Elisabeth Fairchild (2 page)

“Miss Deering makes Gatehouse feel like home,” Felicity had confided, reminding him how far away he sent her, how great her homesickness must be.

Miss Deering, he was told, knew when students were bullied and intervened. She took time to counsel each of her girls individually. Val suspected Felicity had confided in this woman much of her troubled history. And thus she knows the worst of me.

He quietly followed in her wake, certain she held him in low esteem. It ought not to have bothered him--a mere governess. He had been scorned by far better, far more important and influential people in his life, and yet, in watching the demure sway of her hips, in studying the gleaming twists of tightly braided hair, he did not want this young woman to despise him, as Penny Foster had grown to despise him. He did not want any woman to ever again have equally sufficient reason to revile him.

Besides, she meant too much to Felicity.

There was, deep within him, a reluctance to offend anyone who in any way reminded Felicity of Penny Foster. Too much offense had already been generated in that quarter.

The resemblance was not physical.

Miss Deering’s backside had a less pronounced curve than pretty Penny’s, her shoulder blades were sharper, her waist smaller, indeed her entire frame was slighter, more delicate. Could there be something similar in the quiet, self-possessed stride? The tilt of her chin? The fluid grace of her movements? No stray curls tempted a man’s gaze to linger, and yet his gaze did linger, searching for glimpse of Penny, whom he should have married, could have married, would have married.

Had you been a different man, a wiser man, a more sober one.

Miss Deering shot a quick glance over her black clad shoulder, an impression of guarded concern. Concern that he followed her? But no, her dark brows furrowed at the sound of a woman scolding, the voice like an unoiled hinge.

 “Willful child! You must put it back on.”

With a horrible clanging of iron came a second voice from the same distant classroom door, one that made him hasten, the voice of a child.

“I will not. It pinches. I cannot breathe, and my neck and shoulders go all stiff.”

Felicity!

Miss Deering passed through the doorway as the woman gave a contemptuous laugh, saying, “How else are you to obtain regal bearing, stupid child?”

And here was Felicity’s voice again, sharp, strong, completely uncowed. “There is nothing whatsoever wrong with my posture.”

Just as it had been the day he had introduced himself.

“You are not my father. My father is dead!”

He was her father. They two, cut from the same cloth. He had never denied her that, once he was aware of her existence. Val stopped just outside the doorway, head cocked to listen. Did his daughter regularly misbehave at school? Was she always so wayward and headstrong? As her mother had been wayward, as he had been headstrong?

“Unmanageable! You are an entirely unmanageable young man! I’ve no idea what to do with you.”

His quiet, even-tempered mother. How sorely he had tried her patience. How many times had she wrung her hands over his behavior? Did it explain why she had never sought to care for Felicity in his absence? Her only granddaughter. Her illegitimate granddaughter. She had to have turned a blind eye on the resemblance, a deaf ear to the gossip. They had never spoken of the matter. Would they ever?

Had his unmanageable daughter battled wills with Penny throughout her youth, without his knowing?

“Felicity Wharton.”

That sharp voice again! As mean-spirited and biting as the voices of his childhood. His lip curled.

“Would you live without benefit of stays, Miss Wharton, in an age of dumpling-shaped girls?” The woman’s bark was sharp. “I think not. Your father has paid for the privilege of a proper education, and that includes proper posture obtained by the use of the proper posture device. Now put it back on, at once.”

Val peeped inside the doorway in time to see Felicity, looking taller than when last he had seen her, arms folded obstinately across her chest, regarding with contempt a pile of metal bands and leather straps strewn upon the floor.

 “It is torture, Miss Bundy,” she stated belligerently. “I refuse to willingly succumb to such a device.”

No surrender. No defeat,
Val thought.

Someone sniggered.

Val shifted position for a better view. In the row of desks behind Felicity the strangest sight met his eyes. Young women, children really, like Felicity, ten to twelve he guessed their ages, sat like stiff-backed, life-size automatons, trussed up in metal bands and leather straps that forced their shoulder blades together. Metal rods with semicircular chin props kept their gawky, girlish heads artificially high.

