With a governess in the castle, the children’s hours would be better filled.
“Would you like to change your clothing, sir?” Billings eyed Rupert’s coat with barely concealed horror. “Or would you prefer to wait for the dinner hour?”
Rupert looked at the mantel clock. It was only just past three. Too early for dinner, but ridiculous to change into anything else. “I suppose dinner clothing would be appropriate, but I’ll forgo the coat for now. I have my drawings still to do.”
“Yes, Mr. Gardiner.” Billings went into the small antechamber that served as closet and bathing room for Rupert. Meanwhile, Rupert started shedding the mud-crusted garments. The day had proved fruitful, and he hoped the discussion with the duke on his observations would be satisfying.
Chapter 3
Alice’s second day in the castle, her first morning as the governess, was not an unqualified success. In fact, she qualified it as a minor disaster. Her nerves were somewhat frayed by the live frogs Lord James had introduced during their morning recitations. The amphibians had not bothered her as much as the shrieking of the boy’s older sisters.
Lady Isabelle and Lady Rosalind had enough power in their lungs to launch a British man-of-war out of a harbor. Returning the schoolroom to order afterward had taken time away from their study of geography.
“Lady Rosalind, will you kindly point out the location of India on the globe, please?” Alice had asked, ready to begin a lesson on that region.
Unfortunately, she learned at that point Lady Rosalind thought India a part of South America. The girl peered at the southern hemisphere for some time before asking, “Why isn’t India labeled?”
Lady Isabelle had laughed at her sister before proudly spouting off the names of all the crown heads of Europe to prove herself superior.
That had caused another argument.
The art instructor staying in the castle sent word shortly after twelve that he was ready for the children’s lessons. Alice sent them off, relieved beyond words to have an hour of quiet.
It was an hour she ought to spend organizing the schoolroom and preparing for the next lesson. Standing three floors above ground, looking out a window into the gardens, Alice yearned for something else.
The Clairvoir gardens were famous throughout England for their beauty. All of Society had sought news of how the duchess had rebuilt the castle in the past decade, and everyone sought to copy Her Grace. Even Alice, living on the fringes of Society in her uncle’s home, had heard about the statue garden. She still remembered one letter they had shared from a friend who had seen the work-in-progress.
A dozen commissioned statues of the favorite Greeks, a dozen more of historical figures, and all scattered about in beds of flowers meant to delight the senses.
And here she stood, with only a flight of stairs and a door between her and such magnificent beauty.
“Half an hour,” she said aloud, then nodded firmly. She could spare that much. She would be outside and back in so quickly she would not even need a bonnet and gloves. She briefly looked down at her dress.
The deep blue gown she wore was cut for practicality, not fashion. The neck was high, the sleeves long, and there were no feminine ruffles or flounces, or any lace to speak of. But what did she care? It was not as though she was going to a garden party. She meant to take a hurried stroll, be seen by no one, and return to the schoolroom on the upper floor.
That decided, Alice went out the door and found the servants’ staircase. When she accompanied the children, she was to keep to the main passages and stairs, but alone she could do as she pleased.
She passed a valet who gave her a quick bow and skirted by a maid who looked rather affronted at finding someone in her path. Then she was on the ground floor, and with just a few steps, she was out a door to the first terrace, which consisted of lawn furniture and tables meant for the household and guests to take their ease in the open air. Steps led down to the next level of gardens, and she took those quickly. After the first terrace where one could sit and enjoy the view, there were rose gardens, and then the slightly wilder gardens filled with riotous flowerbeds and columns of ivy; below that one she found the statues.
Her heart raced from her exertion, and Alice did not stop until she stood at the foot of the first statue she saw. “Who are you, then?” she asked the marble maiden. The woman stood holding a bowl in one hand and wheat in the other, looking out over the garden with a gentle expression.
