Harlequin Historical May 2020--Box Set 2 of 2

by Harper St. George

  ‘She was quite impertinent!’ Averill exclaimed.

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’ He was surprised, too. It didn’t sound like Miss Wilmot, with her air of decorum. What he had learnt of her character did not chime with what Averill described.

  He frowned. Rosabel had been outdoors every day recently. Miss Wilmot had achieved more than he had ever hoped. Nevertheless, he would need to speak to her. He could not have her display impertinence to his neighbours in front of Rosabel.

  ‘I’ve told you that you ought to allow me to engage your nursery staff in future,’ Averill chided with a pretty smile that didn’t disguise the annoyance in her eyes.

  Averill had become almost proprietary, Dominic realised. She’d offered help when Sarah had died and he was grateful, but he was able to hire his own staff.

  He took a sip of claret. ‘Thank you, Averill. I will let you know if I need assistance.’

  ‘The new governess is quite unsuitable,’ Averill insisted. ‘She ought to be dismissed!’

  ‘Miss Wilmot has only recently arrived,’ Dominic found himself replying. ‘So far she has been more than satisfactory. She has a great interest in the sciences. She collects insects, day and night. I came across her one evening down near the woods, hunting moths, of all things.’

  ‘But what on earth was she doing out alone at night?’ Averill eyed him from behind the fluttering fan. ‘Oh, how positively scandalous! I thought she was a bluestocking, not a creature of light morals!’

  Dominic laughed outright. ‘Miss Wilmot, a creature of light morals? I don’t think so, Averill.’

  Averill raised a delicately arched eyebrow. ‘You are too generous, Dominic. Let me tell you, I am certain that she is not all she seems. You know how these women try to take advantage of your good nature.’

  Dominic tensed. He took another draught of claret as he recalled Miss Wilmot’s impassioned defence of her profession.

  ‘We ask a great deal of governesses,’ he said at last. ‘There were some misunderstandings in the past, nothing more. I don’t think Miss Wilmot is trying to take advantage.’

  Averill’s chest heaved. It set her diamonds sparkling.

  ‘So, you’re defending governesses now.’ She spoke lightly, yet her words held a sharp edge.

  He shrugged.

  ‘I see I will have to be careful how I speak in future about your new governess.’ With another of her pretty smiles Averill changed the subject.

  The awkwardness between them had passed, Dominic reflected later as he returned to Pendragon Hall, but he knew he would not forget the conversation.

  He had allowed Averill to become more invested in their lives than he had intended. He would not, of course, have had her employ a governess for Rosabel. It was beyond the bounds of neighbourly. And he had not cared for the way she had spoken about the new governess. He had to admit, he had not cared for it at all.

  As always, the sight of his home lifted his spirits. It looked particularly well at night, with its turrets and towers, lit from within by gas and candles. It emanated a warmth and brightness from the mullioned windows.

  Unexpectedly, it reminded him of the new governess. Her exterior was plain, like the grey stone of the Hall, but it possessed the same fine lines and elegance. It was made of stuff that would last, that had strength. Eyes were known as the windows of the soul, and her eyes, those green eyes that held those unexpected lights, were as warm and golden as the candlelit windows of his home.

  He laughed drily to himself. It was not like him to be fanciful, but there was much more to Miss Wilmot than the moth-grey garments she wore.

  She wore such sombre clothing. It suited her vocation, he supposed. He frowned. Did she do it on purpose? Why did she go to such lengths to hide her beauty? Many women wouldn’t, of course. Miss Wilmot kept herself hidden, always in a cocoon of her grey clothes.

  Perhaps she merely thought it more suitable to a governess.

  He glanced across the dark lawn, but he could see no lamplight. Miss Wilmot was not out moth-hunting tonight.

  When he had come across her that night in the woods, her eyes had not been dancing. Instead, in her white face framed by that russet hair, her eyes had been dark and huge in fright. She had been quite terrified when he startled her.

