The Governess and Mr. Granville

by Abby Gaines

  I love Serena.

  But that couldn’t be true. Emily...

  Loving Emily hadn’t stopped Dominic from falling in love with the woman in front of him.

  With Serena.

  The concept was dizzying. Even more dizzying was the fact that loving Serena didn’t diminish his love for Emily.

  He loved her flushed cheeks and her bright eyes, her kind nature, her tender heart. The employee who dared tell him he couldn’t sing a note and that he neglected his children. The parson’s daughter who dealt out sermons without hesitation, and tortured herself over her own youthful failings. Her mischievous sense of humor that had him worrying what she might do next. Her tender love for his children. Her deep and true faith. I love her.

  “Dominic? Are you all right?” Serena stretched out a hand toward him, but let it drop before it reached his arm.

  She couldn’t touch him, nor he her.

  Because he was promised to another.

  Chapter Nineteen

  When Alastair invited Serena to take a turn about the rose garden with him on Tuesday morning, she suggested instead that they walk down to the lake. The rose garden... Dominic had touched her chin there.

  So the lake it was. A longer walk, but she needed the invigoration. She’d felt so oppressed since they’d returned from London.

  With her arm tucked in Alastair’s, she strolled the edge of the lake beneath cloudless skies. Serena pointed out the water lilies that guests usually admired.

  “Delightful,” Alastair said. He closed his free hand over hers where it rested in the crook of his elbow. “I wish I didn’t need to leave today.”

  He was such a nice young man. In so many ways he was the Alastair she remembered. In other ways, he wasn’t. Her heart no longer beat faster at the sight of him. Which Dominic would doubtless consider far more sensible than the absurd tattoo her heart set up whenever she thought of— I won’t think about him.

  “Your parents will be longing for you to return home,” Serena said. “You’ve only had, what, one night with them so far?”

  “That couldn’t be helped. When one’s general summons, one obeys.”

  “Your mother will be desperate to fatten you up.” Over the past few days, she’d heard the full story of Alastair’s survival. How he’d been injured in battle, left for dead when his regiment retreated. A Portuguese baker and his wife had nursed him until he was well enough to start back for England. But he’d been caught en route, charged with spying and left to molder in a prison cell for four years. During which time he’d gathered from his fellow prisoners some intelligence of considerable use to his general, even now that the war was over. Then he’d escaped, and made his way back to England.

  “I’ve missed Mother’s cooking,” he admitted.

  “Your mother has always been very pleasant to me,” Serena said. “I hope she won’t despise me after learning of our secret betrothal.” She’d urged him to confess the truth to his parents.

  “Of course she won’t.” He squeezed her fingertips. “Serena, I must ask your forgiveness.”

  She stilled. “Have you changed your mind? You no longer wish to marry me?”

  “As if that could ever be the case!” He stopped walking. “It was wrong of me to ask you to marry me, knowing your parents disapproved.”

  “No more wrong than it was of me to accept,” she said.

  “I was older than you, I should have known better.”

  “You were eighteen to my sixteen.” She removed her hand from his arm and took a step back. “Alastair, we both erred.”

  “But you were the one forced to see your parents every day while keeping our secret. No doubt you saw my parents in church every Sunday, too.”

  She smiled ruefully. “They’re very regular attendees.”

  “You must have felt the burden every time you saw them,” he said.

  She nodded. “I did feel awful, but then...well, it was less than a year before we learned you were missing, presumed dead.” Her voice caught at the memory of that dismal time. Of his mother’s sobs and his father’s ashen stoicism. Of her own tears, wept into her pillow so no one else would hear. “The worst thing was, I couldn’t even wear mourning,” she said. “Your parents wore black the entire twelve months afterward... How I wished I could make public my loss.”

  He took her hands. “I’m sorry, my love. I thought of you every day, it’s what got me through. I prayed you’d wait for me—that sounds selfish, I know.”

  “No,” she said. Although it did, a little. “You needed to hold out hope.”

