Gift-Wrapped Governess

by Sophia James

  His eyes skimmed her figure, as though he’d only just noticed she was clad in a nightgown. He frowned. ‘Why are you going to bed so early? This time last night, you were still bustling about—’

  ‘This time last night,’ she retorted, trying very hard not to dwell on the fact she was practically naked, ‘I hadn’t spent the entire day playing ball games and coming up with ever more inventive bribes to get the boys involved in decorating the schoolroom for Christmas.’

  ‘And a splendid job you have done, too. It looks…like a fairy grotto.’ In the space of one day, she’d transformed the schoolroom completely. The greenery was no longer heaped in random piles, but fashioned into swags and bunches, decorating every available surface, as well as hanging from unlikely-looking corners. Even the way the fire, banked down for the night, bathed the hearth in a crimson glow lent a touch of magic to the atmosphere.

  ‘Come on.’ He indicated the tray. ‘I have cake, as well as wine. What harm will it do to sit for half an hour?’

  On their own? While she was completely naked under her nightgown? Was he mad?

  No, just impervious to her as a woman. To him, she was just a…dreary drudge in need of cheering up.

  ‘I am far too tired to entertain you, Lord Chepstow,’ she said wearily. ‘Can’t you find someone downstairs to talk to?’

  ‘Not about Pippa,’ he said, playing his trump card. ‘After what you said earlier about me not writing letters, it occurred to me that I may have been somewhat remiss. She does love getting letters. I only have to recall how she would squeal with pleasure whenever one came from you. It used to puzzle me, because surely she was the one with all the news, since she was the one having a Season? I could not imagine what you might have to say that would be of such interest to her. But then again, I have no idea what to say that might be of interest to her, either. Could you not help me compose something suitable, while we share a glass of wine?’

  ‘If it will prevent you from mentioning all those things I told you last night, in confidence,’ she grumbled. ‘I really don’t want her to find out that I feel as though I got the job under false pretences. Or that I’m struggling to cope with the additional demands of his lordship’s guests. I would feel as if…as if I’m letting her down.’

  She took a step closer to the desk where he was sitting, her brow wrinkled as though she was so intent on making her point, her feet had moved closer to him without her volition.

  ‘And her husband. He gave Lord Budworth his personal recommendation, just because Pippa asked him to…’

  She still looked a touch reluctant to come closer, but if he was any judge of things, concern about what he might put in a letter was now overriding her embarrassment at being caught in her night attire.

  ‘She will be interested to read my impressions of how you are faring in your first paid post, though. Perhaps,’ he said, ‘I could relate the tale of how your kingdom was invaded by pirates and how you managed to put all their energy to good use. Because I have to say, I am intrigued myself as to how you got them involved in making so many decorations.’

  ‘Oh, well, it was something you said, actually.’ She looked as though the fact something he had said had been of help had astonished her.

  ‘About them enjoying things in their own way. I realised that fighting them over those revolting paper pellets was a waste of time. Instead, I bargained with them. I said that if they made a garland of their own, they could then cover it in, um, snow, with my blessing. After they had helped to nail up all the garlands the girls had made, too, of course…’

  ‘Glad to be of service.’ He chuckled, noting that a good proportion of the garlands were covered in ‘snow’. ‘I am sure she would be highly entertained by that sort of tale,’ he said, pulling a sheet of paper from a desk drawer and reaching for a pen.

  ‘Now,’ he said, ‘where to start?’

  Since it was obvious she wasn’t going to be rid of him until he’d done what he came for, she pulled up a chair and sat as far from him as she thought she could get away with, without revealing how uncomfortable she felt. For he was acting as though it was perfectly normal to sit and have a conversation by firelight with a woman who was dressed only in a nightgown.

  Knowing what she did of his history, no doubt it was.

  She pinched her lips together in disapproval.

  ‘What, by the by,’ he said, eyeing the hairbrush she’d forgotten she was still holding, ‘what were you intending to do with that? Spank me? From the look on your face you would dearly love to. Though…I thought you had vowed never to beat any boy, no matter how naughty he’d been.’

