The Secret Desires of a Governess (3 page)

He had to walk away.

When women became involved with Wright men, it seemed to end in madness and death. The last woman he’d cared for was dead. The circumstances surrounding her death just as strange as his mother’s final walk into the North Sea.

Still, he couldn’t move away from the door. Head tilted to the side, she wet her hair and lathered soap into it from a small container. The smell of crushed flowers made its way to his nostrils. It seemed familiar, but he couldn’t place the fragrance. Her fingers were slow and methodical as she combed them through the wet strands. He’d been so entranced by her every move that he hadn’t expected her to dunk her whole body beneath the water to wash out the soap.

When she came back up, she reached over the lip of the tub to grab one of the folded linens on the floor. All the breath left his lungs when the deep rose tip of her breast pearled on being exposed to the air. His mouth watered to taste her. To suck that firm peak into his mouth and lave it. His hand gripped so tight around the frame of the door that it groaned in protest.

He couldn’t continue to torment himself like this.

He’d definitely been too long without the company of a woman. So why in hell couldn’t he leave her in peace?

She hummed something while she re-braided her hair.

Nothing identifiable, but something low and melodic. He must have been standing there for some time without realizing it, like an asp charmed by her music. He shook his head like a bloody mongrel— which he was, considering his inability to leave her be— and forced his grip to loosen from the door frame.

Elliott found a shred of decency niggling at his mind and grasped the thin threads before they escaped him.

Finally, he managed to turn away from the kitchen. He headed toward his study and away from temptation.

Hard labor was the only thing bound to clear his mind of Miss Hallaway and rid him of the stiffness beneath his trousers. He’d have to take better care not to find her unaware again. It wasn’t fair to her. And she most certainly wouldn’t appreciate the kind of thoughts running through his head right now.

Abby paused with one foot on the edge of the bath, her ear tilted toward the door. Was that noise a creak in the floor? Was someone up and about in the house?

Stepping completely from the water, she grabbed up the folded linen and wrapped it around herself as she dripped her way over to the kitchen entrance. The door was cracked open the tiniest amount. She furrowed her brow. She’d definitely closed the door behind her. Hadn’t she? She stuck her head out from the warmth of the kitchen and peered down the dark hall. No one to be seen anywhere. No moving shadows. Just stillness.

It was an old house. It was bound to make strange noises.

Shutting the door firmly, she dressed with quick efficiency. She was reluctant to leave the warm sanctuary the kitchen had blazed into now that the woodstove was going strong.

It had to be coming up to five in the morning, so the cook should be here any moment. Were governesses required to help with the preparation of breakfast? She hadn’t a clue. She had limited experiences with governesses. Her own father had taken it upon himself to educate her once her mother had died.

There was a bucket under the table. Filling it with the water from the hip bath, she took it to the door that led outside. It was a heavy door to pull inward, but once it was open, she made quick work of tossing all the water into the gardens.

Abby warmed herself by the fire once more before gathering up her belongings and finding her way back to her room.

If she recalled correctly, the child she was to instruct was eight. She’d ask Mrs. Harrow, the woman who had corresponded with her, what learning tools would be available to her. Her first priority of the day— after a warm breakfast— was to retrieve her luggage from the train station. She’d have to wear one of the dresses she’d discovered in the wardrobe.

She found her room with better ease than she’d found the kitchen. Shutting the door behind her, she looked at the logs aflame in the fireplace. Her breath froze in her lungs as she peered around her shadowed room looking for any imposing figures, any moving silhouettes. She exhaled once she concluded she was alone.

Who had lit her fire? Was there a maid already in the house? Surely it hadn’t been the lord of the manor? If it had been Lord Brendall, she’d have to make sure he understood he couldn’t enter her private bedchamber whenever he pleased.

The prince was set to marry a princess of his father’s choosing. He refused to abandon his ladylove and left the castle to find his own way in the rough.

