The Reluctant Governess

by Maggie Robinson

  Now twenty-four, she was balancing work and caring for her fragile mother, whose health had never been robust. Mrs. Lawrence had managed well enough the eleven and a half months Eliza spent living in Mr. Hurst’s household, but Eliza didn’t want to spend a minute more in this hotbed of sin than she had to.

  She heard nothing from the bedroom next door. Perhaps Mr. Raeburn did not snore, which would be one point in his favor. Eliza tried to think of more, and apart from the man’s physical beauty, failed.

  Eliza had met his brother Lord Raeburn on several occasions, and he was equally attractive, though much darker and broader. The baron sometimes hung about the office when his wife came down from Scotland to iron out the impossible, and there was a strong family resemblance. Both men were overly tall, but as far as Eliza knew, the baron did not sport an earring—diamond for tonight in Eliza’s brief glimpse of him—or have a tattoo anywhere on his body. (Eliza would never dare ask Mary.)

  Nicholas Raeburn’s hair was a wild nest of dark auburn curls, and his skin was still golden from the Italian summer sun. She had seen much more than she should have. She was afraid she would have trouble erasing Nicholas Raeburn’s naked torso from her mind once her life got back to normal.

  Not to mention the shocking pictures that hung on the bathroom walls, where she had innocently gone to wash her face and brush her teeth before bedtime. It was one thing to paint unclothed women—all the classical artists did that—but taking photographs of them seemed far more depraved. That all of the girls appeared to be so damned happy to pose for Nicholas Raeburn was very annoying.

  To have Sunny live in such a household! The poor baby. She’d lost her mother and old nurse, and was saddled with the devil himself for a father. To be fair to Nicholas Raeburn, he seemed to love the little girl in his own careless way, but what kind of upbringing would she have? Who could she marry?

  Eliza swatted herself mentally. Why should Sunny have to marry anyone? The girl might find suitable employment just as Eliza had, and would have family money as a backup if she didn’t. Eliza had no intention of marrying unless someone very special came along. The trouble was, she had no time to look for someone, special or not. Her job and her mother consumed all her time.

  She sighed. It was never good to get philosophical in the middle of the night. Eliza would need all her wits about her in a few short hours when Sunny woke up, but sleep would not come, no matter which way she lay her head on the pillow. Eliza had lost the Battle of the Bedcovers ages ago, as Sunny was mummified, only her pert little nose poking out of the sheets. She would have to search for an extra blanket tomorrow, for she quite liked to be mummified, too.

  When her mother spent a restless night, Eliza would fix warm milk with a touch of honey and cinnamon. She could do the same for herself, now being familiar with the kitchen after helping Mrs. Quinn.

  Eliza was stealth itself, rolling out of bed so as not to disturb the little girl. She found her dressing gown in the dim shaft of electric light from the street and crept out of her room and down the stairs. Flickering sconces led the way—how profligate, and dangerous, it was of Mr. Raeburn to leave lights burning all night long. Eliza knew the Raeburn family was wealthy, but wasting money was not a Scottish trait, she was certain.

  She paused in the hall before the double drawing room. Somewhere below there was a definitive noise—the snick of a door closing, the clatter of a walking stick tossed into the stand, a snatch of song. Drat. Nicholas Raeburn was home and one floor below.

  No wonder the house had been so quiet—he’d gone out with his mates to roar someplace else. But now he was back, probably more foxed than ever, and she was barefoot in her dressing gown.

  Eliza turned to flee upstairs, but was halted in her tracks by a whispered “Oh hell” and an ominous thud to the floor.

  It was really none of her business if he couldn’t get to bed on his own steam. Let him sleep on the front hall carpet, to be discovered by Mrs. Quinn, or poor Sue if she had sufficiently recovered from her illness. His servants were paid to care. Eliza had no notion if Mr. Raeburn even intended to pay her, although she was sure Lady Raeburn would see that she had some compensation for her sacrifice. Yes, tomorrow first thing she would ring the office and arrange for a suitable—or unsuitable—replacement.

  “Argh.”

