Elisabeth Fairchild (14 page)

The maidservant looked at her as if she considered the request quite odd.

Mrs. Olive, eyebrows raised, had asked, “Are you quite sure you wish to join us, my dear?”

Stepping down. It is seen as a step down to make such a request. Relinquishing power.
And yet what power have I?

“I do not care to eat alone,” she said. She did not tell them she had only picked at the tray they had given her earlier in the day, the soup gone stone cold by the time it was carried up from the kitchen.

Dear Mrs. Olive looked as if she sympathized with her plight. “Do you think Mrs. Corwen would mind terribly?” she asked the maidservant.

“I shall just go and ask, shall I?

Elaine’s tray of food was congealing by the time she returned, but it did not matter.

“Mrs. Corwen would be quite pleased to have you,” the maidservant bobbed a curtsey. “She is in a bit of a fluster making sure the parlor is tidy, Miss, so we shall walk slow, if you don’t mind, so as not to arrive before she is satisfied.”

“Oh dear,” Elaine said. “I’d no intention of making her go to any trouble.”

“No trouble, miss. She called Tibbs and Gibson to do the dusting.”

Elaine closed her eyes a moment in chagrin realizing how she had upset the natural order of things. Now two of the maids had been called away from their supper.

In the end, Mrs. Corwen’s room was tidied to perfection, and the trays of food delivered and arranged just so for them to begin their meal, she did not get to eat after all. Just as Mrs. Corwen finished saying a blessing over food fast reaching room temperature, a rap sounded upon her door. The underbutler interrupted to say, “Miss Deering is required in the Saloon, Mrs. Corwen.”

“Is Miss Felicity ready to be sent away to bed, then?” Elaine rose from the short comfort of her chair, and turned her back on a lovely plate of roast beef, potatoes and peas.

“I do not know, but you are to come at once, if you please.”

And so she was led away, without a bite of dinner, to the Saloon where she was not, after all, required to take Felicity to bed. The final course of brandied pudding had yet to be served, and the children had been promised the treat. Lord Wharton was in the midst of declining his portion of the desert when she entered.

“Miss Deering!” He seemed pleased to see her. “Felicity has just been telling these ladies that you are proficient at playing the harpsichord. They are most anxious to know if you would mind playing for us.”

Of course she could not refuse him, her employer, and never had Elaine been more conscious of the fact.

The harpsichord occupied one end of the Saloon, a room that despite enormous, echoing grandeur entangled its occupants in a reaching, curling, artfully repetitive pattern of trailing vinework. The ceiling was a golden bower of intricately plastered and carved timbered boxes, row upon deep row, edged in overlapping esses of fine gold scrollwork. A deep blue ground and more vine-like gold elegantly framed cameo paintings of mythological characters, a false heaven of them.

The walls, deep buff, with gold-trimmed white wainscoting, came alive with a vivid forest of tapestries. Twisted gold-framed rows of pale-complected ancestors. Gold-vine sconces twinkled with candles, the moving light giving the faces in each portrait a sense of movement, as though they turned to watch her pass along the vine-laced Aubusson rug, blue flowers and green leaves on a green ground. Pier tables where coffee and cakes were served on inlaid vinework satinwood drew her eyes only momentarily. The harpsichord dominated the room, a beautiful, golden, gleaming masterpiece.

The most beautiful instrument Elaine had ever seen, without a note played it seemed to sing. Exquisitely fine inlaid walnut trailed pale golden vines and birds and fan-shaped shells framing the starkly black and white keyboard. More vines trailed from inside the instrument, the length of the tightly stretched harpstrings, around the strut that held open the case.

The maker’s name was entwined, and the date, 1742. Elaine felt as if the tendrils must wind themselves about her fingers, her arms, her waist as she sat to play a prelude by Bach, one of Corelli’s concertos, Mozart. The sounds she coaxed from vibrating strings became part of the background while pudding was served, conversation continuing, the music but one more beautiful element in a room filled with beauties designed for the satisfaction and entertainment of those who could afford the very best.

