The Ungrateful Governness

by Mary Balogh

  Now she was aware of what her life could have offered. Not just the fine homes and clothes, the parties, the outings, and the suitors. But she knew what her particular life might have been. She might have been the Countess of Rutherford, the wife, the companion of the man she had grown to love. She might have made something of such a relationship even if his love did not nearly match her own. At least she would have had a chance to win his friendship, his esteem. The challenge would have been exhilarating. Now she would never see him again.

  But she must not look back, Jessica told herself on that first evening, must not regret rashly made decisions. And she must not complain. Her first night on the road was to be reasonably pleasant, at least. She had actually been given a room of her own. Granted, it was a tiny box of a room under the sloping roof of the attic, in which it was necessary to edge one's way around the rather lumpy bed. The only other furniture was a cracked washstand and an equally cracked bowl and water jug. But at least she would have some privacy, and at least-and surprisingly-the sheets were clean. And there was a dining room in this inn separate from the taproom. She had been able to eat her dinner without fearing at every moment that she was going to be accosted

  It was fairly early in the evening, far too early to go to bed, Jessica decided. But she would not venture from her room again. She took a book out of her valise and perched as comfortably as she could on the edge of the bed, huddled up inside her cloak. She would read until the candle burned out, anyway.

  It turned out to be a very frustrating day for the Earl of Rutherford. When he left Hendon Park, he expected that finding Jessica would be the least of his problems.

  It was what he would say to her when he did so that occupied his mind all the way back into London. This time he must be very sure that he said the right thing. The whole of her future happiness would depend upon it.

  For that very reason, perhaps, he was not quite as nervous as he had been the day before when he had proposed to her. Then it had been his own happiness he was trying to secure. Now he had merely to convince her that she must return to London and her grandfather's care. He must assure her that in the public eye her reputation was quite unsullied and would remain so. Although the Barries could cause her some embarrassment if they chose to do so, really the only persons who could do her reputation any real harm were himself, his grandmother, and her grandfather. Surely it would not be difficult to convince her that none of those three persons would ever be malicious enough to begin a whisper of gossip about her.

  She must return to London, to the society where she belonged. The thought of her returning to the sort of life she had led when he first saw her filled the Earl of Rutherford with dread. Women ordering her around, treating her like dirt beneath their feet. Children treating her with as much insolence as they knew their parents wopld let them get away with. Men eyeing her with lust, scheming how to coax her into their beds. She would be fortunate indeed if she found her way into a house where she would be treated with the proper respect. And even then it would be no life for Jess. His beautiful Jess.

  Perhaps she had not heard or had not believed his assurances of the night before that he was going away, that he would trouble her no more. Perhaps it was her fear of him as much as anything that was driving her away. He must repeat his assurances to her. He must convince her that he meant what he had said. She must know that she could return to London and begin her social life again without the constant fear that she would meet him at every turn. She must feel entirely free to encourage other suitors and choose an eligible husband from among them.

  Rutherford felt physically sick at the thought, but he resolutely put his feelings from him. He had renounced Jess the previous day. He must train himself now always to think of her as quite beyond his reach. It must be her happiness, and only hers, that occupied him for the rest of this day's business. As soon as he found her, he would take her back to Hendon Park, or to Berkeley Square if she preferred, and then leave, never to see her again.

  He decided not to stop in London. His grandmother had assured him that Jess would already have set out on her journey north even before he left Hendon Park. It would be an utter waste of time to go to Berkeley Square on the slim chance that she would still be there. After all, if she was bent on running away from her grandfather, she was not likely to spend a few hours relaxing at his grandmother's house.

  He would save time, he decided, by taking immediately to the northern road. His grandmother's crested carriage was easily recognizable. He would overtake it within the hour, if he were lucky, or certainly not too much longer than that. He would be able to bring Jess back before the middle of the afternoon.

  It was only as one hour turned into two that Lord Rutherford regretted not returning home for his curricle. It would have been a slightly more comfortable mode of travel. He had not realized that the carriage could have had such a start on him. Jess must have made almost no stop at all at Berkeley Square. It made sense, he supposed when he thought about it. He would wager that she would not take with her any of the finery that his grandmother had provided her with. Packing her belongings would not have taken her long.

  As the afternoon wore on, he became downright uneasy. Could the carriage have possibly come this far? Was there any chance that he had passed it? But no, that was impossible. It was equally impossible that it could have taken a different route. Lord Rutherford began to come to the unwelcome conclusion that the carriage must still have been in London when he passed the city by and that it was somewhere on the road behind him.

  But did he dare take a gamble and turn back? If by some chance she was still ahead of him and he went back now, he would never catch up to her.

  He rode onward for another five miles before deciding that he must turn back. As it was, it seemed unlikely that he would get back to London that night. And the weather was turning bitterly cold. He had been trying to ignore it all afternoon, but his hands were numb even inside his gloves, and the heavy capes of his greatcoat were failing to keep out the cold. Stray flakes of snow were beginning to drift down from a leaden sky.

