However can I thank you for arranging this meeting between the love of my life and I? You simply must come to the wedding! Had it not been for you, I would not have enjoyed such a fine courtship from such a fine gentleman for these past few weeks, and we would not be getting married. I owe everything to you, my dear.
-Lady Cynthia Soothley
“He was courting us both at the same time?” whispered Olivia.
Mildred hung her head, unable to meet her friend's eyes.
The gossip hit the social scene faster than a hurricane hits a colony. It was not long before Olivia learned of the full measure of Ben Soothley's betrayal, of how he had been courting Cynthia since that first night she had led him, panther to her prey, away from her. Why had Ben even come back? From a distant source, perchance by a person whose idleness led their imagination astray, Olivia received the devastating news that Cynthia, for fear of her parent's disapproval of a man who did not come with a title, had asked him to court Olivia, as well. She had thought that Olivia would serve as a nice cover for their romance, and that in the end, she would be the one to reap the rewards.
Whether this was true or if more blame lay in Ben Soothley's corner than she knew about, Olivia spiraled into a deep, dark hole. While in public she held her head up high, there was no more pounding of her feet on the stairs of the Kingsley home, no more bright and merry laughter. When she emerged from her quarters with her bags packed two weeks later, her gentle waves of brown hair were scraped tightly into a bun and she had traded her low-cut gown in for one that buttoned to the neck. She had written and informed her aunt of her decision; she held her welcome letter to Worchester Abbey in her gloved right hand.
* * *
It came as no surprise to the eccentric aunt of Lady Olivia that her niece had applied for a position as a governess at Worchester Abbey. In fact, in light of the scandal that had descended upon her life, the maiden aunt liked that Olivia was taking charge and holding her head up high.
“But darling, why Worchester Abbey?”
Perhaps it was the fact that the dilapidated old mansion was located in the neighboring town, or perhaps it was because Lady Margolis, the proprietor of Sootherly's who had warmed to the devastated young lady, told her that three motherless children lived there, but Olivia had decided to take the proffered position with as much alacrity as possible. She had written the Duke of Worchester of her unusual education, and he had replied, in a very terse fashion, that it would be sufficient for his daughters to learn the basics of geography and the finishing arts, which he assumed, her being a lady of gentle breeding, she possessed herself. Of his son he said only that he would be receiving supplemental lessons in the maths from a tutor. And although her private opinion was that the duke's daughters should be receiving similar supplemental lessons, she knew that she would be able to provide those, as well, with none the wiser. Ladies of her day should not be reliant on a man to manage the affairs of a household, and that included the ledgers of money.
There were so many moments on the lengthy coach ride to Worchester Abbey that Olivia pondered her own lunacy in embarking on so bold a venture. Yes, her education was superb and unusual, but what on Earth did she know about children? Nothing, that was what, and the duke had a full three. Three! Merciful heavens, what was she thinking? When the coachman finally announced her stop, she gathered up her bags and approached the imposing home of the Worchesters. Dark and shabby, it loomed over her delicate frame like a hulking Nordic god, causing her to swallow hard. She raised the heavy knocker at the door and brought it down in two loud bangs on the door.
It was a few moments before an older woman with graying black hair and an air so imposing it was almost comical. “I am Mrs. Huxting, the housekeeper,” she said, leading Lady Olivia and her slew of bags into the grand foyer. “The duke and his children will be down shortly.” With that, the formidable lady looked the younger one up and down and her expression softened. “Is this your first post as governess, Lady Knightbridge?”
“It is, Mrs. Huxting.”
Mrs. Huxting took a moment and then nodded decisively. “You will need to draw upon all your resources for these children” was all she said before she went up the marble-railed winding staircase, the marble aged and cracked in multiple places, to fetch the aforementioned group for whom all those resources would be so necessary. Not a good sign.
