He waited until his heart resumed a normal cadence. This was the woman the old headmistress would have serve as companion to Miss Hickenbottom? If he were capable of laughter, this moment crafted by the fates would have been the time for it. “Mrs. Bryant,” he said, icing his greeting with a ducal arrogance his father would have been proud of.
Most women averted their eyes out of deference to his station. Rowena stared briefly back. “Your Grace,” she returned, sinking into a flawless curtsy.
Then, she’d never been like most women. She’d been spirited and unapologetic.
The headmistress passed a probing look back and forth between them, and Rowena hurriedly lowered her gaze to the floor. Could the older woman see the years of history between him and her most-esteemed instructor? If she knew all the ways in which he had made love to this tall, Spartan beauty, she’d expire from shock. And yet... it was Rowena’s reaction that gave him pause. That uncharacteristic hesitancy that defied everything he knew about her.
Mrs. Belden reclaimed the chair behind her desk. “Will you please sit, Your Grace?” Unnerved by that change in Rowena Endicott, he sat. The fawning deference in her employer’s request and Rowena’s silence matched everything he’d come to know from Society.
As a second son bound for the military, he’d previously evoked little interest in anyone, his own father included. Most spares would have chafed at being dismissed in favor of an older brother. He, however, had reveled in the freedom it permitted him.
I could never want a duke or a lord, Graham... I only want you...
Tension crackled in the room as he settled his larger frame in the delicate shell chair better reserved for the young ladies called before this cold harridan. Of all the bloody instructors, this was the one suggested him. Oh, how the fates must be rubbing their hands with mocking glee.
“Mrs. Bryant?” the headmistress inquired.
Rowena stood stock-still with such a remarkable calm, he wondered if he’d merely confused the always laughing girl of his past with this serious-faced creature. Rowena Endicott would never have been one to move with those precisely measured steps and perch on the edge of her seat with her back straight enough to rival a military man. He peered at her through deliberately hooded lashes. Those thick, burgundy-streaked brown tresses, however, could belong to no other.
“Your Grace,” the tight-mouthed headmistress began, “I must praise the devotion and dedication that has brought you here seeking my finest instructor.” She motioned to Rowena the way Cook made a selection of roast at the market. “I thought you might interview Mrs. Bryant and determine her suitability.”
Wanting to rouse some response from the still creature, Graham turned his lips up in a sardonic grin and faced Rowena. She stared straight ahead, at the wall behind the headmistress. An honorable man would feel some compunction at the lady’s silent distress. It was there in the hard press of her lips and the muscle ticking at the corner of her right eye. At one time, he would have sooner lopped his arm off than hurt Rowena Endicott—now Bryant—in any way. This is the woman Mrs. Belden thought fit to serve as companion to Ainsley?
This creature before him had not a hope or prayer of taming his spirited ward. As such, it would be easy to decline her services and find another. Yet, why was he more bothered by the woman she’d become? He sought to elicit... some reaction. For it grated that she should be this cool, removed creature when inside, she’d thrown him into tumult. “I concur, Mrs. Belden. An interview is in order.” He stretched out that pronouncement and, if possible, her back went all the more straight: a proud, regal carriage befitting a queen. He took an unholy glee in the idea of putting questions to her before Mrs. Belden and breaking that remarkable calm. Already knowing, in the end, after all that had come to pass, he’d never set foot outside this institution with her at his side. He craved calm in his life, and Rowena Endicott had always roused in him too much emotion for her to ever be safe.
“It is not every day a duke enters my esteemed institution, himself seeing to the task.” The headmistress tapped her desk once. “It speaks volumes of your honorable character.”
Rowena dissolved into a fit of coughing. Graham leveled a hard stare on her splotchy red cheeks and shaking frame. “Are you all right, Mrs. Bryant?” Rowena of old would have pointed her eyes at the ceiling and challenged him.
At her immediate failure to comply, the headmistress frowned. “Mrs. Bryant,” she chastised. “His Grace has spoken to you.”
