Chapter Ten #2
“Alex?” Again, she pushed open his door, and only just stopped herself from dragging her fingers through her recently dressed hair. “Drat you, where have you all gone?” she demanded of the silent air.
From the main playroom, she checked the schoolroom one last time. Perhaps they were with Harriet. She had just made up her mind to knock on Harriet’s door on her way downstairs, when she heard the sound of footsteps and childish laughter floating in from the passage.
With some relief, she dashed across the room, just as Orchid and Rose skipped inside.
“There you are, Miss Jasper!” Rose said brightly. “Look who we’ve brought—oh, ma’am, don’t you look lovely!”
“Thank you,” Carina said repressively. “I have to make up the numbers at...” She broke off for a complete stranger had entered at Lily’s heels—a youth with rather wild dark blond hair and a wide smile. He must have been about Lily’s own age.
“This is Duncan,” Rose said, beaming. “He goes to school, so he doesn’t need a governess.”
“How heartening,” Carina said. “Good evening, Duncan.”
They boy bowed civilly, but Carina barely noticed for a shadowy figure entered behind him and smiled at her and stopped her heart.
Lord Durward.
DURWARD SMILED SIMPLY because he had found her at last and just seeing her filled him with happiness. Obviously, with what seemed like a roomful of children between them, she could not rush into his arms as he had dreamed, and he retained enough decorum to do no more than smile.
She did not smile back. Beyond the faintest widening of her eyes, she did not move.
She was stunned, he thought uneasily. She seemed to sway, and he started forward, afraid she would faint.
But even as he pushed past Duncan, she reached out and grasped the corner of the table beside her.
She wasn’t wearing gloves, so he saw the force of her grip in her white knuckles.
He paused, suddenly uncertain. And remembered finally to bow. “Miss Jasper. How do you do?”
“My lord,” she returned, inclining her head with the smallest dip of a curtsey.
“I am in something of a hurry. If Mr. Duncan Travis would like to join my charges for schoolroom supper, he is most welcome. Mildred, the nursery maid, will be along presently. Orchid, I hope to be back by your bedtime. Excuse me.”
She whirled around and vanished into the next room, closing the door behind her.
Durward, who had rarely felt so helpless in his life, stared after her.
“Lady G. must have summoned her to dine,” the eldest girl, Lily, said. “I expect your arrival upset the numbers.”
The middle girl, Rose, nodded wisely. “Lady G. sets great store by such matters.”
“She wasn’t pleased to see you,” said the youngest child accusingly.
“Actually, she wasn’t,” the boy, Alexander, said, turning a suspicious frown upon Durward. “Are you sure you are her friend?”
“Yes.” There was no point in being haughty around children, although Duncan was developing a thunderous frown.
Durward nudged him to distract him from unwanted fraternal defence.
“Perhaps she has forgotten. Ah, is this your nursemaid? Then I shall leave you and go down to dinner. Best behaviour, Duncan...”
Having arrived at Grand Court only half an hour previously and been bearded by the children as soon as he had climbed into evening clothes, he had not yet met anyone of the assembled party save his hosts.
As he strolled into the salon next to the dining room, where everyone had gathered, he was greeted by an unexpected chorus of welcome that sounded almost like a cheer.
Snake Sanderly was the first to grasp his hand.
Lord Wolf thumped him on the back, grinning.
The Duke of Isbourne raised his glass from the other side of the room.
A vaguely familiar blond man inclined his head and abruptly, Durward placed him.
“Captain Berry, the Duck and Spoon,” he said, sticking out his hand as he recalled the wild night of drinking and gaming that had followed the Mullins fight, in that other life before he had gone to Harwich. “This is quite the reunion!”
“Talking of which,” Sanderly drawled, “you may make your bow to my bride to be, Miss Cole.”
Another wave of familiarity washed over Durward as he greeted a rather lovely young lady with laughing eyes, who seemed torn between smiling at him and glaring at her betrothed.
Yes, he had seen her before, and dash it, that had been at the Duck and Spoon too.
A wet and bedraggled young woman, a goat, a collection of impudent, leering drunks, and Snake taking advantage. ..
