Chapter 2
Justin Weatherall dismissed the children for the day and set about straightening the schoolroom.
Putting everything away where it belonged was the last task he assigned every day, but it never ceased to surprise him how much even the older children missed.
A lid off an ink pot. A crumpled piece of paper tucked out of sight under the boys’ table.
Smoothed out, it proved to be the dart Gareth and Billy had been tossing back and forth until he caught them at it. He had wondered where that had gone.
Since there was no school tomorrow, he’d also move the chairs and tables to return the room to being a parlor. Not that he expected visitors, but he liked things to be ship-shape.
Several items went into his desk drawer for the next school day, when he would hold each one up and ask the owner to collect it. He hoped a moment of shame might make the perpetrators more careful in the future, but so far, it had not had the desired effect.
Was he expecting too much? The smallest of powder monkeys soon learned to keep his kit and his duty station immaculately tidy.
Mind you, the navy used a heavy hand to enforce discipline, even on those most junior crew members.
Justin had never liked the practice. Whipping or birching might enforce obedience, but it created fear and resentment, too.
Justin had seen crews turn sour under the rule of a bully, and a surly crew was ripe for mutiny.
Justin would not have used birching in his schoolroom in any case, since he taught both boys and girls. No man worth his salt would raise his hand against a female, and Justin couldn’t consider it fair to birch boys and not girls when they were being educated together.
“They are not a bad lot,” he reminded himself. Their untidiness might offend his navy-trained sensibilities, but they were mostly good students. With a few notable exceptions.
“Milly Stone is heading for a sharp set down.” Milly Stone was the daughter of the butcher, and reveled in her reputation as the prettiest girl in the village.
She was fifteen, and her ambition in life was to better her mother’s achievement of marrying when she was just turned sixteen and having her first child before her seventeenth birthday.
Milly had set her sights on becoming the schoolmaster’s bride, and was doomed to disappointment.
“Silly chit. She is half my age and has considerably less than half my wits.”
As if his thoughts had conjured her up, Milly sashayed through the door, all ready for conquest. “Mr. Weatherall?” She’d either been stung by a bee or she’d been pinching her cheeks and biting her lips.
Given that she had also unbuttoned the top of her dress and folded the pieces back to give herself a decolletage that would not have disgraced the seamier streets of Paris, Justin was placing his bets against the bees.
“Did you leave something behind again, Miss Stone?” He attempted to infuse his voice with both ice and long-suffering boredom. It worked about as well as he expected. Milly was impervious to hints.
“I thought I might be able to help you, Mr. Weatherall,” the girl simpered, batting her eyelids so vigorously that Justin imagined he could feel the wind.
“No, thank you. It is time for you to go home.”
Instead, she continued to advance across the room. “You are so diligent, Mr. Weatherall,” she cooed. “So much better than our last teacher.”
Justin had replaced an elderly lady who used to set the work for her pupils each morning and spend the rest of the day asleep.
She had been thrilled to accept when Sir Peter Somerville, the school’s patron, offered her a pension and a little cottage of her own.
And Justin had been delighted to take her place—still was, Miss Stone notwithstanding.
“Mrs. Caldecott was an excellent teacher in her day, so I am told,” he said. “Do run along, Miss Stone. It is not appropriate for you to be here with me when the other pupils are absent.”
“I don’t mind.” There went the eyelashes again, stirring up a hurricane. “Da won’t mind, either. He likes you better than my other suitors.”
Good Lord. “Miss Stone, I am not your suitor.”
Milly leaned forward to give Justin a better view of her mammary assets. “You could be, though, Mr. Weatherall. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. It doesn’t matter if you are poor. Da is rich, and he likes the idea of having a gentleman as a son.”
Time for that set down, Justin. Pity you haven’t composed one.
He’d just have to improvise. “Miss Stone, even if I was in the market for a wife, I would not consider a child of half my age.” Or a chit with feathers for brains and no more idea about what marriage entailed beyond a pretty gown for her wedding and the chance to lord it over the other girls in the village.
Another simper warned Justin that the palatable excuse had not been enough. “Da says a man is better to marry a young wife, so he can teach her how to go on.”
