”
She wiped her eyes against the pillowcase.
I know you are right.
The dizzying heights of hope and joy matched the theatrical depths of despair that painted the background of her life. She had never been able to temper the two into a manageable standard of living. Even in the early days of their courtship, Conor would pull her onto his knee presumptuously and tease her about her flights of passion.
Conor Walsh had been a lieutenant, a man of rank whom she would never have met had it not been for the fortuitous patronage of the Dowager Marchioness. This made him too good for her, too refined and too rich. And yet he had whispered praises in her ear for her wildness, her frankness, and her capricious moods. He loved her for all of the things about her natural manner that she had always been ashamed of as being childish or unrefined.
“I wanted a military career because I was stifled by the expectations of my family. Poor little rich boy,” he had laughed, “I know. And yet I was so unhappy. I thought I would find life and rigor in the military, and so I have. But in the end, it was you I needed all along. My will-o’-the-wisp.” He had kissed her with more passion than was altogether proper for a couple who were merely engaged and not yet married.
In the morning, the sky had cleared, but Amanda’s heart remained clouded. She felt as though she had not shut her eyes all night for even a moment, but that couldn’t have been true because she awoke to the sound of gulls outside her window. She laid in bed amazed at how a square of blue sky could brighten up the day after a nightmarish night.
After a few moments, she became aware of the sounds of movement outside. She got up and quickly got dressed, splashing her face with cool water. Her stomach was still lurching but knowing that she would soon have both feet firmly on land comforted her.
The glass that hung above the basin was small, so small that she could only see her face in quadrants and not all at once unless she took several steps back. Even such with an obstructed view, she knew that it was obvious she had been up crying. Her skin had an ashen quality to it, and her eyes were ringed with darkness that looked almost like a faint bruise blooming underneath her skin. The Dowager Marchioness would not be happy with that.
Amanda’s beauty was the Dowager’s prize. She had picked Amanda out for it and set her above her adoptive family on its account.
“You will be a fine lady,” the Dowager had said years ago. “I will make it so.”
The old lady had no daughters of her own, having lost two of them to fever in their infancy, and her only son had been in Italy for years. With no children to spoil, she had taken up the hobby of lifting the reputations of whichever young people caught her eye. Amanda had been her first foray into becoming the patron of a peasant. For the rich lady, it was all a grand game, plucking young Amanda out of obscurity, dressing her up, teaching her how to behave, and putting her in the way of wealthy suitors. Often, Amanda felt buffeted most savagely by the sudden elevation of her assumed status, but she could not but be grateful, even if it was all so overwhelming at times.
Amanda couldn’t bear to stay where she had lost her first love. The Dowager was unhappy to hear Amanda was escaping to England. She couldn’t fathom the thought that her charge was considering a job as a governess.
“My charge? A governess? But I had such wonderful plans for you,” the old lady had protested.
But Amanda had been insistent until the matriarch relented and arranged for her surrogate daughter to be stationed in an elegant manor in the countryside. She herself would stay nearby in London should Amanda wish to give up this adventure into self-sufficiency.
Amanda knew the Dowager had plans to marry her off to a wealthy nobleman, until Conor scooped her up as his own. He tangled her heart so tight that no other man could hope to catch her eye. Now that Conor was dead, Amanda knew that the lady’s machinations would start back up again. The matron wouldn’t accept the fact that no amount of riches could erase Conor from her heart.
So, she would make her own living, because the alternative, becoming the wife of any man who was not Lieutenant Conor Walsh, was abhorrent to her. With her purpose firm, she descended the ramp with the Dowager in London.
A woman of graying hair and tidy dress approached them, curtsying hesitantly. “Lady Brubrun?”
“Yes?”
“My Lady. I am Luise Green, the housekeeper at Ethelred Manor. I’ve come to escort Miss O’Neil to Vicewood.”
The Dowager Marchioness nodded, quickly retrieving a card from her reticule and handing it to Amanda.
“This is my address in London. Should you need anything, do not hesitate. In fact, I expect as many letters as you can find the time to write and as many visits as the Marquess will allow.”
Amanda took the card. Saying goodbye to the Dowager Marchioness was not such a blow to her heart as leaving behind the O’Neil’s, but it was still a severing from the support that she had come to depend on. She nodded, her heart thudding in her chest as she and her luggage were brought to a carriage that waited to carry her to her new life.
“How far is Vicewood?” Amanda asked timidly as the housekeeper settled in across from her in the spacious carriage.