Olivia took in the inside of Worchester Abbey like she was reading a book, noting each and every detail. The vast multitude of rooms had a dank air about them, as if they had just been aired out in preparation for her arrival, but had otherwise been unoccupied for years. By far her favorite room, the one where she saw more potential than darkness, was one that was clearly a study and clearly far more often inhabited than the others. The ashes in the grate left her white fingertips sooty and books lined the extensive library waist to ceiling. Pulling back the dark burgundy-colored drapes revealed a set of enormous French windows through which Olivia could see the brambles of an overgrown garden, like something out of Paradise; in fact, the entire house reminded her of a Paradise lost, a place where joy once ruled supreme and now Darkness was Master.
“And have you found exactly what you were looking for, Lady Knightbridge?” a deep male voice interrupted her musings, nearly startling her out of her skin. She turned, expecting and finding none other than the illustrious duke of Worchester. Her ready smile was wiped clean off her face at the unexpected sight she encountered there.
They say that some people have an objective beauty appreciated by all almost instantaneously. Ben Soothley—she was loathe to even remember the name in that moment—was one such person, but the man who stood before her now had an entirely different, far more interesting quality to his person. His dark hair rose up in curls that would have been very dyspraxic had the duke not tamed it down with extensive visits to his barber. His cheeks were drawn and pale, his eyes deep and dark, very arresting. And his lips—Olivia stopped herself there, aware that her study of her new employer was tapping into a dangerous part of herself. He stood almost an entire half meter taller than she did, and his shoulders were quite broad; he was tastefully dressed in a dark suit with a cream cravat, impeccably tied. Under other circumstances, he might have been every inch the dandy, but the whole raison d'etre about his appearance was that he was at least ten years older than Lady Olivia, and the years lent him a maturity and self-possession the likes of which his new governess had not encountered before. How unusual, how peculiar, to meet a man so much older who sparked such an immediate interest in his person.
“My apologies, Duke,” she replied smoothly, gathering up all her breeding in that moment. “It was a long journey and I simply wanted to start getting accustomed to my new surroundings as quickly as possible.”
“Your disclaimers are not necessary here, Lady Knightbridge,” replied the duke, holding open the door so she could exit the study. As she passed, she caught a whiff of his scent, musky and masculine, and felt blood rush to a host of unexpected places. She shook it off as the duke began rattling off a litany of rules and regulations for the education of his children. There were periods of time, a schedule for their walks outside—“No child of mine is going to be a layabout lazybones,” he declared authoritatively—their meals, their studies, the books she would use; it seemed that everything had been planned within an inch of its life. Her head was reeling from all the rules, and she had not even met the children yet.
“Duke, forgive me, but when is it that I make the acquaintance of the children?”
The duke looked at her oddly. “They have been here all along, Lady Knightbridge.”
Olivia shook her head. “Please, Lady Olivia is fine—what do you mean they have been here all along?”
It was then that she noticed the three curious faces peeking out from behind the staircase in the grand foyer. The children, it seemed, had been silently watching her exploration of their home from the minute she stepped in.
“File out, children,�
� said the duke and snapped his fingers in an altogether military fashion. The metaphor held true as the children arranged themselves from tallest to smallest by the staircase and held their heads straight up as the duke made the rounds, so to speak.
“This is Katherine Worchester, my eldest. The spitting image of her late mother, if you can believe it,” said the duke, pointing to his tallest and slimmest child, who seemed to shrink into the bones of her own body as surely as if she were a turtle determined to hide from the world.
“Not that father ever lets us talk about her,” interrupted the boy snidely. There was a note of pain in his voice, cleverly masked by a raging bitterness; Olivia recognized it so precisely because it was often how she had felt when the members of the ton who did not yet know who she was asked her about whom her parents were. Immediately following was a widening of the eyes and a well-recognized look of pity would enter their expressions, pity that Olivia did not want or need.
The duke sighed heavily, and Lady Olivia realized where the few strands of gray that were making their way through his curly locks came from. “And now you have met my heir, little Lord Mischief himself,” he told her.