Graham pondered her. Who was this new laconic woman before him?
“F-Fine,” Rowena belatedly rasped out through her strangled fit. “I am fine.” If looks could kill, she’d have smitten him dead with the fire in her eyes. At that familiar spark of her spirit, some of the tension left him, and he puzzled through her reaction.
What was the reason for her outrage? Did she believe he’d reveal their love affair from long ago to this woman and shatter her reputation as unblemished instructor? He might despise her with everything he was, but he was not such a bastard that he’d share their past with this woman or any other. That she believed he would set his teeth on edge.
Furthermore, why should she question his honor when she’d been so flippant with her words of love? How little they’d truly known each other.
“Very well. Now you may ask Mrs. Bryant your questions to determine her worth.”
Had he not briefly dropped his gaze, he’d have failed to see Rowena dig a claw-like grip into the edge of her seat. That was the spirit he recalled. A once intrepid, unapologetic young girl, free with her thoughts. This was a woman capable of the role of companion: fearless, unrepentant, strong. Such a person could easily transform a lively girl into a model of propriety and face down the ruthless members of Society. And for the first time since he’d entered the room, he entertained the possibility of bringing Rowena Bryant back as Ainsley’s companion. He started. What madness was this, even considering hiring the woman before him?
Finding strength in her unease, he leaned back, and laid his palms on the arm of his chair. “How long have you been an instructor here, Mrs. Bryant?” How long since her husband had kicked up his heels and left her in this sorry state? Damn that question for flitting forward in his mind. And God how he despised himself for caring that there had been a Mr. Bryant.
“I’ve been an instructor nine years.”
Graham’s careful mask of indifference slipped. His mouth fell agape, and he forced himself to promptly close it. She’d been married but a year, and then widowed young. She would have been just nineteen. Far too young for widow’s weeds. His chest tightened. How quickly she’d fallen in love with another, and then lost all. Why did he not relish that truth? Because I once loved her. Because I would have cut out my own heart and handed it over to secure her smile. A sad smile pulled at his lips. Yes, he’d been that foolish.
“Mrs. Bryant has provided instruction on everything from embroidering to husband hunting to painting.”
A snort escaped him. Rowena was a girl who’d rather spit at a man than pay respect to his title. It was not, however, that detail enumerated by the headmistress that earned his derision. “You are skilled, then, in the matters of husband-hunting, Mrs. Bryant?”
After all, she’d garnered not only one promise of marriage from him but another from the bastard who’d actually given his vow before God. Unlike Graham’s pathetic romantic promises atop a hill while the sun set.
Rowena glared at him. “I’m particularly skilled in recognizing faithless bounders who’ve only dishonorable intentions and guiding a lady toward respect and devotion.”
He went still. Surely the lady wasn’t... she hadn’t... by God, was she calling into question his honor? “You speak freely of respect and devotion,” he rebutted. “I trust those are important sentiments to you?”
“They should be important sentiments to everyone.” Her chest rose and fell quickly, at odds with her even tones.
“Indeed, Mrs. Bryant,” Mrs. Belden sai
d with a proud nod. “As you can see, Mrs. Bryant is skilled in helping a young lady make the most advantageous match. She is also quite skilled with watercolors and sketching.”
He forced his gaze to Rowena. “Are you, Mrs. Bryant?” She was. She’d delighted in sketching his likeness so many times in the fields of Wallingford when they’d snuck off together.
“I am merely proficient,” she said tersely.
Mrs. Belden tittered like a proud mama. “Such modesty on Mrs. Bryant’s part. She instructs her students on compositions of floral arrangements and bowls of fruit.”
Bowls of fruit and floral arrangements? Apparently, with time’s passage, Rowena had become, at best, a shell of her once-spirited self. As if in proof of that very realization, she avoided his eyes. “And is that what you see as most important, Mrs. Bryant? Making the most advantageous match?” If so, the duplicitous chit must have regretted the moment he’d returned from war, heir to a dukedom, when she’d already found herself married to... to... a Mr. Bryant. If Graham hadn’t already paved a path to hell with his actions on the battlefield, he did so in this moment, wanting to kill an already dead Mr. Bryant.
