The Secret Desires of a Governess (26 page)

The dragon addressed the people. “You once knew me as the prince of Brahmors. I cannot rule you in this form but will watch and protect you forevermore. I have no desire to live as a man, for my love was taken from me with my dying human breath.”

—The Dragon of Brahmors

“I see she’s packing to leave like the others before her,”

Martha said.

Elliott turned away from the frost and fog mingling together over the water’s surface like long- lost lovers in the distance. He’d been staring out the window in his study for at least half an hour, gazing at the chasm of nothingness.

Elliott turned away from the mesmerizing lap of the water below and looked Martha over with a critical eye.

He recalled this setting and felt a spark of similarity. Same place, same stance, same question asked by a woman who’d known him his whole life.

He’d been watching Martha closely these past few days.

Either she knew he was watching her and was careful not to misstep, or she was innocent of any wrongdoing. He didn’t believe the latter.

“She lasted longer than our past governesses,” was his response to her flippant remark. “Have you started the process for hiring another?”

“Weeks ago. I have had a few applicants you may like.”

Weeks! Not hours, nor a day, but weeks! Abigail hadn’t started packing until this morning. Martha had been responsible for hiring Abigail. For what reason would she wish to see the back of her? Why would she want to cause her physical harm?

“I shouldn’t want Jacob to go without a teacher now that he’s grasped onto his studies with both hands so to speak. Perhaps it’s time he try a tutor again?”

“Aye. A sound plan. I’ll have the advertisement changed right away.” She turned to leave.

He didn’t want her to go yet. Something niggled at the back of his mind like a hammer at his skull.

“Martha?”

She turned back to him.

“How long have you worked here?”

Deep furrows lined her forehead. She seemed puzzled by the question.

“A long time. Long before you were born, Lord Brendall. More than forty years, now.”

“You would have been a young woman when you came here.” She nodded. “Around thirteen.” Another nod. Life had been hard on Martha; she looked a decade older than her true age. “I’m surprised you stayed on. My father was a tyrant.”

“My home has always been in the north. I couldn’t leave it even with the likes of your father at the helm of the house hold.”

Was there a possibility she’d seen and felt much of the same abuse he had from his father?

She carried on, “Your father was always a hard man.”

“An understatement,” he interjected.

Cruel, vicious, inhuman were closer to the truth. The old man had been the reason his mother had ended her life. A woman of fortitude and strength browbeaten to a shell of her former self. No one could survive long living under his father’s thumb.

Martha interrupted his thoughts. “You didn’t want that young one to stay. You won’t remember her before long.”

“You assume she’ll fade as all the others.”

“You may not think that now, but time and distance will change your mind.”

Was she attempting to make him feel better about letting Abigail go? He shoved his hands in the

pocket of his coat and turned back to the window.

There were a lot of reasons to let Abigail leave. First and foremost that of her safety. She’d nearly drowned a few days ago. Drowned! He could have lost her forever.

And if she did stay, he could very well impregnate her again. She didn’t deserve that. She deserved so much more in life than him. She would only find it if she left.

“I’m glad to know you’ve sent her away. Spied her in here some weeks ago going through your papers. She could have found any number of things.”

Why mention it now? That knowledge served no purpose. But Martha wouldn’t know why he’d insisted upon Abigail leaving.

His heart gave a painful jolt recalling the moment in his chamber when he’d torn up the bloody sheets from the miscarriage as he tossed them into the fire to hide the evidence of all that had happened. Abigail had slept while he’d wept his regret in silent misery. She’d been far more shocked by the miscarriage than he following her near-deadly trip into the bowels of the sea.

The breath caught in his lungs, and he rubbed at the pain he felt blooming deep inside his chest. Elliott gave a harsh rub to his eyes.

“I want quiet,” Elliott said. Would Martha leave well enough alone where Abigail was concerned now that she’d stated what venom was on her tongue?

“As you wish, my lord.”