And if Durward had, somewhat reprehensibly, joined in the merriment as she had been teased from all sides. Blinking, he gazed from the girl who was clearly daring him to mention the Duck and Spoon to her, and Sanderly, whose face looked utterly bland, apart from his eyes which threatened doom.
Durward tried not to laugh and instead bowed low over Miss Cole’s hand. “Enchanted, ma’am. Your devoted servant.”
“Lord Durward,” Snake murmured, as though she would not have worked it out.
Lady Grandison bustled up. “Durward, you have the honour of taking my goddaughter in to dine. Sanderly, be so good as to escort Lady Sark...”
Durward, while intrigued by Miss Cole and her story with Sanderly, felt somewhat chagrined not to be escorting Carina. He needed to know the reason for her coldness. He needed to talk to her, just be with her. But his quick glance about the room did not find her.
He did, however, catch the eyes of two people from Harwich who smiled at him as though he were their best friends. His hackles rose. Sir Hugh Mansel, who had all but assaulted Carina, and his social-climbing wife. Were they the reason for Carina’s upset? He would make a point of watching Mansel.
“So when exactly is the wedding?” he asked Miss Cole.
“Tomorrow,” she replied, apparently in surprise. “Is that not why you are here?”
“Of course it is,” Durward lied, nodding as Bethany appeared at his side. The Grandisons had already told him of her presence.
“Durward,” she said ominously, “what have you done with Duncan?”
“Duncan?” he repeated vaguely, for Carina had just slipped into the room and remained just inside the doorway as though trying to blend in with the furniture.
“Collected him from Eton and brought him with me since he behaved for the final fortnight of school. He’s being entertained in the nursery where I think he has been smitten by first love. Ah, we’re going in. Miss Cole?”
He offered her his arm, and the lady laid her fingers upon it. By the time they reached the doorway, Carina had vanished.
FROM A RATHER CHARMING and eccentric place of refuge, Grand Court had suddenly become a nightmare for Carina.
Confronted by the man who had broken her heart and forced into the kind of huge social gathering she had no experience of and less desire to pursue, she already felt as if she were walking on the edge of a knife.
Lady Grandison, Sanderly and Harriet stood with Durward and his sister. And then her view was blocked by another gentleman.
“Miss Jasper,” purred Sir Hugh Mansel.
Oh perfect! She almost screamed with vexation.
He and his wife could destroy everything she had found here—supposing she survived Durward’s reckless presence—with just a few well-placed words.
She remembered Lady Mansel’s accusations about setting her cap at Durward, her own rejection of Sir Hugh’s unsubtle advances, and she felt intolerably trapped.
“Sir Hugh.” She lowered her eyes and curtsied. “How do you do? I hope you will give my regards to Lady Mansel, if that won’t be too presumptuous. Please don’t feel you must acknowledge me. I am only the governess.”
While that might have dissuaded his wife, it had the opposite effect on Mansel. His eyes gleamed in that grubby, oily way that had always made her flesh crawl.
“I know,” he murmured. “Perhaps I would even feel insulted by being allocated such a partner for the evening, but governesses are not usually quite so...alluring. I believe Lady Grandison was showing me favour.”
Suspicion caused her to snap her gaze back to his face. “What do you mean?”
Lady Grandison was leading the way to the dining room, on the arm of a tall, haughty-looking young gentleman.
Oh no...
Mansel smiled. “I have been asked to escort you to dinner.”
Behind her ladyship, Harriet was on Durward’s arm. Was he entertaining her with tales of the tugboat captain’s daughter? A world of humiliation seemed to be closing in on Carina, ready to explode.
Just walking across the hall on Mansel’s arm felt like a nightmare. He tried to press her hand into his body, and she kept shifting it until she barely touched him at all. He bent his head nearer, as though listening intently to her silence. She could smell the brandy already on his breath.
“So, do you have your own room, Miss Governess?”
“Yes.”
“Oh good. I’ll drop by, shall I?”
She pretended not to hear that, though her blood ran cold.
Her room was nearest to the nursery, and the door had no lock.
It had never seemed to matter before. She removed her hand from his arm as soon as they entered the dining room.
