A Lady Becomes a Governess

by Diane Gaston

  The young woman laughed, a musical sound. She smiled at the girls. ‘Your uncle forgets to say who I am. I am Lady Agnes. His fiancée.’

  Rebecca took in a gulp of air. As she’d guessed.

  ‘What’s a fiancée?’ Ellen asked.

  Pamela answered, ‘It means that Uncle Garret is going to marry her.’

  Both girls glanced back at Rebecca with unhappy expressions. Lord Brookmore’s face remained stiff.

  The fashionably dressed, beautiful, petite, blonde, blue-eyed fiancée then seemed to notice Rebecca. ‘And you are the governess, I presume.’

  Rebecca met the woman’s gaze and executed an obligatory curtsy. ‘Miss Tilson, my lady.’

  ‘Not in the schoolroom, I see?’ Lady Agnes said, ever so disapprovingly.

  Rebecca smiled. ‘On such a fine day? We were watching the sheep shearing.’

  Lady Agnes wrinkled her nose. ‘You do not say!’

  ‘Lady Agnes,’ Lord Brookmore finally spoke. ‘Come in the house.’

  Rebecca curtsied again and the girls mimicked her.

  ‘May we go back to the sheep?’ Pamela asked. The once too-correct child had become enamoured of animals. The horses were still her favourites.

  ‘I want to go inside with the lady,’ Ellen insisted.

  Rebecca scooted them away. ‘We are not going inside to bother her. We will watch the sheep some more.’

  Ellen was full of questions on the walk back to the shearing station. ‘Where did she come from?’

  ‘From London, I suppose,’ Rebecca answered.

  ‘Will she stay in the house?’

  ‘I expect so,’ Rebecca said.

  ‘What room will she sleep in?’

  Would Ellen’s questions never stop? ‘I do not know.’

  ‘When will they be married?’

  This question was the most painful. ‘We will have to ask Uncle Garret.’ Although Rebecca had no intention of asking that question.

  * * *

  They watched the sheep for another hour before returning to the house, but Rebecca could not tell what they had seen or what they’d spoken to each other. It had taken her a long time to even remember to breathe. She brought the girls into the house through the back entrance and up the back stairs to the children’s wing where they washed their faces and hands and changed their clothes. Cook sent up a meal of soup and bread with blueberry tarts for dessert.

  Afterwards the girls wrote in their journals and somehow Rebecca read to them from The Shepherd Boy, a book that seemed to suit the day—at least the sheep-shearing part of the day.

  Mary helped the girls get ready for sleep and Rebecca kissed them both goodnight. So dear and sweet they were, she thought. Her efforts at being a governess might fall short, but she loved these little girls. She could not imagine having a stronger love, even for children of her own.

  Not that she would ever have children of her own.

  She left their bedchamber and sought refuge in her own room. On an ordinary night she would ready herself for dinner with Lord Brookmore, but this night she simply sat in the chair and stared out the window at the waning light. In mid-July it would be more than an hour before the sky turned dark.

  She watched the setting sun paint the fells in shades of purple and wondered how to bear spending another day in this house. With him. With her. She imagined them together in the dining room, Lady Agnes dressed formally for dinner, seated in the chair near him. Rebecca’s chair.

  Lady Agnes was dazzling in a way Rebecca could never be, even if dressed in her finest gowns and jewellery, the ones lost at sea. Lady Agnes also had charm, although Rebecca detected a bite to it, hidden behind a smile. A governess was nothing in comparison.

  She remembered what Claire had said—‘A governess is not important enough to notice.’

  Chapter Twelve

  Garret felt like another person walked in his skin. From the moment Lady Agnes stepped from the carriage, he’d felt like an automaton, going through the motions. He’d walked Lady Agnes and her companion, an adoring aunt, into the house and called for Mrs Dodd to make rooms ready for them and serve them tea in the drawing room. All the while, his spirit was with Miss Tilson, wanting to explain that he hadn’t known Lady Agnes was coming, that he would have warned her had he known.