  The groan wafted up the stairs, and Eliza bit a lip.

  “Aieee.”

  Oh drat. He sounded like an animal caught in a trap, which would only serve him right. Eliza hesitated.

  “Help me, for God’s sake, someone. Anyone.” He sounded as if he knew he hadn’t a prayer.

  Eliza knew her Christian duty. The man was drunk, possibly injured. And if he wasn’t injured now, his head would be killing him tomorrow morning. This morning. It was nearly two o’clock of the new day already. Eliza peeked over the banister.

  “I swear I’ll be good. Better, anyway. I promise on Sunny’s life.” Nicholas Raeburn continued to talk to the floor. He had pitched face-forward, and the only thing Eliza could see in the gloom was the back of his dark coat.

  “I know I’ve told You that before. This time I mean it.”

  Eliza snorted. Any bargain the wicked man had made with God had not been fulfilled.

  “Who’s there?”

  Her mother had warned her about her snorting. For one thing, it wasn’t ladylike, and now her contempt had revealed her presence.

  “It is I, Miss Lawrence.”

  Nicholas Raeburn attempted to look up but failed. “What are you doing up there?”

  “I was on my way down to the kitchen for some hot milk. What are you doing down there?” she couldn’t resist asking.

  “Getting rug burn, I imagine. Could I trouble you to assist me? My legs seem to have gone out from under me. If you could just return my walking stick to me—I see I was premature to give it up.”

  Eliza looked down at the mirrored hall tree in the entryway. There was a collection of walking sticks and umbrellas corralled behind an elaborate bamboo design. Mr. Raeburn had not struck her as the walking stick sort. These things were probably left by his bankrupt friend and fellow artist Mr. Preble, about whom Mrs. Quinn had few good words to say as she hustled around the kitchen this evening. Mr. Preble must be truly a villain if Nicholas Raeburn compared favorably.

  “Very well.” Eliza made sure her robe was fastened securely and walked downstairs with as much dignity as she could muster. Looking over the canes, she selected one with a silver dog’s head and placed it near Mr. Raeburn’s hand. She had an image of herself holding out a branch to a man sinking in quicksand.

  He grasped it, but his gloved hand slipped. The sconces didn’t throw much light, but his glove appeared wet and dirty. It was a fine night—what mischief had he gotten into in some gutter or other?

  He tried again, hand over hand, slowly dragging himself up on his knees. With a little shriek, Eliza let the stick go and jumped back.

  “Don’t be afraid, Miss Lawrence. You should see the other fellow.”

  His face was covered in blood. Eliza saw tiny black spots dance in front of her eyes, and then nothing else.

  ***

  “I thought you were supposed to be helping me,” Mr. Raeburn said, hovering over her. His beautiful face was discolored, but from the looks of things he’d wiped most of the blood off with his silk cravat, which dangled from one swollen hand. Eliza shut her eyes, although she supposed one could not fall into a faint again when one was already lying down. And where was she? She cracked one lid.

  They were both in the ground floor morning room overlooking the back garden, though the stained glass window was black as death. Still in the middle of the night, then. He must have carried her to the sofa from the hallway. Better that than dumping her on the dining table in the next room, she supposed.

  Eliza struggled up on her elbows, tasseled pillows falling to th
e floor. “Wh-what happened?”

  He picked the pillows up and tucked them back behind her. “To me or to you? I say, it was most unfair for you to swoon and force me to pick you up. I can barely walk as it is without carting around a well-fed young woman.”

  Was he implying she was fat? The bounder! “I didn’t ask you to do anything!”

  “No, for you conked right out, didn’t you? Sheet-white, eyes rolled back in your head, a veritable textbook case. Cat definitely got your tongue and swallowed it whole. I’m sorry you can’t deal with a little bit of blood.”

  A little bit of blood? The man was mad. He’d looked like he’d been bathing in it, a great red river of— She swallowed hard. No more torturing herself with such an image. She was not so missish that the usual scrape or cut bothered her.

  But he’d been so very, very bloody. Dried bits had mixed in with his incipient coppery beard, and she shuddered.