Alice tapped her lip with one finger as she thought, before quietly whispering, “Hestia or Hera, a goddess of prosperity and harvest. Hm.” She went on to the next, the statue of a man holding a bow and surrounded by purple and pink butter-cup-like flowers. “Anemones. Ah, that makes you Adonis.” Alice smiled up at the Greek depiction of male beauty. Then she narrowed her eyes. He rather looked like the portrait of the duke she had passed on the grand staircase. “I wonder if the duke commissioned you, or if the sculptor sought to win his favor?” She giggled at herself and kept going.
Her time stolen from duty ran short. She needed to hurry, so as she went deeper into the gardens, she ran around the base of another statue to come to its front—and tripped over a pair of boots. Her momentum sent her sprawling face-first into the flowerbed.
Unladylike words trilled through her mind, learned when unsuspecting male relatives had let loose their caustic tongues within her hearing. But she clamped her lips against saying such things out loud, only to immediately taste dirt.
Alice tried to rise at the exact moment the owner of the other pair of legs attempted the same. Her foot slipped between a pair of ankles, tangling them both up. It also sent her face back into the flowers.
A rather masculine voice, likely belonging to those same legs, released a torrent of ill-tempered words. “What in blazes—if His Grace keeps allowing this, I will never complete my work.”
What did the duke have to do with a man lying about in the gardens, where anyone might trip over him? She ought to offer an apology, but given his brusque reaction to the accident, he might not deserve one.
Alice groaned and settled for rolling over, instead. The first thing she saw was the top of the statue she had been attempting to view from the front. The figure was that of an imperious-looking woman, pointing almost directly at where Alice lay. She blinked.
A face appeared above her, alarmingly close. “You aren’t one of the duke’s daughters.” He spoke almost gruffly, as though he disapproved of her anyway.
Thank heavens her spectacles remained in place. They allowed her to clearly make out every detail of the man kneeling at her side. He was a handsome fellow, despite the smudge of dirt across his cheek. He had black hair that fell across his forehead almost into his forest-filled eyes. His face was narrow, his lips wide, and a rather endearing little cleft marked the bottom of his chin.
All her female cousins from the tender age of fourteen to three and thirty would take notice of this man.
“Are you injured?” he asked, his black eyebrows pushing together. “Addled?”
Alice sucked in a breath. “I do not think so.”
He nodded and extended a hand to her. He wore thick leather gloves, well-scratched and dirty. Alice took the offered hand, and with a swift movement he pulled her to her feet. While she was taller than Society considered fashionable, this man still had half a head on her in height.
“You ought to look where you are going.” He abruptly turned away from her. The man released a long-suffering sigh. “It’s gone. An absolute perfect specimen.”
Narrowing her eyes, Alice glanced down where she had landed and crushed more than a few flowers. “There are many unhurt. Perhaps you might find another.”
“Another. I suppose that will have to do.” He sighed and stripped off his leather gloves, dropping them into an open wooden box filled with odd tools.
Though his accent was educated, not the same which she had caught sound of from the servants, his rough style of dress seemingly marked him
as under the duke’s employment. The box on the ground as someone who worked outdoors, with his hands. Botheration. Had she stumbled over a groundskeeper?
Alice twisted the ring around her right thumb with the fingers of the opposite hand. “Are there more beds of narcissus?”
“Hm?” His gaze left the ground to meet hers. “Narcissus?”
She gestured to the white and yellow flowers. “Are there more elsewhere in the castle’s gardens?”
“Yes.” He looked down at the flowers again, his shoulders slumping forward beneath his dirt-smudged coat. “I suppose finding more of that particular type of flora might lead me back to the Pieris napi. Though I cannot say I have seen those two coincide often.”
Alice could identify many flowers by their common names, but his Latin immediately showed the state of her ignorance. Did gardeners usually refer to flowers in Latin? Perhaps he had a better education than most servants, which explained his lack of the local accent. Perhaps he was someone’s younger son, who had found himself in need of employment beneath the status he had once enjoyed. She knew well enough that an adequate education might not lead to a favorable position in Society.
