Chapter 4
Jamie woke in a bad temper, which was not unusual. What was unusual was that the temper had lasted through the night and appeared determined to survive into the morning on its own.
He lay for a moment, staring at the ceiling with one arm thrown across his eyes and considered whether it was possible to ignore an entire day by simply refusing to begin it. The ceiling offered no useful opinion on the matter. He dragged himself upright.
The room was cold enough to make his left shoulder ache.
He flexed his hand under the blanket and felt the familiar pull across the scar tissue, the skin along his neck and shoulder tight and unyielding in the way it always was on cold mornings, and on warm ones, and on every variety of mornings in between.
He had simply learned which discomforts were worth acknowledging and which were better ignored, and this was the latter.
He rose, crossed to the washstand, and splashed cold water over his face. The shock helped, marginally, and he reached for the towel and dried his face without looking at the glass on the dresser across the room. He had made a habit of that years ago.
The scars were not a surprise to him anymore, had not been for a long time, but there were mornings when seeing them first thing struck him with a variety of irritation that served no useful purpose and set the wrong tone for the rest of the day. This, he had decided, was one of those mornings.
He dressed with the efficient practicality of a man who has spent years aboard ships where privacy was theoretical and speed was expected.
His clothes were already laid out, which meant Logan had been in the room while he slept, which meant Logan had decided he could not be trusted to select his own coat without assistance, which was an insulting conclusion that was also, on difficult mornings, accurate.
The door opened without a knock.
“Good morning,” Logan said.
“It is not,” Jamie said.
“You have been awake long enough to form an opinion, then.”
“I have been awake long enough to know it is cold, my shoulder aches, and you laid out the black coat again.”
Logan moved farther into the room with the unhurried ease of a man who has learned that Jamie’s temper before breakfast is a weather condition rather than a personal offense. “The black coat is suitable.”
“It is too warm for the season.”
“You will be indoors most of the morning.”
“That is not the point.”
“It is the point.” Logan set down the tray he carried, which held coffee and the plain breakfast Jamie would eat rather than the elaborate offerings the kitchen sometimes attempted. “You are brooding.”
“I am dressing.”
“You are brooding while dressing. The distinction is important to you, apparently.”
Jamie pulled on the shirt and felt the pull across his shoulder and kept his face neutral, because Logan was watching and Logan noticed everything and the last thing he wanted this morning was a discussion about the shoulder. “I am not brooding.”
“You have that expression.”
“What expression?”
“The one that means you spent the night thinking about something and arrived at conclusions you dislike.” Logan poured the coffee without being asked. “You are thinking about the governess.”
Jamie took the coffee. “I am thinking about my household, which she entered without proper preparation on my part.”
“You agreed to take her on Mrs. Maggie’s recommendation.”
“Without reading a single reference.”
“Yes.”
“Without conducting an interview.”
“Also yes.”
“Without knowing anything about her beyond the fact that she is the daughter of a woman Mrs. Maggie was fond of many years ago.”
Logan picked up the discarded cravat from the chair and handed it over. “And yet she arrived with references, lesson plans, and a word puzzle that made Duncan speak voluntarily for the first time in six weeks. I am struggling to identify the problem.”
Jamie took the cravat and said nothing, because the problem was not a thing he could explain without sounding like a fool.
A stranger had walked into his house and accomplished in a single afternoon what he had failed to do for nearly a year.
He did not know whether to feel grateful or ashamed, and the uncertainty made him unreasonable. Knowing that only sharpened his temper.
“The boy’s face,” he said, after a moment.
Logan looked at him.
“When she handed him the puzzle.” Jamie reached for his coat.
“I watched from the door. He looked interested. Actually interested, not merely less hostile than usual.” He pulled the coat on and felt the familiar restriction across the left side and adjusted it without thinking.
“I have been trying to reach him for months.”
“I know,” Logan said.
“And she managed it in five minutes with a piece of paper she made herself.”
“Yes.”
“That is infuriating.”
“It is also,” Logan said, with patient firmness, “a thing to be grateful for rather than angry about. The boy is not a contest, Jamie.”