—The Dragon of Brahmors

The first members of the house hold Abby had come across were the house keeper and her daughter, Lydia, who appeared to be about Abby’s age. Abby had been given immediate instruction to call the older woman Martha, because calling her Mrs. Harrow made her think of her husband’s mother. Abby could only surmise that Martha did not like her mother- in- law. Not with the way her lips curled in distaste when she’d mentioned the long- deceased woman.

Martha had also apologized for unknowingly abandoning her at the rail. But didn’t seem to care that Abby had had to walk fifteen miles in the most horrendous torrential downpour she’d ever been caught in. Abby wasn’t generally one to cast judgment on people until she fully knew them, but it was very hard not to judge Martha for her lack of caring.

Presently, Martha kneaded into some dough on the long table in the kitchen while her daughter cut up potatoes, onions, and carrots and tossed them into a pot on the chopping block set between two deep bronze butler sinks.

Abby sat on a stool close to the table and Martha.

This was the first time she’d ever watched someone make bread. The way Martha pounded into it looked like a good way to release anger, if one were so inclined. How useful it would have been to do something like that last night.

“You came with exceptional letters of recommendation and you’re well written so you’ve had a respectable education, but you seem too young for this post. How many years have you got, child?”

The woman didn’t seem convinced that Abby was quite capable of filling the position. Was that why she spoke so gruffly to her? Was that why she pounded into the dough with more vigor than she probably needed? Martha had seemed so much more cordial in their correspondence than she did now in person. For some reason, Abby had been expecting a more motherly figure.

Lydia didn’t look up once during the whole conversation. Had Abby done something wrong in coming to the castle on her own? Was it the fact that she wore their old mistress’s clothes? It wasn’t as though she’d had any choice in the matter.

“Three and twenty, madam.” Abby knew she looked younger than most thought. It was her lack of bosom and hips that made her seem youthful. “My father groomed me well for this position. I was his last hope to play the role of the son he never had.”

“You have sisters then?”

“Two older sisters, yes. Both married well.” They’d done so much better than marry well. She’d not reveal that her sisters were both countesses.

Stirring a lump of sugar in her tea, Abby watched the older woman’s weatherworn hands flexing around the dough. Not wanting the conversation to focus on her life, Abby said, “I’ve been unable to find my charge all morning.”

Actually there’d been no sign of the child. She had checked all the rooms she’d come upon, explored every parlor, bedchamber, dressing room, study, nook, and cranny she’d found in the giant house. There were no misplaced toys, no child- like clutter. It was as though the house were childless.

Martha took a small handful of fl our and tossed it into the open oven. It turned a golden brown. She gave a harrumph— satisfied with the outcome, Abby assumed—and set the dough in the rising pan for a fourth time, then put it in the oven to bake.

“Have you checked the stables?”

“She’s fond of horses, is she?” Abby loved horses, but she was not an accomplished rider. Papa had had to sell their horses to keep their family in coin and cloth. They’d lived on necessities until her first sister had married.

“The young master’s father had him on a horse before he could walk,” Lydia interjected. The first words the young woman had uttered since her good- day wishes first thing this morning.

Abby looked directly at the young woman, sure that her face clearly revealed the shock she was in. In her confusion, she pushed her teacup away and stood from the table. The hot liquid sloshed over the side and scalded her hand. She yanked it away and wiped it on her skirts. The pain was nothing compared with her thoughts.

He?

A boy?

What was she to do with a boy? She had no experience with boys. None. Why in the all the world had they hired a governess instead of a tutor? Didn’t little boys, and heirs to earldoms, receive an education from the finest tutors and later attend the finest schools throughout En gland?

“I did not realize I’d be teaching Lord Brendall’s son.”

She busied her hands by smoothing her braids against her head. She’d been duped into coming here. She felt foolish.

Naive.

Was there a possibility that the boy was from the wrong side of the sheets? Did bastards go to the finest schools?

