The Governess Game

by Dare, Tessa

  He shuddered, pushing aside the nightmarish image of Daisy’s blood pooling on cobblestones.

  “Their return journey took money, cleverness, and courage,” she said. “They could have used that same money, cleverness, and courage to go anywhere else. But they came here. They came home.”

  Chase’s jaw tightened. How dare she. How dare she praise their remarkable achievement of not quite dying, and try to spin this all into a moralistic fable designed to puff him up.

  This time, she was the one who needed to face facts.

  He would show them to her.

  Chase stood and quietly motioned for Alex to follow. After leaving the nursery, he went to her bedchamber.

  “This is what will happen.” He yanked one of her cottage-for-let notices from where Alex had tacked it to the wall. “I’m going to buy you this cottage, or one like it.” He took a closer look at the advertisement. “Actually, I’m going to buy you a cottage that’s much better. One with enough room for you and the girls.”

  “Me and the girls?”

  “Yes. I’m offering to extend your employment as their governess. Indefinitely.”

  “Their governess? I don’t understand.”

  “You’re right. What am I thinking? You won’t be their governess any longer. I’ll hire another governess to live with you and teach the girls. You’ll be an astronomer, of course.” He looked through the other advertisements tacked on her wall. None of the properties appeared remotely satisfactory. “You’re going to need a larger property for that. One with a hill. Barrow can find something.” He left her room, heading for the stairs.

  Her footsteps pattered behind him. “Chase, stop. You are not making any sense.”

  This time Alex had it wrong. He was returning to his senses. Accepting what he’d known from the beginning, but had stupidly tried to ignore.

  “You seem to be saying that you’re sending me, the girls, and some other governess to live in a country cottage.”

  “A large cottage. Near a hill.”

  “And where are you in this plan, may I ask?”

  Chase set his jaw. “Far away.”

  “Oh, no.” She put her hand to her temple. “Yesterday, you were ready to embark on a life together. The four of us, as a family. One thing goes wrong, and the whole plan is off? Everyone goes back to living miserably?”

  “At least living miserably means being alive. This wasn’t a tiny mishap, Alex. She fell from the window. She could have died in the street. And once again, I was nowhere to be found. I was off in an inn with some woman.”

  Her chin jerked. “‘Some woman’?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Yes, I do.” She reached out and took his hand in both of hers. Her voice was calm, rational. “I know exactly what you mean, and I understand precisely why this terrified you. But it isn’t the same. Daisy’s going to be fine.”

  He gestured wildly. “Her arm is broken!”

  “Her arm is broken. But she is going to be fine.”

  He shook his head and went to the study, fishing the key from his waistcoat fob to open the money box. He counted out banknotes. “Five per week. Two hundred at the end of the summer.” He squared the stack. “There. That’s two hundred and fifty. Your wages.”

  “Chase, don’t do this to them. Don’t do this to me.”

  He flung the keys down with a clatter. “I have to do this. My mistake was believing, for even one moment, that I could do otherwise.”

  Alexandra claimed to be sensible. Practical. Straightforward. Chase had wanted to believe that, too. He’d almost been convinced that she saw him. Truly saw him, for everything he was and everything he wasn’t, and that her mirror-finish eyes reflected everything he could become.

  But that had been an illusion. Today was the proof he needed.

  She would keep fooling herself that he was a better man, and she would persist in telling him the same. No amount of argument or evidence on his part had convinced her otherwise. She wouldn’t see reason, and that left him only one way to get the message across.

  He had to wound her. Deeply.

  Even if it left him gutted and bleeding, too.

  “I should never have suggested we marry. It was my mistake.”

  “Why are you doing this?” Her voice was shaky now. “I know what we shared last night. I know you love me. Perhaps you’re too frightened to face it right now, but that doesn’t change the truth.”

