The Governess Affair (9 page)

Freddy’s lips compressed.

“If you’re worried about where to stay, I’ve a few leads on rooms. I’ll have us a new place by nightfall. I was just headed out to—”

As she spoke, Freddy reached down and picked up a pair of slippers. “Us?” she said. “
We
won’t have anything.” And then she threw the slippers at Serena.

They were made of wool and therefore bounced ineffectually off Serena’s forehead. Still, she was aghast. Mild-mannered Freddy, tossing things at her?

“How dare you?” Freddy said. “How dare you bring me into this?”

“Freddy—it’s just a place to stay. We’ll find a new one, just as good.”

“You don’t understand!” Freddy looked about the entry. “You’ve never understood. I have only ever had one safe place—these rooms—and now you’ve taken them from me.”

Freddy reached down and picked up the tired valise that stood next to the table.

“Listen to yourself,” Serena said. “You want me to hide, just like you do—hurt once, never risking anything else again. You won’t be satisfied until you’ve brought me down to your level.”

Freddy’s eyes flashed. Her lips pressed together, and in that moment, Serena had the horrible, awful feeling of having said too much. Freddy hurled the valise at her. It traveled only a few feet, lacking the basic capabilities to sustain long flight, and landed in a discordant crumple of leather and buckles.

“Do you not understand what happened to you?” Freddy glared at her. “You suffered a fate worse than death, and still you—”

“I am alive,” Serena said. “My child is alive. I intend to carry on living. Can you say that much?”

At that, Freddy swiped her hand across the side-table, tipping it over. It fell with a resounding crash.

Serena stepped forward and bent awkwardly to right the furniture. Her sister let out a sniff. “Oh, don’t bother,” she said crossly. “I’ll clean it up. I always do clean up after your messes. You would do it wrong, anyway. Go and dally with an entire company of men. I don’t care.”

Chapter Seven

A
T ELEVEN O’CLOCK
precisely, Serena was met at her bench by a man she had never seen before. He looked precisely the sort of man she would have imagined as the Wolf of Clermont a month ago—tall and muscular, eyes set close together, neck disappearing into broad shoulders.

“Miss Barton?” he asked.

Serena stood, folding the list of housing advertisements that she’d been perusing.

“I’m to show you around the back.”

She followed. It was foolish to be nervous. She’d talked with Mr. Marshall before. But not since he’d kissed her. Not since he’d discovered she was pregnant with another man’s child, and he’d drawn back.

He led her around the street and into a mews in back. From there, they ducked into the servants’ entrance in one of the white stone houses. The door opened onto a cellar. This he passed through swiftly, taking her up several flights of a narrow stair, and from there, into a richly carpeted hall, paintings on the walls.

All around her, the surroundings echoed wealth and generations of power—everything that had aligned itself against her.
This
was what she’d been fighting against. Not just the Duke of Clermont, or Mr. Marshall, but an entire country’s worth of opinion. She was as nothing compared to this sort of power—nothing more than a single grain in an entire sack of wheat. Nobody cared whether kernels wished to be ground into flour. It didn’t matter if she spoke or stayed silent; she had no voice either way.

Well, it mattered to her.

The servant came to a stop in front of a door, and Serena drew in a breath.

Her escort rapped on the door, once.

“Come in,” a voice said.

The man beside her opened the door. He held it for her, expectantly, and she realized that he wasn’t going to be entering with her.

She stepped into the room. Big strides. Head high.
Breathe,
she reminded herself. She was in an office—or at least she assumed it was an office. It could have been a library, with those books on the shelves. But there was paper everywhere—not only strewn about in loose stacks, but also set in cunning little shelves and tied up with different colors of cotton tape, all of which seemed to have some meaning. Blue there, yellow here, red spread out on the desk.

She couldn’t see Hugo—the high back of the black leather chair was turned to shield him.

“Well, Mr. Marshall,” she said, walking into the room with more bravery then she felt, “So this is where you crush hopes and shatter dreams.”

“Very droll.” He rose to his feet. Despite his words, there was no indication that he saw anything amusing at all. His mouth was set in one firm, sober line. And when he’d caught her attention, he gestured to the solitary wooden chair that stood across the desk from him. “Sit,” he commanded.

Serena smoothed her palms over her skirt and complied.

He sank into his chair. But he didn’t start the conversation. He simply steepled his fingers and looked at her silently. She wondered what he was seeing. The woman he’d kissed last night? A lady of easy virtue? Or someone else entirely?

He frowned and then pushed back in his chair. “Well,” he said. “We appear to have found ourselves in a bit of a difficulty.”

“You don’t seem to have done too badly for yourself.”

“I haven’t even—” He broke off and blew out a frustrated puff of air. “Never mind. Here is what we are going to offer you.”

“Who do you mean by
we?
”

Mr. Marshall ignored this. “We can’t provide what you ask for—no Eton, no Season. To give that much, the duke would have to exert himself for the child. His wife would discover it, and he has too much to lose.”

“Then I shall continue to sit outside his house. What do you suppose the gossip will run to once I begin to show?” She began to stand.

He slammed his hand against the table with a resounding thud. “
Wait.
”

“Don’t you screech at me,” Serena snapped. “Not you of all people.”

He stared at her a moment and then let out a breath. “My apologies,” he said stiffly. “I am rather on edge at the moment. I suspect we both are.” A muscle twitched in his cheek. “We are prepared to give you your fifty pounds, and then an extra fifty beyond that. Enough for you to live on, if you manage your resources judiciously. Enough to pay for a solid education or a finishing school. It’s not what you hoped for, but it is the best I can manage.”

