The Enigmatic Governess of Buford Manor
A Historical Regency Romance Novel
Emma Linfield
Edited by
Maggie Berry
Contents
A Thank You Gift
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Epilogue
Extended Epilogue
The Betrayed Lady Winters
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Also by Emma Linfield
About the Author
A Thank You Gift
Thanks a lot for purchasing my book. It really means a lot to me, because this is the best way to show me your love.
As a Thank You gift I have written a full length novel for you called The Betrayed Lady Winters. It’s only available to people who have downloaded one of my books and you can get your free copy by tapping this link here.
Once more, thanks a lot for your love and support.
With love and appreciation,
Emma Linfield
About the Book
After the news about her husband’s death in the Atlantic during his service as a Lieutenant in the Royal Navy, Rose Parsons is devastated. Life seems unbearable and she can’t think of loving another man in her life, ever again - let alone carry on with the huge amount of debt her husband left her with.
When she finds herself in the grand mansion of the Duke of Buford teaching his orphaned nephew, her life seems to finally come round: she not only becomes close friends with the Duke’s handsome son, Nicholas, but also discovers a new purpose in life.
Fate though has other plans…
As a terrible accident disturbs the peace of the household, things start to fall apart, one by one...
And all this along with the sudden appearance of an old acquaintance that threatens to destroy all good there is, bringing nothing but chaos and...loss.
Chapter 1
God Himself kissed the Earth, but Rose Parsons didn’t notice. She didn’t hear the tittering of goldfinches that bantered across the marsh outside her sewing room. She didn’t smell the sweet summer air through her open windows. No, Rose Parsons didn’t notice because she was too busy fixating her cobalt eyes over the spindle. She was determined not to lose the precision of her stitching. And it didn’t help when she kept pushing away flaxen strands of hair that escaped her woven braid and furrowed over her forehead. No, Rose Parsons didn’t notice because she had other things on her mind.
Shame on me, she thought. Philip will be home from the wars any day and I have yet to finish this suit. I have cast it aside for far too long.
Not that Rose did not have a perfectly plausible excuse for why the garments were not sewn. She had been left alone to tend their tired land, and while the livestock was scarce, and their home, small, there was much to be done in Philip’s absence.
“I will return to you before you can yearn for me,” her husband had promised.
“That is not possible,” she exclaimed, willing herself not to melt into a puddle of histrionics. “You have yet to leave and my heart is already heavy with grief!”
“No, my love,” Philip insisted, grabbing her hands to press to his breastbone. “You must always look to the gate for my arrival, with a smile on your face and the same love in your heart as you have now. That is how I wish to return to you.”
“Allow me to join you,” Rose begged. “I have heard that wives come and tend to the sailors, tending to them as – “
“Who is filling your comely head with such tales?” Philip interrupted, a slight frown overcoming his even features. “And even if such a thing was feasible, who will care for our home? We cannot put such a burden on the Boyles. No, my dove, your place is here, minding the homestead.”
Miserably, Rose had agreed. What else could she do? Her husband had spoken but that did not mean she happily accepted her fate.
Each day that passed brought along with it an unbearable loneliness, one which sometimes brought her to tears as she waited hopelessly at the window, waiting for word—any word that her love was safe. Or that he had finally returned to her.
The mails were slow and Philip’s letters oft damaged if they made it to her. From the high seas of the Atlantic to a tiny land off the beaten path near Dartford was a world away.
In the interim, Rose did her best to occupy the seemingly endless days.
Good news is on the horizon, she thought, her nimble fingers working along the spools of thread. I feel him returning soon and when he does, I will have a fresh suit waiting.
Not that her beloved husband was expecting any such welcoming. Rose was certain the only gift Philip desired was to hold her in his arms again.
Still, she wanted to bequeath him something, even if it was a small gesture of how terribly much she had pined for him in his absence.
Has it only been two years? It seems much longer.
She stifled the threat of melancholy and thought of the future. John Boyle had visited her only the previous afternoon, one of Bridget’s delicious elderberry pies in hand. The mere sight of it reminded Rose she had not eaten in a day and her stomach growled in protest.