Her stomach growled as the pudding was put to flame, cut and eaten, coffee and tea served in transparently thin porcelain along with equally thin and brittle conversation. The plates and silverware were cleared, and still she played, her fingers, like the vinework, clinging to the harpsichord, become a part of it. As the diners rose from the table she played, haunting and sweet, a song of unrequited love that spoke of the loneliness squeezing at her heart.

“Who, I wonder, was the delightful Lady Greensleeves to cast off her love discourteously?” her hostess murmured.

Elaine looked up from the keys, the sudden movement dizzying her, or was it finding Lord Wharton’s gaze fixed upon her, made her swoon? The pale golden curls of his forelock overshadowed an unexpected sadness in captivating blue eyes, as if the instrument she played was his heart. His sadness had nothing to do with her, she was quite certain, a sadness unnoticed by the women who sought to entertain him with polite conversation.

They wondered in bright, unaware voices if Valentine would not care to dance. Elaine wondered hungrily if she might beg a cup of tea and a biscuit.

Valentine Wharton blinked, straightened his shoulders, gave a brisk nod. He danced with fine precision, but he did not look as if he enjoyed himself, any more than she enjoyed the unladylike gnaw of hunger in her tummy.

Bemused by his expression, Elaine became the background again, an impetus to moving feet, nothing more. She played and played, song after song as they pranced and pirouetted until she began to feel light-headed, the sensation most disturbing, the music blurring before her eyes. She missed a note, could not find the right keys. When she tried to stand, the room spun into darkness.

V
al reacted at once, ignoring his partner’s surprise at misplayed notes and dance steps gone awry. He rushed to catch Elaine as she fell. Into his outstretched arms she slid, as if her bones were turned to water, as if she belonged there.

“Smelling salts!” He lifted her, thistledown of a woman, the warm weight of her no trouble in his arms, no trouble at all, and he beside himself with worry--with alarm. Was she ill? Had she been ill all along and he too blind to notice? Too caught up in the past to properly observe what was right under his nose?

Not smelling salts but a burning feather the butler brought at once, efficient man, while his mistress latched onto Val’s arm and wondered, “Is she ill, my lord? Given to fits of fainting? Is there danger of contagion?”

Val could not respond in any way but to say, “She is only newly come into my employ,” while his heart raced with concern, for Elaine Deering had come to mean more to him in their few days together, than he might have expected.

His dancing partner, completely ineffectual in assisting, felt compelled to say, “How curious that she who has been sitting should faint away while those of us who have been whirling about the room and are quite light-headed with dancing, should be right as rain.”

He ignored her.

“Are you ill, Miss Deering?” he leaned close to ask.

Lashes fluttered. She sighed and opened her eyes.

“Shall I send for a physician?”

She shook her head weakly, seemed to immediately regret having done so, a pained expression crossing her features. “No physician. It is nothing. Only that I have not eaten. It leaves me light-headed.”

Not eaten? She had played music for them for hours on an empty stomach?

“Why did you not eat?” Anger rose in him that she foolishly brought this upon herself.

“No time,” she said, and pressed a hand to her forehead as if it ached. “I was asked to come immediately.”

Of course. They had called for her in the very moment when the servants were sitting down to dinner.

“Send to the kitchen at once for broth, toast, tea.” He ordered the butler. “Have it delivered to Miss Deering’s room.

“Yes, my lord. And will you require a footman to carry her up?”

“I shall carry her myself.” He lifted her without any other word of warning, to the dismay of all concerned.

“My lord,” the Biddington’s sounded appalled.

“My lord, no,” the governess herself protested. “Put me down. I am sure I can walk.” She made weak struggle in his arms.

“I am damned certain that you would topple over the moment I set you down,” he scolded, unswayed. “Do not make this any more difficult than need be, Miss Deering. I shall just carry her to her room,” he informed the others. “Felicity will open doors for me.”

“Yes, papa.” She rushed ahead, pleased to be involved, eyes round with concern.

His hostesses nodded open-mouthed.

“Arms about my neck, Miss Deering,” he instructed.

“But I do not think--”

“Do not think, Miss Deering, only know that it will be easier for me.”

“Yes, my lord.” She obliged him, the soft roundness of her breast pressed to his chest, arms sliding about his neck, her breath, quick and warm against his chin. The ribs of her stays, at odds with his own ribs, prompted thoughts of unlacing such an obstruction--dangerous thought with almond-scented soap teasing his nostrils.