“Otherwise known as Buxley,” said the mop-topped little prince and executed a more perfect mock curtsey than Lady Olivia had ever managed to execute herself.
“There is a reason this house is run with ship-shape efficiency, Lady Olivia,” continued a duke, reaching out a hand to ruffle the boy's blonde hair with affection. “Buxley here has managed to scare off the last four governesses, and I do hope you are made of far stronger stuff.”
Olivia was surprised. It seemed that all of the rules the duke was so set on enforcing came from a misguided desire to provide his children with structure, rather than to be tyrannical. He truly cared for his children, and that simply endeared him to her even more. And then it was impossible not to notice the bright little face peeking out from behind Duchess Katherine's skirt. Olivia knelt down and was met by a pair of eyes so merry that she had to swallow a laugh as the Duke of Worchester's youngest daughter stepped out shyly to meet her.
“I am 'lisbeth,” lisped the round-cheeked child, her eyes wide and green and tilting up at the corners. Lady Olivia did not know when she had encountered a child quite so lovely, and at her simple hello, Elizabeth rushed right to her and enclosed her with her small arms. Lady Olivia's heart managed to break wholly and utterly as she thought what the last few years must have been like for a child so small; the duke, for all his obvious adoration of his brood, could not have been overly physically affectionate with them. Olivia snuck another peek at him. He was so utterly English.
As she hugged the little girl back with all of her might, Lady Olivia felt a shift take place inside of her. It was remarkable, but she suddenly felt as if she would do very well in this home, and perhaps her presence could inflict some change. It all went surprisingly splendidly until later that week.
Perhaps she should have been suspicious of so uneventful a week, but Olivia simply saw it as fortune finally smiling down on her. The girls seemed so lovely, and so receptive and insightful to their lessons that Olivia found it a pleasure to be in their company. Lisbeth especially always seemed ready with those green eyes to smile and hug. And yet the evenings in Westchester Abbey always seemed to drag on for Lady Olivia. It was on a particularly stormy night after the rain had come down in torrents on the soft grass outside that she found herself staring out of her windows. The house had a darkness to it, as if there was an emptiness that the years had not been able to fill. It was inevitable that it would be on this night, long after Mrs. Huxting had tucked away the children into their overstuffed beds with clean sheets that Olivia would at last be alone with her thoughts.
They ventured on Ben Soothley briefly, for he was becoming a distant memory, a slash of pain on the surface of a past she no longer cared to remember. She wondered if the duke had any inkling of her past, if it had managed to follow her all the way to this charmingly shabby house, and if he did, did he think her foolish? It occurred to her that his opinion was becoming increasingly important to her. So far, from what she had seen of the man, he was distant, remote. The only time life came into his eyes was when the girls would come down for a late luncheon organized by the inestimable Mrs. Huxting or Buxley would pull yet another caper. So far, he had left frogs in her bed and torn up several of her books. Growing up with an eccentric aunt with far-flung friends had prepared her for much more than a boy who had too much energy and too much time. A quick talk with Mrs. Huxting and the stable master had set a structure in place for Buxley that was far more effective than anything the duke himself had organized.
Initially, he was furious.
“Who exactly do you think you are, Lady Knightbridge, to make my son into a stable hand?” he had raged, his smooth and weary exterior suddenly ruffled and animated.
“Lady Olivia, thank you. With all due respect, Duke, Buxley needs structure outside of the schoolroom—”she began, but the duke would have none of it.
“My son is not a commoner!” he shouted.
Olivia struggled to keep her composure. Really, the arrogance of the man! “And nobody would think of him as such. But titles and lands or not, Buxley is still a growing boy and he needs to expend his energy outside of mathematics and geography. The brain is not the only muscle he has to exercise. Let him work his arms, his legs. I think it will do him a world of good and in a week, you will tell me how correct I am,” she told him, and watched him reel back in complete shock. Being as inexperienced as she was with men, it was the first time she had seen the effects of her unorthodox upbringing on a member of the upper class. Given his credit, the duke said nothing, simply turned and walked away. He continued to say nothing even as Buxley's behavior began to improve vastly; the boy simply had no extra energy to work his mischief around the house, and he seemed to acquire an innate sense of duty that was evident to one and all.