  “Most people don’t get a second chance, the way we have,” he said.

  Serena knew what was coming next.

  Alastair tugged her closer. “Serena, we haven’t talked of our feelings since that night at the ball—I don’t blame you after I made such a hash of things.” For an awful moment, she thought he would go down on one knee; mercifully, he stayed upright. “I know your father insists we wait three months before we’re betrothed, and we will. But my love for you is as strong as ever. Before I leave for Piper’s Mead, it would mean the world to me to know you feel the same. That when the time comes, you’ll agree to be my wife.”

  He carried her right hand to his lips, kissed her palm. “I love you,” he declared.

  And waited.

  “Alastair, I...” Explanations hovered on her lips. It’s too soon. I still feel guilty. My feelings are confused.

  All those were true. But none were The Truth that would stop her ever saying yes to his proposal.

  “Serena?” He tugged at her hand.

  “Alastair, I’m so sorry.” She withdrew from his clasp. “I can’t.”

  “You think it’s improper for us to discuss this before the three months are up.”

  “No, we’re both of age, it’s not that.” She drew a deep breath of lake-scented air. “I’m no longer in love with you.”

  He stumbled backward. “What?”

  “Love needs to be nurtured,” she said. “Nourished by each other’s company. My love for you didn’t survive our separation, though I never realized that.”

  He ran a shaking hand over his face, and turned away.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said again. “I only just now understood, else I never would have encouraged you to hope.”

  “You said I still had your heart!” His voice was muffled.

  “I believed it. Indeed, I wished it, after we’d behaved so improperly. But when you left, you were just a boy, I a mere girl.”

  “Soldiers have been away longer and come home to wives who haven’t tired of them,” he accused.

  “I thought you were dead,” Serena protested. “I didn’t decide not to love you—it was a natural consequence that eventually my heart moved on.”

  “Are you in love with Granville?” he demanded.

  Her chest constricted. “No!” She didn’t deny Dominic was the kind of man who— But he wasn’t for her.

  “Then why can’t we start again?” Alastair asked.

  “Because...” All of a sudden the words came to her. Dominic’s words. “Because I’m free of my guilt.” Dominic had told her that, when he’d first learned of her betrothal. “Because a second chance doesn’t have to mean reworking old mistakes. It can be brand-new.” He’d told her that the night Alastair returned.

  At last she understood.

  * * *

  When Dominic entered the drawing room after dinner, he found Marianne and Hester playing a hand of whist. Mrs. Lacey was engrossed in a large and rather ugly, in his inexpert opinion, embroidery project. His eye was drawn to a far more pleasant sight: Serena, seated at the escritoire over by the window, writing.

  “Dominic, you’re here. I’ll order tea,” Marianne said.

  “I’ll do it,” he replied. “Finish your game.”

  He crossed the room to pull the bell, then walked over to Serena. She’d been pale and quiet during dinner, but now her cheeks were flushed, her eyes bright. As if—his
heart clenched—as if she might have been sitting here with her back to the other ladies, crying.

  When she realized he was nearby, she moved, as if to shield her writing from him.

  “Writing letters?” he asked.

  She nodded.

  “To Lieutenant Givens, I presume.” It must be the lieutenant’s departure this afternoon that had upset her. Though to start writing when the man would barely be thirty miles away by now seemed excessive.

  She cleared her throat. “I’m writing to my parents.”

  Relief he wasn’t entitled to surged through him. “They’ll be glad to have you near them when you marry.” He paced away from her a few steps, then turned back. “No doubt you’re already missing Lieutenant Givens.”

  It sounded like an accusation. Serena turned a shocked expression on him.

  “That was impertinent,” he said stiffly. “Forgive me.”

  “There’s nothing to forgive.” She glanced over at the ladies. “But...perhaps I should tell you...to avoid any awkwardness that might result from unconscious comments...” She glanced down at her letter.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “I’m writing to inform my parents that Lieutenant Givens and I...” She drew a breath. “I’ve told him I won’t marry him.”

