From Governess to Countess (Matches Made in Scandal)

by Marguerite Kaye

  She could not envisage returning to London, but the fee she would earn here would give her the freedom to go anywhere she wished. Edinburgh, York, Bristol, even Paris. She could start afresh, and on her own terms.

  And as for physician Anthony Merchmont! At the end of the day, all he’d wanted was to protect his exalted status with his privileged clientele. Well, she’d conceded him that, quite uncontested. Foolishly, she could almost hear The Procurer say in her lilting tone, and could easily imagine her grandmother nodding in agreement.

  Allison reached for the locket under her pillow and opened it up to look at the miniature portrait. ‘He’s welcome to it, Seanmhair,’ she whispered in Gaelic. ‘I will start again somewhere else.’

  She closed the locket, kissing the gold casing. Her heartbeat was back to its usual steady thump. The last horrible remnants of the dream faded. She was ready to face the new day, and to make a fresh start with her charges.

  She’d been hiding behind the excuse she’d given Aleksei, that it was for the best that they didn’t care for her. The children had no one else but her for the time being, and they needed someone. She’d been too reserved with them, following their lead, and fretting about the shadow of the much-loved Anna Orlova. It was time she tried to build bridges her own way, with stories and cuddles and entertaining games. She couldn’t bring herself to like that blasted dog of theirs, but if she could find a way of making him less noxious? He was a greedy thing, which was part of his problem, for he ate anything and everything. If only he could be persuaded to eat something that was good for him, and good for his closest companions too! Allison smiled to herself. Yes, she was pretty certain it could be done, and she was pretty certain the children would like to help her too.

  * * *

  Aleksei wearily pushed aside the sheaf of papers that he had been working on, and rolled his aching shoulders. He’d been hunched over the desk for hours working on his suggested reforms. The only positive thing to come out of the effort he’d been forced to put in to oversee the Derevenko estates these last few months had been his ideas for change. Working through them with the extremely enthusiastic and supportive man of business, who produced a suspiciously complete set of his own proposals, Aleksei got the impression that Michael had been even more of a traditionalist than he’d thought. Now, the whole antiquated system would be made more efficient, and brought into the nineteenth century. Aleksei had been forced to learn a great deal more about estate management than he’d ever wished to know, and he’d had a surfeit of it for today.

  The study looked out over the formal gardens at the rear of the palace. It was a lovely day outside, the early autumn sunshine giving no hint of the harsh winter to come. He opened the window, and a burst of laughter alerted him to the presence of his wards. They were throwing a stick for that dog of theirs, and the rotund animal was lumbering after it. They probably fed it sweetmeats. He should have a word with them, put an end to that.

  Elena was wrestling the stick from the dog now, falling on her bottom when it wouldn’t let go. Aleksei waited for the wail which routinely preceded her tears, but instead the little girl laughed as the bulldog licked her face and Nikki started to tickle her. There was such sheer joy in the sound of their unbridled laughter, he couldn’t help but smile.

  Allison, who must have been watching on from one of the benches just out of view, now appeared, engaged in conversation with Catiche. What were they talking about? Aleksei felt oddly left out, like a stranger looking down on a tableau which he was permitted to view, but not to participate in. There had been a dog when he was Nikki’s age, he recalled suddenly. Not a bulldog, something much larger and long-haired, a hunting hound big enough to carry him on its back—or so he’d thought. Michael had acted as the mounting block, crouched down on all fours when he had failed to help Aleksei up using his cupped hands as he’d seen the stable hands do. He couldn’t recall the dog’s name or what had become of it.

  Were the children unhappy, as Allison alleged? They didn’t seem to be. A week ago, she’d claimed they hadn’t warmed to her either, but either her expectations were high, or there had been a recent thawing, for there were Nikki and Elena shouting to her now to throw the stick for the dog, laughing at her paltry attempt to do so. Catiche, who had been hanging back, had decided that the game of tickling wasn’t beneath her dignity after all, and was now joining in.

  Thirteen, an age which hovered between childhood and adulthood. She’d be expected to embrace society soon. Catiche and Elena were destined to follow in their mother’s footsteps, just as Nikki couldn’t escape following in Michael’s. It was how it was, how it had always been. Aleksei couldn’t change that.

  His own solution had been to join the army to escape his predetermined fate. ‘And look where that has got me,’ he muttered to no one in particular. Ought he to stay here, sacrifice his freedom for those three children out there? Was that what Michael expected of him, when he wrote that damned will? And if so, why the devil hadn’t he discussed it with him?

  Outside, Allison was attempting to restore order. He smiled, remembering their midnight row. A whole week ago, and they had barely spoken since, while he endured seven days and nights of tedium playing the aristocrat. How Michael put up with it was beyond him. Tonight he was engaged to dine at the Winter Palace again, but he could see it far enough.

  As he watched Allison swoop down to catch Nikki up, swinging him around in the air, Aleksei felt something approaching a physical shifting inside him. Elena was pleading to be swung too. Catiche tried to pick her up, staggering backwards with her sister’s weight until they both fell on to the grass. They rolled over, leaning on their elbows, looking expectantly at Allison, who set Nikki down and joined them. What was she saying? Her hands were clasped together. He remembered the way she’d recounted the tale of the seal husband, that same teasing, smile on her face. She must be telling them a fairy tale. The only tale he could recall being told as a child was the legend of the Derevenko dynasty, and a more tedious tale he could not imagine. Whatever tale Allison was telling, judging from his wards’ entranced faces, it was not tedious.

