Seducing The Perfectly Enchanting Marquess (Steamy Historical Regency Romance)

by Scarlett Osborne

  “I take it your journey was an uneventful one,” he said, suddenly breaking the silence. He clasped his hands together, his long fingers interlocking.

  “Yes, My Lord.”

  “And I take it that you have begun to settle yourself into the rhythms of Ethelred Manor.”

  “Yes,” she said, then added, “My Lord.”

  Her eyes flicked up to meet his momentarily, and her breath caught in her throat at the intensity of his gaze. Perhaps it was merely the dramatic lighting, the golden light and inky shadows that flickered across his face. She tried to calm the hammering of her heart. She looked away, turning her eyes to the flames that, somehow, seemed less dangerous than his eyes.

  “You are not what I expected,” he said.

  Am I to apologize?

  She did not know how to respond.

  “What age are you, Miss O’Neil?’

  “One-and-twenty, My Lord,” she said.

  “And you have no experience in commanding children?”

  Amanda stammered. “N…no, My Lord. But Lady Brubrun has prepared me, and I have…I have plans. Lessons. I can teach Lady Heather her French and needlework and the pianoforte. I also can teach reading and writing and drawing and the history of England.” A sudden terror had seized Amanda that he would dismiss her on the spot.

  “That’s all very well, Miss O’Neil,” he said, his voice rising ever so slightly so that Amanda’s mouth slammed shut. “I imagine any lady of acceptable accomplishment could teach her all those things. The reason why I had the Dowager Marchioness bring you here, specifically, is because you share Heather’s mother’s nationality. My daughter is half-Irish, Miss O’Neil, and it falls to you to instruct her according to that heritage.”

  Oh.

  “Lady Heather did say something to that effect,” Amanda said.

  “I’d like her to know, in addition to English history, the history of her mother’s people. And such tales and songs and cultural practices as are her inheritance. Do you think you can manage such an undertaking?”

  “Oh, yes, My Lord,” Amanda assured him.

  “You will find my daughter to be…a handful.” Here he seemed to relax somewhat. Perhaps it was a trick of the light, but Amanda thought that he almost smiled. Just for a moment.

  Amanda’s lip quirked, but she resisted a smile.

  “I may have been too lenient with her, and now she is shamefully spoiled, as I’m sure you have noticed. I’ve had precious little guidance in the raising of my child, and now that she is getting older, I need the help of a—” he cleared his throat. “Parental instinct is not sufficient in itself for a father to teach a girl to be a lady.”

  “I understand,” Amanda said.

  “Good.”

  Amanda noticed that he had relaxed when speaking of his daughter, partly because now that the subject had been dropped, his shoulders straightened, and his expression became hard once more.

  “That will be all for now. Goodnight, Miss O’Neil.”

  Amanda swayed slightly at the sudden dismissal before rising to her feet and dropping into another curtsy. He waved her off with his hand, turning toward the fire resolutely, and she left.

  * * *

  Joseph had to dismiss the girl at once.

  He rubbed his jaw in irritation as he gazed into the depths of the inferno that blazed in his fireplace.

  He had a plan if the governess turned out to be comely. He’d had those uninspiring gray dresses made just for such an eventuality. He’d planned for this. And yet, the reality of it was overwhelming. He had feared an attractive governess, but he had not dreamed that Miss Amanda O’Neil, orphan pet and companion of the odd Dowager Marchioness of Brubrun, would be so beguilingly beautiful. No austerity of dress could mask the enchanting curve of such a long and elegant neck.

  And the accent. God preserve him, the accent. Her voice was gentle as a mouse but warm. So horrifically, disastrously warm.

  When first he had laid eyes on her, his instinct to rip those blonde curls from the grim, plain knot she had them secured in at the back of her neck. To run his fingers through them. Her lips were altogether too pink, too apt to part enticingly when she was nervous. She was too young. Too nubile. Too—

  Joseph cleared his throat, shifting his weight as his body reacted to the calamitous train of thought.

  He would simply have to get rid of her. There had to be other Irish governesses. There was no law saying that he had to stick with the first one that had appeared in front of him. He’d find a nice, plump, matronly one, and she’d do just as well.

  The suddenness and ferocity of his lust for the governess shocked him. He’d known that there would be a possibility of trouble in bringing a woman into the house, but he’d not imagined it would be so forceful. It was as if nearly a decade of grieved celibacy had done nothing to train his body into submission to his will. He felt like a schoolboy again, utterly trapped at the mercies of his raging passions. It was dangerous.

  He supposed it was his own fault for retreating as he had from society. He had just become overly sensitized to the sight of a beautiful woman. It was mere loneliness that caused this overreaction.

