Etiquette With The Devil

by Rebecca Paula

  He caught himself in the mirror, the faint hint of a grin as he remembered her stroking his face the day before. He had been half out of his mind in pain, but that touch of hers, the gentle way she spoke his name, was balm enough for his wounds.

  Barnes was in the middle of sharing another wild story when Bly entered the kitchen. He was sure Clara would have preferred using the formal dining room for meals, but his mother had insisted on dressing formally and doing the same. He would rather skip the reminder of her during her last days, sitting at the head of the table in furs and jewels, acting as hostess to an empty room.

  Bly stepped in, well, staggered in, more unsteady on his feet than he would like to admit. “I hope you saved a plate for me.”

  Clara looked up from feeding Grace on her lap and dropped her spoon. “You should be in bed. Mrs. Gibbs and Molly have left for the evening. They left broth…”

  “Then no need to bring it,” he said. Everyone watched him, quiet setting in. If quiet set in with this bunch, then that meant trouble. “Well, carry on. I’m alive.”

  They returned to eating, all except James, who poked at the food on his plate. Bly had been over this with him many times since the boy came into his care, but they had made no progress. Bly sank into the chair next to his nephew and slid his plate over, then quickly separated the food so the potatoes did not touch the chicken or carrots.

  “Eat up now,” Bly said softly, meeting Clara’s stare from across the table.

  She quickly darted her eyes away, focusing on the babbling Grace with mashed potatoes in her hair.

  “Are you well, Uncle?” Minnie asked. “Isaac said you were shot!”

  “Minnie, that is not appropriate to talk about at the dinner table,” Clara scolded.

  He reached his foot under the table and knocked it against the swinging feet of his niece. “I’m well,” he whispered, making a funny face. She laughed again. What he would give to remember how to laugh as carefree as she did now. He was half-happy he would miss the day she learned the world was not the protective bubble he had tried to shield them under. Soon she would learn about friendships, fights, and heaven help him, love.

  “Tell your uncle what you learned to do today,” Clara urged, her voice softening. She stood and set Grace on her hip, wiping the child down before placing her on quilt with a few wooden toys not far from the table.

  The kitchen was warm, the fire still burning low, and the night was comfortable. That would be changing soon as well. From what he remembered, summer was a short visitor in Yorkshire this side of September.

  He reached for the cut chicken on the platter before him as Clara came up behind him. “I’ll make your plate. Don’t move your arm.”

  He wanted to call her something then that wasn’t exactly polite, and at the same time couldn’t help taking in the sight of her bottom in a rare dress of hers that wasn’t a disaster. It was cream-colored, where her others were often gray or brown, or some muckish color in between. Small pink flowers dotted the fabric. But it was the lace that brushed against her neck that he was envious of.

  A man envious of fabric touching a woman? That is what he’d been reduced to, because of her lips, her eyes, that soft skin that beckoned to him like a safe haven. But there was also the way she served him before serving herself, how she fed Grace to allow Barnes to eat, how she was terrified to stitch Bly up the day before, but had bravely done so.

  He wasn’t convinced she was as innocent as she claimed, but he was convinced of her character. For all the annoying rules and pointed glares, Clara Dawson was a remarkable woman with a strong constitution, one of a survivor.

  She sat opposite him at the table while he quizzed Minnie with his pocket watch, happy that she had learned to tell time.

  A knock at the door startled everyone. Barnes stood up, glancing to Bly, then setting his hand on a gun hidden at the waistband of his pants. “I’ll see who it is, seeing that I’m the footman.”

  No one laughed.

  Barnes left the room, and when he answered the door, Bly heard him ask, “Christ, how’d you find us?”

  The person’s response was quiet, followed by another laugh from Barnes.

  “Look who crawled out of Calcutta to join us, Ravensdale.”

  Bly’s grip on his fork loosened until it clattered against the plate as he set eyes on Graham. “Holy hell.”

  Clara slapped her hands against the table. “Watch your language in front of the children.”