  Blood rushed in Dominic’s ears. “You what?” he barked.

  The other ladies’ heads turned in their direction.

  Serena pressed her lips together. He’d heard her correctly.

  “Since when?” he asked more quietly, but with no less urgency. “Why?” He realized he was being impertinent again, and he didn’t care a fig.

  Her cheeks turned pink, but she held his gaze. “My feelings had undergone a change,” she said. “I could no longer marry him.”

  Serena was not to be betrothed. Her affections were unengaged.

  “You told him he still had your heart.” Confound it, Dominic had interrogated her on that very subject!

  “I made a mistake.” She busied herself folding her letter.

  “Blast it, Serena...” He wanted to shake her for not coming to this realization sooner; he wanted to shout for joy.

  He could do neither.

  It’s too late.

  The knowledge hit him. Joy drained away, leaving him empty.

  Serena might be free, but he wasn’t. He was to marry Hester.

  Dominic spun away, before Serena could see the despair in his eyes.

  While he was composing himself, the tea tray arrived. Hester stacked the playing cards into a neat pile, then moved to the sofa. She smiled at Dominic, expecting him to join her there.

  He would do so, of course. Just as he would marry her next month. A gentleman couldn’t jilt a lady without ruining her reputation forever. A gentleman always did his duty, always took care of those entitled to his protection.

  He walked to the sofa and sat down.

  * * *

  The mood in the drawing room started subdued and turned downright depressing, in Serena’s view. She suspected her parents wouldn’t be too upset at the news she didn’t plan to marry Alastair, but she hadn’t enjoyed telling them. Nor had she enjoyed telling Dominic, who’d then gone to sit with Hester, and not so much as looked at Serena again. Did he feel she should have done more to atone for her past? Had he not meant those things he’d said, that she’d quoted to Alastair?

  Marianne pleaded a headache soon after the tea arrived, and that served as a cue for the ladies to retire.

  Serena changed into her nightdress, then donned her dressing gown. She found what she wanted in her chest of drawers, then walked along the candlelit hallway to Marianne’s room. In response to her tap on the door, her friend called her in.

  “I brought you some powdered cinchona bark,” Serena said. “My mother swears by it for a headache.”

  “Thank you.” Marianne took the screw of paper. “My own remedy—a ginger inhalation—doesn’t seem to be working.” She indicated the steaming bowl on her dressing table.

  Serena poured her a cup of cold water from the jug the maid had left. Marianne tipped in the powder, then downed it. She grimaced. “Ugh.”

  A rattle against her window startled them both.

  “Could it be hail?” Serena wondered.

  “There was no sign of bad weather—the sunset was gorgeous,” Marianne said. “And there’s almost a full moon, no cloud.”

  Another rattle came, this one louder.

  “Someone’s throwing stones at your window,” Serena realized.

  Marianne crossed the room and peered through the glass. “There’s a man on the lawn... Oh, my!” She turned back to Serena, her fingers pressed to her lips. “It’s Beaumont.”

  “Close the curtains,” Serena advised.

  Yet another rattle made Marianne jump. “I’d better open this before he breaks the glass. Or worse, brings everyone in here to see what’s happening.” She struggled to raise the sash. Serena didn’t move to help.

  “Marianne, how does Mr. Beaumont know which is your window?” she asked.

  Her friend spun around. “Serena, I swear, this hasn’t happened before. But he did ask me one day when we were walking across the lawn, and I pointed out this room.”

  Serena nodded, believing her, but disapproving.

  “Could you help me, please?” Marianne demanded. “I need to send him away before he wakes everyone.”

  That did seem the best plan. With Serena’s assistance, the window slid up. Marianne leaned out. Before she should speak, Beaumont called, “Marianne, I need to talk to you.”

  “It’s Miss Granville to you.”

  Oh, for goodness sake! Serena ranged herself alongside her friend and stuck her head out. “Go home, Mr. Beaumont, before I call Mr. Granville.”