“No.” That solemn declination pierced the quiet.
“Mrs. Bryant?” the headmistress squawked. “Of course—”
Not taking his gaze from Rowena, he held up a staying hand to the older woman. He pressed her with his eyes to speak in defiance of the headmistress intending to silence her.
“For me, it is not the most advantageous match my charges might make, but rather, their ability to see through schemers and rogues with pretty endearments and dishonorable intentions. It is important that my students look past a title, and see the strength of a person’s character, else they be deceived.”
Graham furrowed his brow. That honest answer, that had nothing to do with the love they’d once shared, momentarily flummoxed him. It also marked her an ideal guide for his charge.
“A wonderful answer, is it not?” Mrs. Belden’s frank statement came, devoid of any pride or emotion.
“Indeed,” he said, looking once more to Rowena. She’d not meet his gaze but rather the headmistress opposite them. “Leave us,” Graham coolly ordered.
Rowena promptly stood, dropped a curtsy, and then started from the room.
“Not you, Mrs. Bryant,” he called over his shoulder.
The lady staggered to a stop and wheeled around, questions parading through her expressive eyes.
It was a testament to the distinguished headmistress’s aplomb that she gave no outward show at his ducal arrogance and abruptness. She moved around the desk and with smooth, elegant steps, and took her leave. The echo of her retreating footfalls indicated the lady had moved no more than five paces. Heightened senses were just one of the proverbial gifts he’d returned from battle with.
Graham stood. “Mrs. Bryant,” he drawled mockingly, and a guilty blush stained the lady’s cheeks. She’d always possessed that creamy, white skin prone to burning and blushing. Once, he’d found it endearing. Now, it just served as an unwanted reminder of their past together. And her treachery. He walked slowly forward, circling the lady, and with his every slight movement, her shoulders came further and further back. “The late Mr. Bryant left you dependent to work. Tsk, tsk. Poor form of him.”
“Is this part of your interview?” she shot back with a show of her old spirit.
Graham smirked. “Indeed, it is.”
Her mouth tightened, drawing his gaze to her tense lips. “What do you want?” She paused and added, “Your Grace.”
That bold confidence, that undaunted strength momentarily knocked him off-kilter, reminding him of the young lady who’d moved into his father’s parish and stolen his bloody heart. His stomach muscles clenched, and he damned himself for having ever been so weak.
It was only the careful mask he’d donned and the secure walls he’d resurrected about his heart and body that kept him carefully emotionless in this instance. Graham folded his arms across his chest. “Why, what do you expect I should want with you?” He layered a wealth of meaning to those words and the lady promptly dropped her gaze to the floor, in a wholly uncharacteristic way.
God help him, he preferred her snapping and hissing to this subservient instructor routine.
“Nothing,” she said quietly. “I expect you’d want nothing with me.”
And several years ago, he would have wholeheartedly concurred. After returning from fighting Boney’s forces on a litter, a breath from death, he’d discovered her gone. He’d sworn the last thing he wanted or needed in life was Rowena Endicott.
She’d been his Achilles heel. His Delilah. It was why he should call back Mrs. Belden and ask for another. And yet... he studied her. This woman, who by her birthright shared more with Miss Hickenbottom than any other seemly instructor who could be paraded before him. Other possible candidates for the post who’d barely concealed their disdain for a bastard charge. Rowena may be a widow now, and the finest instructor at Mrs. Belden’s Finishing School, but she would always be the girl who’d haltingly told him the truth of her parentage. It was why, even as he wished to send her to the Devil, not a single instructor in this entire school suited more. With slow, precise movements, Graham tugged free his immaculate white gloves. Rowena watched him, a guardedness in her eyes. “I require a companion for my ward.”
The wariness deepened in her features, settling in the mistrustful eyes she now studied him through. The tangible loss of the innocence she once had held him momentarily frozen. Life had made her a cynic, too. “And of all the companions, you wish to hire me?” Healthy skepticism coated her inquiry.