  “What a charming, familiar scene. Not at all where I thought I’d find of you, Ravensdale. Didn’t know you were much of a family man.”

  Bly didn’t like the appraising look that flickered across Graham’s face at Clara’s set down. “Come sit down, Graham. Have you eaten?” He was trying his best not to lunge at the man and ask him why he never fought back at the palace, but he figured Clara would object to that as well.

  Bly quickly made introductions and went back to eating, letting Barnes carry most of the conversation. When plates were cleared, he said goodnight to the children and watched regretfully as Clara ushered them upstairs.

  “Why are you here?” he asked as soon as they were gone. “Why the hell did you track me down?”

  Barnes snickered. “Miss Dawson wouldn’t approve of how you’re treating our guest.” He rummaged around in the cupboards. “I wish Mrs. Gibbs would stop trying to hide the rum. It’s bad enough she’s given you control over the whiskey.”

  “You have to fill me in, Ravensdale. Is your sharp-mouthed maid responsible for the bandages across your chest?”

  “Did you come all this way just to test my patience, Graham?” Bly sighed, pushing aside the ribbing for what it was—ribbing. “She’s the governess. The nurse and housekeeper live in the gardener’s cottage. I haven’t seen to staffing the house properly. My aunt will see to that. As far as the bandage, I was shot. Much like how I left you actually.”

  Graham shrugged his shoulder, then flexed his fingers over the tabletop. “That’s right. We did leave on shaky ground. As I recall I was shot twice and you escaped with Barnes here, and left me to rot at that palace.”

  Barnes, in a moment of kindness, slid Bly a glass of rum, then another toward Graham.

  “I did what you trained me—”

  “Oh no, I’m of no mind for excuses, Ravensdale. Besides, I’m here for a job,” Graham continued.

  “Then this will be short,” Bly said. “I’m not interested.”

  “You’re saying you’re done?” Barnes asked, kicking his boots up onto the table. “This is a new development.”

  “It’s not new at all. You,” he said, shaking his hand at Barnes, “were careless and I was almost killed trying to rescue you.”

  “You can’t die—”

  “And you,” Bly said, speaking over Barnes to Graham, “came along with me that night on your own accord. So no, right now, I’m not taking up another job. I have to get affairs in order so I can leave this hellhole and return…”

  “To where?” Graham asked, drumming his hand over the table. “You can’t stay here. Seems like you have a nasty reputation in the village. I knew of your reputation among our peers, but never in England. The Devil? How provincial.”

  Bly wished he had a cigar, wished he was more himself so he could control this conversation. “Ever heard of ink and paper, Graham? You could have written.”

  Graham stared back, the glass pitched to his lips. There had been a time when Bly saw a friend when he looked upon him; now he wasn’t quite sure. What was that that hid behind Graham’s deep brown eyes?

  “Not for this mission.” He threw back his glass and drained the whole thing, slamming it onto the table. “This could only be achieved in person. I’ll be staying in town until you change your mind. And trust me, Ravensdale, I won’t be leaving without you.”

  *

  French was not going to be easy to teach to the children.

  James’s mind was unique. His attention often focused on the mechanics
of things. And Minnie, well—she proved difficult to keep in her seat for most of the time, never mind teaching her conjugations. Clara would try sums after they went for a walk with Molly in the gardens later. Perhaps that would bring greater success.

  Clara dropped the edge of the curtain, smiling as Molly’s little boy Teddy chased after Grace in the gardens down below. Ned was turning over another garden bed and Molly was seeing to the mending, while she watched over the two children.

  “Are we done yet, Miss Clara?” Minnie whined.

  Clara turned in time to catch the girl wilting over the table like the flowers Grace had picked yesterday and scattered about the kitchen floor.

  “We will be when you are. I want you to recite the conjugations of danser to me one more time.”

  Minnie shook her head, her strawberry blond hair coming loose from its bow. Against Minnie, even ribbon could not tame all that was wild about the child. Her spirit was simply too big for such a little body.

  “Your Lords—James?”