  Lord Rutherford did not afterward know what inspired thought led him to consider that perhaps his grandmother's carriage was not on the road at all. Was it certain that that was how Jess was traveling? His grandmother had said so, of course. She had offered the carriage. But was it really certain that Jess would have accepted? Was it not far more consistent with her stubborn character and with her determination to return to her former life, for her to have decided to travel by. the stagecoach? He had passed several since leaving London. She could have been on any one of them!

  And so he made his way back, uneasy about his decision to do so, cold, worried about his tired horse, and determined to examine every stagecoach he passed to make sure that she was not on any of them. Soon, of course, most of them would stop for the night. He must look carefully at each inn to see if a stagecoach stood in its yard.

  He hailed two stagecoaches on the road without success before spotting the one in an inn yard. Snow was falling. It was almost dark. He felt hopeless. He had lost her. Somehow he had missed her, and he would never see her again. He would never be able to explain to her that she was making an unnecessary sacrifice of her life.

  He asked for her by name, slipping the innkeeper a large coin as he did so. It was amazing to be told that yes, she was upstairs in the attic room. After the long journey of the day and all its worries and uncertainties, it seemed almost too easy to find that she was here, at the very first inn he checked.

  There was no spare room at the inn. Rutherford placed another coin in the innkeeper's hand and began to climb the stairs to the attic.

  16

  Jessica stiffened when the knock sounded on her door. She might have known that her good fortune was too good to be true. She was going to have to share her room after all. The bed was certainly large enough to accommodate more than one person.

  "Yes?" she called out hesitantly, wishing that she coul
d pretend to be deaf.

  There was no answer for a moment. Then her blood ran cold.

  "Jess?" a familiar voice said.

  Jessica leapt to her feet. Her book slid with a thud to the floor and her cloak slipped from her shoulders. "Who is it?" she called foolishly. There was only one person in the world it could possibly be. "What do you want?"

  "May I talk to you for a minute?" the Earl of Rutherford asked.

  "What about?" she said. "What do you want? I have nothing to say to you."

  "Jess." He was speaking quietly through the thin door. "Will you please open the door? I have something of great importance that I must say to you. I give you my word of honor as a gentleman that I will not touch you."

  "Go away," she said. Her voice was shaking, she noticed in some alarm. "Please go away."

  "Jess, please listen to me," he said. "Please open the door. The innkeeper will be up here soon wanting to know what all the commotion is about. Just listen to me. Hear me out. Please."

  She pulled the door open and immediately felt what a tactical error it was to have done so. He looked huge, clad still in his greatcoat and topboots. His hat and whip were in his hands. His hair was disheveled, his face rosy with cold. He looked impossibly handsome.

  "My lord," she said breathlessly, "I do not know how you have found me here. But I will not be harassed any longer. I have left your father's house and your grandmother's. I am on my way to a new situation. I want nothing more to do with you. I thought I had made that plain. And I seem to recall that you promised just last night that you would leave me alone. Please go away."

  "Jess," he said, "let me in. Let us not entertain a whole inn with our quarrel. No, you are quite safe." He said this as he stepped inside, closed the door behind him, and threw his hat and whip onto the bed. "I have promised not to touch you."

  Jessica watched him warily and backed between the wall and the bed down toward the washstand.

  "You must come back," he said. "This flight into Yorkshire and return to a life of service is madness, Jess. And totally unnecessary. You do not belong in such a life."

  "Your tune has changed drastically within a few weeks," Jessica said. She was beginning to feel more in command of herself. "Until you discovered my grandfather, this was exactly the life in which I belonged."

  "No," he said. "You forget that I offered you a very different life even before I discovered that you are Heddingly's granddaughter."

  "My life is none of your concern anyway, my lord," she said. "If I choose to take a situation as a governess, that is my business only. I do not owe you an explanation."

  "No, you do not," he agreed. "You owe me nothing,

  Jess. Nothing at all. It is not for myself I plead. It is for you. I do not believe that you can be happy with such a life. And I have reason to believe that you are returning to it because of what I have said to you. But it is not true, Jess. It is not true that your reputation is ruined. You do not have to flee from society."

  She looked at him, amazed. "Flee from society?" she said. "How absurd! Do you think I care what other people say of me?"

  "Yes, I think you do," he said gently. "But other people are saying nothing, Jess. I made the situation sound very bleak yesterday morning, did I not, when I was trying to persuade you to accept my offer. I wished you to believe that you had no choice, that marriage to me was your only way of avoiding great scandal. But it is not so at all. I lied."

  "Why?" she asked. She had moved around to the foot of the bed and held on to one of the bedposts.

  He shrugged and smiled somewhat apologetically. "I don't know," he said. "I suppose I considered it a sure way of getting you to agree. Not very honorable, was it? And foolish, as it turned out."

  "You should have been relieved that I released you from having to do the honorable thing," Jessica said.

