Governess's Dilemma (9781460320600)

by Griffin, Pamela

  Of course. Jeremy.

  “I didn’t know she’d crawl into the cupboard. I didn’t know it would get stuck.”

  At the almost hysterical hitch in her voice, Dalton rose from the floor. “One moment,” he said to Myrna, then approached his niece, putting his hand to her shoulder and steering her away. “Come, Rebecca. We must talk.”

  Myrna stared after them, curious what he would tell the child but mostly wondering what he had been about to say.

  * * *

  “Uncle Dalton, you don’t like him, either. I can tell.”

  His niece climbed into bed, and Dalton pulled the sheet over her, to her chin.

  “Regardless of my feelings for Miss McBride’s cousin, it was wrong of you to interfere.”

  He was resigned to let Myrna go, no matter how hollow he felt at the prospect. Distancing himself from the manor at dawn and not returning until after she left would be the wisest recourse to carry out the difficult choice.

  “Promise Sisi won’t die?”

  His rigid stance softened at her plea, and he sat down on the edge of her bed, taking her small hand in his.

  “I’m not God. I can’t make such promises. No one can. But remember what Nana says, how we must have faith and not waver in the midst of any storm. You must pray and hold on to faith that God always does what is best, as tightly as I’m holding to your hand.”

  “Like the eagle who won’t give up?” she asked quietly. “Like our family creed?”

  “Exactly.”

  She looked at him with childlike trust then smiled. “You called her Myrna.”

  “What?” Taken aback, he tried to keep up with his niece’s wandering mind.

  “I heard you at the door. And you hugged her in the conservatory. You like her.”

  Dalton released her hand. “To bed, Rebecca. We’ll discuss suitable discipline for your misbehavior tomorrow when I return from town.”

  She wrinkled her nose then smiled again. “I think she likes you, too.”

  Dalton renounced the leap his heart made at such naïve words and tweaked her nose. “You’re incorrigible.”

  She giggled then grew serious. “She cries sometimes while we’re doing lessons. She goes and looks out the window and cries so we can’t hear. She always brushes her cheeks before she turns around.”

  Such news wounded Dalton to hear it, sure he must have been partly responsible for Myrna’s sorrow, and his resolve strengthened. He would not be the source of her tears again.

  “You shouldn’t tell me such things.”

  “She doesn’t want to go away, so why is she leaving?” Rebecca insisted.

  A question he asked himself more than once. He stood and lowered the lamp to a dull flame. “Good night, Rebecca.”

  He was halfway to the door when she again spoke.

  “I know Sisi is going to be all right, ’cause I’m going to pray really hard and have faith.”

  He turned at the threshold. “That’s my girl. Now go to sleep.”

  Obediently she closed her eyes. “And I’m going to pray that Miss Myrna stays with us.”

  In the lamp’s gentle glow a peaceful expression soon calmed her face. For Dalton, with all he had learned and revealed tonight, he felt certain that slumber would not be so benevolent toward him.

  Chapter 16

  Dawn broke through the crack in the panes, bathing that sliver of the room in muted rose, and startled by the light Myrna jerked awake in the chair, her first realization—Dalton had gone.

  Last night he had returned to keep vigil with her, bringing with him two tankards of coffee. But any deep revelations did not resume as within minutes of his arrival, Sisi awakened from a nightmare. Terrified, she had clasped both Myrna’s hand and Dalton’s, saying she felt safer with “Uncle Dalton” and Myrna both there. Dalton stayed long after he told her a story to help her sleep, not of wolves or other terrors, but this one of a princess and a pea that made Sisi drowsily smile. The remaining hours he encouraged Myrna and told tales of his past with his siblings, and she also recounted some of the happier events of her childhood.

  Genevieve entered the room, clearly surprised to see Myrna there.

  “Go,” she encouraged. “Get some rest. I’ll stay with the wee one.”