Jamie looked at him sharply.
Logan met his gaze without flinching. “She is here to help. Whether she manages it more quickly than you expected does not make it a defeat.”
Jamie set his jaw and said nothing, because there was nothing to say that would not prove Logan’s point. He crossed to the door instead. “Send word to the governess. I will see her in the study at nine.”
“You could wait until she has settled in,” Logan said.
“Nine o’clock,” Jamie said, and left.
The study felt too large for the conversation he intended to have, and he spent ten minutes rearranging papers on his desk before acknowledging that he was doing it and stopping.
He sat down, opened the estate ledger, read the same column of figures three times without taking them in, and had just closed it again when the knock came.
“Come in,” he said.
Miss Beauchamp entered. She wore a plain dark dress, her hair pinned with care, and carried folded papers in one hand and a small notebook in the other. She stopped at the proper distance from his desk. “My lord.”
Not too eagerly, and not with the stiffness of someone suppressing fear. Simply with the manner of a professional woman who intends to conduct herself accordingly.
He rose, as courtesy required, and gestured to the chair opposite. She waited until he had sat before she did, which was correct and which he noted without comment.
“I understand Mrs. Maggie has recommended you,” he said.
“Yes, my lord.”
“I have not yet seen your references.”
“I brought them.” She set the folded papers on his desk without ceremony.
He did not pick them up immediately. He looked at them, then at her, and she held his gaze with the straightforward attention of someone who has nothing to hide and no interest in performing anxiety for his benefit.
He opened the papers at last. The handwriting was clear and methodical, and what he found inside was not what he had expected.
Not a simple list of prior employment and names to write to, but a full week’s worth of proposed lessons, divided by child and subject, with time blocks and reading selections and practical exercises accounted for in detail.
He turned to the second page and found nature study plans, arithmetic progressions, and a section of word games and cipher exercises that bore obvious relation to the puzzle she had given Duncan the night before.
He looked up. “You prepared these last night.”
“I finished them last night, my lord. I began them on my journey here.”
“In your lodgings at the inn.”
“I thought it prudent to arrive with something more useful than intentions.”
He studied her. He had expected Mrs. Maggie to send him someone kind, patient, and adequately qualified. He had not expected a plan with real detail, prepared overnight by a woman who had not yet been certain she remained employed.
He set the papers down. “You have given Duncan separate exercises from Maisie.”
“They are different learners,” she said. “Duncan responds to challenge. Maisie needs reassurance and shorter intervals of concentrated work. Teaching them identically would serve neither of them well.”
“You determined this from one afternoon in a tavern.”
“I determined it from watching them,” she said, without defensiveness. “Children tell you a great deal if you pay attention.”
He held her gaze for a moment and then looked back at the papers. He was not going to tell her they were good. He was not going to tell her they were more thorough than anything the previous three governesses had produced combined. He simply set them aside and folded his hands on the desk.
“There are things I require you to understand,” he said.
“Of course, my lord.”
“The children have a schedule. You will keep them to it.”
“Yes, my lord.”
“You will not take them into the village without informing Mrs. Maggie and receiving approval from me.”
“I understand.”
“You will not discuss estate matters, financial matters, or any matters relating to the household management with them.”
“I had no intention of doing so.”
“You will not countermand my instructions to them in front of me or in my absence.”
A slight pause. “That would depend on the instruction.”
His eyes narrowed. “I beg your pardon?”
“If an instruction were harmful to one of them, I would be obligated to say so.” She kept her voice level and her expression composed. “I do not imagine you would give such an instruction. I simply do not make blanket promises I cannot be certain of keeping.”
He stared at her. She did not look away.
“You will not take liberties,” he said.
“I have no desire to take liberties, my lord.”
“You took one last night.”
“I handed a boy a puzzle,” she said. “I will accept your objection to the lack of prior permission. I will not accept that the act itself was harmful.”
The silence that followed was brief and sharp. He saw the resolve in her, the strength beneath the composed surface, and he recognized it because he had relied on the same trait in officers who had served under him. She held her position without aggression. She was immovable without being reckless.