Rules for a Proper Governess

by Jennifer Ashley

  Bertie’s eyes widened. Improperly? He thought he’d been improper? That was a laugh. “You were much more improper with the widow.”

  A crease appeared between his brows. Why did he not leap around the desk and start shouting at her, instead of holding it in until he cracked? His large body, trapped under layers of his pristine suit, swayed a little, as though he kept himself in place with great effort. “Miss Frasier . . .”

  So formal. No longer Bertie, but Miss Frasier, as though she truly were the governess. “Really,” she said. “What you did with me—it weren’t nothing.”

  “It wasn’t nothing, that’s the point.” His voice grew a little louder.

  “Eh?” Bertie stared at him until his meaning trickled through her numb brain. “No, what I mean to say is . . . I didn’t mind.”

  The crease between his brows deepened. “But you should mind.”

  “Well, I didn’t, and maybe you think that means I’m a tart, like I said that widow was, but—” Bertie cut off her words with effort, no idea why she was babbling. “You didn’t do nothing—anything—wrong. Didn’t even kiss me.” But the way Sinclair had suckled her fingers, the way he’d leaned into her, had been stronger than kissing. The encounter had been about bodily passion, a desire she’d never known. She wanted to know it again, and more.

  “I’m your employer,” Sinclair said in his hard voice. “I consider myself an honorable man, which means I shouldn’t have my way with everyone in my house, from the cook to the second housemaid.”

  “Ooh, I’d like to see you try that with Mrs. Hill.” Imagining Sinclair acting like a besotted swain with the coldly haughty housekeeper made a hysterical laugh bubble from Bertie’s mouth.

  “This isn’t funny,” Sinclair said, the growl returning to his voice.

  “Yes, it is.” Bertie took a step toward the desk. “My pal Ruthie told me about a place where she was kitchen maid a long time ago—the man of the house dipped his wick in whichever maid he wanted, and a couple of the footmen too. He never got around to Ruthie, because she told her mum, and her mum took her right out of there.”

  “Bertie.” Sinclair raised his hands. “Stop.”

  Bertie’s tongue tripped on. “Point is, you ain’t like that. What’s between you and me is . . . between you and me. But if you want me to go, I’ll go.” She had to swallow on the last words. Her throat hurt so much—maybe she was coming down with a cold.

  “I don’t.” The words came out quickly. Sinclair clenched his fists again, his hands brushing the desk.

  Bertie remembered the scar on his wrist his rising shirtsleeve had showed her last night, and resisted the urge to go to him and push up his sleeve now. She’d lift his tanned wrist to her lips and kiss the scar, maybe lick it. She wondered what he’d taste like.

  Bertie felt her breasts tighten, and she tried to banish the vision. She’d never think straight if she imagined such things. “Why’d you ask me to go, then?”

  Sinclair let out an exasperated breath. “Damn it, Bertie, I’m trying to be noble.”

  “Well, don’t. It don’t suit you. Are you finished? I’ve got lessons to give.”

  He rested his fists on the desk, keeping Hadrian’s Wall between them. “Yes, yes. Go,” he said in annoyance, as though Bertie had come to bother him instead of him sending for her.

  Bertie made for the door, knowing a dismissal when she heard one, but she lingered, her hand on the porcelain doorknob. “You off to your chambers now?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh.” Bertie tried to think of more to say, so she could stay in this room and speak to him longer, but she came up with nothing. “Well, you have a fine day, then.”

  “Thank you,” Sinclair said. His gray eyes pierced her from all the way across the room. He wanted her gone, no mistake.

  Bertie felt as though she should curtsy or something before leaving his presence, but he wasn’t a king or duke. Only a man—a tall, handsome, lonely gentleman with a warm and wonderful voice—and she was governess to his children.

  How nice it would be if she could hand him his valise in the mornings, wish him a good day, and give him a kiss good-bye. And welcome him back home again with another kiss, he enfolding her in his arms and saying how glad he was to be there.

  Bertie had to settle for giving Sinclair a brief nod and gliding out the door, her heart hammering. Sinclair said nothing at all, the session over.