  “Even if I do love you, it doesn’t matter. I’m Rosamund and Daisy’s guardian, and I’m going to be Duke of Belvoir. I need to be heeding those responsibilities. As it is, I’m barely skating the boundaries of good society. Think of how it would damage the girls’ prospects if I married so far beneath me.”

  “Beneath you? You’re being absurd, Chase. I know you, of all people, don’t believe that.”

  “Everyone else will. And the Sir Winston Harveys of London will make sure no one forgets that you were once ‘just’ a governess.”

  “I’m not ‘just’ a governess. I’m not ‘just’ anything.”

  He pushed the banknotes toward her. “As of this moment, you’re not a governess at all.”

  A tear formed in the corner of her eye. It clung to her eyelashes, wobbling there. She didn’t do him the mercy of dashing it away. She let it fall, and he watched it trail down her face.

  Chase wanted to rip his own heart from his chest and hurl it into the fireplace. For all the good the thing did him, he might as well be rid of it.

  She ignored the heap of banknotes. “I don’t believe for a moment that you meant anything you just said. I know you better than that. You’re a good man with a loving nature. But even if I can dismiss your words, that doesn’t mean they don’t hurt.”

  “Take the money, Alexandra. The telescope, as well. I’ve no need of it.”

  “I don’t want your money. As if it’s some even trade for your heart?”

  “To be honest, I think you’re coming out better in the bargain.”

  She shook her head. “Tomorrow, or the day after, or maybe next week, you’re going to wake up and realize what an idiot you were, and you’re going to want to make things right with me. I’m telling you now, it will be too late. This will be the last time I raise my hopes, Chase. The last time I dare to dream of a future with you, only to watch those dreams dashed.”

  He looked her square in the eye and nodded. “Good.”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  As it happened, it didn’t take even an hour for Chase to realize he’d been an idiot. There was no excising these girls from his life.

  When the time came to set Daisy’s arm, Chase had to pin her down with his body so the doctor could do his work. She screamed with the pain and struggled to get away. He would have gladly broken his arm and both legs if it meant he could suffer the pain instead. It was the most wrenching thing he’d ever done, but he would not have allowed anyone else to do it in his place.

  At last, it was over. Daisy fell asleep, exhausted from the struggle. Chase was equally spent. He showed the doctor to the door, peppering the man with so many questions, he turned and looked to Chase as if to say, Don’t you know anything?

  No. When it came to this guardian business, he truly did not. But he was going to have to learn.

  What came next? Supper, baths, stories? Some other loving ritual absent from his own youth, and therefore completely foreign to him? He didn’t suppose wine was on the list, unfortunately. Not yet, anyway.

  He heard the sound of sniffling coming from the dining hall. He bent to peer under the table. “Rosamund?”

  She turned away from him, swiping her nose with her sleeve in an effort to hide her tears.

  Chase went down on his hands and knees to join her under the table.

  Steady, he told himself. Don’t frighten her.

  She needed assurance, and he had to provide it—even though he’d never felt less sure of himself in his life.

  “Daisy’s fine,” he said. “S
he’s fine.”

  “She was screaming. I heard it.”

  “The physician had to set her arm back in place, but it’s done now. All splinted and bound. Now it only needs time to mend. In a few months she’ll be good as new.” He put a hand on her back. “It wasn’t your fault. Do you hear me? It was an accident. You aren’t to blame.”

  “You can’t expect me to believe that. Of course it’s my fault. I told her to climb out the window. She wouldn’t have fallen if not for me.”

  “Very well, then. Perhaps it is partly your fault. But it’s partly mine, too. I should have made you feel safer to stay.” Chase made himself as comfortable as possible in the cramped space, bending his legs until his knees touched his chest. “I’m going to tell you a story.”

  “One of those improving tales with morals? No, thank you.”

  “It’s a sad story, actually. No happy ending.”

  In clear, simple terms he told her about Anthony’s death. He left out the more scandalous details, naturally. But the gist of the story remained the same.

  “I promised to take care of him,” he finished at length. “And I wasn’t there when he needed me.”