Ah, the duke. So isolated in his—
A warm pair of tiny arms encircled her legs, nearly giving Olivia a heart attack. When she looked down, it was none other than Lisbeth, who was clutching her with a grip so tight and an expression so terrified that Olivia immediately sank to her legs to be on the girl's level.
“Darling, did the storm scare you?” she asked. Lisbeth nodded, and Olivia unlocked the vice grip from her dressing gown. “You know, thunder is when the gods of old come out to play. Sometimes they do not realize what a ruckus they make.”
Lisbeth broke out into the crackle of a smile. “Come. I will take you to your room and you will sleep and dream of the gods playing, and how large they are and how small you are, and how you are always, but always safe.” It was a long trip down the hallway, and a sudden noise alerted them both. A peek down the grand staircase revealed a dripping wet Katharine, who was sneaking in from goodness knows where at a very late hour. Unable to help herself, Olivia cried her name aloud.
The girl looked stricken and trapped, like a deer in a trap. “Do not worry your precious self about where I was,” she snarled, and Olivia was taken aback by the venom in her voice.
“Don' talk that way to Mis' 'Livia!” cried Lisbeth, clutching Olivia's hand tightly and fiercely. If she had not been so shocked at Katherine's reaction, she might have smiled at the show of bravery her small savior was showing right now.
“Oh what do you know, you little brat. You'd hug anyone,” said Katherine.
“Katherine!” gasped Olivia. She quickly secured the now crying child to her room and comforted her quietly. When she came back out, Katherine was attempting to scurry off into her own bedchamber, but Olivia caught her by the wrist and took her back to her own quarters.
“How can you speak to your sister that way? And where were you, the stables? You have gotten mud all over your dress.”
“Do not concern yourself of where I was tonight.”
“I most certainly will concern myself, young lady! I am your governess and I cannot have you tramping about at
all hours of the night, most likely catching cold—”
“You are not my mother.”
Olivia swallowed hard. “I am aware of that. However I do not see how that affects what I am currently saying to you.”
“I heard all about you, Lady Olivia,” sneered Katherine. “You and that ridiculous story with Mr. Soothley, how he married Lady Cynthia and led you on all the while. And now here you are, so desperate to make something of yourself that you are willing to endear yourself to a child in order to secure a husband.”
Olivia was in shock. Katherine has seemed so sweet, so innocent. It seemed that no matter how far away she got, she would never be able to escape that dreadful story of the engagement that botched her life, and now, it appeared that she was being punished for it. “Katherine, what in heaven's name are you speaking of? Who is this husband I am trying to secure?”
The girl's eyes flashed. “My father, of course. Mr. Soothley was too low on the totem pole for a titled lady like yourself, so you decided to get someone with a name and land behind him, did you not?”
In that moment, Lady Olivia Knightbridge felt herself grow up. For sitting across from her, the bottom of her gown dripping with mud and wetness, was a girl just ten years younger than herself who was hurting so badly that all she could do was lash out at someone she thought was taking her remaining family and protection away from her. She could see it in her eyes, in the way her bottom lip quivered to keep from crying as she spat out the hateful words that she herself did not quite believe. And it was obvious as the day Olivia was born—in this moment, she could not allow the child to sting her. She had to step outside of herself and take the other point of view. If she wanted Katherine to trust her, she would have to put her feelings first.
Olivia sucked in a deep breath and sat down on the edge of her new bed gingerly, as if completing a delicate balancing act. “Your mother was lovely to you, wasn't she?” she began, but it was wrong.
ROMANCE: CLEAN ROMANCE: Summer Splash! (Sweet Inspirational Contemporary Romance) (New Adult Clean Fantasy Short Stories) Page 37