“I do apologize for disturbing you. I am afraid I was not paying attention in my hurry.” A butterfly fluttered in the breeze, coming nearer the gentleman’s shoulder.
He cocked one of those dark eyebrows at her. “A hurry? In a garden?” He finally seemed to give notice to her, his eyes sweeping up and down her frame in a cursory manner.
She reached up to tuck the hook of her spectacles more firmly behind one ear, sneakily ensuring her unruly curls had stayed in place during her fall. Though she wore no bonnet or gloves, Alice knew she appeared respectable enough.
“My name is Miss Sharpe. I’m the new governess to Her Grace’s children. I thought to take in the gardens, but my time is short. I must return to the schoolroom.” She gripped the side of her skirt, a sudden and dreadful thought coming to her. “I hope I did not venture out of bounds. No one said whether or not I could explore the gardens—” She cut herself off, recalling well enough how often her aunts had warned her against “prattling on and on.”
The man tipped his head to one side at the same moment the little green and white butterfly—or was it a moth?—landed upon his shoulder. The effect was rather comical, given the situation, and Alice bit her bottom lip against a giggle.
“I cannot think why a member of the household, even a governess, would be barred from the gardens.” His forehead wrinkled as he stared at her. “You have some dirt on your cheek. Just here.” He tapped his own left cheek, beneath his eye.
A brief laugh tripped from her at last. “So do you, actually.” She withdrew a handkerchief from her sleeve and wiped at her cheek, then held the cloth out to him. He stared at the linen, edged in embroidered rosebuds, as though surprised by it. Then he smiled and shook his head. It was a charming smile, a little crooked on one side.
“I’ll have more than a bit of soil on my cheek by the end of the day. But thank you, Miss Sharpe.”
She tucked the handkerchief away, then cut a glance at the butterfly, now resting with open wings.
“Um.” She took a quick step to the side. “You have a bit more than dirt on your shoulder, too, sir. There is a butterfly—I should not like it to be hurt. May I remove it?” A silly thing to ask, really. But what if he brushed it off and damaged the poor creature?
He stilled, as though her words had turned him into stone—every bit as much of a statue as the Aphrodite who stood above them while they spoke. It has to be Aphrodite, really, given that she is pointing at a bed of Narcissus. Greek myths had captivated Alice during her years of ducking into libraries to avoid the severe criticisms of relatives.
He spoke through barely parted lips, obviously trying to move as little as possible. “Is it white and green?”
Alice blinked up at him. “Yes?” What difference did the color make? And he acted as though she had told him he had a wasp waiting to sting him.
“I have forceps in that box.” He pointed with a finger, not even raising his hand. “They have little nets on either side. Do you think...that is, would you mind using them to capture the butterfly?”
“Netted forceps?” Alice looked down again at the box, then up at the man. “I could use my hands. I will be gentle.”
“No. Humans secrete oils and minerals which would be harmful to the wings. The forceps would be best, please.”
Having never had anyone mention secretions of any kind to her, Alice hesitated while she wondered if she ought to take offense. He had said humans. And it sounded as though his last wish was to hurt the delicate creature. She bent down and reached for the box, pulling it closer to her. If he was trying to minimize his movements, she ought to do the same.
There were many odd things in the box, including small crates lined with netted fabric. But the forceps were easily found. She took them in hand, opened them, and stood slowly. The gardener hadn’t moved at all. Neither had the butterfly.
Alice positioned the netted forceps carefully, then closed them gently over the little creature. It raised its wings as she moved, which seemed to be better for it. Alice brought the little net closer, peering at the butterfly and biting her lip.
“I do hope we haven’t hurt it.”
The antennae continued to move, as did the little legs. Alice let out the breath she had held the moment she captured the creature, rocking back on her heels. She had not crushed it. She raised her gaze to the man in front of her, unable to hold back her grin. “I caught it.”