  Her level of panic had seemed out of place. Certainly, he’d come across her unawares, but she had been trembling from head to foot. It wasn’t that some alarm wouldn’t be expected in the circumstances. It was more that she appeared to be the opposite of the cool-headed confident young woman he generally observed.

  He frowned. What Averill had told him at dinner didn’t sound like Miss Wilmot. He was a man who trusted his own instincts. What he had observed of her character did not chime with what Averill described. Yet he had seen her, when they first met, giving what could only be described as a dressing-down to the young man who had tried to make an elderly passenger give up her seat on the train. There was a passionate woman beneath her carefully guarded manner. In any case, he would have to get to the bottom of it.

  Loosening his tie at last, Dominic crossed the threshold. Taking up the lamp that had been left in the hall, he made his way up the stairs.

  Then he heard it. A cry, sharp with terror.

  He gripped the lamp and finished the stairs two at a time.

  Outside Rosabel’s nursery door, he stopped and listened.

  Had he imagined it? Some night bird, perhaps? Gulls often sounded eerily like children.

  It came again, lifting the very hairs on his neck. High, pained and full of panic. Very nearly a scream. He threw back the door of the nursery and would have run to Rosabel’s bedside, save it only took him two strides.

  He stared down at his daughter in puzzlement. The lamp glow played over a sweetly slumbering face. She was sleeping soundly.

  Her hair lay smooth on the pillow, her hand tucked under her cheek, and her breathing was even.

  He was withdrawing, shielding the lamplight from her eyes, when the cry jolted through him again.

  Now he realised. It came from the room beyond the schoolroom next door, from the governess’s room. A terrified cry, as if in mortal danger.

  Miss Wilmot.

  Without a second thought, Dominic threw open the connecting door.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Half in dreams I sorrow after;

  —Alfred, Lord Tennyson: Maud (1855)

  ‘Miss Wilmot. Miss Wilmot! Martha!’

  Through the horror of the nightmare Maud heard a deep male voice.

  She moaned.

  ‘Martha. Wake up!’ the voice commanded her.

  Strong arms pulled her up, out of the nightmarish depths. She did not resist. She did not want to. With a sob, she instead leaned into them, her whole body knowing instinctively that she was safe in those arms. So sure, so powerful, she knew they could hold her and protect her from the nightmare that had pulled her back into the dreadful memory she fought so hard to keep from her mind by day: the sensation of being slowly suffocated beneath an immovable weight that she could not fight or escape. In her waking hours her brain seemed to protect her and shield her memory from the full horror. But at night, oh, at night, as she slept, the remembrance would return without mercy, without buffer. She lived the experience again, night after night.

  Yet now, as she came out of it, still shuddering, she realised that she was not defenceless against it for the first time. Someone had come to her aid and pulled her out of the morass.

  Sir Dominic Jago.

  ‘It’s all right.’ His low voice was full of a strange tenderness. ‘You’re awake now. You’re safe.’

  The firmness of his hold, the strength of those arms. Instinctively she laid her head against his chest while his arms wrapped around her, so close she could hear his heartbeat. For a moment she let herself relax, her breath still comin
g in painful jags, then slowing, easing.

  ‘It’s all right, Martha.’ He soothed her again, as his arms briefly cradled her against him. ‘It’s all right.’

  She pulled back with a gasp. ‘You’re calling me Martha.’

  Instantly he released her from his grip and moved away to the edge of the bed. ‘My apologies, Miss Wilmot. You were having a nightmare. At least, that is what it seemed to be. I needed to try to reach you.’

  He had reached her, but it hadn’t been through his voice alone. His touch had reached her through sleep in a way she had never expected.

  There had been a strange, physical honesty between them as he cradled her in his arms, but now, hearing him call her by Martha’s name and not her own, that honesty vanished.

  She was in his home under false pretences.

  Her panic must have shown on her face.

  Instantly he rose from the bed and took a step back. He must have assumed that she withdrew from him in alarm at his familiarity, for his breach of the master–governess gulf between them, when he called her by her first name. He didn’t know that she wasn’t who she claimed to be.

  She shuddered again.