  “Should you call a doctor?” Eliza asked when she had pulled herself together.

  “Because you were so lily-livered to faint? I don’t think so.”

  “Not for me, you idi—I mean, for you,” she said, minding her words just a trifle too late. He raised a rusty eyebrow. There was a deep cut above it, and he winced. He’d have to do his rakish eyebrow-raising tricks with the other.

  “For me? Whatever for?”

  “You have been beaten to a pulp, sir,” she said repressively.

  “Stabbed, too. But who’s keeping track? I’ll be fine with a hot bath and a hot toddy.”

  “I venture to say it was drink that got you into this fix in the first place.” She was not going to stitch up any part of him. Let him run around London and become a pincushion.

  He gave her an unashamed, crooked smile. “Would you now? Are you saying I’m a drunkard, Miss Lawrence?”

  “I don’t know what you are, Mr. Raeburn, and I don’t plan to stay long enough to find out.”

  “What about Sunny?”

  “I shan’t leave before the Evensong Agency secures a replacement. I wouldn’t let Lady Raeburn down.”

  “We don’t need you anyway,” Mr. Raeburn said, folding his long body into the chair opposite. “Interfering females.”

  At least he wasn’t bending over her any longer, although she had no intention of prolonging this discussion with him. “You need some interference, sir,” she said, sitting up. The room spun only a little—she must have hit her head when she fell. “That poor child! What if she had come downstairs to find her papa lying half dead on the floor?”

  “She probably wouldn’t have fainted, for one thing,” he said imperturbably. “Sunny’s got grit. And you exaggerate. I was nowhere near half dead.”

  “Castaway, then.”

  “I don’t know why you persist in claiming I am inebriated, Miss Lawrence. I am as sober as a judge.”

  Eliza took a sniff. It was true she could not smell spirits from this distance, although his dinner party had been rowdy in the extreme. “Well, you have been doing something that you ought not, and got in trouble for it. Think of your daughter, Mr. Raeburn. You have a responsibility to her. You can’t go around fighting and drinking and—and wenching.”

  “I don’t need you to lecture me on my responsibilities. You have no idea of anything or what I’ve been doing. Look at you!” His face had darkened so that his bruises blended in.

  Eliza felt her own color rise. “What about me?”

  “You are so smug. Self-righteous. A pretty prig.”

  Eliza heard the “pretty,” but the other words held more weight. “I am just as I should be, Mr. Raeburn, a respectable woman. I am not one of your n-naked models.” She checked the neckline of her dressing gown to make sure not even an inch of clavicle was showing.

  His foot was twirling in an agitated manner, but his voice was ennui itself. “Don’t worry. You are completely safe from me.”

  Eliza stumbled to her feet. “I will bore you no longer, Mr. Raeburn. Good night.”

  She was halfway up the stairs before she heard him laugh like a lunatic. So he was drunk after all.

  Chapter 4

  Damn it all. If Nick hadn’t been so prideful, he could have explained what happened. But Miss Lawrence had been so disapproving in her angelic white nightgown covered by an ungodly gray wrapper and schoolgirl braids, she had made him want to be very bad.

  Nick knew it was wrong to blame others for his loss of control. Lord knows, Alec and Evan had lectured him enough when they had not joined in his mischief. And he was much too old at eight and twenty to be getting into scrapes such as tonight’s, but Maisie’s man wanted instruction.

  The fellow would not be bothering Maisie or any other woman for a while. Nick hadn’t counted on the weaponry, but in the end it had been the key to get Phil Cross locked up for the foreseeable future. The attempted murder of a peer’s brother was no minor offense. Nick just hoped the peer in question would be on his way to Southampton before the newspapers broke the story. Alec would read him the Riot Act and Nick wagered his new little red-headed wife would not be far behind.

  How to get up the stairs? He couldn’t call Miss Lawrence back and lean on her arm—she’d just as soon tear it off and beat him with it. From her perspective, he supposed he had gotten what was coming to him. He had been a bit cavalier with her today, not fully appreciative. Mrs. Quinn said as how Miss Lawrence helped in the kitchen with the dinner and made it a fun game for Sunny as well.