He walked the house after that. In the library, Abigail’s accoutrements were still stacked on the desk in tidy piles.

Leather journals where she logged the day’s events with his son were set at the edge. Loose sheaves of paper where Jacob had filled out mathematical problems sat atop the journals. The deck of cards depicting each letter of the alphabet lay in the center. He picked them up and turned them over in his hand.

This was where it had started with his son. He doubted he would ever have the aptitude his son displayed. Knew, in fact, that it was an impossibility. He’d tried for so many years to learn what the letters meant.

Fanning out the deck of cards, he looked down at the colorful drawings on the thick parchment. Abigail had taken her time, ensuring the paintings were beautifully, carefully drawn. He bet his finest horse that these cards would be around for generations to come.

The animals were well thought out for the letters they represented. Some he didn’t even know because he’d never seen them before and couldn’t even guess what they were or from whence they hailed. He’d never been one for traveling. Hated it in fact. Hadn’t even liked his trips to London, which had been a necessary evil for his future financial security once his father had died.

He slid one of the cards out from the middle of the spread deck. It was a strange animal with woolly, thick curly hair, like a sheep’s. Its doe- like brown innocent eyes stared back. It had long legs and a long neck and the sleek soft face of a lamb. Its ears stood tall and flopped forward where they folded at the middle.

He traced the two straight lines that were the letter it represented; one shot straight up, while the other went out at a right angle. Had he even known what animal it was he still couldn’t be sure what the letter was. Perhaps an i or an l or even a t.

Putting the strangely beautiful beast back into the stack, he gathered up the cards into the tidy pile they’d been in before he had displaced them and turned them facedown. He needed no reminders of his failures, though he wondered if Abigail would have been able to teach him as she’d taught Jacob.

Although he’d spent every nights attempting to copy out the letters Martha gave him. Attempted to put the letters, lines, and circles in the same place she did. The sheaves of parchment never looked identical when he held them side by side. The words would always swim before him on

the paper.

“Father?”

Elliott had been so focused on the cards and the room around him that he hadn’t heard Jacob enter the library. He spun around, about to ask his son if he kept at his reading.

Jacob didn’t meet his gaze. His fingers fidgeted together and he shifted from leg to leg anxiously, as if he needed to impart something of importance.

“Good afternoon,” he said. “What did you wish to tell me?”

His son seemed relieved to be asked. “I came straight here. I was up on the parapet wall. There was someone down below. She didn’t see me at first. Martha was talking to her. And then they both looked up. And I ran all the way here.”

Elliott placed what he hoped was a soothing, reassuring hand on his son’s shoulder, then steered them out from the library toward his study. He needed to remain calm and not upset his son further. But this was his chance to catch Martha. He’d been waiting for this moment, and here it presented itself so beautifully.

“Slow yourself down, Jacob. Tell me your story slowly so I can make sense of it.”

Jacob pinched his lips together and nodded. The best course of action would be for Elliott to ask the questions he needed answered most.

“The woman you saw with Martha, did her clothes look like those of a poor village woman? Worn and ragged?”

“She was like the witch in the dragon fairy tale I took from Miss Abigail.”

Bethesda. On speaking terms with her niece, it seemed.

What foulness were the two women concocting? Pieces started falling into place in his mind. Bethesda leaving the castle when he was a boy, his mother walking out into the sea, a babe born to Martha not six months later.

The events were related; he just needed to figure out how.

He paused, taken aback by where his thoughts were leading him and coming to a startling conclusion.

Why hadn’t he thought of it before? How could he be so blind to the truth? Martha hadn’t married Thomas until after Lydia was born. Lydia had been born out of wed-lock. Goddamn it. How could he not have figured it out sooner? Simple: There had been no need to.

But how did all this connect to Abigail? Had his wife been a victim of the same mishaps that Abigail had been subjected to? No, he remembered her mood swings, her dementia. Martha couldn’t have been part of his wife’s demise.

Finally in the sanctuary of his study, Elliott took the key from the lock of the second- to- the- top drawer of his desk.