  Lady Agnes kept up enough chatter that he needed only to nod or speak one or two words.

  Mrs Dodd readied Garret’s sister-in-law’s room. He trusted the housekeeper would remove Maryanne’s personal items, items he must save for his nieces.

  When the room was ready, he parted from Agnes and went to his room to change for dinner. He’d still had the mud from the shearing on his boots and bits of sheep’s wool clung to his buckskin breeches. No doubt she’d been appalled.

  As Brant dressed him, his mind whirled. Why had Lady Agnes come? The trip from London was a journey of at least five days in a private coach. She’d made it clear she disliked travel. He’d never expected she would make such a journey.

  Garret hurried down the stairs and knocked at his sister-in-law’s bedchamber door.

  Lady Agnes’s maid answered.

  ‘Come in, Brookmore, dear,’ Lady Agnes trilled. ‘I am almost ready.’

  She sat at the dressing table putting sapphire earrings in her ears. She wore a blue-silk gown and looked as if she’d be gracing a London dining room.

  He remained standing.

  ‘This room is charming,’ she went on. ‘All this oak wainscoting quite transports me to an earlier era.’

  ‘Most of the house is panelled in oak,’ he said.

  ‘It is quaint, is it not?’ She rose from her chair. ‘Aunt Theodora will not be joining us. She is very fatigued.’ She took his arm. ‘So it is just you and me.’

  His insides plummeted. What about Miss Tilson?

  When he and Lady Agnes reached the dining room, Miss Tilson was not there and the table was set only for two. But for which two? For him and Lady Agnes? Or him and Miss Tilson?

  Agnes surveyed the room. ‘Now I do feel transported. Spanish leather wall covering!’

  The wall covering had been on these walls since the sixteenth century.

  * * *

  Lady Agnes managed to keep conversation flowing throughout dinner, even though he could offer few words and his eyes kept wandering to the door wondering if Miss Tilson would appear, wondering why she had not.

  She finally asked something about him. ‘Tell me, Brookmore, what has been occupying you here?’

  It took him a moment to focus his thoughts enough to answer. ‘Estate business.’

  She pressed for more. Why not answer her? If he were to share his life with her, why not tell her how he’d spent his time. At least some of his time.

  ‘I’ve been meeting with the tenants and the workers, asking their needs, taking their complaints and planning to address them.’

  ‘Goodness!’ She blinked. ‘That is what an estate manager is for. If you like I will write to Papa. He can certainly recommend someone who is up to the job.’

  He took a long sip of wine. ‘I have an estate manager.’

  She laughed softly. ‘I meant a good one.’

  He averted his gaze. ‘That is not necessary.’ Miss Tilson had admired his efforts with the workers.

  * * *

  After dinner they retired to the drawing room. In the midst of her commentary, he gazed at her, perfect in every way a viscount’s wife should be. It would be a good partnership, so why did his mood plummet to the depths?

  What had changed inside him? Or, rather, who had changed him?

  When he finally suggested they retire and she agreed, he escorted her back to her room.

  On the way he said, ‘I take breakfast with my nieces at eight-thirty in the morning.’ And Miss Tilson. ‘You are welcome to join
us.’ But please don’t. ‘Or you may have breakfast in the dining room, if you prefer.’

  ‘How sweet.’ She smiled. ‘And a little absurd, too, is it not? The lord of the estate eating with children? I am certain I would be excessively entertained, but I believe I will sleep in and ask for breakfast in my room.’

  ‘As you wish.’ They reached her door.

  She put a hand behind his neck and urged him to lean over. She kissed him on the lips, a lingering kiss, but one as cool as the evening air.

  ‘Goodnight, Brookmore,’ she murmured before slipping into the room.

  Garret strode away and climbed the stairs to his room, putting his hand on the door handle, but he did not open the door. Instead he walked down the hallway to the children’s wing.

  And knocked on Miss Tilson’s door.

  * * *

  Rebecca answered the door in her nightgown, expecting Mary coming to offer her food one more time.