  He brought his mind back to his wife. His memories of her now were frosted over with the soft-focus of years. When he thought of her now, the image in his mind was of the portrait of her that hung in his bedroom. He could remember the color of her hair when it splayed against her pillow in bed, he could remember the shade of her eyes and the sound of her voice, but none of it was as crisp and clear as it once had been. Major memories were still there, but the day-to-day of her life was slipping away from him like sand through fingers.

  The guilt gnawed at him. Guilt for forgetting Teresa’s expression as she had sipped tea in the morning. Guilt for imagining the heat and softness of Miss O’Neil’s body. Guilt for neglecting his duties as a parent and spoiling his daughter. Guilt. Guilt. Guilt. It choked out the weeds of covetous lust, for which he could at least be grateful, though now he sat wallowing in fresh agony. He sat there in the chair watching the fire as it roared, then quieted down over time to a sedate flickering.

  He would simply have to dismiss the girl. Even as he made up his mind to do so, he couldn’t stop himself from envisioning her upstairs, removing that plain gray dress and climbing into bed, her blonde curls now braided loosely over her shoulder. He would simply have to dismiss her at once.

  Chapter 5

  Amanda’s spine tingled as she hurried back to the privacy of her room. For it was privacy that she suddenly craved, more than anything else. Perhaps it had been the firelight and the dramatic shadows and flickering shapes that it cast about the room, but something about her meeting with the Marquess set her pulse racing. It was more than just an introduction to an employer. Her heart was beating as though she was a rabbit who had narrowly escaped the clutches of a predator and the fact that she couldn’t quite account for why he had such an effect on her only made it worse.

  In the dim quiet of her room, she sat on the edge of her bed and, absentmindedly, pulled the pins from her hair and began to brush it with her fingers, twining it into a single long braid for bed. She remembered what Lady Heather had said of her father, that he looked like an undertaker. She was wrong.

  He is beautiful.

  Not in a conventional way. He did not have princely beauty or any manner of refined elegance. Rather, he was beautiful in the way that a craggy mountainscape was beautiful or the tumultuous sky just before a storm. There was something so hard and unrelenting about his face. The high cheekbones and sharp, glinting eyes gave him an air of danger. There was a sense about him that he was always right on the brink of anger or displeasure, but rather than frighten her; it merely seemed to make her instinctively want to please him.

  Briefly, she imagined that stern face softening into a smile. The thought sent a warm tingle through her and she put it away.

  So, he was handsome. It made no difference in regard to her employment. Despite the
unlikely and unorthodox patronage of the Dowager Marchioness, she was still poor, still decidedly untitled, and without the grace or charm of a wealthy woman. The Marquess, if he ever did smile, would not do so on her account. It was a waste of time to linger on such thoughts.

  She wriggled out of her dress and climbed into the soft bed. The furnishings in the governess’ room were simple and plain but comfortable. As she nestled into the plush pillow, she comforted herself with the thought that, with such an employer who aroused this strange desire in her to impress him, she would likely find it easy to do her best here. He was a fine motivator. And his daughter was a darling child for whom she already had a great fondness for.

  Things are going to work out here. I know it.

  With such optimistic declarations, she fell asleep.

  * * *

  When Amanda awoke, the sky outside her window was still gray, and the nursery was silent. She got dressed as quietly as she could, hoping to steal down to the kitchens for a quick bite and some tea before her pupil awoke. Yesterday had merely been introductions, today was the first real day of her new life, and Amanda greeted it with a bone-deep determination to succeed.

  She slipped silently out of her room and ate quickly in the kitchens. It seemed that she was the last of the staff to wake up, and the two maids giggled again at the sight of her. Amanda wondered if they were sisters. They did seem to be joined at the hip, at any rate. She smiled at them, still full of early-morning optimism and hoping that she might make friends here.

  “You met the Marquess last night?” one of them asked.

  Amanda nodded, her mouth unfortunately too full of sweetened porridge to answer.

  “And what do you think of him?” the other one asked.

  Yes, they must be sisters. I see a resemblance now.

  “It’s difficult to say. We spoke only briefly,” she answered after swallowing so quickly that the hot food scorched her throat.

  “Well, don’t get any ideas. He’s the best-looking man in the county, but no woman can get close to him.”

  Amanda’s eyes widened and she felt a blush creep into her cheeks.

  “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” she lied.

  The girls giggled again.

  “He’s terribly handsome, isn’t he?” the one on the left with the darker hair asked.

  “Awfully handsome. Disastrously handsome,” the other one replied.

  “I hardly know. He looks…rather like any other man, I suppose.”

  The maids laughed and, when Luise came into the room, they scattered off in different directions to continue their work.

  “You slept in.” Luise’s voice wasn’t unkind, but it wasn’t warm either.

  “I’m sorry. I am just returning upstairs now.”

  “As long as you are up before the child, there’s no harm done. And likely she is worn out from traveling and may sleep a bit longer. Hurry back all the same, though.”