She would be a fool not to take it. Anyone would say so.

But if she agreed, she’d no doubt be setting her name to more silence—a hundred supercilious looks, a lifetime of shaking heads. And her child…he would still be some nameless, unprotected bastard.

“What about my sister?” she asked.

He waved his hand. “She may stay where she is or live with you, as is her preference. This has already been communicated to her landlord; Miss Frederica Barton knows by now that she need not leave.”

She should take what he’d offered. Still, Serena met his eyes and held them. “Is that all you’ve got to offer? It isn’t enough.”

He’d been watching her the entire time. But now, for the first time, he looked away.

“As it happens, there is something else.” He played with the handle of a desk drawer uneasily. “What you wanted for your child was acceptance. That will be unattainable if your child is born a bastard. Eton would have been a futile promise in any event, as the founding statutes say quite clearly that any boy who attends must be legitimate. Have you any plans to marry at present?”

“You know I haven’t.”

He was still looking away, addressing the desk. “Consider acquiring some.”

Serena felt herself flush.

“Mr. Marshall, recall the circumstances in which I find myself. I have no great wealth, no family name to shield me. I am pregnant with another man’s child. Marriage is simply not an option.”

His expression did not change. “On the contrary, Miss Barton. You have a pending proposal of marriage—one you have not yet answered.”

“What are you talking about? I think I would know better than you if someone had proposed.”

“Think harder, Miss Barton. I know the circumstances of the offer quite well. I should. After all, I made it.”

Her heart came to a standstill. That note, that confusing, heart-rending note that he’d sent her…was it just yesterday afternoon?

“That wasn’t seriously meant,” she protested. “You don’t want to get married.”

“Don’t imagine it would be the usual kind of marriage.” He seemed to withdraw even more. “It needn’t even be consummated. Any woman I liked well enough to marry doesn’t deserve to be saddled with me. If we marry, it will be a quiet wedding by special license in a back room. At the end, we’ll go our separate ways—you, to your farm, and me…” He looked around the small room at the messy piles of paper. “I’m not offering to make a life with you. I am merely giving you the chance to make your child legitimate. Nothing more.”

He watched her, his eyes hooded and wary. And deep inside… She had no notion as to what to say.

She let out a long breath. “Oh, you
are
romantic.”

His lips compressed. “Grow accustomed to it. This is business, not romance.”

He glanced down, avoiding her eyes, and sifted through papers on the desk before him. “You wanted a lease on a farm within your means, did you not? Shall I look out for properties for you, or would you like to conduct the search yourself?”

“I would hate to put you to any trouble.”

“No trouble.” He glanced up warily at her. “As it happens, I’ve already started. There are some possibilities detailed here.” He rescued a sheaf of papers teetering on the edge of the desk and slid them over to her.

No; it wasn’t coldness she detected in his manner. He was nervous. And if he was nervous…

Serena had never been able to suppress hope for long. It filled her now.

There were no fates worse than death. There were only temporary setbacks on the road to victory. And no matter how coldly he phrased the prospect of their marriage, one thing was quite clear. She had won.

He was hers. Not Clermont’s. Not anyone else’s. No matter what he said, one didn’t tie oneself to a woman for life without granting her one’s loyalty. She stood, ignoring the papers he’d shoved over to her.

“The key to picking a good property,” he said, reaching across the desk to shuffle the pages, “is to think of where you’ll have water and sunlight and to look at prior crop yields. Those will tell you much about the quality of the soil.”

She stepped around the desk and set her hands on his shoulders.

He stopped. Swallowed. “Lavender—you did say lavender, did you not?—grows best in dry, sandy soils, neither alkaline nor acidic in nature. You might start looking at the properties in Cambridgeshire—that’s one of the driest parts of all of England, you know. Search out a soil that produces carrots on a regular basis, and…” He trailed off as she leaned toward him.

“You would be giving up all chance at marriage, Hugo. If you met someone and fell in love…”

“Will never happen. Never wanted it.” He let out a shaky puff of air, and Serena realized that he had been holding his breath.

“I have no time for women.” He raised his hand to her face and skimmed his fingertips down the line of her jaw, trailing them along her skin, until his index finger reached her chin. “Not even for you,” he whispered.

She raised her eyes to his. “Are you telling me I can’t?”

He made a confused, scalded noise—and then his arms came around her, catching her to him, pulling her down to sit on his lap. His lips were soft on hers—soft and sweet, but oh so hungry.

He’d claimed there was nothing of romance in this, but she wouldn’t have known it from his kiss. It wasn’t just his tightly-constrained want. A man who was driven solely by physical lust would have tried to seduce her first and marry her never. Instead, he kissed her as if it were his last time. As if she were a glass of water, and he the man about to embark on a trek across the desert. He savored her with his lips.

For a moment, she believed that no matter what he’d said, their marriage might become real. He was going to change his mind. She could taste it in his kiss.

But then he pulled away. “As you can see,” he said hoarsely, “this is nothing more than selfishness on my part. There’s no room for you in my life. But this way, at least I’ll know that you’re safe.”

He was fooling himself if he thought she would settle for a half-marriage. She’d vowed to win him from Clermont. She’d be damned if she stopped with less than full victory. She’d brought him this far. He would change his mind.

“I see,” Serena said softly, setting her palm against his cheek. “There’s no romance at all.”

“None.” And this time, his eyes didn’t drop from hers.

Chapter Eight