She wasn’t sure since she’d never been to a school before.

Since she’d never met a bastard before.

“We discussed it in our correspondence.” Martha looked at her with her innocent round face, with her dark brown eyes and a heavy fist to another batch of dough.

Abby was positive she’d never been told so. She would have remembered, and probably would have refused the job had she been given that knowledge to begin with. As soon as she retrieved her luggage, she could prove that fact.

Yet proving she’d never been made aware she was to educate a boy would not change her mind on taking this post. She could not leave. She didn’t want to go home. She needed to make this work. If it turned out terribly, she’d advertise in the paper for another position. If she ran home to her sisters at the first hint of a problem, she’d never make the kind of life she wanted for herself.

Not that she knew exactly what she wanted for herself.

Maybe she was merely amusing herself till her dowry could be released to her. Maybe she wanted only to escape the love and joy that her sisters indulged so openly in. Was she jealous of her sisters?

Oh, what an awful thought to have. She adored her sisters, and was happy that they had found loving, adoring, disgustingly smitten husbands for themselves. Oh, dear, she was jealous.

She focused on Martha, wanting to concentrate her thoughts elsewhere, like on the fact that she’d never been told about educating a boy.

One skill that Abby had honed well, since she liked to wager on a great many things, was that she was an accomplished liar. She’d pretend she was not caught off guard by this small quandary, despite her earlier reaction belying that fact. She was determined to have her in dependence, and Martha would not have her tucking her tail between her legs and running home. And she’d not be thrown off course after coming this far.

“I hadn’t thought to check the stables for the boy.” Abby tapped her mouth in thought. “Speaking of stables, is there someone who can take me to the train station? I need to retrieve the rest of my belongings today. I did not mean to help myself to the clothes in the wardrobe, but the dress I wore on my trudge up to the castle is still quite damp.”

Abby didn’t mind repeating that she’d been all but forgotten at the train station. For some reason, Martha didn’t seem to like her. Maybe given her youthful appearance, the older woman thought she’d been duped into hiring her. She’d have to prove Martha wrong.

“Thomas will be out helping the master. They’ll be working on the west wall. Been out there most

of the summer to fix what tumbled down some decades ago.”

Interesting that Lord Brendall was the one maintaining the castle and not the local tradesmen. Unless he was overseeing the workers? Come to think of it, she doubted that to be the case with his brawny physique. The man was built like a laborer who worked in the fields at her sister’s home.

She shook her head as though it would clear the unwanted thoughts. She must stop admiring her employer’s most exceptional physique.

Martha placed the last bit of dough in a pan, clapped her hands to remove most of the fl our from them, and gave them a final wipe on her apron. Taking one of the warm loaves that had cooled by the window ledge, she cut fat wedges off the loaf of fresh bread.

“I’ll prepare you some sandwiches to take. They’ll have worked up a fierce hunger by now.”

Martha said nothing more, just went about her task of setting up a luncheon, while Abby finished her tea. Lydia came over to the long table and cut up some cold meat to put between the thick slabs of bread.

Basket in hand, Abby stared up at the clear blue sky with its faint smatterings of clouds stretching across the horizon like bolls of cotton yet to be picked.

The weather was decidedly better than it had been on her whole trip north. It had rained for most of the train ride and poured buckets when she’d been forced to walk to the castle. A shame it hadn’t warmed a great deal with the appearance of the sun.

Her gait quickened with every cool slap of wind to her face. It was a relief to know her first day of employment didn’t seem nearly as dreary as it had only a day ago.

Aside from the fact that she knew next to nothing about little boys, she would do her best to make this situation work for her. She hoped she wasn’t biting off more than she could chew in this instance.

In the distance, the sea slapped noisily against the shore. She couldn’t get a glimpse of it from where she stood as there was a great sandy- white wall surrounding the bailey, but she tasted the salt on the air, heard the call of gulls in the distance, and fought to stand against the cool wind that swept over the wall and through the castle grounds.