“I have news that the fighting is going well in Spain,” her kindly neighbor offered, and Rose smiled. It was a conversation they had exhausted in the past months.
In the beginning, John’s visits had inspired hope with his optimistic reports of the allies disarming the French. Rose had been certain that her Philip would return in due time, just as he had promised.
Yet as the weeks slipped by, she came to understand that John Boyle’s words were merely a placebo, intended to still her overwrought nerves. She could not fault the man for trying to ease her loneliness but some days she much preferred the company of his wife, Bridget, who had a quieter way about her.
“Is it?” she asked, accepting the pie from his outstretched hands. “How wonderful. I pray that the men will return home safely and soon.”
The response was almost automatic, she had said the empty words so many times in the past.
“No, Rose,” he said urgently, surprising her by touching her wrist. “It is going very well. Napoleon has ordered a retreat.”
The words filled her with an unexpected shock and Rose gasped, dropping the pie as her hand reached for her mouth. With stunning agility for a man of his advanced age, John caught the falling pan and quickly placed it on the rickety wooden table.
“Are you certain, John?” she whispered. “Can it finally be?”
A warm smile touched his weathered mouth and he bowed his thinning head of hair graciously.
“I am many things, Rose, but
a cruel man is not one of them. I would never make such a claim if I did not have it on good authority.”
Rose fell back against the wall, her hand falling to the slender waistline of her apron, striving to reclaim her stolen breaths. The world around her took on a surreal quality, as if a haze of fog had befallen the interior of her home.
No, she decided. John Boyle hasn’t a cruel streak whatsoever. He must believe what he has told me to be the truth. My Philip is coming home to me.
As she continued to work, a sweet hymn started in her chest and for the first time that she could recall, Rose began to hum a tune. Her mood lifting with the notes of the music, enveloped in the warmth of what was to come.
In mere days, Philip will be home, never to leave again. We will finally begin the family of which we have always dreamed.
A bolt of joy sent shivers through her body as her mind wandered, imaging the pitter-patter of small footfalls filling her ears. They had only been wed a year before Philip had been summoned to war and Rose had clung to the hope that she would greet him with the face of their child in her arms upon his deployment.
None of that is of consequence now, she thought with contentment. How difficult would it have been to raise a babe without his father? It is a blessing I was not lying-in with child when he left.
The needle jabbed into her forefinger suddenly and Rose yelped as a prick of blood pooled on the tip. Raising her hand from the jacket she had been so meticulously altering, she stood, hurrying toward outside to the rain deposits.
As she leaned over a bucket, splashing the sun-heated water over her hand, a dark cloud suddenly overtook the bright sunshine, casting an ominous shadow over everything in her path.
Inexplicably, a sensation of dread swept through her slender form, and Rose straightened her body to turn and stare at the sky behind her. The light of the day had vanished, a humidity filling the air with the smell of ozone.
It is only rain, she chided herself gently. Nothing more.
Yet Rose could not tear her vivid blue eyes from the heavens, as if they were forewarning her of troubles to come. She started as a sharp bleat shattered her reverie. At her side, Dora, the goat eyed her reproachfully.
“Into the barn with you,” she told the animal who made no move to obey.
She continued to eye the mistress of the house with disdain until Rose was forced to tap the animal’s grey rump and send her trampling off toward the red-painted structure.
“Mind the garden!” she called but of course her words were futile and Dora danced through her carefully tended patch with devious relish.
Rose had to chuckle, her momentary sense of unease forgotten. Fat droplets of rain began to splat against the land and Rose stood for a long moment, savoring the feel of the cool against her skin.
She had been so absorbed with her homecoming project, she had failed to notice how hot it had grown within the house.
Rain is welcomed. It washes away the old and renews. It is fitting for what is to come.
Their part of the country was not particularly overcome with inclement weather, but the Boyles oft complained about the frequent washings, the weather affecting their aging bones.
I must check on them and see if they require anything, lest we have a storm incoming.