  "Relieved?" He laughed. "But it does not matter how I felt or feel, does it? That is not the question here. The point is, Jess, that you are running away from a situation that does not exist. And you belong back there. You belong with your grandfather, stubborn and wrongheaded as he can be. You need to marry and have a family with someone of your own class. Not this, Jess. Oh, not this shapeless gray dress, dear, and the severe hairstyle. And not the demure look, eyes cast down, that I saw at the Barries'. Not that, Jess. Please."

  "Life was tranquil until just a couple of months ago," Jessica said. "It is only since that it has been full of feelings that have torn me apart. I have not been happy. And there is nothing to go back to. Only emptiness and heartache." She had laid her forehead against the bedpost and closed her eyes. "I want to be at peace again. I must go on."

  She was aware of him throwing his greatcoat impatiently onto the mattress. He strode around the bed toward her but stopped a short distance away.

  "I have promised not to touch you," he said. "Don't be so unhappy, Jess. Can you not see that I have been responsible for all your misery? I insulted you and harassed you when I first knew you, and I have pestered you with unwelcome attentions and with offers that you did not want. And the last one was unforgivable because I enlisted the help of a man whose wishes I thought you could not resist and used arguments that I thought would crumble all your resistance. Wherever you have turned, you have found me. And I now know that you have not wanted me in your life at all."

  Jessica put one hand between her forehead and the bedpost so that he would not see her face.

  "I am sorry," he said gently. "Love can make one very selfish and very blind. In my love for you, I was unconscious of the misery I was causing you. But the point is, dear, that it is a matter that can be put right. Once I have escorted you back to London-and I shall hire a carriage for you, Jess; I wil not ride with you- then I shall leave as I promised you last evening. And I shall not renege on my promise to leave the country in the spring and stay away for a few years. You will be happy once I am gone, Jess. I promise you will."

  She was crying into her hand. But she could not move or say a word without betraying the fact to him.

  "Would you prefer that I left now and sent someone else to accompany you tomorrow?" he asked. "Aubrey would come, or Godfrey, I know. Or would you prefer me to ask someone not connected with my family at all? Just promise me that you will stay here and not run away while I am gone."

  Jessica was concentrating all her energies on not allowing a sob to escape her.

  "Jess," he said suddenly. He sounded closer, though he still did not touch her. "You are not crying, are you?"

  She felt a light, hesitant hand on her hair when she still did not answer.

  "Don't cry," he said. "Please don't cry, dear. I can't bear to see how miserable I have made you. Please, Jess."

  She turned away from him and reached for a handkerchief in her pocket. She scrubbed at her eyes and blew her nose.

  "You must not blame yourself," she said. "You have not been entirely the villain of this piece, you know."

  "You will come back?" he asked.

  She stared down at her hands, her back toward him, for a long moment. "Yes," she said, "I will come back."

  He did not move. "With me?" he asked. "Or shall I send someone else?"

  "With you," she said.

  "Thank you." The tension had gone from his voice. "Thank you for trusting me, Jess. You have made the right decision, you will see. You will be happy once I am gone. For tonight I will not risk scandal. There is another inn two miles farther north. I shall stay there for the night and return for you in the morning. I shall hire a carriage for you. All you have to do is wait here. You will wait, Jess?" There was a note of anxiety in his voice again.

  "No." She shook her head and turned to face him. "Don't leave."

  "There is no room left here," he said. "I should have to sleep in the taproom. Not that that would matter. But we must not stay at the same inn. Tattlemongers might make something of that if word were to get out."

  "There is a room," she said. "Here. I want you to stay here."
<
br />   "What are you saying?" He watched her intently, a frown between his eyes.

  She swallowed and flushed. "Do you still want me?" she asked. "You used to want me. I am offering myself to you."

  He did not move or change his expression. "I have not asked for anything, Jess," he said. "I have made no demands on you. I have come so that I might take you where you belong and set you free. I want you to be free, dear. You owe me nothing."

  "Am I free to offer myself to you?" she asked. Her flush had deepened. Her hands twisted nervously against the sides of her woolen dress. "I do not feel constrained. I make the offer because I wish to do so."

  "Jess?" He frowned and gazed at her uncertainly.

  She took a deep breath and let it out raggedly. Then she stepped forward, laid a trembling hand against his coat, and lifted the other hand to join it. She unbuttoned the coat and then proceeded to do the same with his waistcoat. She spread her hands over the silk of his shirt and looked up into his eyes.

  He had not moved, but he looked down at her in wonder.

  "Don't you want me?" she asked, her eyes slipping from his.

  "Don't I want you!" He caught her to him suddenly in a bruising hug and rocked her from side to side. "But I don't understand, Jess. I don't understand."

  She raised her head from its position against his shoulder and found his eyes with hers once more. "Make love to me," she whispered. "Make love to me, my lord."

  She gasped at first under the fierce onslaught of his kiss. His mouth covered hers hungrily and his tongue invaded its warm depths. But her passion matched his almost immediately. She put her arms up around his neck, arched her body against his, and gave herself. There would be no holding back this time, no last-second pangs of conscience. This time she was his for the taking, no matter what happened afterward. This time she offered the gift of herself in love and gratitude for the precious and selfless gift he had just given her: her freedom.