Actually, no, he didn’t. The moment she’d stepped inside this office and unsettled his already precarious world, he’d vowed to turn her away and demand another, more suitable instructor. A companion whose lips he’d not kissed. Whose thighs he’d not lain between and been welcomed with such warmth. His body still burned with the memory of her throaty moans as they’d found surcease in one another’s arms.
His resolve to hire her, despite their past together, weakened. It would be sheer folly bringing her into his household. She would serve as a daily reminder of his greatest hopes and most painful heartbreak.
She gave him a questioning look, and he searched for a curt rejection for the lady’s services. Words that would not come. He’d responsibilities to a girl that mattered more than his own weakness.
“Aren’t you the best, Mrs. Bryant?” he asked instead. He drifted closer, and the lady squared her shoulders all the more with an erect bearing any military commander would be hard-pressed to emulate. Graham lowered his lips close to her ear, and the scent of primrose that clung to her skin wafted about his senses. Just like that, he was sucked deep within her snare, her hold as strong as it had been all those years ago, as an electric charge surged between them, punctuated by her audible inhalation of air.
Yes, even as a girl of sixteen to his eighteen years, there had been an explosive passion between them.
Rowena took a hurried step away from him. “Come,” she scoffed “with my”—she stole a glance at the doorway, and when she returned her focus to him, spoke on a hushed whisper—“reputation, you would want my sullied self near your charge?”
At her grating condemnation, Graham struggled for calm. Never had he judged her as inferior because of her birthright, and once he’d promised to give her his name. That reminder lanced at his chest, still, all these years later. For even had he returned a whole man, he could have never truly made her his. As such, it shouldn’t matter that she’d not waited for him... and yet, it had mattered. Mattered still. He neatly tucked his gloves inside his jacket. “You are the best, though, aren’t you?” he countered, instead. “Hmm?” he impelled when she still said nothing.
“What would you have me say?” her question emerged faintly breathless yet coated with an anger she had no right to. “If I were to agree, it would reek of an arrogance of which only a duke could aspire.” He narrow
ed his eyebrows. God, she was as insolently clever now as she’d been then. As a duke’s mere second son, he’d been captivated by her wit. As a man, hardened by battle and seasoned by her betrayal, he ached to know her in his bed once more. “If I disagree, it would either ring of false modesty, or worse, seem as though you’ve cowed me with your ducal pomposity.”
And despite the shell of a man he’d existed as for the past eleven years, Graham’s lips twitched in a rusty smile that strained the muscles at the corner of his mouth.
Damning that revealing expression of mirth, he firmed his lips into an unyielding line and refocused himself on the sole reason for his being here. For ultimately, it was not about his past with this treacherous lady before him, but rather a vow he’d made Lieutenant Hickenbottom. It was ultimately about his ward. And more... she shared more with Rowena than she would any of the other stiff, celebrated companions Mrs. Belden would send him. “As you stated, you’ve been an instructor here for ten years?”
“Nine,” she corrected.
“My ward is spirited,” he continued over her interruption. “Romantic.” Graham dipped his lips close to her ear once more. “In short, everything you are, Rowena Bryant.”
“If that is the reason you’d employ me, then find another. I am no longer those things, Your Grace.” Your Grace. Not Graham. Not “my love.” Simply “Your Grace.” He should be grateful for the natural barrier erected between them; and yet, he wanted to strip his title from her lips and replace it with the husky whispered endearment she’d once made his name.
I am a bloody fool.
“I do not care what you are now,” he lied. “I care about who you once were.” The lady flinched and disgust coated his mouth at the bastard he’d become. “My ward has no grasp of propriety or decorum. She’ll need to be schooled before she makes her Come Out, and you will serve admirably as her companion.” Withdrawing his gloves, he turned on his heel, but her sputtering pulled him up short.
Schooling the Duke (The Heart of a Scandal, #1) Page 5