“An hour’s ride.” Miss Green did not elaborate, and her eyes squinted out the window without glancing at Amanda.
The rather terse reply seemed to forbid any more questions, though Amanda longed to ask many more. Her mind was a cacophony of questions, of fears and hopes. Was the manor terribly large? What was the master like? What of his daughter? Amanda had hoped that she would find camaraderie with the other staff who lived at the manor, but if the housekeeper was anything to go by, such hopes were unfounded.
“The master of the house is away with his daughter,” Miss Green said without preamble, making Amanda jolt slightly at the sudden breach of the silence in the carriage.
“Oh?”
“They left a week ago to visit his relations in Windsor. They are due to be back tomorrow afternoon.”
“That will give me some time to become acquainted with the manor,” Amanda said, mostly to herself.
“You will have a bath and put on new clothing which has been bought for you,” the woman said. She had such a strange way of speaking, a tightness in her voice. Though she had a motherly look about her, her speech did not match that maternal air in the slightest.
“New clothing?” Amanda asked, surprised.
“Lord Ethelred has certai
n expectations of all who live under his roof. Neatness of appearance is not negotiable. You must never appear shabby or sloppily dressed in his presence.”
Amanda swallowed thickly. “I see.”
The ride to Vicewood felt long, and the roads they traveled were soft with mud. That must have slowed them down because, by the time they arrived, it felt as though three hours had passed, not one.
Ethelred Manor looked even more like a castle than Amanda had imagined. It was a stout but sprawling building, made of stone that looked so heavy and severe that the entire place seemed to sink into the earth. The stone had to be ancient, though certain parts of the house seemed to have been added on in different eras. It was a fortress, dressed up with wings of modern architecture and dainty English roses in the garden.
Amanda couldn’t stop staring at it as she descended from the carriage and was led inside. The juxtaposition of such stalwart, military foundations with the modern elegance of its décor was almost dizzying. The house seemed to be having its own crisis of identity, and she couldn’t help but wonder about the man and his daughter who lived there.
Chapter 3
Joseph Garvey, the Marquess of Ethelred, looked in on his daughter. Seven years had passed since her mother had died giving birth, and Heather looked more like his late wife with every passing day.
She was nestled in a bed far too large for her. Heather was small for her age, birdlike and skinny. She slept curled into a little ball, her knobby little knees pulled up to her chest and her face buried in the blankets. She looked so small, so vulnerable.
He was right to send for a governess for her. As much as he loved her, as much as he doted upon her, she needed a woman to raise her. There was no woman alive who could replace his wife, but accommodations had to be made.
Silently, he closed the door, crossing the hall to his own solitary room of the inn where they were staying for the night. It was midnight and, although he had tried, he could not fall asleep. He had gotten up to check on Heather once more. He hated traveling with her. As much as she loved visiting her relations and getting away from Vicewood, something about exposing her to the world terrified him. She was all he had left, and he felt she was safer at Ethelred Manor.
The sudden loss of Teresa had been such a momentous shock that Joseph still felt jarred by her absence even years later. Losing her so suddenly had proved that anything could be taken from him at any moment.
He had grown suspicious and anxious, grasping so tightly to the things he held dear for fear of losing anything else. In the case of his daughter, he knew that his tight grasp on her would do her harm. Children needed freedom. They needed holidays in the country; they needed time away from their father to grow and play with others.
But, oh, how I hate the thought of being separated from her.
His fears got the better of him every time he tried to arrange for Heather to stay with her grandmother in the lake district each spring. His mother was insistent on it, but he made excuses every year. He couldn’t part with Heather. Not even for a fortnight.
A governess would be a step in the right direction, at least. She could be exposed to outsiders and given a companion to ease the monotony of her days, all while remaining safely within the walls of his house.
He toed off his boots once more, letting them drop onto the floor next to his bed and tossed himself backwards against the pillow.
Why can I not fall asleep?
He knew the answer perfectly well. He disliked admitting he was anxious to meet this governess. How long had it been since he met or spoken to any woman who was not Miss Green?
Once the idea of a governess had entered his head, months ago, he had been sure that he wanted an Irish woman for the job. Teresa had been as Irish as they came, with flaming locks of copper hair and freckles that would never lighten no matter how much buttermilk she daubed onto them each night. Even after a courtship of two years and a marriage of one year in England, her accent had never faded even by a single degree.