She would not look at him. Lashes fluttered downward, dark against the milky pale of her skin, milk staining strawberry as he shifted her, tightened his hold and thought of drinking her in.

“That’s more like it,” he said briskly, as if completely unaffected by her proximity. He could not allow her to know he wanted to kiss her. Too selfish a desire. Inappropriate, she would have said. Highly inappropriate. And yet, he could not stop looking at the satin smoothness of her lower lip, could not ignore the pull of her clean, soapy smell, and the seductive weight of her body against his.

“Do you faint often without food, Miss Deering?”

She nodded, a quick head bob. He reveled in the warm roundness of her rump against his stomach. He must remind himself that she was ill. He must not take advantage. She was his daughter’s governess. She had been taken advantage of by her last employer, and she had left him. She would leave him.
As Penny left me
.

“You need not worry,” she said. “I am generally very careful.”

“Of course you are,” he murmured. At last she looked up at him, a quick, startled meeting of their eyes, not careful at all, her mouth so very close to his he thought of nothing so much as kissing her. Her breath warmed his cheek. It had been too long since he had kissed any woman, indeed wanted any woman but Penny.

As quickly as she looked at him, he looked away and thought of Felicity, illegitimately born of just such thoughts turned to action.

His daughter held the door wide to her room, saying, “It is too far to climb the stairs, papa. Is she all right?”

“Miss Deering is faint with hunger. Given a bit of food she will be well again.” He steeled himself with fresh resolve in stepping into his daughter’s bedchamber, a woman in his arms.

“I am hungry, my dear. That’s all.” She echoed his words, voice trembling, vibrating against his chest, her uncertainty vibrating all the way through him.

A dragon’s appetite stirs in me, and not for food.

“Light-headed,” she said, as he leaned down to deposit her on the counterpane feeling light-headed himself as he released his hold.

“Like when I spin and spin with my arms out? And then I fall down and the whole world is spinning?” Felicity’s voice seemed to come from a distance for in that moment Miss Deering looked into his eyes, candlelight caught, a sparkling flare of light in the depths of that visual exchange. She fizzled through him like a Roman candle against the darkest night sky.
As I am spinning now. Her body the fulcrum. The heat of the dragon in her eyes. The scent of her desire rising to consume me.

Her mouth moved, dark lashes fluttering down to hide what he had discovered in her eyes, in the musky scent of her.

“Very much the same, my dear,” she said.

Like our desires, he thought as he fell back as one stunned. He made a concerted effort not to glance in her direction again, not to respond to the dizzying tune of her voice, the dizzying loss of her body heat. He made very effort not to think of how completely light-headed he wished to render her with kisses, and the roving passage of his hands.
Palmer all over again. Damn Palmer! Damn my own inappropriate desires. I want a wife, not simply a lover, do I not? A mother for Felicity.

He needed the governess to be a governess. No more. No less. For the sake of his daughter he dared not risk losing this fine and beloved influence in his daughter’s life so soon after convincing her to go with them to St. David. For the sake of his soul he dared not lose himself to the searing heat of the dragon of desire.

E
laine missed the strength of his arms, their warmth, the scent of him. His soap, his cologne, grew faint. She shivered.

“Papa has sent for food,” Felicity plopped herself down on the edge of the bed even as her father withdrew.

“Are you thirsty?” he asked, and not waiting for her answer he poured a glass of water from a pitcher.

“I do apologize,” she said, feeling very awkward sitting on the edge of a bed with a gentleman waiting on her. Especially this gentleman, who was by all reports no gentleman at all.
And yet--and yet--he is all that is gentlemanly to me.

“And what would you apologize for, Miss Deering?” He took up what would seem to be his favorite position, leaning nonchalantly against the doorjamb. To keep his distance. Though there was nothing distant in his eyes.

“I apologize for creating a scene.” She took comfort in decorum, finding safety in it. Unable to voice her deepest reasons for contrition. For inappropriate thoughts. For wishing. For feeling. For dreaming fairy tale dreams. “I apologize for not eating as soon as the tray was brought.”