  He squinted, fiddling with the globe by the school table. The world spun and spun, a whirl of great continents, until they bled into oceans.

  “Well, it seems I have a mutiny on my hands.” Clara hefted her hands to her hips and tilted her head toward the two eldest Ravensdale children. “I suppose it’s better than ink in my tea or frogs in my bed,” she muttered to herself. Minnie and James did not move, nor acted as if they listened. “That’s too bad, because I had it on good authority that there’d be a picnic later if we finished our lessons.”

  Minnie sat up, wiping the hair from her face. Those hazel eyes of hers, the same as her uncle’s, startled Clara. She wondered if he was in better health today, still caught up on the sight of his sickly pallor last evening and the sweat that beaded at his forehead as he accepted his dinner plate from her. His eyes had been full of fever, those lips of his, that she almost kissed, had been dry and chapped. She had wanted to run balm over them with the pad of her thumb, to settle him back in bed, to see him well. The very notion is what made her convinced she was the one suffering from a fever.

  “And kite flying,” Clara finished. “As long as the wind continues.”

  The globe stopped spinning and she was met with another set of wide eyes, those of James. They were two wholly different children. One, quiet and withdrawn. The other, every polar opposite. Minnie possessed the same fire as her uncle, the same innate ability to touch and move over nearly every surface of a room. She was quite certain if she could find a way to connect with James and that strange brain of his, he would prove an excellent student, and though young, Minnie already showed signs of having no head of lessons, drawing, or comportment. Heaven help Clara when she finally broached the subject of embroidery. She feared it would be the same as furnishing the girl with a weapon.

  “Ah, so now I have your attention. Very well.” Clara walked across the school room and sat on the petite chair, her hands clasped on her lap. “I know that this year has been full of trials for you both. It is very difficult to have to grow up all at once, but you are both such brave children and are doing well. I am very proud to know you.”

  “I want to return home,” Minnie said. “Can we go back to India, Miss Clara? You can come with us. And Lucy and Raja, too.”

  James peered at his sister, then at Clara, dropping his eyes back to the globe. “India isn’t home for us any longer, Minnie. We live here now.”

  “Uncle gets to return to India.”

  “And Burton Hall is my home now, too,” Clara said. “We will make the best of it. Even the bad.” Two heads nodded solemnly. “And that goes for lessons as well. You are both exceedingly smart and I daresay smarter than me.”

  “Or uncle?” James asked. “He knows seven languages.”

  Clara somehow doubted that. He showed a poor execution of his own native tongue. She pressed on, ignoring that last point. “You can know that many as well. Tomorrow will be begin with Italian.” Their excitement was nonexistent at this news. “How about this? Before we break, you each tell me your very favorite fact about India and one question about England you would like an answer to.”

  “Your uncle knows more than seven languages, in fact,” an unfamiliar man spoke from the doorway.

  Clara jerked back, fighting the urge to duck underneath the table. She could not afford to meet new faces when she was still wishing to forget about one in particular. “May I help you?” she said instead.

  “No,” the man answered. His hands stretched out across the doorway, drumming on the molding Clara had so thoroughly dusted and scrubbed down. “Not unless you’d like me to conjugate danser.”

  Perhaps it was his hawkish eyes, the way they scoured Clara and ripped her apart like a field mouse without mercy, or the way ease set into his shoulders as he spoke. He carried the same lie as Mr. Ravensdale—that careful nonchalance that left her uneasy and her cheeks heated.

  Clara was not an object to be studied, nor did she wish to be. She had thought governesses were meant to fade into the background of a house such as Burton Hall. Instead, she seemed in a constant battle with Mr. Ravensdale to do as she was hired—him thrusting her into a position of authority when she would rather be left alone in the schoolroom.

  “We’re in the middle of our lessons, sir.” Her voice did skip a nervous beat, as though her sentence was a bad attempt of a pebble skimming the surface of a pond. It sank with a quiet thud until his smile spread.