  Bertie ran up the stairs, back to her own room, where she had to pace the floor for a time before she calmed herself enough to make her way to the nursery and the lively children waiting for her there.

  “What is it now?” Sinclair snapped at the clerk who put his head around his door. He looked up from another of the blasted anonymous letters that he’d received this morning, no longer interested in the day-to-day running of the common courts.

  “Your meeting with his lordship,” his junior clerk Henry said. “If you don’t look sharpish, sir, you’ll be late.”

  “Bloody hell.”

  Sinclair shoved aside the letter that burned his fingers and made himself get to his feet. His entire body felt wrong, his legs stiff. Not the only thing that’s been stiff. Sinclair had lain awake hard and furious all night and decided it best to send Bertie away. Only way he’d regain any sanity. He either had to take her to his bed and ease his need for her or send her off.

  But when he’d summoned Bertie to dismiss her, the sensible thing to do, she’d stood resolutely in front of his desk and looked at him as though he were a fool. She didn’t want to leave, and Sinclair didn’t want her to go.

  She had nowhere to go, in any case, and they both knew it. Her choices were the slums of the East End or another house of some aristocrat who exercised his power over the staff, as her friend had described. Damned if Sinclair would let that happen. Also, Richards had told him what Eleanor’s coachman had told him, about the dank rooms and Bertie’s bully of a father who’d been ready to hold her back when she wanted to leave. Sinclair would never send her back to that.

  But he had to do something. He couldn’t lie awake all night and still be able to give attention to his cases. He couldn’t stand up in front of a judge and tell him in the politest possible terms that his lordship was an ass when he was daydreaming about unbuttoning Bertie’s new and prim governess gowns.

  He could always stay overnight at chambers, Sinclair thought as he snatched up his robes and followed Henry out. He never had, always wanting to return home to his young family, but knowing Bertie slept so near him every night was going to drive him mad.

  Henry helped Sinclair settle his robes and look respectable before he strode from Essex Court across the way to Middle Temple Hall. The brown brick building, its white corner trim and windows soot-stained, stood like a cathedral on the green of the gardens, an imposing edifice of the law. The walls told the outside world that here was an important place of learning and weighty decisions. If Sinclair hadn’t known many of the men inside it so well, he might believe it.

  His lordship, Sir Percival Montague, whom Sinclair had enjoyed confounding over the case of Ruth Baxter, didn’t rise when Sinclair entered the room he’d commandeered for this meeting. Sir Percival, Old Monty to both friends and detractors, had a cadaverous look, though Sinclair knew he was fond of meat and drink. He had watery blue eyes in a sunken face, thin lips, grayish skin, and wisps of hair across the top of his balding head.

  Sir Percival snapped his fingers at a lackey waiting nearby and signaled him to pour two glasses of sherry. “I’m sorry I have no Scots whiskey,” Old Monty said, not looking one bit sorry. “But I like a bit of sherry in the morning. Settles the digestion.”

  Sinclair thought sherry overly sweet and cloying, but he politely accepted a glass.

  “You know why we’re meeting,” Sir Percival said. He drained his glass and held it up for the lackey to pour more.

/>   “Either you want to admonish me for switching from prosecution to defense in the case of Ruth Baxter,” Sinclair said calmly, “or you are measuring my backside for a place on the bench.”

  Old Monty looked pained. “You always have a blunt way of putting things, McBride. This endears you to some of my colleagues who find you rustic and amusing, but not to me. Take care to remember that. You were perfectly right, of course, in the Baxter case—the man taken in arrest has confessed to all and should shortly meet his maker, or else the bleakness of Dartmoor. But there is no secret that you are moving swiftly in your profession. You’re young for a silk, aren’t you?”

  Sinclair was in his thirties. “I worked hard. Not much else to do, is there?”

  “Not really.” Monty drank his sherry and held the glass up again to his footman. “I like to see a barrister take keen interest in his work. You’re a family man? Married, are you?”

  Sinclair had known this man since his arrival at the Temple, but Old Monty was notorious for remembering no detail of anyone else’s life, barely even of his own. “I have two children,” Sinclair said. “My wife . . .” He stopped, and swallowed. Forgive me, Maggie. “My wife passed on seven years ago.”