  ‘Lord Brookmore.’ Her heart leapt at the sight of him, but she quickly steeled herself.

  He stared at her with his intense blue eyes and she remembered that, once again, he’d encountered her in her nightgown.

  Finally he spoke. ‘You did not come to dinner.’

  ‘Surely you did not expect me?’ She almost laughed.

  ‘I did not know whether to expect you or not.’

  She lowered her gaze. ‘I would not intrude.’

  His brows knitted and again he paused before speaking. ‘Did you eat?’

  He should not trouble himself of whether or not she ate. ‘I ate,’ she lied. She started to close the door.

  He stopped her with a hand on the door. ‘May I speak with you?’

  She should say no. She should close the door and turn the key in the lock.

  But she opened it the rest of the way and stepped aside so he could enter. The last time he’d entered her room was after a passionate kiss that sent them both to her bed—something he regretted, but even now she could not regret.

  She waited for him to speak, her arms folded across her chest.

  He walked over to the window and looked out into the night, as she had done before his knock.

  Finally he turned. ‘I did not know Lady Agnes would come.’

  ‘I see.’ Claire would not have expected to be informed of invited or uninvited guests. Rebecca must not either.

  He pressed his lips together. ‘I would not have invited her.’

  Why did he believe it mattered? Merely because the governess developed romantic notions about him?

  ‘But had I known of her visit, I would have told you,’ he added.

  She lifted a shoulder. ‘It is of no consequence.’

  He took a step towards her. ‘I want to explain. When I inherited the title, I took my duty very seriously, including the duty to make a good marriage and ensure the line of succession. I was not prepared—’

  She stopped him. ‘You do not have to tell me this.’

  He shook his head. ‘I do need to tell you. I need you to understand.’

  He was making it difficult for her to build a cage around her emotions. ‘I do understand,’ she murmured. ‘You are trying very hard to do all that is required of a viscount.’

  ‘It is not what I wanted,’ he shot back. ‘And I have not done well. I’ve made mistakes. Big mistakes.’ He sounded pained. ‘I tried to do as my brother would have done, but then I discover he was a terrible model.’

  She looked directly into his eyes. ‘You are nothing like your brother.’

  ‘How could you know that?’ he snapped.

  ‘For one thing, you care about other people, even your tenants and workers.’ She added, ‘You care about his little girls, which certainly he did not.’

  He turned his face away. ‘You give me too much credit.’

  It struck Rebecca like a bolt from the heavens that she, too, had often thought only of herself and not others. Perhaps she ought to have considered her father’s grief over losing her mother with more sympathy, rather than be hurt at being ostracised by him. Perhaps she could have seen that her brother had been the most unloved of them all. After marrying her mother, her father had not cared a fig about his son. Perhaps she even should have understood Lord Stonecroft’s desire for an heir.

  This was new territory for her. Lord Brookmore had been the cause of it. She’d watched him being kind to her, being loving to his nieces and concerned about his workers. She’d opened her heart to Pamela and Ellen, because she’d seen them through his compassionate eyes.

  She could not tell this to him, though. They could no longer share confidences. He could never be her lover, nor could he be her friend. She must remain in her place as governess.

  Rebecca lowered her arms and softened her voice. ‘I will tend to Pamela and Ellen,’ she told him. ‘But I’ll have no expectations of dining with you or otherwise placing myself in your way. You can rest easy on that score.’ She paused. ‘But I would like to continue to ride in the mornings.’ Without that release she feared she’d go mad, because, although she was acting strong and noble, inside she felt as if every organ was shredded.

  She knew how to keep her distance; she’d perfected the skill with her father.

  ‘Of course you may ride. You must go on as you were,’ he insisted.

  ‘No.’ Sadness filled her voice. ‘That is what I must not do. I will act the governess from now on.’ She forced herself to smile. ‘And a governess must not entertain the Viscount in her bedchamber.’ She walked to the door, which he’d kept open. ‘I bid you goodnight, sir.’

  He crossed the room, but slowed as he passed her. His hand rose and she thought he might touch her, but he dropped it again. ‘Goodnight, Miss Tilson.’