The grass around her was a cropped field of emerald green. Taller rushes of brown grass lined the inside wall.

There were few flowers aside from vines of morning glories near a large square building a good hundred paces from the main house. She guessed the building to be the keep that the Harrow family lived in.

There was a drive that went around that second structure and led into a section of the castle that seemed mostly in disrepair. Bits of stone lay crumbled, and littered the interior walls of the castle. Where stones had once filled the cobbled path, only pockets of sand and dirt remained.

Half the stable was missing its roof, and what looked to be an old church lay in ruins, just a few walls still standing. The bell long fallen and rusted to a lime color lay dejectedly on the ground.

The grass had not been cropped in the old churchyard; it grew like a wild field, swallowing its secrets beneath the tall rushes of dancing greens and weeds. Beyond that, at the farthest end of the castle grounds, she could see the men bending over and lifting a great square block waist-high and placed it onto the white ledge of the new wall.

They did not immediately see her approach, so she slowed her pace to see how they went about mending the wall. There was a whole section of crumbled stones that had long ago fallen and tumbled down to the sand dunes surrounding the castle on the north side of the property.

Where the wall should have been was an open view of the water. It was her first view of the North Sea. It was as dark as a night sky without stars to light the way. The water churned and rolled not far off in the distance. It made her dizzy staring at it. Made her feel as though she’d fall if she didn’t close her eyes and turn away from the rhythmic slap of waves against the shore.

She focused on the men. Busy at their task, they still hadn’t noticed her.

The weather might not be particularly warm— she did require a thick wool shawl— but it was obvious the men had been doing heavy labor for some time. Especially with the way Lord Brendall’s sweat- dampened shirt stuck to him at the shoulder blades and lower back. Outlining all the strength and sinew beneath.

What would a fine layer of perspiration look like against his bare flesh? What would it feel like under her fingers as she explored the hard planes of his body?

Abby snapped her eyes closed, wanting to dispel her thoughts along with the images hampering her mind. It didn’t help; her imagination conjured up the image she’d hoped to banish. Lord Brendall was like some long-forgotten warrior. She pictured him brandishing a sword, cutting a swath through enemy lines. She made a strangled sound, and had to focus on the ground in front of her.

It wasn’t her fault she was imagining him in half dress.

The man was never decently clothed whenever she’d happened upon him.

Taking a deep breath, she forced a smile on her face, hoping the desire she’d felt moments ago wasn’t obvious.

Hopefully they’d think the red of her cheeks an effect of the chilly wind and not something she seemed to experience whenever she looked upon her employer.

Ignoring her unruly thoughts, she studied what the men worked on. Strange that there were no local tradesmen helping them reassemble the wall. Did his lordship not have the money to pay them to do the task? Was that why they’d hired a governess for a mere pittance, instead of hiring a tutor for his son?

The man working next to Lord Brendall must be Thomas. He had a full white beard beneath his straw hat.

His eyes crinkled at the sides as he squinted against the sun. A red kerchief was tied about his neck, and his sleeves were rolled up to the middle of his forearms. He wore a kind, welcoming smile, one that encouraged her a few steps closer. She did not wish to interrupt them overly much.

She could wait for them to finish their work before she asked for a hand in retrieving her belongings.

Lord Brendall stood and drank water from a skin: his head tipped back, his damp shirt revealing a clean, strong outline of the muscles on his back: the indent at his spine, the outline of his shoulder blades, and the solid bulk of his shoulders and arms. She watched his throat work as he swallowed the liquid.

Perhaps the journey to Northumbria had tired her more than she thought? Perhaps this attraction she felt would subside after a decent night’s sleep? He was very different from what she was used to in a man; that must be where her fascination stemmed from.

He hadn’t looked up at her yet. But she didn’t doubt that he knew she stood silently by. Thomas nodded in her direction and said something too low for her to hear over the wind whistling around them.