She hoped he would not deign to hold the chair for a mere governess, but he did, using it as an excuse to lean too closely over her—and no doubt to peer down the front of her gown.
Across the table, near the head, Durward’s head was turned toward her, or perhaps just to Harriet at his side.
Either way, shame crept over her. And despair.
If anything was needed to point out the impossibility of happiness with Durward, it was that sight.
She was not worthy of Durward who, bizarrely, she understood and ached for.
Instead, it seemed, she deserved the adulterous leers of Hugh Mansel who would destroy the remnants of her life without a qualm, just because he could. ..
“Jonathan Berry,” said the young man on her other side. “Friend of the groom’s.”
“Carina Jasper,” she replied gratefully, “governess to the bride’s sisters.”
“Delighted to meet you. I haven’t been much in Society, and I hardly know anyone here.”
“Neither do I,” Carina admitted, delighted by his open-ness. In fact, there was something oddly steadfast as well as likeable about him, something in his watchful gaze that told her he would be a good friend and a formidable enemy.
The brief, friendly exchange with him revived her spirits. She would accept neither ruin nor libel from Mansel, whose conversation ran along predictable lines.
“How charming you look, quite the fashionable young lady.”
“Thank you.”
“You must be lonely, surrounded only by children.”
“I am fond of my charges.”
“But you long to escape them for adult...company.”
“No.”
Mansel, clearly undeterred by her cold responses, pressed his knee against hers.
Carina shifted her position. Beside her, Mr. Berry—formerly Captain Berry of the 95th Rifles, she had established—was talking to the lady on his other side, so Carina ate in silence, waiting for Mansel’s next attack.
Berry, when he turned his attention back to his own food, cast a quick glance past her to Mansel, as though he had guessed the situation, or just the tension of her person.
“So, you have had an adventurous life, sir,” she said to Berry in desperation as Mansel’s hand landed on her thigh. She moved her legs away from him, but his hand remained.
“I have,” Berry said cheerfully. “I was invalided out of the army and was travelling for my health when I was apparently mistaken for a highwayman and forced to flee from Bow Street runners.”
“Seriously?”
Mansel’s fingers began to stroke and pinch and move higher. Carina snatched up her fork abruptly enough to draw attention to it. Mansel withdrew his hand, and Carina speared a piece of beef instead.
The meal was interminable, almost like a military campaign, alternately hiding from and facing the enemy, invoking the reinforcements of Mr. Berry, and then resisting enemy fire alone.
She refused to even glance up the table to Durward and Harriet.
Did they notice? Did they blame her for Mansel’s attentions?
Surely Durward would not, and he should not matter anyway, but Harriet was to be her employer.
.. Carina’s headache built and she looked forward desperately to escaping this torture.
At last, everyone stood up, as Lady Grandison led the ladies’ departure.
Mansel drew back Carina’s chair in such a way to ensure she had to pass him to follow.
Of course, as soon as she did so, he moved, shrinking the space between them.
Keeping her gaze straight ahead, she brushed past him and only just prevented herself from bolting ignominiously.
Her head pounded. She walked quickly among the other ladies to the drawing room, her one aim now to seek Lady Grandison’s permission to return to the nursery. Gaining her ladyship’s attention was another matter.
As she stood patiently at her employer’s elbow, a young lady addressed her. “Miss Jasper, is it not? I’m Eve Wolf. I gather you too are a friend of Miss Cole’s?”
“I’m the governess,” Carina said bluntly. Lady Wolf did not appear to mind. She possessed a face of character rather than conventional beauty, her features strong but attractive.
Carina knew who Lady Wolf was from all the pre-wedding gossip—the daughter of a cit and married for her money, her husband had apparently fallen in love with her when she was hurt and temporarily lost her memory during a robbery at this very house.
Intrigued, Carina allowed herself to sit beside the other woman, who, it seemed, was also acquainted with Mr. Berry.
“Is it true he was once misidentified as a highwayman?” Carina couldn’t help asking.
“Why yes. That was partly my husband’s fault too, but it is all sorted out now.”
“Good grief, it is you,” drawled an amused female voice.