  * * *

  The next morning Lady Agnes did not sleep as late as she’d told Brookmore she would. She rose early, sent her maid down to the kitchen to get her a pot of chocolate and something sweet to eat.

  Her Aunt Theodora sat in the ancient upholstered chair that must have been a century old, while Lady Agnes stood at the window overlooking the park and the outbuildings, one of which showed signs of activity. More sheep shearing, no doubt.

  ‘It is very rural here, is it not?’ Agnes remarked, her lip curling.

  ‘Indeed,’ her aunt agreed. ‘Quite rural.’

  She gazed at the far hill, dotted with grazing sheep. Lord Brookmore had smelled of the vile creatures the day before. She hardly could stand it until he washed and changed for dinner. This was not something she would tolerate.

  But she knew that was a battle to be engaged in at a later time. No husband of hers would smell like a farm labourer.

  He was less elegant than she would have liked, possibly from all those years in the army, but she intended to give him polish and working with farm animals, alongside unwashed underlings, would not do it. The previous day he’d seemed preoccupied with these farm people. Well, after their marriage he’d discover she had no intention of spending her days on a farm.

  But first she had to get him to the altar.

  His delay at returning to London and accompanying her to Brighton had worried her. Something was afoot and she’d come all the way to this...wilderness...to discover what it was.

  She moved the curtain—how old was that piece of cloth? she wondered.

  Two riders approached the outbuildings and it took only a moment’s observation to recognise Brookmore and that governess. They were not riding side by side, but they were both riding early in the morning and returning to the stables at the same time.

  Agnes felt her neck tense the way it always did when she sensed trouble.

  She’d noticed the way he’d looked at the governess the day before. And this nonsense about breakfasting with the children every morning. Undoubtedly the governess was present. Now both he and the governess were riding?


  The night before, he’d avoided any discussion of a wedding date. Or of a time he would be ready to leave this rustic area. Was it because of this governess?

  Her maid entered the room with a tray bearing the pot of chocolate, two mugs and a plate of sweet breads filled with currants.

  Agnes turned to her maid. ‘Holly, put the tray on the table and go find Mrs Dodd, the housekeeper. Ask if she might come speak with me.’

  Holly curtsied. ‘Yes, m’lady.’

  ‘And bring another chocolate cup when you return,’ Agnes added.

  Aunt Theodora sat at the table, but waited for Agnes before eating or pouring the chocolate.

  Agnes joined her.

  A few minutes later Holly brought the chocolate cup. ‘M’lady, Mrs Dodd said she would call on you directly.’

  ‘Excellent!’ Agnes turned to her companion. ‘Aunt, would you mind taking your breakfast in your room? I should like to speak with the housekeeper privately.’

  Aunt Theodora immediately stood. ‘Of course, dear.’

  Agnes signalled to Holly. ‘Help her.’

  * * *

  When Mrs Dodd knocked on the door, Agnes was quite alone.

  ‘You wished to see me, Lady Agnes?’

  The housekeeper appeared cordial enough and well she ought. Lord Brookmore had introduced Agnes as his fiancée. Mrs Dodd would eventually answer to Agnes when she became Lady Brookmore. Assuming Agnes would ever set foot in this antiquated house again.

  ‘Thank you so much for interrupting your busy day to speak with me.’ Agnes smiled her sweet smile. ‘Please do come in.’

  Mrs Dodd entered and Agnes gestured for her to sit. ‘Please have a cup of chocolate with me.’ These upper servants sometimes liked such niceties.

  ‘Thank you, my lady.’ Mrs Dodd sat.

  Agnes started the conversation with polite enquiries as to Mrs Dodd’s health and her satisfaction with her position and her staff, complimenting her lavishly as she went on. She finally reached the point of her request to see the housekeeper.

  She poured Mrs Dodd more chocolate. ‘And what of this governess? I understand she is new.’

  Mrs Dodd pursed her lips before answering. ‘She is an odd one. I will say that for her.’