  Immediately, he wished he had not said that. Not that he’d ever been much of a one for those sorts of bedroom games, but for some peculiar reason the thought of bending over one of the desks and letting her chastise him to her heart’s content had sent blood rushing straight to his groin.

  ‘As if anything I could do,’ she said, settling her candle down on the desk, ‘could have any effect upon you.’

  ‘You might be surprised,’ he said, shifting in his seat to ease the tightness of his breeches. ‘I am surprised myself, to be honest.’ He studied her with a puzzled frown. Her nightgown covered her from throat to ankles, not touching any part of her body in between, yet just knowing she was probably naked underneath it made him recall how very shapely she actually was.

  ‘Perhaps it’s your hair,’ he said musingly. ‘Because, you know, it looks very…enticing, unbound like that.’

  Self-consciously she reached up with her free hand and pushed the mass that had slithered over her shoulder back into place.

  She had been on the point of braiding it when she’d heard him blundering about in the schoolroom. She had not had it cut for years, except to trim the ends. It reached right down to her waist.

  ‘And without your spectacles…’ He looked deep into her eyes. ‘Your eyes are brown.’

  ‘My eyes are brown all the time.’ She tried to retain a strict tone of voice, but the intent way he was studying her was making her feel all soft and melting inside. It was thinking about all those other cosy fireside chats he’d had with all the other women in his past. The ones who’d also only been wearing…whatever it was that women of loose morals wore to bed.

  She felt her cheeks heat. Whatever they wore, she was certain it was nothing as unflattering as the yards and yards of flannel currently swathing her from top to toe. He would want his mistresses adorned in scraps of lace and silk, not bundled up in a garment designed to keep the sole occupant of a chaste bed warm during the long, lonely nights.

  She wasn’t sure if it was too dark for him to notice her blushes or not, but he was smiling as he poured them both a glass of wine.

  As he held out one of the glasses to her, it suddenly occurred to her that by this time of night, the chances were he was not completely sober. In which case, coming up here to write a long-overdue letter to his sister and cheer up the poor dowdy, incompetent governess probably seemed like a perfectly logical thing to do.

  Not that he needed to be foxed to act in an unconventional manner. When she thought of the things Pippa had told her he got up to when stone-cold sober just because he took some crackbrained notion in his head it would be fun…

  ‘One glass, that is all, and then you must leave,’ she told him firmly. ‘It is all very well for you, but I have to get up early in the morning. I don’t have the stamina to sit up half the night drinking as well.’

  ‘Point taken,’ he said, raising his glass to her in salute. ‘Though I do think you might give me some credit for thinking of you. How often does anyone come up here to just sit and talk to you at the end of your working day?’

  ‘N-never,’ she stammered, taking the glass and raising it to her lips, suddenly assailed by a feeling of loneliness so strong she almost shivered.

  ‘I suppose you think it is entirely my own fault,’ she said gloomily. ‘I have done nothing but snap at you every time you have come near
me, when I think, upon reflection, that you really have been trying to…I don’t know, be friendly.’ She shot him a questioning look.

  ‘In some ways,’ he said slowly, ‘I can understand why you have spoken as you have. To be frank,’ he said, setting down his glass and looking her straight in the eye, ‘nobody has ever made me question my behaviour the way you have done over the past two days. I was a touch irritated by your…cheek, at first.’ He smiled ruefully, to show that the comment no longer held true. ‘But when you held that mirror up to my actions, you showed me an image of myself I did not much care for.’

  He reached out and took hold of her free hand. ‘Miss Miller, you seem to think I abandoned Pippa when she was still grieving over the loss of our parents. Please, try to look at it from my point of view. I was hardly more than a boy myself. I knew nothing about how to look after a twelve-year-old girl. I really did think I was doing the best thing for Pippa by sending her to school, where she would be with girls her own age. When I interviewed Mrs Moulsham, she seemed like a motherly sort. And she assured me she would teach Pippa everything a young lady ought to know.’