Hearing his daughter speaking with such a proper English accent seemed like a terrible loss to him. Though she had inherited her mother’s hair and skin, Heather was growing up to be English through and through. Being English himself, he felt a tremendous need to honor her Irish blood somehow and to have an Irishwoman as her governess, teaching her such folktales and songs as Joseph himself could not know, seemed like the only way.
Though he knew this to be in Heather’s best interest, the thought of having another Irishwoman in the house frightened him.
Seven years. Seven years without the touch or even the tender glance of a woman. It had not been difficult to remain solitary; his grief had made his self-exile from society easy. Though his heart was still frozen, his body was by now in open revolt against this premature death of his soul. The thought of a young woman about the place ignited something in him that he knew was best to ignore.
Lord, let her be ugly.
He tossed in the bed, rolling onto his side and trying to remember all that the Dowager Marchioness had said about her charge the last time he had met her. O’Neil, her name was. A baker’s daughter. “But naturally refined,” the Dowager Marchioness had said, “and clever. And as Irish as St. Brigid.”
It wasn’t much to go on, but he had jumped at the opportunity. Almost as soon as he had made up his mind about finding a governess, a likely candidate had seemed to fall from the sky. He’d taken it as a sign then, that he was making the right decision.
Now he wondered if he had acted too quickly. Was he motivated by a desire to honor his daughter’s Irish blood, or was it the adulterous craving of his body for a stand-in for his dead wife?
He tossed and turned the whole night, fitfully running through the same thoughts and fears again and again until, at last, the darkness of his room gave way to the milky glow of dawn. Then he was free to get up from bed and wash and dress himself.
He couldn’t change his mind now. The governess would have arrived in London that morning, and when he arrived at Ethelred Manor, she would be there, for better or for worse.
Heather awoke full of energy and excitement. She had none of his misgivings. He had worried, at first, that she would resent having a woman in the house to essentially fill the space of her mother. He’d been wrong. Heather spoke non-stop about her governess ever since he had broken the news to her, and she was radiant with enthusiasm about the prospect.
“Remember that she is to be your teacher. Your guide. Essentially…she is to wield authority over you, and she answers to me. I’m not paying her a salary to be your friend and co-conspirator,” Joseph reminded her gently as they sat at breakfast in the dining hall of the inn. It was still early enough that they were some of the only ones up eating, save for a couple of solitary travelers.
Heather wrinkled her nose at him. She looked so like her mother.
“You are my father,” she said, raising her copper eyebrows imperiously, as she did when she felt confident that she was raising very grown-up and reasonable arguments, “the most disciplinary person in my life. And yet, we are friends, aren’t we, papa?”
“Disciplinarian.”
“And aren’t we friends?” she asked again, ignoring his correction of her grammar. That was exactly the sort of thing that had convinced him so thoroughly that she needed a governess. She was far too comfortable ignoring his corrections and rebukes for her childish behavior. She was correct in saying that they were friends, and that was just the problem.
“Yes, darling. We are. All the same, remember that Miss O’Neil is to be respected and obeyed. You must represent me and our family well to her.”
Heather, to her credit, did not quite roll her eyes. But there was a slight lift to her brow that, to the trained eye, such as his was, expressed the same sentiment as an eye roll. He chose to ignore it. Another reason why she needed a governess. He was far too quick to ignore her little faults and improprieties.
“Yes, Papa,” she murmured, digging into her porrid
ge.
* * *
Miss Green herself gave Amanda the tour of the manor. As they passed from the cold, stony edifice of the main building and into the more refined west wing, the housekeeper explained that Amanda’s assumptions had been correct.
“The manor began its life as a fortress dating back to medieval times,” the woman explained, briskly walking Amanda through the halls. “But down the generations, additions have been made to update and expand upon the foundations. The nursery and your room are in the newest portion of the house.”
Amanda struggled to keep up with the housekeeper. Her trunk was being carried by a strapping young footman, thankfully, but Amanda still carried her own bag, and it weighed heavily on her, knocking against her shins as she followed Miss Green’s footsteps up a staircase.
She was shown to the nursery, but it was really more of a simple bedroom. There was only one child, and the small bed was dwarfed by the size of the room, which had clearly been built with an intention to fit several more children. A large dollhouse dominated the center of the room, and the space was decorated luxuriously, with fresh floral wallpaper and a tall ceiling.
Seducing The Perfectly Enchanting Marquess (Steamy Historical Regency Romance) Page 2