The Captain's Christmas Family (16 page)

Mr. Culpepper met them in the entry hall when they arrived home. Before Gideon could get the door closed, the butler announced. “A guest has arrived while you were at church, Captain. The late Mrs. Radcliffe’s sister, Lady Villiers.”

M
r. Culpepper’s announcement struck Marian like a bolt of lightning. For months she had dreaded this moment, worked and planned to avoid its consequences. Now just when she had hope God might answer her desperate prayers, it had come. Worse yet, the girls seemed to welcome it—Cissy certainly did.

“Aunt Lavinia!” The child seized her sister by the hand and pulled Dolly off in search of their aunt.

And Gideon…what about him? He cast a furtive glance at Marian, then followed the girls.

Breathing a quick prayer for strength, she hurried after him.

“Aunt Lavinia!” she heard Cissy’s voice from the Chinese drawing room, more animated than in a very long time. “It’s so good to see you. We were afraid you might never come.”

When Marian and Gideon entered the drawing room, they found the girls being petted and embraced by their aunt. “Oh, my dearest darlings, how good it is to see you both again! I was quite prostrate with grief when
I received the sad news about your poor, dear papa. I started for home just as soon as I was fit to travel, but I was in Naples, which is an excessively long way. And travel in the winter is such an ordeal. There were times I feared I might succumb to the elements!”

Her ladyship did not appear any the worse for her recent ordeal. At least not to Marian, who stood back quietly observing the scene. Lady Villiers’s arrival had thrust her back into the role of servant after months of feeling like something more.

The girls’ aunt was dressed and coiffed in the height of fashion. The rich peacock blue of her traveling gown set off her fine eyes and raven hair to perfection. She resembled her late sister in beauty, if little else, with fine features, luxurious eyelashes and a pert little mouth.

In contrast to such an elegant creature, Marian felt plainer and dowdier than ever. But that was nothing to the way her heart plunged when Lady Villiers paused in her gushing attentions to the girls and glanced up at Gideon. Her eyes fairly blazed with predatory interest, and her lips curved into a beguiling smile.

She rose gracefully and targeted Gideon with the full barrage of her considerable charm. “Bless me! Here I have been rattling on, so delighted to see you both again, that I am all sixes and sevens. Pray, my darlings, introduce me to this handsome gentleman.”

“What handsome gentleman?” Dolly’s nose wrinkled in a puzzled frown.

“She means Cousin Gideon, of course.” Cissy shot the younger girl a glare of disdain. “Aunt Lavinia, this is Papa’s cousin, Captain Radcliffe. He is the
new master of Knightley Park. Cousin Gideon, this is Mama’s sister, Lady Villiers.”

The child delivered the introduction with impeccable decorum, just the way her governess had taught her. But Marian could take no pride in the accomplishment of her young pupil at the moment. Instead, she stood transfixed as Lady Villiers swept Gideon a flirtatious curtsy.

“It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance at last, Captain Radcliffe. To think you are dear Daniel’s cousin and I am Emma’s sister. That almost makes us family…though not
too
closely connected.”

Not too closely connected for what? Marian’s lips drew into a tight, disapproving line. Though they had met once before, the girls’ aunt did not even flick a glance in her direction. It was as if she had been rendered invisible.

Lady Villiers extended her hand toward Gideon. It was too high and in quite the wrong position to shake. Clearly she expected a more gallant greeting.

“Welcome to Knightley Park, your ladyship.” The warmth of Gideon’s greeting was tempered with a certain endearing awkwardness. He bowed low over Lady Villiers’s hand but did not raise it to his lips. “I understand you have been traveling on the Continent. I trust you enjoyed your tour.”

“Immensely!” Her ladyship sank onto the settee and pulled Cissy and Dolly up on either side of her, an arm draped around each child. “Seeing all the sights for myself at last was such an adventure.”

“Cousin Gideon has had lots of adventures,” Dolly
boasted. “He has circum…circum…he’s sailed around the world.”

“Has he, indeed?” Her ladyship lavished the captain with an admiring smile. “How very fortunate I am to make the acquaintance of a bold adventurer! You must tell me about all the exotic places you have visited, Captain.”