  With a glance at Sisi to assure she slept peacefully, Myrna thanked the maid and went to her room. She sluiced her face with cool water from the washstand, changed into a fresh dress, then wearily made her way downstairs to find sustenance.

  Jeremy met her in the foyer.

  “Glad to see you’re up and about,” he greeted her and checked his pocket watch. “We haven’t much time before the train leaves.”

  “I’m sorry. I cannot possibly leave today.”

  He frowned. “I’ve spent too much time away from my shop. My assistant sent a telegram that one of my most valued clients needs help, which he isn’t qualified to give.”

  She took the remaining steps down. “You had already retired for the night. You didn’t know. We found Sisi—”

  He gave an impatient nod. “A maid told me. Are your bags packed?”

  “A doctor had to be sent for. He said she’s to remain the day in bed.”

  “She’ll be fine once we’re aboard the train.”

  “No, you don’t understand. She...she could have died last night, smothered to death.”

  It still hurt saying it.

  A trace of sympathy touched his eyes. “But she’s all right now?”

  “I wouldn’t say that, but she’s better.”

  He shrugged. “Then I don’t see the problem.”

  Myrna struggled to remain composed in the face of his cavalier attitude toward her little sister.

  “The problem is that due to her history of illness I would prefer to follow the doctor’s orders.”

  He thought it over then gave a short nod. “I’m not a cruel man, Myrna. If she needs to stay, so be it. We can send for her later.”

  “Send for her?”

  “Yes. Now what’s the matter? I thought that would please you.”

  “I can’t send Sisi alone on a train—she fears the very thought of them! I would need to accompany her.”

  “You mollycoddle the girl, Myrna.” Anger laced his words and he snapped his pocket watch shut. “My father would never have allowed what she gets away with on a daily basis. She must learn her place.”

  Myrna struggled to keep the ice from freezing her tone. “And just what is her place?”

  “Seen, not heard, as all children should be. Definitely not having every whim catered to. She needs a firm hand. Then, once she’s of age, she might make a suitable match for my apprentice.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “Don’t look so shocked. Arranged marriages happen all the time. He’s a fine boy, highly skilled, and I wouldn’t wish to lose him.”

  Barely seven, and he was marrying her sister off for his convenience?

  The truth came to Myrna so vividly, it brought a rush of relief, like lancing a boil, though she was sure Jeremy would protest to being compared to a carbuncle. She almost felt giddy with contained laughter at the parallel, or perhaps it was due to her lack of sleep.

  “I’m sorry. This was a mistake.”

  “What was?”

  “I cannot leave with you.”

  The soft words aired gave her solid conviction and she faintly smiled.

  His face reddened. He looked ready to explode and pocketed his watch. “Fine. If it’s that important, stay and travel with your sister later. I must leave today.”

  Before he took more than a few steps toward the staircase, she stopped him with her next words.

  “You misunderstood. I cannot go at all. I cannot marry you.”

&n
bsp; He gaped at her in shock.

  “I’m sorry it’s taken me this long to realize. So many fears clouded my perception. But the life you offer isn’t what I want for my sister. It isn’t the life I would choose for myself.”

  “You’re not thinking clearly.” His tone was condescending. “You look like you’ve had no sleep. Don’t make rash decisions you’ll later regret.”

  “Actually, I’m thinking more clearly than I have in a long while. I would make a terrible clockmaker’s wife. I find the topic of clocks rather dull and certainly wouldn’t wish to spend the remainder of my days dusting them.”

  He stared at her, as if more horrified by that disclosure than by her change of heart. She wondered what he would say if she admitted that she found him to be of similar character to his clocks but refrained from speaking the insult. He had been kind to respond to her letter and follow her father’s wish to help. Myrna had no desire to rub salt in the wound.

  “Goodbye, Jeremy. I do wish you the very best life has to offer,” she said, sincerely meaning it, “and a pleasant journey home.”