  ‘I tried to wake you for some time,’ he said, low. ‘I did not know how else to do so. You didn’t seem to respond when I called you, Miss Wilmot. I’m sorry for the breach of propriety in my taking hold of you, but you were in great distress. I feared for your well-being. There was no other way.’

  ‘It’s not that,’ she whispered. ‘I mean, I’m glad you woke me. Thank you.’

  His face was shadowed as he studied her by the light from the nightstand. He must have brought the lamp with him. Beneath his regard her body was a swirl of sensations: her unsteady heart, the tingle where his arms had cradled her and the warmth where her cheek had leaned against his shirt.

  ‘I heard a scream,’ he explained. ‘I thought it was Rosabel.’

  Maud struggled to sit up, but her whole body trembled as she reached for the bedcovers to hold them up against her nightgown. ‘Is she all right?’

  ‘Rosabel is sound asleep,’ he reassured her.

  Taking up the lamp, he backed towards the door.

  He was still dressed, unlike Maud, but his bow tie was loose and his shirt was unbuttoned, revealing his neck and a glimpse of his chest. The chest she had leaned against, only moments before. Where she had rested her head and found unexpected solace.

  He scanned her intently once more. ‘You are still clearly distressed. May I be of any further assistance to you? Do you think you can get back to sleep?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’ If she slept now, there was every chance the dream would reclaim her. She could feel it there, lingering in the back of her mind. Respite had come only when Sir Dominic had held her so close. Of course she could not ask him to stay, nor to hold her again. That would be unthinkable.

  ‘It may be better if you get up for a while,’ he said after a moment. ‘I suppose I should suggest cocoa, or a cup of tea, but I’m tempted to prescribe brandy.’ His half-smile played around his lips. ‘For both of us.’

  ‘Brandy would be very welcome,’ Maud admitted. She rarely drank spirits, but she needed something to still her frantic heartbeat. ‘Thank you.’

  Dominic moved the lamp closer towards her. ‘Follow the light, Miss Wilmot.’

  Maud pushed back the covers. Her body was damp with perspiration.

  She’d thrown herself into Sir Dominic’s arms. The comfort of that moment, of being held by him, so securely. The fear had been beaten back.

  But that nightmare had been one of the worst. One of the terrible ones, where she feared she would suffocate entirely, when she was stifled, trapped—

  No! She wouldn’t think about it.

  She seized her grey woollen dressing gown and buttoned it up tightly. It took longer than usual, for her fingers were trembling so. Thank goodness Sir Dominic had already departed the room. Doubtless he realised it was indecorous in the highest degree for him to linger in a governess’s bedchamber. She would follow his light as soon as her fingers managed to secure her some modesty.

  She hardly knew now what made her tremble: the remnants of the nightmare, or the embrace she had shared with Sir Dominic.

  He’d taken her in his arms, he’d said, in order to get through to her. He must have realised that she had not responded to her name, or rather, to her sister’s name. Hopefully he had thought it part of the terrible dream.

  She stared at her white face in the looking glass, ghostly in the lamplight, as she plaited her hair. She draped it, one long fox tail, over her shoulder and hurried through the connecting door to check on Rosabel. To her relief, the little girl lay asleep, clutching her teddy bear, her breath slow and steady.

  Lamp in hand, she made her way downstairs into the study.

  The door was ajar. Firelight glowed in the grate.

  Sir Dominic stood beside it. In one cupped hand he held a rounded brandy glass, its colours catching the brown-and-gold firelight.

  ‘Come in, Miss Wilmot.’ He indicated one of the leather chairs by the fireplace. ‘Take a seat. I’ll pour you a brandy.’

  ‘Thank you.’ She settled by the fire, feeling as if she were still in a dream. She supposed she ought to have felt uncomfortable drinking brandy in the middle of the night with the master of the house, but she didn’t. She felt strangely at peace, as if Dominic’s presence cradled her as securely as his arms.

  It was odd, especially in the circumstances. She might have expected that in any situation where she was alone with a man, particularly the master of the house, she would be frightened.