Clapping a hand over his mouth he stepped back out of the doorway. It would not do to simply burst out laughing at them. Vision of his Latin professor, Mr. Barrow, rose at once to mind, slapping a rule against his palm, frowning at him most severely.

“You take things far too lightly, Wharton. Another outburst of unnecessary laughter and I shall . . .”

His hands tingled with the thought of his ill-met response.
“Risio, risor, risus.”

Miss Deering said something. He could not make it out. He turned his head, the better to hear, stifled amusement shaking his shoulders.
What is this nonsense?

“Miss Deering, “ Miss Bundy said with haughty disdain, “Can you not see I am in the midst of chastising a wayward pupil? As for you, Felicity Wharton, why when I was your age I was hung by a ring from the ceiling so that I might be straight-laced to the point of fainting. Our shoes were weighted with lead to strengthen our leg muscles, and we gladly swung by our chins that our necks might be stretched, that we might stand proud, recognized as ladies!”

Bloody nonsense! He returned to the doorway fully prepared to defend his daughter, but Felicity, his outspoken, sensible nine-year-old going on twenty, beat him to the punch. “How foolish!” she stated flatly. “I would rather forgo being a lady if neck stretching and chin propping are required.”

Hear! Hear!
he wanted to crow. It was time he intervened.

“Ill-mannered child! “ Miss Bundy barked. “Pick up that posture perfector and apologize at once.” A tall, spare woman with pikestaff stiff posture and a persimmon twist to her lips circled his fair child like a lion tamer, cracking a rule against her palm.

Felicity stood her ground without cowering. Pride surged through him. Brave and beautiful, his wayward seed.

His daughter’s silence infuriated Miss Bundy. “You do not belong here, Felicity Wharton, amongst so many well-bred young ladies.”

Felicity took the words like a blow, body braced. Her chin fell. Her defiant gaze did not. Val’s blood rose.

“You did not think I knew of your disgrace, did you now, Miss High and Mighty? Well, I do know. We all know. . .”

In that split second, in his mind’s eye, he saw the lads leer, heard the taunts: “You’ve been with the tarts, haven’t you? Jam all over your face. Jam all over the tarts. Or is it the tarts who have been jammed?”

This memory of long ago spite was interrupted by the quiet good sense of Miss Deering.

“Miss Bundy! Miss Wharton has a visitor. Can this reprimand wait for a more appropriate time?” Dark eyes, dark-winged brows, a generous mouth above the sharp little chin. So serious she looked. Not a beautiful face, Miss Deering’s, but aware, so very aware.

Bundy turned on her, spewing vituperative. “Appropriate? Your continued interference is most inappropriate and impertinent, Miss Deering. I do not know how you were allowed to behave in your last position, young woman, but as a governess at Gatehouse you must learn to demonstrate better manners. You are an example to these girls, Miss Deering.”

The younger woman’s cheeks flushed rosy. Low voiced, hands clasped, a picture of demure reason, she murmured, “As are you, Miss Bundy.”

Val cocked his head. An unexpected comeback from the not-so-timid tabby. Bundy’s back went so rigid she might have been wearing a posture perfector herself. Her eyes looked ready to pop from her head.

He drawled in an acid tone, “Would you hold the child guilty for her father’s sins?”

Miss Bundy’s head snapped round. Color flared in sunken cheeks.

“Papa!” Felicity turned, uncertainty in her eyes, in her demeanor.

It tore at his heart to see his defiant daughter lose backbone at sight of him.

“You will not make me wear it, will you?”

Val’s jaw clenched. She had to ask?

She does not know you, Val.
The voice of reason, of the past, reminded him.

He eyed the proper young girls who stiffly stared back at him.
They know my daughter’s shame. My shame.

With a cynical bark of laughter he said, “In the Far East women’s feet are bound in youth, that they might be small and dainty, if completely deformed. We consider that barbaric.”

The girls, with all the grace of lampposts, glanced from him to their governess and back again, confused. They did not grasp his meaning. Miss Deering’s eyes were downcast, her manner as quiet as ever, hands clasped, fingers caged in her own grip, guarded amusement in the curve of her lip!  Pretty lips. A pretty sort of amusement in that he made her face bloom. For a moment she was quite attractive, dearest Miss Deering.

Miss Bundy did not look at all amused. “This is quite different,” she protested.