  She didn’t reply, and he didn’t want her to feel she ought to. She was ten years old, and he was here to console her, not the reverse.

  “When you and Daisy came into my care,” he went on, “I didn’t believe that I could be a good guardian. I’d failed my cousin already. What if I failed you, too? That’s why I planned to send you to school at the first opportunity. We’d all be better off that way, I told myself.”

  She rearranged her legs within the cramped space. “Are you sure you weren’t right?”

  “I’m not right very often, so the chances are against it.” He exhaled, releasing all the air in his lungs. “To be honest, Rosamund, I was terrified. It wasn’t only that I’d failed Anthony. I missed him, terribly. I was afraid of losing someone else. I didn’t want to care about you.”

  She sniffed. “I didn’t want to care about you, either.”

  “Much as I tried to avoid it, however, it seems I’ve come to love you and Daisy both. Very much. When you were missing, I was frantic. All I could think about was how empty the house would be with you gone. How empty my life would be.”

  “I was thinking about how empty our stomachs were, and that I should have brought more sandwiches.” Her chin met her knee. “Or that we should never have left at all.”

  He smiled a bit. “We are quite the pair. What are we going to do with ourselves?”

  She shrugged.

  “Here’s what I think. There’s no going back to change the past. If we allow our mistakes to consume us, we’re stuck in one place—and it’s not a good place to be. Believe me, I spent years there. I know. The only choice is to move forward. Try to do better. I may not be a perfect guardian. You may not be the perfect wards. But if we love each other and keep trying our best, perhaps we’ll manage.” He added, “Mind you, we’ll all need to make a greater attempt at acceptable behavior—in public, at any rate. But I’ll try if you will. What do you say?”

  She was silent. He could sense her struggling. She didn’t want to admit she needed him, or anyone.

  “Blink once for yes, twice for no.”

  Instead, she leaned into his shoulder.

  “I’ll take that as a yes.” He wrapped his arm around her and kissed the top of her head. “That’s it, I hope you realize. No taking it back now.”

  She lifted her head. “Where’s Miss Mountbatten gone? She took her things. Did you sack her because we ran away?”

  “She was hired to teach you and Daisy for the summer, and the summer’s come to an end. That’s all. But you and Daisy are invited for tea at Lady Penny’s house every Thursday. You’ll see her there.”

  Rosamund leveled a doubtful gaze at him. There were hours of interrogation in those eyes. The girl could break hardened spies.

  “Very well, that’s not all. We had a falling-out.”

  “Can’t you go apologize to her?”

  “Not this time, I’m afraid.” Not yet.

  It will be too late, she’d told him. It would be too early, as well. If he had any hope of ever regaining Alex’s trust—and her love—he had to prove he deserved it. Not only to her, but to himself.

  “You must have done something truly horrid, then.”

  He nodded. “That’s the sum of it, yes.”

  “So that would mean . . . the only choice is to move forward and try to do better?” Her voice was smug.

  “Don’t make me regret this guardian business already.”

  She lowered her voice in imitation of his. “No taking it back now.”

  He sighed, exasperated. “Are you going to keep throwing my words back at me?”

  “That’s the sum of it, yes.”

  “Then I promise to be a perfect young lady.”

  “Brilliant.” She scrambled out from under the table. “I have some half-embroidered serviettes you can finish.”

  Even Nicola’s biscuits weren’t enough to soothe a broken heart.

  Which was why Alexandra was currently sitting in the breakfast room of Ashbury House, with an entire toffee cake on a plate before her, and one solitary fork.

  She dejectedly poked holes in the cake and took the occasional lick of icing. Emma paced the floor nearby, making cooing noises at the fussy babe in her arms. Breeches, the feline terror, was having one of his good-natured days. He rubbed against her ankle, purring.

  Alex was surrounded by her dearest friend, a baby, a cat, and a cake. “Really,” she declared, “who needs men at all?”

  “It seems we’ll have a new one in the neighborhood any day. Someone’s finally let the house on the corner.”