  ‘Mrs Moulsham was certainly a very astute business woman,’ Honeysuckle agreed. He was holding her hand. He had reached out and taken hold of her hand. It was almost impossible to concentrate on what he’d said about Mrs Moulsham, rather than just delight in the feel of his strong, warm fingers enclosing hers. ‘She was very good at telling prospective clients exactly what they wanted most to hear. And…Pippa…’ Pippa had been painfully shy when she first came to school. Inside, she had not changed all that much, in spite of acquiring the kind of gloss that deflected most people’s perception of her real nature.

  ‘She was never one to speak out. It used to infuriate me, the way she would keep up that determinedly cheerful front every time we came to visit you, instead of telling you how lonely she was and how much she missed you…’

  ‘Aha! So you were almost as cross with her as you were with me? And you do accept that I was doing my best?’

  She could not think why it should matter to him so much, after all this time, but she was nothing if not honest.

  ‘Yes. I admit that I was wrong to suspect you of being deliberately unkind to your sister. There were faults on both sides.’

  ‘Then we can drink to that,’ he said, raising his glass again.

  ‘Drink to w-what, exactly?’

  ‘Getting to know one another. Now that we have both admitted that we have misjudged each other in the past.’

  She gave him a dubious look, but she did obediently raise her glass and take another sip of wine.

  ‘I don’t suppose I could get you to smile at me, could I? Just the once?’

  ‘Wh…what? Why?’

  ‘Well…’ he leaned back in his chair, his eyes fixed on her mouth ‘…I have this philosophy of life, you see. That it is so short that we should take what pleasure we can, whenever we can. Even if it is just the satisfaction of coaxing a smile from a lovely woman who looks almost as though she’s forgotten how.’

  And then he totally shocked her by reaching out with his forefinger and tracing the outline of her mouth.

  Even more shockingly, she sat stock-still and let him.

  And then wished she had slapped his hand away, for now her lips tingled and wanted more than just the touch of his finger.

  She couldn’t help looking at his lips, which were curved into a very sensual smile.

  She sucked in a sharp breath. And then another, because all of a sudden there didn’t seem to be enough air in the room.

  ‘Do you know what I think?’ He leaned forwards until their faces were so close their breaths mingled.

  ‘N-no.’ She shook her head, inhaling the scent of Lord Chepstow. His sweet breath, his freshly laundered clothes, his spicy soap, and something else she could not identify, but which was probably just…him.

  ‘I think, since it is Christmas, that you should let me kiss you.’

  She gasped and shot to her feet, panicked at how very easy it would be to lean forwards and make his seductively murmured words into reality.

  ‘You don’t really want to kiss me,’ she said, shaking her head as she backed away from him.

  ‘Oh, but I do,’ he said, getting to his feet and coming after her. ‘Honeysuckle, take it from me, as one who has spent a great deal of time studying the topic of feminine attractiveness. Any man who could see you now would want to kiss you.’

  She stopped mid-stride, his words astonishing enough to paralyse her. He took advantage of her immobility to come right up to her and place his hands on her waist.

  Honeysuckle’s heart was beating so fast now that he must be able to feel its echo through the palms of his hands. But if he did, it did not distract him from studying her face as though he had never seen her before. As though he really was thinking about kissing her.

  She was sure he had not come up here with seduction on his mind. That he really had only been thinking about mending fences with her, because she was a friend of Pippa’s. Or wanting to cheer her up, because she’d admitted to feeling so miserable yesterday.

  So she was not afraid. That was not what was making her heart beat so fast. It was just that, well, it was like a dream coming true, having him look at her like that, as though she was worth showering with jewels and fine clothes, the way Pippa told her he always treated the current object of his interest.

  Though he couldn’t really, truly, be interested in her. It was probably the wine making him talk like this. Or perhaps he was bored, and hadn’t been with a woman for a very long time…or perhaps he did not like the fact that she wouldn’t behave as though the sun rose and set on him, the way every other woman of his acquaintance must surely do.