  The housekeeper’s tone implied to Amanda that the task of caring for the day-to-day of the child had fallen to her before a governess was brought in.

  She obeyed the older woman, swallowing the rest of her breakfast as quickly as she could and hurrying back to the nursery on light feet. It was well that she had rushed because when she came in, Lady Heather was stirring lightly in the too-large bed.

  “May we have our lessons outdoors today?” the child said before even opening her eyes.

  Amanda grinned, pushing the heavy curtains aside and letting the sun, which was just rising above the lake that stood behind the manor, into the room. She gazed out at the still, glassy water. She had yet to explore the gardens, which were meticulously tidy and quite inviting.

  “I don’t see why not. Today I must determine where you stand in order to continue your education. Have you had a governess before?”

  Lady Heather was sitting up in her bed now, bleary eyes and stretching her pale, skinny arms above her head.

  “No.”

  “A nurse, then?”

  The girl shrugged. “I suppose I must have had, but I don’t remember. It’s always been me and Papa. And Miss Green.”

  “So, you’ve never had any sort of lessons before?” Amanda turned to look at her charge, mentally calculating how she would go about this education business. She prayed that even without experience she would be able to manage it.

  Lady Heather shook her head. “Not really. Papa has taught me some things. I can ask for sugar in French.”

  Amanda chuckled. “Is that so?”

  “Je veux du sucre, s’il vous plait,” the girl said, straightening up and putting on an air of sophistication. Her accent, while exaggerated, was really quite good.

  “Ah,” Amanda laughed. “Well, at least you have the important parts down, at any rate. Come now, let’s get you dressed and fed, then you can show me the garden.

  * * *

  Joseph took his tea in his chamber, sitting in the chair that overlooked the lake and sipping it in silence. His room was in the east wing, in the older part of the house. The stone walls were adorned with heavy tapestries, and the ancient four-post bed dominated the space. He had once shared a much more elegant bedroom with his wife that was on the other side of the house. After her death, he had not been able to endure sleeping in the room he had once shared with her.

  This room suited him better now. He liked the hardiness of it, the history, and the way that its thick walls cut off all sound. He basked in the stillness in the room. Occasionally a mouse would skitter across the floor, but he didn’t mind the company.

  He had woken up surprised to be alone. Heather often had nightmares, and rather than go to Miss Green; she had a habit of sneaking into his room and slithering under his covers. The bed was so wide that it wasn’t until he woke up in the morning to find her curled on the edge of the bed.

  His hope had been that having a governess would help to end these night terrors. Having to sneak through the labyrinthine and dark corridors all the way across the house to seek her father’s comfort after a nightmare would, he hoped, prove to be less practical than simply going to the governess right off her own room. She was getting too old to sleep in her parent’s bed.

  Whether she had slept through the night or introduced Miss O’Neil to her night terrors was an intriguing question he wanted to know the answer to.

  Just as he was thinking so, he caught movement outside the window, and, standing up to get a closer look, he saw two figures crossing the lawn. Heather was bouncing along next to the sedate Miss O’Neil, who carried a basket. He sipped his tea as he looked down on them, silently watching them as they took a turn through the garden path and then headed out toward the lake, which glimmered beyond the confines of his low garden wall.

  Even from this height and distance, the shapely figure of the governess awakened his senses. She was charmingly demure, though it seemed to be an act. Beneath her submissively lowered eyes, he could swear that there was a wild streak. Even her gait looked restrained to him, as though she was fighting back the urge to run and frolic along with the child at her side.

  I must dismiss her.

  His resolution to do so was wan and thin in the morning light, however. Heather needed a woman to raise her now that she was growing out of childhood at a rate that alarmed and terrified him. Would he really send a perfectly serviceable woman for the task packing simply because, if he let his thoughts linger on the curve of her waist, he grew hard and fidgety?

  Would it not be wiser and more expedient to simply not let his thoughts linger on the curve of her waist?

  I am only looking for an excuse to keep her here because I want to bend her over the side of my bed.

  He grimaced, swallowing the bitter dregs of his tea.

  Heather needs a governess. And look at how she has taken to Miss O’Neil already.

  He watched the two spread a quilt upon the grass near the water in the distance. Perhaps he could ignore the issue for now, and, down the line, she would make so
me fireable mistake that will settle it. It would really be unkind to dismiss her at first sight, when she hasn’t done anything wrong.

  It isn’t her fault she looks like that.

  At that thought, his mind traveled over the finer points of how she looked. Her wide, innocent eyes had startled him. She had the look of an imp about her, with those startling eyes and that pointed chin. Try as she might to maintain a demure expression, he knew that if he got to know her just a bit better, it would be most easy to read the thoughts in her head as they skittered across her face. There was something enchantingly honest about her looks. Unbidden, the image of her eyes fluttering closed with lust burst into his mind. What expression would be in those eyes if he took her into his bed and spread her…