  “Ah? Well, I am sorry to hear it.”

  Whether that was sympathy or he was sorry to hear that Sinclair was no longer married, Sinclair couldn’t say. “Thank you,” he managed.

  “I like to see a barrister settled. A wife keeps a man at home and out of mischief, doesn’t she?”

  Sinclair decided to nod. Sinclair hadn’t always been a dull man confined to his job, as Bertie had implied this morning. Andrew’s antics had been inherited—both Sinclair and Elliot had been the wild McBride boys, impossible to tame. Patrick had despaired of them but felt better when they’d each joined the army—Elliot going to India, Sinclair to Africa.

  Sinclair had done well as an officer, but he’d retained his wild streak off duty. After Maggie had taken him in hand, Sinclair had given up such enjoyments as filling an obnoxious English officer’s tent with goats. Actually, she’d laughed uproariously when Sinclair had told her the tale. The English officer in question had cruelly beaten one of the Egyptian boys assigned to help him. Sinclair had made sure the goats created the worst possible mess, then took the English captain a little way from camp and explained his feelings, with his fists.

  “You’re young, as I observed,” Monty said. “You can always remarry.”

  Sinclair’s anger stirred. Of course. When one wife goes, uproot her and replant another in her place. Choose one that looks well and goes with the furniture.

  “Perhaps,” Sinclair said without inflection.

  “You take my advice, my boy. The committees like to see a man settled. They want no fear of a judge getting into scandal. If you don’t mind me saying so, your name is already associated with enough scandal as it is.”

  Sinclair blinked. “Is it?” He led a model life, at least these days. His liaisons in the last few years had been conducted with utmost discretion.

  “Your brothers and sister.” Monty put his fingers together, now seeming to remember every detail of Sinclair’s life. “One nearly mad, hiding himself in the wilds of Scotland. Then there was your youngest brother and that scandal he recently caused with the Duchess of Southdown. And your sister, of course, marrying into the notorious Mackenzie family. Lord Cameron Mackenzie has a terrible reputation, rumored to have killed his first wife, and there was your sister—a lady-in-waiting to the queen, no less—eloping with him.” Monty shook his head. “Some of us on the bench were not keen to even consider you, but there are those who persuaded me to give you a chance.”

  Sinclair’s irritation rose, the darker side of his sense of humor starting to itch. “Maybe you’re thinking I should replace my brothers and sister with new ones too.” He let his accent grow thick. “Mebbe made to order.”

  “No use you taking offense, McBride,” Monty said, looking down his nose. “It’s not bad advice. Marry a respectable young woman, and your wife’s family will cancel out any embarrassment yours have perpetrated.”

  “Debts and credits, eh?” Sinclair asked.

  “Exactly.” Monty almost smiled. “You have grasped it. I know several eligible young women, from excellent families, who might suit.”

  “So do my brothers and my many sisters-in-law,” Sinclair said, trying to keep the annoyance from his voice. He thought of Clara Thomalin from the night before, with her cold skin and colorless face. Perhaps a fine enough woman, but not as a life mate. “I’m inundated with eligible bloody women.”

  “No need to swear, though I suppose it’s the Scots way.” Monty sat back in his chair, lifting his hand in dismissal. “You think on what I’ve said, McBride. If you want to move up in the world, don’t sneer at your betters and their advice.”

  The lackey understood the cues. He set down the sherry goblet and moved to the door to open it for Sinclair.

  Sinclair got himself to his feet and swung around to go, making himself say nothing in response.

  He seemed to hear Bertie’s voice ringing in his head. Silly old man, she’d say when Sinclair told her about it. He’s like a spider, inn’t he? Waiting in his web for someone to come along so he can bully him. And she’d laugh.

  Not until Sinclair was halfway back to his chambers, his stride swift, did he realize that he’d pictured sitting down with Bertie and confiding all to her without giving it a second thought.

  Jeffrey Mitchell had sulked in the pub until late into the night, and this morning, he was paying for it. His head pounded and his eyes ached, and he wasn’t happy that the winter day was so bright. Sunshine leaked through even the close-set buildings of Whitechapel to stab at him.