  Perhaps he saw her earlier antagonism as a challenge to his masculinity.

  ‘You ought to let me go,’ she somehow found the strength to say, even though she was aching to press herself closer. ‘You really should not kiss me.’

  ‘Do you know, whenever someone tells me I ought to do something, I have the strongest urge to do the exact opposite?’

  There was nothing more likely to induce him to go off on one of his madcap adventures than someone telling him the thing was impossible to achieve. And she knew that. So why had she thrown down the gauntlet?

  ‘Y-you should not tease me,’ she said, recognising the glint of devilment in his eye. ‘Not like this. I’m not a little girl any more.’

  ‘No, you are not.’

  He leaned back a little, the better to make a leisurely perusal of her body. With his hands at her waist, he must be able to discern the outline of her figure, even though it was covered in the thick flannel gown.

  ‘You have grown up into a very attractive woman. You have a delectable body. Even that hideous nightgown you are wearing cannot completely disguise it. And your hair…’ He raised one hand to run his fingers through its length. ‘It is the kind of hair a man likes to see spread across his pillow.’

  His pillow. She could see herself lying back and letting him spread it across his pillow with those long, capable fingers. Looking at her just like this, as though his next move was going to be to remove her nightgown and run his fingers over every single inch of her naked body.

  ‘You are cold,’ he said, misinterpreting her convulsive shiver of longing. ‘It is freezing up here and you have nothing on your feet. It was selfish of me to keep you talking like this. Tell you what,’ he said, sliding one arm round her waist and pulling her close. ‘Kiss me goodnight,’ he said, his voice dropping to a husky whisper that sent another shiver right through her, ‘and then I’ll let you get back to your bed.’

  ‘That is an outrageous request to make.’ She was saying the right words, but they were coming out all low and breathy. Nothing at all like the stern rebuke they ought to be. But the longer she kept arguing, the longer he was likely to hold her close to him like this.

  ‘I don’t think so.’ He raised one hand, and cupped her ch
eek. He ran one thumb over her lower lip. ‘A girl as pretty as you ought to be kissed. Especially at Christmas.’

  ‘P-pretty?’ Nobody had ever told her she was pretty before. Not that she cared what anyone else thought. The point was, Lord Chepstow was telling her he found her pretty. Even though he could not possibly mean it.

  Good lord, flirting came as naturally to this man as breathing. Give him a spare hour and a woman who posed a bit of a challenge, and he would not rest until he’d made a conquest of her.

  All she would have to do was admit she wanted him to kiss her more than she wanted her next meal and he would no doubt recoil in horror. So naturally she did no such thing. Instead, she raised the stakes.

  ‘This is a schoolroom,’ she pointed out, even pulling away slightly to make him hold her a little tighter. ‘It would be completely inappropriate,’ she said, unsure whether she was talking about kissing in a schoolroom or her deliberately provocative behaviour. ‘It’s not even as if there is a kissing ball up here…’

  ‘I have no need of a kissing ball,’ he said scornfully.

  His eyes were fixed upon her mouth. And she couldn’t pretend this wasn’t exactly what she wanted one second longer. Her lips parted on a yearning sigh.

  He lowered his head towards hers. ‘I am quite capable of kissing a pretty woman without any other stimulus whatever. And did I not warn you that if someone tells me something is inappropriate, I want to do it all the more?’

  Yes, which was exactly why she’d reminded him. But if she was only ever to be kissed once in her life, she wanted it to be this man that did the kissing. Besides, he’d been the one to point out that life was short and pleasure was for snatching, wherever it was to be found. The chance to taste the ultimate delight of Lord Chepstow’s lips was just as ephemeral as the ice cream he’d bought her that day at Gunter’s. He might not be sober, he might be only reacting to the challenge he thought she represented, but if she did not taste him now, the moment would melt away, never to return.

  And so she raised her arms, and put them about his neck.

  ‘A C-Christmas kiss? Just one, and then you will let me go?’