  Nick had refused medical attention, another sign he was an idiot, just as Miss Lawrence suggested. He didn’t care about his face, but the slice in his thigh was stinging like the very devil. An unlucky few inches higher and—it was clear what Phil Cross had been trying to do. Thank God Tubby had come back with a policeman in time to witness Cross abandon his knife for a gun.

  Nick had been remarkably stupid tonight. He thought he could talk reason to the blighter, offer him money to stop beating the poor girl. He would be lying if he said he wasn’t hoping to throw a fist or two, but he had not counted on Cross’s lack of fair play. Phil Cross had certainly never heard of the Marquess of Queensberry rules, or any other rules Nick could think of. He was damned lucky he had escaped alive from his misplaced chivalry. Maisie had shrieked at him the whole time and thrown a crock of something unspeakable at him, which had cut into his forehead, too.

  Well, Maisie would not be posing for his tribute to Raphael anytime soon, although he’d given her rent money for the year. He was, as it had been established, an idiot.

  And his starchy governess thought him worse than that. But what did he care? She would be gone in a day or two and they could go back to being comfortable.

  Nick tried to rise but his bottom seemed stuck in place in Daniel’s rickety Jacobean chair. His rickety Jacobean chair. Nick thought the Lindsey Street furnishings rather splendid, the result of two decades’ worth of artistic acquisition. It seemed almost criminal that Daniel had to be parted with it all, but one reaped what one sowed, and Daniel Preble had been a prodigious sower. Some dozen years older than his protégé, he’d been Nick’s guiding star the past few years as the younger man kicked around the Continent avoiding Scotland, his late sister-in-law, and his brothers. Nick had been only too happy to help his friend out. He was generous to a fault, as tonight had proved.

  Damn it all. He’d slept sitting up before, but that was not his preferred position. What he needed was a bath and brandy, and two and a half sets of stairs sets were between him and the object of his desire.

  For heaven’s sake. He’d climbed a minor Alp or two in his time. It was only carpeted stairs, not sheets of ice. Nick was fit, although he’d overestimated his martial skills tonight. With a grunt, he extricated himself from the antique chair and limped to the hallway. Something unpleasant slithered down his leg, but he resolutely ignored it and began to mount the steps.

  He reached the first story
with no incident. The floor-through double parlor was dark, but Nick could see Mrs. Quinn had tidied up the remains of the party. They’d had coffee, brandy, and cigars up here, the casement window overlooking the garden open to ventilate the room. Nick felt a blast of cold night air and detected the scent of Havana’s finest. The overstuffed sofa beckoned, but he was not to be deterred.

  Perhaps he’d forgo the bath. Fall into his bed fully clothed. A trickle of blood dripped onto his lashes disabusing him of that notion. He needed plasters and carbolic before poor Mrs. Quinn quit at the sight of his bloody bedding. She was only one woman, and Sue was just a child, really.

  His sister-in-law ran an employment agency—maybe he could ask her to get a few dailies in to help out with the scut work. But then Nick remembered she was off to Southampton later today and some fellow named Oliver was in charge. He would mention his idea to Miss Lawrence if she was still speaking to him.

  Well, here he was at his open bedroom door. Not a sound came from Sunny’s room, where no doubt Miss Lawrence was lying like some shriveled martyr, missing only a spray of lilies. He stripped himself of his ruined clothes and put on his dressing gown—he did have one, contrary to Miss Lawrence’s accusation, a lovely Italian striped silk that had been a gift from Barbara at the start of their affair.

  Nick had been just a boy then, for all his posturing, but Barbara had taught him a great deal in the year he’d spent as her favorite. When he’d returned home, he’d been unbearably full of himself, fancying he was God’s gift to women. Alec’s wife Edith hadn’t thought much of that claim—he’d been entirely unable to charm her, not that he had anything other than brotherly attention for her. It hadn’t taken long before he was driven out of Scotland and back into Barbara’s arms. The self-confidence she’d fostered influenced his work, and suddenly the world wanted a Nicholas Raeburn to hang on its drawing room wall.