  He didn’t want to be home, not alone in his tiny lodgings. He didn’t want to go all the way to Hackney to see the woman who called herself Sylvie, pretending to be French, even if she was a good ride. She wasn’t no more French than Jeffrey was, but she’d been a whore, and caught more flats with her fake accent and name.

  Jeffrey didn’t want her, though. He wanted Bertie.

  Bertie usually told Jeffrey to go to the devil, but her eyes sparkled when she said it. She laughed a lot—she was a great girl for laughing, was Bertie. She could scold too, but Jeffrey would teach her not to when they married.

  And he’d marry her. Didn’t matter that she’d run off to be the tart of some rich gent. That couldn’t last, and she’d be back. Jeffrey would forgive her, after he pounded her for leaving him. She’d learn not to do that. She’d learn that Jeffrey would take care of her and none other.

  A carriage came down the narrow lane. Jeffrey moved close to the wall, hugging it so the big horses and conveyance could move through. When the coach was abreast of him, a man called out the open window. “You. Come here.”

  Wasn’t many back here but Jeffrey, so it was obvious who he meant. Jeffrey moved a cautious step forward. Gentry coves passing through sometimes asked the denizens of the streets to run errands for them, and the denizens, usually needing extra coin, complied. But sometimes gents wanted more than that, especially the ones with unnatural appetites.

  “Yes, you,” the man went on, leaning out the window. “You’ll want to speak to me, because I can tell you exactly what you want to know about Basher McBride.”

  Jeffrey’s caution deserted him. “That bloody Scots barrister? What about him?”

  The man beckoned Jeffrey over, and Jeffrey stepped to the coach and peered inside. He tried to see what the man looked like, but the gent had a hat pulled over his eyes. He dressed like any other rich cove—heavy coat against the cold, gloves, walking stick he rested his hand on. The carriage was shining and fine, with a beefy coachman on the box.

  “He’s got your woman,” the man said. “The little pickpocket. She’s yours, isn’t she?”

  Bertie. Jeffrey’s heart beat faster.
“Yeah, she’s mine. Where is she?”

  The man opened the door of the carriage. “Come inside,” he said. “And I’ll tell you all about it.”

  Bertie settled herself on a bench in Hyde Park and let Cat and Andrew play, keeping a sharp eye on Andrew. Andrew’s idea of playing meant running around like a mad thing, chasing birds, yelling, and pointing out things to Bertie at the top of his voice. He’d brought a little boat, which he’d sail in the nearest pond whenever he calmed down. Bertie had learned to let him run first and do more complicated things later.

  Cat, on the other hand, spread out a little blanket near the bench, sat her doll down next to her, and proceeded to hand out a pretend tea. Every movement was solemn, no smiling, the ritual rehearsed.

  Bertie watched her speculatively. There was something wrong with Cat, something beyond grief for her mother, but she didn’t know what. The girl should be rushing after Andrew, or skipping rope, or pushing a hoop, or other things little rich girls in parks liked to do. Instead, she sat very quietly, pouring imaginary tea without showing any real enjoyment. Every morning, the maid Aoife dressed Cat as though she were a doll herself, Cat taking no interest in the proceedings. That was wrong. Every girl, rich or poor, young or old, liked to primp herself. Cat took very good care not to tear her clothes or soil them—unlike Andrew who was determined to ruin a fine suit every day—but that was as far as her interest went.

  Cat finished her tea-pouring ritual, as though it had been a chore she needed to get through, then she reached into her bag for a notebook—the one she let no one else see. Her pencil began moving, Cat staring at the pages, but again showing no real interest.

  The bench moved as someone plopped down beside Bertie, too close to her. She looked up, and all the breath went out of her.

  “Bertie-girl,” Jeffrey said as he sent her an evil grin. “There you are.”

  Chapter 10

  Bertie cast a swift glance around her. Andrew was still running, flapping his arms as though trying to fly, and Cat had her head down over her notebook. The kids were safe, she saw with relief, but the mild winter day suddenly became colder.