“Did you hear any of their conversation?”

“I don’t much understand what they were talking about.”

“It’ll be like a puzzle to solve. Tell me what you heard as best you can.”

“I couldn’t hear the witch. She spoke so low.”

Elliott was surprised and impressed that Jacob had likened Bethesda’s character to something so vile— and so accurate. The woman had been a blight on their house hold.

He thought her hatred for them would wane after his father had sent her away.

More than ever, he wished he knew the story and gossip that had surrounded his father and his mother’s lady’s maid.

Martha was somehow tied into whatever mess his father had created. Just because the main component of the equation had been taken out— Bethesda—hadn’t meant the problem had ever been solved.

Was it possible that Thomas and the rest of the household were part of the plot to harm Abigail?

His wife? To what end, what ultimate purpose? Revenge against his father?

He focused on his son.

“What of Martha? Her words?”

“She said their plan worked. She told the witch to go through the tunnels. But they are all locked. Except the ones that come up to the house.”

His son had obviously been exploring recently to know that. Maybe his son was familiar with and used the old tunnels regularly. It shouldn’t surprise Elliott that his boy seemed fearless even in the bowels of the eerie catacombs.

The catacombs.

Anyone who knew the lay of the castle knew of the entrance from the beach into the catacombs. It wasn’t part of the tunnels, just an odd connection to the main artery that ran beneath the castle.

“Have you noticed anyone down in the tunnels the last few months?”

“Martha uses them all the time. It’s not to go to the keep. I followed her one day . . . she went down to the sea.”

That confirmed his suspicion.

Now to catch Martha speaking with the witch that was Bethesda.

He pressed a key into Jacob’s palm and clasped tight around Jacob’s smaller hands. “I’m giving you this key to let yourself out of this room later.” He pointed at the clock on the sideboard. “Not till the little hand is pointed to the six do I want you to leave this room.”

Jacob nodded his understanding. Elliott mussed up his hair before striding toward the door. Turning back one last time before he left, he said, “Don’t open the door to anyone except Miss Hallaway.”

“Yes, Father.”

Until he knew who was responsible for the accidents surrounding Abigail, it wasn’t safe for even his son to wander the castle. He locked the door behind him and slid the key into the pocket of his jacket.

He wanted to find Abigail, make sure she was tucked away and safe somewhere, but then he might lose the opportunity to confront Martha and Bethesda.

In the kitchen, a servants’ entrance opened up to the network of tunnels beneath the main house. It would be the quickest way to intercept the women.

Despite the cold, the tunnels still held a dampness that clung to the stone surface like a second skin. He swore he could taste the salt of the sea in the musty air and feel slickness like seaweed over the walls.

As he approached the ledge that overlooked the village just south of the castle, whispered voices made their way to his ears, echoing off the walls around him. Martha’s voice was clearer; Bethesda’s was hoarse like a rusty carriage wheel squeaking from disuse.

“He told her to leave,” Martha said.

Bethesda said something along the lines of, “You’re sure she won’t stay?”

Martha had been listening at the door when he’d said his good- bye to Abigail. He’d thought someone there all along.

His instincts had served him well. Hopefully not too late.

“She hasn’t spoken to him since then. It’s done. And he’s asked for male tutors.”

“Good.”

“I’ll be missed if I’m here much longer. I want to find the boy, make sure he never speaks of seeing us here.”

“I still think we should ensure the teacher can’t be coming back,” Bethesda hissed.

“How do you propose that? She’s packing as we speak.”

“Don’t matter. She can come back. You said she was carry ing a child.”

“Yes, she has been showing signs of the morning illness.”

Elliott’s fists clenched so tight, his knuckles cracked with the pressure. How dare they. How dare they think to do something so vile!

“You can’t let her have that child. Poison her drink or her food to rid her of the fiend.”

“If you think that’s best, I’ll do so.”

“Go, then. There is no time to waste if she’s set on leaving today.”