Rupert rarely interacted with the fairer members of his species for a reason. He had seen more than one Society miss latch onto a gentleman the way a female Mantis religiosa latched onto her mate before eating him. Not that a gentlewoman would literally eat him. But the figurative devouring of his life, his person, his time, and his funds, kept him from fully trusting the women who sent flirtatious smiles his way.
Miss Sharpe’s smile was not at all coy, nor was it calculating. There was only true joy and surprise in her eyes and the curve of her lips. Indeed, her smile grew wide enough that he caught a flash of her teeth—something most women of his acquaintance would rather die than expose for fear of being perceived as vulgar.
When Miss Sharpe grinned, holding the netted forceps in a gentle grasp, he only saw beauty.
Blinking away that thought, Rupert rushed instead to find an empty insect cage for the butterfly, Pieris napi. “The green-veined white.” He slid open the wooden door to the cage. “Would you release it in here, please, and then withdraw the forceps quickly?”
Her smile faded, but her nod was firm. He held the box in both hands, and she stepped nearer in order to peer into it before releasing the winged insect. He slid the door shut, then held the box up so they both could peer through the netting as the butterfly opened and closed its wings inside.
“How lovely.” The whispered words brought his focus away from the white and green wings, settling it instead on the woman no more than a foot away from him. “What a magnificent way to study butterflies.”
“And other insects.” He stood to his full height, noting absently that she was rather tall for a woman. “Thank you for your help. I thought it had escaped.”
Her bright blue eyes narrowed. They were rather an interesting color. What did they remind him of?
“Are you going to pin it to a box somewhere?” she asked, sounding terribly disapproving.
“I should not have the need to do so, this time. I prefer to study creatures while they’re in movement. But I do have a rather extensive collection of insects.”
Her nose wrinkled in a familiar expression of disgust. “Boxes of dead things.” She shuddered. “What is the point of that?”
Rupert tucked the butterfly’s box back into his crate. He had heard this opinion from any number of people before. He released a sigh. “It is for science, Miss Sharpe.”
“Science?” She took a step back, tugging at
the end of one sleeve. “I understand the initial study, but why keep them after they are no longer useful?”
He looked up at her from where he crouched, considering the question. “Because they are always useful. What if I find a new species? How would I know without comparing it to what I already know to be cataloged? Or, perhaps, I come upon a stronger magnification method. I could make greater inspection of a creature already in my collection, rather than finding a new one.”
“I suppose a non-living insect would be easier to study through a microscope.” The way she spoke, as though conceding the argument, made him study her more closely. “Have you a microscope? How extraordinary. I thought to ask for one, for the schoolroom. I did not see one this morning amid the shelves.”
Before he could answer, she fixed him with a sudden wide-eyed expression. “Oh. I’ve been out too long. I must go. Do forgive me for rushing away. It was a pleasure to have met you.” She dropped the slightest dip of a curtsy and darted away. She ran behind the statue looming over them, and when he leaned backward enough to follow her progress through the hedges, he saw she was moving with great speed back to the castle.
Rupert considered her fleeing form long after she had disappeared. Though dressed in dark clothing, she had bright, lively eyes that hinted at intelligence and good humor. She was young for a governess. Pretty, too.
The duke’s three youngest children needed a firm hand. Given Miss Sharpe’s worry over harming a delicate butterfly, he doubted she had one. And yet. When she had challenged his habit of keeping insects in boxes, her jaw tight and eyes full of censure, she had appeared rather severe.
Not that it mattered to him. The governess was none of his concern. He had promised the duke to catalog insects and plants alike, and that daunting task required his full attention.
He rubbed at his cheek and felt the dirt flake away. His valet would certainly tut over Rupert that evening, before dinner. There were guests coming, too, though Rupert could not remember who they were. That meant sitting at a table and trying to make conversation on topics other than his studies.
Mr. Gardiner and the Governess: A Regency Romance (Clairvoir Castle Romances Book 1) Page 2