“Perhaps we can exchange accounts of our travels.” Gideon started to take a seat, then recalled Marian’s presence. “Come join us, Miss Murray.”

Marian would rather have fled to the nursery to sort out her confused feelings and consider the consequences of Lady Villiers’s arrival, but she was not at liberty to come and go as she pleased. She was hired to do her employers’ bidding, and the master of Knightley Park had asked her to be seated.

At last Lady Villiers deigned to notice Marian, flicking a dismissive glance in her direction. “Oh, yes, the governess.”

Edging around the perimeter of the room, Marian perched on the window seat. It was close enough to the others to satisfy the captain’s invitation to join them while still being in keeping with her peripheral place in the household.

Once Marian had taken a seat, the captain sank onto his chair. “Miss Murray has been much more to your nieces than a governess in the past months. She has been mother, father, teacher and advocate. The girls were very fortunate to be in her care during this difficult time.”

If Marian had needed anything to make her care for him more, his gallant tribute would have accomplished
that. But she already cared for him far too much. The cruel stab of jealousy she felt watching Lady Villiers flirt with him warned Marian she must quash those dangerous feelings or risk worse misery than she had known since her school days.

“How commendable.” Her ladyship sounded surprised that Marian could be capable of such conduct. “Emma and I had such horrible governesses when we were girls. I pleaded with Father to send us to school where we might have the advantage of many different teachers.”

School. Marian barely stifled a whimper. Her worst fears about Lady Villiers had been right. The moment she took the girls from Knightley Park, their aunt would seek to place them in a school, all the while assuring herself it was in their best interests. And there was nothing Marian could do to prevent her. Any effort she made would seem like a selfish attempt to keep from losing her position.

“Did you enjoy your time at school, Captain?” Her ladyship seemed eager to turn the conversation back to him. “Which one did you attend, pray? You have the distinguished look of an Eton man to me.”

“I received my education in the Royal Navy,” Gideon replied. “If I’d had a choice, I would have preferred to remain at home with a governess or tutor.”

Lady Villiers gave a trill of high-pitched laughter that pierced Marian like shards of glass under her skin. “I suppose we all hanker for whatever we have not had. Your naval training seems to have made a fine man of you.”

Marian could not dispute that, though she resented
Lady Villiers for being free to flatter him so blatantly when she had been obliged to guard every word.

Gideon did not acknowledge her ladyship’s praise. “Surely you must admit your nieces do credit to Miss Murray’s tutelage.”

“They are perfectly adorable!” Her ladyship hugged Cissy and Dolly close, attention the girls appeared to welcome. “So like their dear mama. I am certain they would flourish under any circumstances. But come, Captain, you promised me stories of your travels.”

Gideon obliged her with an account of his visit to New Zealand, a story he had shared with Marian and the girls some weeks before. To Marian’s admittedly biased ears, he did not sound as relaxed and animated as he had then. Dolly interrupted him often in an effort to enliven the tale.

Marian itched to remind the child to mind her manners, but bit her tongue for fear it would only rouse the veiled antagonism she sensed from Lady Villiers. The last thing Cissy and Dolly needed was for their aunt to have any excuse to dismiss her. She would speak to Dolly later in the privacy of the nursery.

As the afternoon progressed, Marian sat watching from the fringes while Lady Villiers usurped the place she had so recently enjoyed in their little family. Her thoughts turned to Gideon’s inquiry and his misery at the prospect of losing his command and reputation. She could not help feeling that her prayers might have contributed to the situation. At the very least, she had failed to keep her original promise to pray that he would get justice.

She must find some way to make things right for
him. But how? If a man like him felt bullied, without influence or power, how could someone in her humble circumstances be of any assistance? She could appeal to God again, but would He pay any heed after she had changed her mind so often about what she wanted? It would be tantamount to taking the favor He’d granted her and throwing it back in His face. Gideon had been right—the Creator of the Universe was not a tailor to be bidden to make minute alterations to the garment of life.

It was up to her to help Gideon receive the justice he’d been denied. She could think of only one person who might possess the power to intervene on Gideon’s behalf. Perhaps it would do no good, but she must try or she could never truly claim to care for him.