  “But—what will you do?” he asked once Myrna walked away.

  She turned slightly to look at him. “I haven’t decided. But I’m no longer apprehensive of what the future might bring.”

  He gave her a nod of grudging acknowledgment, and she wondered if secretly he was relieved, having also come to the conclusion that she and Sisi wouldn’t fit into his rigid lifestyle that ran like his mechanical clocks.

  Needing fresh air and open space, she went outdoors.

  Dalton’s surprising acceptance of her, after hearing of her family’s scandal, had been a huge burden lifted from her shoulders. He and his mother had been the two she most feared would want nothing more to do with her if her history came to light. Instead, Dalton had opened up to her, and she felt twice ashamed for misjudging him.

  But that didn’t change their lots in life or erase the feelings experienced when in his presence, when in his arms. Friendship and desire were not love. She had grown to treasure his companionship, but knew it would never be enough. For either of them.

  She trusted Dalton never to wield his position to try to seek more from her but didn’t place faith in herself, not after her passionate reaction to his embraces. She had never felt that way with any man before Dalton, and she had no wish to tempt fate, to learn if she was as weak as her mother. Perhaps the girl Olive might speak for her to her manager, and Myrna could secure a position as a laundress, also find a place in town for her and Sisi to board.

  Without realizing she’d done so, Myrna found herself on the plot of land that held the family tombstones. Twice in the span of months death tried to steal her sister, and she could not help but thank God that He watched out for them. How much she had changed from the suspicious and terrified woman Dalton first brought to this house against her will!

  With tears in her eyes, she smiled at the memory and looked at Dalton’s brother’s grave. His death was the reason Dalton returned home, and though the events were tragic, she felt blessed to have been a passenger on the train with him. Where would she be now if they had never crossed paths? So much had happened since that night to change her outlook on life. She felt that she had aged years instead of months.

  She stared at the small, gray headstone in the row behind, with an angel carved into its stone surface. It was clear that Dalton loved his little sister and still carried guilty remorse for her death, though he, too, had learned to move on, as difficult as that could be.

  The sudden blur of movement in the sky caught her attention. She inhaled an awed breath and held it at the sight of an eagle, its wingspan incredibly wide as it soared above the clouds. Unafraid. Majestic. Magnificent.

  She had come to Eagle’s Landing battered and broken, in need of renewal for her body and a rekindling of her spirit—and she’d found both. Myrna finally knew peace in the knowledge that she had made the right decision for her and Sisi to remain in Hillsdale, feeling as if, indeed, a light did warm her soul.

  Everything else still too fresh, too vague, she couldn’t think beyond that.

  A rustle in the grass made her turn. She looked with surprise to see Dalton a short distance away. Also the victim of a sleepless night, he appeared weary, his eyes rimmed with red, but it was the moisture that sparkled in them that stunned her. There was a vulnerability about his carriage, his expression intent, and she shook her head in confusion.

  “Dalton?” Only recently had she allowed herself to say his name when in his exclusive company. Alarm washed through her, and she moved a few steps forward. “It’s not Sisi...?”

  “Sisi is fine.” His voice held a raspy quality, but she barely sounded like herself, either.

  “Thank you for staying with me to keep vigil,” she said somewhat carefully then realized where he’d found her. Was that what upset him? “I hope you don’t mind that I came here....”

  He waved that away and moved toward her, shortening the distance until she could reach out and touch him if she wished.

  “I spoke to your cousin. He said you refused him.”

  “My sister would never have been happy with the life Jeremy had planned. Nor would I. I was foolish not to see that sooner. Thank you for helping me realize that.”

  He blinked rapidly a few times then swiftly turned, walking toward another grave and bowing his head. She watched his odd behavior.