Mrs. Stone was a timid woman completely in the shadow of her formidable husband and demanding daughter. Justin could not imagine Milly ever becoming a counterpart of her mother, no matter whom she married.
“You have my answer, Miss Stone. I will not change my mind, and if you continue to attempt to flirt with me, I shall tell your father you are learning nothing at school, which is no more than the truth, and that you should stay at home and help your mother.”
For a moment, Milly looked her age, as she pouted and stamped one foot. “You are so mean,” she declared.
An unexpected third voice joined the conversation. “Am I interrupting?” Every cell in Justin’s body came to attention and his heart leapt, even before his eyes had confirmed what his ears had told him. Lady Felicity Belvoir!
It couldn’t be, but it was. The woman his heart yearned for, despite the gulf between them.
“Miss Stone was just leaving,” he told her, even while his mind was trying to babble all the reasons why it was even worse to be alone with Felicity than with Milly.
But Milly accepted her dismissal—even if with poor grace. She flounced out, Felicity moving out of the doorway to allow her passage, and if the girl had been a feline rather than the human version of the same animal, she would have hissed as she passed.
“A little young for you,” Felicity observed. Did he sense a touch of possessiveness in that tone? Well. If anyone had the right, she did.
“A lot too young. Also too ignorant, too self-absorbed, too inclined to flirt with everything in trousers, too devoted to her personal appearance in lieu of any other redeeming features.”
Felicity chuckled, as she walked past him. “Poor Miss Stone.”
Justin inhaled the fragrance that said “Felicity” to him.
Floral notes, with cedar undertones and a touch of musk, plus something indefinable that was all her own.
It took him a moment to gather his wits.
, “Say, rather, poor Mr. Weatherall. Convincing Miss Stone of my complete lack of interest is proving to be a labor of Sisyphus. Every time I think I’ve routed her, she rolls right back to the bottom of the hill, and it is all to do again. ”
“Hmmm.” Felicity seated herself at his desk, placed her reticule on it, leaned her parasol nearby, and folded her hands in her lap.
He waited, but she said nothing. Just observed him from her clear blue eyes.
He devoured her with his own. She shouldn’t be here, said his mind, but the rest of him rejoiced in her presence.
To say he had missed her was like saying that an elephant was sizeable or that ice was cool.
A totally inadequate statement to convey the full extent of the phenomenon.
She was here, and the hollow place within that only she could fill was both appeased and desperate.
Eased by her presence. Desperate for the closeness they had shared—was it for only a few weeks?
It had seemed a lifetime. In the two years since, he had been only half alive.
Perhaps it was good she was here. For surely, he would find she did not live up to his memories of her. She is not for you, Weatherall.
As always where Felicity was concerned, his customary charm deserted him. “What are you doing here?” he demanded.
Her eyebrow formed an interrogatory curve. “We are to skip greetings then, and go straight to the point? I am a guest of Lady Somerville’s. She and her husband are holding a house party.”
She continued to gaze straight at him, her face calm, but he had been born, or so it seemed, understanding the words she didn’t say.
“Did you come because you knew I was here?”
Her face changed at his question, and for a moment he saw such anguish in her eyes that his own heart clenched with pain.
“You left. You gave me no reason, not even a goodbye. Not even a note. You said you would come the next day, and you did not. Then I found you were gone.” She screwed her eyes shut as if to hold back tears, took a deep breath and composed herself. “I need to know what changed.”
What changed was that he’d come to his senses.
And yes, it had been a coward’s part to creep away without speaking to her, or at least writing.
The Earl of Hythe, her brother, had assured him he would soon be forgotten, especially if he simply left and said nothing.
But Hythe did not know what had transpired between them.
He should have ignored Hythe, insisted on staying to see her one last time.
“I owe you an apology,” he conceded.
The lady gave no quarter. “You owe me an explanation.”
“Come then.” He would show her. He unlocked the door between the school room and his own quarters—he had kept it locked on schooldays since the day Milly Stone had been waiting for him in his bedchamber, sitting at his desk and leafing through his personal correspondence.