Her neighbors had always been kind but none more so than in Philip’s absence. Not a day passed without a call from John or Bridget, and Rose had come to see them as the parents she never had.
For their part, they had no children of their own, their only son lost at sea during a fishing expedition in Ireland.
Imagine, finding a family at my age, Rose oft mused but she did not feel any less blessed by the realization.
All her life, growing up among the orphans in Chelmsford, she had yearned for a family of her own, people to love her and nurture her the way she had read about in books. Rose knew very little about her own parents, having been abandoned on the doorstep of a church at the age of one but it had been ingrained into her straw-blonde head from a terribly young age that she was among the most fortunate of girls in her position.
Unlike some of her peers who had been shipped to the colonies or into overcrowded and disease-ridden orphanages, Rose had been brought to an educational institution. It lacked the merits described to the public, the sanitation deplorable, and the nurses dreadful, but Rose was at least afforded the opportunity to read and write.
Moreover, Chelmsford is where Philip found her while on leave in the navy and her life truly began.
Now I have a husband who loves me madly and caring neighbors whom I consider as close to me as any kin I could imagine.
She whirled, her long, thin skirt swirling about her ankles as she hurried through the suddenly driving rain. The chickens scattered as she moved as if abruptly realizing that the sky was falling upon them, squawking in confusion.
Rose made her way to the wooden gate, blinking against the rain as a rumble of thunder filled her ears. A flash of lightning lit the puddling path leading toward the Boyle’s land. The darkness had fallen quickly and without mercy and Rose fleetingly considered turning back to wait for the rain to still some before venturing out again.
No, she decided, vainly attempting to wrest the wet strands of hair from her face. They have done so much for me. It is but a bit of rain. It will not take a minute to call upon them.
Her visibility was not good but Rose would have known her way to the Boyle’s modest property if she had been without sight. Seeing the shape of their clapboard home in the near distance, Rose gathered her sodden dress and began to sprint the remaining steps toward the entranceway.
They are going to send me on my way, dripping like this, she chuckled, amused by the idea. I would not fault them in the least.
As she turned up the path leading to the house, a faint sound caught her attention.
More thunder?
Rose lifted her fine-lined jaw, trying to see past the sheets of water falling from the slate sky. Her heart stopped beating as she realized what she was hearing, knees growing weak.
Can it be?
“Rose? What are you doing, child? You will catch your death out here!” Bridget called from the wraparound porch of her home, but Rose could not acknowledge her.
The approaching horsemen had her full attention. Slowly, her body moved toward the figures, her pulse racing to the rhythm of the horses’ hooves.
“Philip!” she gasped, her voice barely carrying over the wind. “Philip!”
Her long legs pumped along the muddy ground, her careworn shoes catching in the slop, but Rose did not permit her lost footwear to slow her. Waving her arms, tears of happiness began to streak her cheeks as two long years of waiting flooded from her body.
Oh, my love, she cried silently, her body stopping as the two dark horses eased their gait at her approach.
She wanted desperately to compose herself but the emotions were far too strong. She threw her head back, a quivering smile on her lips as the two men in British navy uniforms peered down at her.
“Mrs. Rose Parsons?”
“Yes!” Rose replied but her eyes darted from the speaker to the man at his side, her smile beginning to fade.
“You were married to Lieutenant Philip Parsons?”
The question pushed into Rose like a physical blow, and before he could speak another word, a low, feral wail filled the air.
I am married to Philip! We are currently married! Why did he ask it like that?
She knew precisely why the stranger had asked it in such a fashion. Neither man before her was her husband, the man with whom she would have children and grow old. How could they be? It was clear they had come to give her the worst possible news.
Philip was never coming home.
“Mrs. Parsons?” the younger man called.
A hundred images swept through her mind. Philip smiling at her as they walked arm-in-arm through the streets, his profile as he smoked his pipe, cheeks concaving as he inhaled. She saw him on th
e day he left, promising to return if she greeted him with the same love she felt in her heart.
You vowed to return to me! You swore it!
She stood in the blinding rain, looking up at the men, a denial ready to spring from her lips. Yet when she opened her mouth to respond, no words escaped.
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