Lady Villiers did not appear to be in any hurry to leave Knightley Park. As the days began to lengthen and winter loosened its grip on the countryside, Gideon could not decide whether to be irritated or relieved. The latter, surely, for as long as her ladyship remained under his roof, Cissy and Dolly did, too. And so did Marian Murray.

Not that relations between him and the girls’ governess had recovered since their kiss. It seemed to have transformed her back into the quiet, dour woman he recalled from the earliest days of their acquaintance. To see her now, no one would suspect Miss Murray was capable of chasing about with the children, laughing uproariously at a pantomime, or singing wistful Scottish love songs. No one would believe she could be such a sympathetic listener, such a dispenser of wise, compas
sionate advice. But he knew all those things and more. They made him yearn to have
that
woman back again.

He’d hoped by keeping his distance and treating her with temperate civility, he might coax her out again. But so far it had not worked. Miss Murray took every opportunity to remind him that she was an employee and not a member of the family, as she had once seemed. Was she trying to remind him that he had taken advantage of her position in his household to impose his unwanted attentions upon her? She need not have bothered, for he was well aware of how he had destroyed the fragile trust between them.

Much as he wished he could ask how to get it back, he feared any such overture would only make matters worse. Besides, when would he have an opportunity to broach the subject? She never visited the library in the evenings anymore. At least not during those rare occasions when he could escape Lady Villiers’s company to seek refuge there, as he had this evening.

Or perhaps he had not escaped after all.

Without even the most cursory excuse for a knock, the library door opened—first a crack, then flung wide.

“There you are!” Lady Villiers invaded his sanctuary. “I declare, one would think we were playing hide-and-seek. Do you know, this is one room of the house where I’ve never been before.”

She glanced around at the tall shelves of books, and her nose wrinkled in distaste. “Now I can see why. It is dreadfully gloomy. How do you abide it? And what is that odor?”

Stifling a sigh, Gideon rose from his chair. “I presume
you mean the aroma of old books. It is more pleasant to me than any perfume.”

Her ladyship gave an indulgent chuckle. “My dear Captain, you are delightfully droll! You need someone in your life to draw you out—someone to take care of you.”

Gideon could not dispute that. He did need such a person, but he already had her in his life. Not only had Marian Murray drawn him out and taken care of him, she’d slipped into his private sanctum and enriched it with her presence. She had also helped him draw close to the girls…and closer to God. Was it selfish of him to want more than that from her?

Yet the way Lady Villiers spoke of it made him uneasy. Since coming to Knightley Park, she had gone out of her way to be attentive and agreeable, but Gideon had not warmed to her. Though she had not mentioned any desire to take the girls away, it seemed to hang in the air like an unspoken threat. Perhaps the time had come to stop this game of cat and mouse and bring the subject out in the open to find out where they stood.

“That is very perceptive of you, Lady Villiers.” He motioned her to take a seat. “I have come to realize I also need someone of whom I can take care. During my time at sea, I did my best to look after my crew. Since coming to Knightley Park, I have taken great satisfaction in helping to care for your nieces.”

“And a splendid job you have made of it, dear Captain.” Her ladyship perched on the edge of her seat, leaning toward him. “The girls both seem so well and happy, considering what they have been through, losing
their papa. I believe they have found a most admirable substitute for their father in you.”

Her words touched Gideon. Perhaps he had misjudged the lady. “That is most kind of you to say. I have become fonder of the girls than I ever expected. Their welfare and happiness have become among my chief concerns.”

Lady Villiers nodded. “As they have long been of mine, ever since Daniel and Emma asked Huntley and me to be the girls’ godparents. To think I am the only one of the four left to take charge of those dear children.”

She heaved a poignant sigh. “It comforts me to discover I am not entirely alone in my affection for them.”

“You are not.” Gideon assured her. “The girls also have me and Miss Murray.”

“Their governess?” Her ladyship’s handsome features twisted into a most unattractive sneer. “I will concede she is a considerable improvement over the gargoyles who made my girlhood so miserable, but it is her job to care for the children. That scarcely compares to your admirable concern, which is motivated solely by kindness and family feeling.”