“Is it indeed?” His brows rose. The cynical bite of his voice deepened. “Well-bred young ladies trussed up like Christmas turkeys?”

The turkeys awaited her response, wide-eyed. Felicity stood a little straighter.

“B-b-but, my lord. . .”

“Do not, I beg of you, waste time, or breath in trying to defend such a ridiculous contraption.” He waved a negligent hand at the thing on the floor.

Miss Deering bit her lip. Miss Bundy blinked at him in dismay.

He arched an eyebrow at his daughter. “Care to go on holiday, poppet?”

She hesitated a moment, as he had known she would.

Penny shouted at him, from the fells, from the past.
“She does not know you, Val. I told her you were dead.”

The daughter he had abandoned smiled at him, only a hint of the wary disbelief he always observed in her eyes peeking through the surprise his suggestion generated. “On holiday, papa? Where? When?”

“To Wales. As soon as you apologize to your governess.”

Her smile faded. Doubt and rebellion hung like a cloud before the sky blue eyes.
Like mine. She has my eyes. My temperament.

“In the classroom your teachers are due your attention and obedience.” His father’s words spouted from his lips.
How strange the sound.

Miss Bundy’s head rose abruptly in surprise. Miss Deering looked up more slowly, head cocked. His borrowed wisdom met with startled approval. The language, the duties of fatherhood were unfamiliar to him--uncomfortable. His father’s feeble attempts to reprimand a headstrong son had fallen on almost deaf ears.

Felicity stared at him belligerently, angry and resistant.

He stared back, implacable and unyielding in his expectation. Her gaze fell. She frowned at her shoes a moment, lower lip out-thrust.

She might refuse.
I would have refused, given such a come-lately, shirk-thy-duty father.
But his dear, illegitimately born daughter was blessed with a far more obedient heart than he. Fair head lifting, her blue-eyed gaze met his with a trace of angry, betrayed defiance for a long, silent moment, before swallowing her pride, she stood very straight.

“I apologize, Miss Bundy, for my rudeness.”

The room seemed to hold its breath.

“Back to your studies!” Miss Bundy curtly ordered her students.

Stiff-necked and wide-eyed the students directed their attention to pages that whispered their obedience.

Unappeased, and unimpressed, Miss Bundy said curtly to his child, “You had best go now.”

Dreadful woman.

Felicity nodded, turning toward him, crestfallen, the pain of her disgrace written clear in every feature.

He wanted to sweep her into his arms, to shout
Bravo!
to assure her all was forgiven, but she would suffer no such unexpected public display of affection from a man she knew not--would she?

He clutched his hat a little tighter, and fell into step behind her. Like a dog. Like Penny’s man-eating dog.

Miss Deering brushed past him, to tap Felicity upon the shoulder. “Well done, my dear,” she murmured. “I shall miss you while you are gone. Do you need any help in gathering together your things?” She held out her arms.

With a stifled whimper, Felicity fell against her bosom.

Have I only to throw wide my arms?
Would she respond so readily, or would she simply stare at him, uneasy, uncertain what he wished of her? As uncertain as he had been with his father’s occasional stiff embrace, the pat on the shoulder, his mother’s kiss on air.

Val licked his lips, mouth dry. For most women he had only to throw open his arms with a certain smile. This governess would be easier to conquer than his own daughter, a young woman he had no idea at all how to rule.

The dragon stirred. Desire stirred. It surprised him. She was not the sort that usually caught his eye, Miss Deering.

Have I only to throw wide my arms?

E
laine Deering hesitated to approach the headmistress’s office. Fear slowed her steps, held her back, and yet she could not look away from Lord Wharton, could not retreat now that he had seen her. The monster waited--no--lounged was the more appropriate term--one arm propped along the plain oaken back of the bench provided for students, muscular legs stretched out before him, crossed at the ankle, one expensively shod foot swinging back and forth with nervous energy, flinging raindrops. Father of Felicity’s illegitimacy. As careless of his seed as he was with wet boots.

She could see why women were drawn to the energy with which his presence filled a room. He was undeniably attractive, even in a thoroughly drenched state, but more than a handsome face, and muscular grace, his gaze mesmerized.