  “Ah, Miss Somerton. How delightful.”

  Marianne giggled. The sound must have reached Beaumont, because in the light of the moon, his face filled with hope. “Marianne, tell me what I’ve done wrong. How else will I know how to put it right?”

  “You can’t put it right,” she said, her own face flooding with color as remembered hurt rushed back.

  “I miss you,” he said. “I miss your letters. The game isn’t as compelling without them.”

  “Marianne, are you still playing chess with him?” Serena demanded.

  Marianne pulled her head back inside. “It’s the best game of my life, and it’s not finished. But I swear, all we’re exchanging is chess moves, just as I would with a stranger.”

  She did, too, through the Grosvenor Chess Club, the more remote members of which thrived on their games played through the mail. Still, it didn’t seem right.

  Marianne stuck her head out the window once more in response to a call from Beaumont. “What did you say?”

  “Bishop to F3.”

  Serena rolled her eyes as Marianne abandoned the window and went to move the black bishop. “That’s my knight,” she grumbled, removing one of the white chess pieces from the board. She returned to the window. “I’ve made the move—I’ll let you know mine tomorrow by messenger. Now, go.”

  “I’m not leaving until you tell me what I’ve done to deserve this coldness.” Beaumont folded his arms.

  “Deserve this...” Words failed Marianne. “Fine,” she flared. “You want to know? I’ll tell you.”

  If this was to turn into a full debate, Serena wasn’t about to perch in the window throughout. It was enough that Beaumont knew her friend was chaperoned.

  She went to sit on the bed, from where she couldn’t see outside unless she sat up straight and craned her neck. She would still hear their conversation, but wasn’t quite so intrusive.

  “Is Miss Somerton still there?” Beaumont called.

  “Yes, she is, and she’s staying.”

  “Some things should be said privately,” Beaumont stated. “Not shouted for all to hear. Will you come down and meet me?”

  “Of course not!”

  “I meant, with Miss Somerton watching f
rom the window. You couldn’t come down otherwise.”

  Marianne exchanged a confused look with Serena. Surely Beaumont would prefer she come down unchaperoned. Compromising her would guarantee that he could marry her.

  Serena shrugged, she didn’t know what to make of the man. “You may go down if you wish. You’re twenty-five years old, so I can’t stop you. It’s not exactly regular, but if I’m watching from the window... You’ll need to put your dress back on, however.”

  “As if I’d go outside in my dressing gown,” Marianne said. She thought for a moment, then called to Beaumont, “I’ve discovered that the words you utter in my company are very different from what you say about me to others. I won’t open myself to that deception again. I’m staying here.”

  “What do you mean, my words are different?”

  She told him how she and Serena had overheard him talking at the Spenford ball, reminded him of the atrocious things he’d said in verbatim detail, though it obviously pained her.

  Serena expected him to concoct some story about how he’d been trying to protect her from his friend, who had villainous intentions, or some such nonsense.

  When Marianne finished, there was a long silence.

  Marianne shivered when a breeze gusted in the window.

  Serena craned to see. Beaumont was standing in the same place, clutching his head.

  Giving himself time to think of a story?

  “Marianne, I’ve been an ass,” he called. “The world’s biggest fool.”

  “What, for blabbing your true intentions where I might overhear? For ruining your shot at my five thousand a year?”

  Serena nodded in approval, but Marianne wasn’t looking at her.

  He groaned. “Yes, for all that! And for being so weak, for caring what people might think to see me married to a woman with—with your affliction.”

  Marianne gasped, hurt.

  “Babcock—that’s the friend I was with—his words cut me at a place where I’m vulnerable,” he said. “You’ve heard from your brother, no doubt, about my father. His drunkenness.”

  “Yes.”

  “Because of his addiction, our family was forced to live in seclusion,” Beaumont said. “There was always the fear that others would find out how bad he was, and there was no money left to live a town life, in any case. When my mother died and I found myself with a small inheritance, I went straight to London, as I’d always dreamed of doing.”