  “I don’t mean to alarm you, Ms. Dawson. I’m a business associate of Mr. Ravensdale, a friend. We met briefly at dinner last evening.”

  Of course. In the light of the day, the man was groomed and well-dressed, not at all similar to the unkempt and bearded man of last evening.

  “Mr. William Graham,” he continued.

  That still did not answer why he was blocking the exit to the schoolroom. He was coaxing, and the way he delivered such information made her accept, for a minute, that she would believe any narrative he fed her. Where Mr. Ravensdale lacked Mr. Barnes’s bright charm, he possessed the same overflowing imperiousness that this stranger held, despite being a more brutish copy.

  “Consider yourselves lucky, my dears.” Clara turned her attention to the children. “You may consider lessons finished for now, but I want to know your answers when you return with Molly. I am going to trust that the two of you can bring yourself to the kitchen.”

  They both perked up, not adjusting well to the new rules that they must be escorted around the house by an adult.

  “Like children, not savages. Well-behaved children who wish to go on a picnic later,” she stressed for good measure.

  Mr. Graham moved from the doorway as they walked out into the hallway. A moment out of sight, footsteps raced down the hallway to a chorus of “je danse, tu danses, il danse, nous dansez, vous dansez, ils dansent.”

  “If I had had a governess the likes of you, I might have amounted to more than a shipping clerk,” Mr. Graham said.

  Nerves set on; memories as well. Could she not be left alone in this house instead of always being sought out?

  Clara stood, ignoring his comment, pulling her mouth into a tight pucker. She went back to the window, peering out as James and Minnie burst from the house to join the others in the maze of gardens surrounding the house.

  “Excuse me, Mr. Graham. I have a short time on my own and I have reading that must be done.”

  He folded his arms over his chest and watched as she tidied the room, anything to hide the fact that she wished to flee and scream for the very man she wished not to see the most.

  “Pardon if I speak boldly, but it is not proper for you to be here,” she said, snapping up with an armful of school texts.

  “Rules are lost on men like me, Miss Dawson. Forgive the intrusion. The trip from India has made me weary and I found myself wandering the halls. It was an innocent mistake.”

  It took no skill to denote the man scoured the halls, more like. He did not lay waste to anything; at le
ast that was what Clara could figure by the way he picked at his jacket’s cuffs, so completely bored with her rising temper.

  “Where are you from, Miss Dawson? You sound as though you come from the southern half of the country.”

  Clara felt the blood drain from her as if he had sliced her wrist with that question. “London, sir.”

  “Recently?”

  Flustered, she dropped the books on the table, unsure of where they needed to be stashed.

  “I suppose you read about this position in the papers. Unless you have a familiar connection with Bly.”

  How foolish it was that she had come to claim that name as hers and hers alone to say. Barely a day had passed since she had learned his name, but it had not taken long to find roots in her chest.

  Clara held her head high, then dipped into a shallow bow. “I must insist I take my leave. My break is short and there’s much to sort out.”

  He allowed her to pass, not saying a word. Brandy soured the air around him as she flew past, sucking in a breath as she reached the hall. Even in the depths of Yorkshire it seemed Clara would find no rest. She had been forced her to live her life braced in a corner, weary and watchful, waiting for the next incursion.

  Apparently, this one was named Mr. Graham.

  *

  Clara was enraptured in her torrid novel, tucked away in her small bedroom for the remainder of her short break. Admittedly, she had a soft spot for the dashing hero. Whether realistic or not, silly novels were her escape. They allowed her to forget, if only for a short time, that she was alone.

  A hero was well and good, but she found herself falling back on her encounter with Mr. Graham. No, a hero would fix that sinking feeling in her stomach. Reading had always promised a great escape.

  “You have a large collection of novels, Dawson.”

  Clara did not look up from her book. “What I could manage to bring.”

  She was sitting on the window ledge, her knees drawn to her chest, as she continued reading. She should not be sitting, as she was in mixed company. Try as she might, she did not care when the fate of the novel’s heroine hung in the balance.