  “The one next to Penny’s?”

  “Yes.” Emma stood and walked to the window. “Workmen have been coming and going all week. The rumors passed through the servants say he’s a gentleman of some sort, but no one knows anything else. Whoever he is, I’d wager the poor fellow has no idea what he’s in for. I hope he doesn’t mind goats in the back garden and otters in the rain barrel.”

  “Well, right now I only have eyes for one gentleman, and that’s the young Marquess of Richmond.” Alex scooped the crying baby from Emma’s arms. “I’ll take a turn. Have some cake.”

  “I’ve been meaning to ask you something,” Emma said. “Ash and I would love it if you’d be Richmond’s godmother.”

  Alex was stunned. “Really?”

  Emma nodded.

  “I’d love nothing more, but I was christened Catholic, and I don’t practice anything lately.”

  “Khan will be godfather, and he’s Muslim. Considering that my father was a vicar and the worst sort of hypocrite, and that Ash is Ash, we aren’t ones to stand on ceremony.”

  “Will the clergyman allow it?”

  “The Ashbury estate provides his living. He’ll be persuaded.”

  “Then I’d be honored.”

  Transferring the baby to one arm, she used the other to hug Emma in joy. And then, as she clung tight, the embrace became one of despair. At last, the tears she’d been holding in began to flow.

  “I’m sorry.” Alex sniffled as she pulled away from the hug. “You already have one crying soul to soothe. I don’t mean to be another.”

  “Don’t be absurd. Cry all you like.” Emma took the baby back and settled in a chair, unbuttoning the front of her morning gown. “I only wish I could mend it by feeding you, or changing your clout.”

  “I just feel so foolish. I let myself believe he loved me, and that we’d be together forever. One day later, it all fell apart.”

  “Perhaps it can be pieced back together. You know he loves you.”

  “That’s not the problem. He’s bollocks at letting anyone love him in return.”

  As she watched Emma nurse her baby at her breast, a tiny fist squeezed at her heart. She’d never expected to marry, never truly dreamed of having children at all. But now a longing ha
d been opened in her. Those hopes of children had hollowed out a bit of her heart and made a home there. Now the hopes had vanished, but the space remained, empty and aching. Right next to two empty niches labeled Daisy and Rosamund, and the small cavern she’d blasted out to make room for Chase.

  They heard the ring of the doorbell.

  “Khan will answer it,” Emma said. Then she added in a low voice, “Maybe it’s him.”

  “It’s not him,” Alex said aloud.

  Inside, of course, her thoughts were a riot. What if it was him? It could be him. Did she want it to be him? Maybe he’d beg her to come back. Maybe he’d have a diamond ring in his pocket, and he’d go down on one knee and ask her to marry him.

  And then take her up on his unicorn and ride into the sunset, she supposed. Really, Alex.

  Khan, the butler, appeared in the doorway. “Your Grace, there’s a woman at the door collecting subscriptions for a charity fund.”

  Alex took up the fork and dug into her cake.

  See? Her mind had betrayed her again. She simply didn’t trust herself any longer, not where Chase was concerned. She had to fight her way through the pain and emerge stronger on the other side. Otherwise her longing for him would chip away at her heart, bit by bit.

  Until there was nothing left.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Three weeks later

  “The left side needs to be higher,” Daisy said.

  Chase put down his hammer and stepped back. Damn it, she was right. The shelf still didn’t look straight.

  He fished out a key and opened the locked drawer where he kept his tools—at least a few things had to be kept safe from Rosamund—but instead of a measuring stick, his hand fell on something that crinkled beneath his fingertips. A small, flat package wrapped with ivory tissue and tied off with a lavender ribbon.

  He’d forgotten the thing entirely.

  Chase couldn’t help but laugh at the irony. It had been meant as a surprise gift for Alexandra, but it had ended up being a gift to himself. A gift he’d given himself weeks in advance, without even realizing it.