  Sir Dominic was strong, masculine, but he did not frighten her. He held his strength in check in the same easy way he had held the reins of his stallion.

  The crystal clinked on the silver tray as he poured her a drink.

  Returning to the fire, he held out the brandy glass. His fingers brushed hers as he passed it to her.

  ‘Thank you.’

  The brandy flared down her throat, like the fire in the grate.

  Maud choked.

  He leaned over her. ‘Are you all right?’

  Maud reached to smooth her skirt, but her fingers encountered her dressing gown, instead.

  ‘I’m not used to spirits,’ she explained, coughing.

  ‘Perhaps you’d prefer a cup of tea after all.’

  ‘No!’ Maud said quickly. She threw back the remaining brandy in a single gulp.

  ‘That’s one way to get used to it,’ he said with a grin.

  The brandy burned to settle in her stomach. Sir Dominic ensconced himself in the seat opposite her.

  Between them the fire flared.

  ‘Now, Miss Wilmot,’ Sir Dominic said. ‘Are you going to tell me the truth?’

  ‘The truth?’ Maud gasped.

  Sir Dominic took a draught of brandy. ‘You’re like a filly who has been spooked. You’re nervous, frightened. You jump at the slightest noise—I’ve seen you—yet I do not believe you have a naturally nervous disposition.’

  ‘I haven’t always been nervous,’ Maud admitted. ‘Why, when I was a small child, my mother was nearly driven to distraction by my foolhardiness. M—’ She stopped. She had so nearly said Martha. ‘My…my sister was by far the more cautious and sensible of us two.’

  ‘I see. Then there are the night terrors that I witnessed tonight. Have such nightmares happened before?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Regularly?’

  Again, she nodded.

  ‘But you didn’t grow up having nightmares.’

  Maud curled her fingers around the brandy glass and shook her head. They had begun when…

  No. She refused to let the memory come into her mind. She had some control over that, when she was awake, at least.

  He leaned forward.
‘There is something mysterious about you, Miss Wilmot. Something you are hiding. You can trust me. I will not betray your confidence.’

  Maud hesitated. How she longed to be able to lay down the burden she had carried alone for so long. She hadn’t even told Martha the full story.

  Telling Sir Dominic the truth about her identity would mean telling him everything.

  She couldn’t take the risk.

  ‘It isn’t as simple as that,’ she said at last.

  He raised an eyebrow. ‘Isn’t it?’

  She evaded his gaze. ‘I prefer not to think about my troubles.’

  ‘Perhaps not thinking about them is why you are experiencing nightmares,’ he said, far too shrewdly. ‘It may be better to share your burdens.’

  ‘I can’t,’ she whispered.

  How could she disclose to him what had happened, when she had never been able to speak of it and been forced to come to Pendragon Hall under a false identity? It would take too much to explain and he might send her away. Oh, he was almost certain to send her away anyway, as soon as Averill Trevose had her way. But just in case she didn’t…no, no, it must remain a secret. As long as her nightmares didn’t bring him running into her bedchamber again and then he might demand she reveal all.

  She shook her head, as if she could shake the confusion of thoughts into some order.

  ‘Very well. I don’t want to distress you any further,’ he said abruptly. ‘You do not have to confide in me.’

  Maud bit her lip. Less than an hour before, she had leaned against his chest, felt his heartbeat slow and steady her own.

  ‘There’s something else I need to discuss with you, Sir Dominic.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Miss Trevose came to the Hall earlier this week.’

  ‘Ah. Yes.’ He reached for his bow tie, tossed it aside. ‘Your name did come up over dinner, Miss Wilmot. I won’t deny it. I planned to speak to you about it tomorrow.’

  ‘Please.’ Maud reached out her hand in appeal. She couldn’t bear to toss and turn in her bed again, waiting for the axe to fall. ‘I would rather hear about it now.’

  He exhaled as he took up his brandy glass again. ‘I have no wish to upset you further. You have been through enough tonight. This doesn’t seem the appropriate time or place.’