  “I have tried to keep faith for some time,” he admitted, his voice so low Myrna almost couldn’t hear him. “For weeks I wished to speak, but didn’t dare. Too much...” He shook his head. “Too much had happened. I felt the urgency again when we were in the conservatory. To say what’s been on my heart, knowing time was my enemy. Later, I resigned myself that the missed opportunity was for the best. You had chosen. I didn’t wish you hurt. I resigned myself that it wasn’t meant to happen....”

  “Dalton...I...” She tried to follow, mystified at his jumble of words, so unlike his usual composed self.

  He turned then and looked at her a moment before approaching. He reached for her hands. She freely gave them to him to hold.

  “What I’m trying to say, Myrna, is that I love you.”

  Her heart skipped a beat then quickened. At a loss for breath or speech or thought, she could only stare.

  “You are intelligent and beautiful and clever, someone I’ve come to trust.”

  “What about Giselle?” She finally found words, wincing at her choice of them but needing to know.

  He sobered. “So, you know of Giselle. What have you heard?”

  Quietly she told him what little she had learned of the ruptured wedding. “I saw you dance with her at the ball, then you left the room together.”

  “Giselle and I needed to talk. She’s part of the reason I felt unable to speak to you before this. There was a hole in my life that needed mending before I could go on.”

  She nodded.

  “We agreed to reclaim friendship, nothing more. Neither of us would have been happy together, and at last we both acknowledged that. We were lifelong friends, and everyone assumed that someday we would marry. But it was not to be. We had conformed to what our friends and her parents hoped for us instead of what we preferred as individuals. She realized that before I did.”

  He squeezed her hands, bringing her eyes back to his. “I didn’t dare hope that you cared for me, especially once you made the choice to marry your cousin—but then you gave me your father’s watch, which you cherished and could never bring yourself to sell. Might I hope that your gift was a look inside your heart and that you return my love, even a little?”

  Taking pity on his distress, she nodded. “I do, Dalton, more than a little.” At the light that suddenly glowed in his fascinating eyes she felt forced to add, “But I cannot be to you what my mother was to him, the dowager’s
son. I’m not like that.”

  “I would never ask it of you.”

  Hurt replaced the look of joy on his face, and he released her hands. She missed their warmth.

  “Do you truly believe that I have so little respect for you to make such demands or even coax you into such an arrangement?”

  “But again I ask, as I did then, what can there ever be for us? We admitted how we feel, but that’s as far as it can go. I’m only the governess—and not even one with experience. A fraud, really.”

  “You’re not only anything, and you’re certainly no fraud,” he said in frustration.

  “It still doesn’t change the fact that you’re the master of Eagle’s Landing, from one of the most prominent families in the county. Much is expected of you. I don’t fit in, especially with the added baggage of the scandal of my past.”

  “It wasn’t your scandal, and I’ll have you know that the Freed men are notorious for not giving a flying fig what others may think.”

  “Mr. Dalton, sir?”

  “What?”

  Caught up in their altercation, he swiftly turned at the sound of a new voice, his answer coming clipped. Genevieve blinked, looking uncertain whether she wished to speak.

  He calmed. “Pardon my brusqueness, Genevieve. What do you want?”

  “Mr. Finnegan is here to see you, sir. Says it’s urgent.”

  He let out a prolonged breath. “I hadn’t expected him this soon,” he said to himself. “Please escort him to the library and tell him I’ll join him straightaway. And Genevieve, whatever you may have heard just now goes no further. If I hear even a murmur, I’ll know you’re the cause and there will be harsh repercussions.”

  “I didn’t hear much, sir. Honest. I only just arrived. Only about the scandal last year, and I won’t say another word about what Miss Giselle did.” The maid’s face turned as red as a persimmon. She gave an awkward bob of a curtsy then hurried back to the house.

  Dalton shook his head wearily and turned back to Myrna. “At least she misunderstood and thinks we were talking about my past disgrace. I must go and deal with this. Liam Finnegan is my new manager at the mill.” She nodded and he studied her eyes, his manner intent. “We will speak further, Myrna. That’s a promise.”