  To hell with it, he deserved a break. Closing the window, he gathered the papers together and stuffed them into a drawer of the desk. He locked it and put the key in his pocket, before making his way out into the gardens.

  To his consternation, his arrival made all three of his wards jump up into awkward curtsies and bows. Strange to feel uncomfortable with this formality, when it was what he’d required of them.

  ‘Miss Galbraith was telling us a story,’ Elena informed him, ‘but it’s finished now. You are too late.’

  ‘Not too late to help you exercise that dog of yours though, I hope. He is too fat.’ Aleksei picked up the stick. ‘You need to make him run a bit further than the end of his nose.’ He bent down, putting the stick in the little girl’s hand, gently angling her arm to maximise the throw. ‘Now, you take first turn, and then we’ll see which of the three of you can make Ortipo run the furthest.’

  * * *

  ‘So, while I could now write a thesis on who is bedding who,’ Aleksei concluded some time later, as he sat with Allison in the herb garden, ‘I have been unable to uncover any plausible motive for Michael’s murder. Which, ironically, is the one thing people are not speculating about.’

  Allison studied him from under her lashes. He looked tired and unusually despondent. ‘Did you encounter your cousin Felix during any of your socialising?’

  Aleksei rolled his eyes. ‘It has been four months since Michael died, yet Felix still avoids company.’

  ‘I know. The children have been asking for him. It seems he used to be a regular visitor here.’

  ‘I called on him at home. He all but fell on my shoulder and wept like a widow when I tried to talk of Michael. Of course they could be crocodile tears, but I really don’t think so.’ Aleksei cursed under his breath in Russian. ‘In all honesty, I can’t believe Felix is guilty of anything more serious than
a predilection for mawkishness.’

  ‘That is rather uncharitable.’

  ‘I don’t feel like being charitable! What possessed Michael to leave his progeny in my charge? Why he imagined that I was in any way suitable to do what he’d expect by his children...’ He shook his head wearily. ‘He should have stuck with Felix. The man lives and breathes St Petersburg, he could care for them in a way that I cannot. I wish to hell I could prove him as innocent as I believe him to be, but we are no closer to the truth than we were a week ago.’

  He dropped his head on to his hands, rubbing the frown which was etched on his forehead. Allison put her hand on his knee. ‘Not necessarily. I might have made a significant discovery. I hadn’t planned on telling you, because I’m not absolutely certain yet, but...’

  His eyes lit up. ‘What have you found? Tell me.’

  And so she did, explaining how the delphiniums triggered her memory of the existence of Wolf’s Bane. ‘I need to pay another visit to the Apothecary’s Garden to confirm, as I would expect in such an extensive collection, that it is grown there.’

  ‘Sweet heaven! So it is what you have been looking for, lethal and simple to use?’

  ‘Wolf’s Bane is unusual in that every component of the plant is poisonous.’

  ‘And the symptoms?’

  ‘It very much depends on the dosage, and which part of the plant was used, but if Michael ingested the root in any quantity, he would have died almost immediately.’

  ‘And it would have appeared to have been an apoplexy?’

  ‘With a high dosage, the symptoms would have seemed very similar. It would have been very quick-acting.’

  ‘Then we must be thankful for small mercies,’ Aleksei said grimly.

  ‘Yes.’ Allison bit her lip. ‘I’m afraid there’s more.’

  ‘What? For the love of—spit it out.’

  ‘It is Elizaveta. I don’t think she died of natural causes either.’

  His brows snapped together. ‘Elizaveta fell ill after suffering a severe reaction to a fish she should have known better than to eat.’

  ‘That may be what she thought happened, and it is certainly what she told the doctor, but I don’t necessarily believe it is true. You remember what I said, about the symptoms of Wolf’s Bane poison varying depending on the dosage...’

  Aleksei’s jaw dropped. ‘You believe—are you really telling me that we are dealing with not only one murder but two?’

  ‘Yes.’ The more she thought about it, the more certain she became. ‘Elizaveta was very sick, with severe stomach pains. The symptoms appeared to ease after a day and the sickness stopped, as one would expect in such cases of food intolerance, but then, as they do sometimes, they returned in a different form, and Elizaveta went into a rapid decline. Her pulse grew weaker, her breathing became laboured, until she could breathe no more. It could have been an extreme case of intolerance, as the doctor concluded. But the same effect could have been achieved with a small dosage of Wolf’s Bane.’

  ‘Not a tragic coincidence after all, but simply too much of a coincidence.’ Aleksei looked every bit as dumbfounded as Allison had been when she had first made her discovery. ‘By all the stars in heaven! This puts Michael’s murder in a very different light. But why would anyone kill Elizaveta? I know nothing of the woman.’

  His brow cleared. ‘Though I know someone who does. Her brother has been in Finland on some errand for the Emperor, but I think he is due back in St Petersburg soon. Grigory Fyodorovksi is a charmer, a rake and a rogue, but a likeable one, welcomed everywhere because the currency he deals in is what St Petersburg thrives on.’

  ‘Gossip?’

  ‘And scandal. A more contrasting pair of siblings you could not find, for my sister-in-law was, as they say here in St Petersburg, as straight as the Kryukova Canal while they say that if Grigory Fyodorovski doesn’t know a secret, then that’s because it doesn’t exist. Perhaps he’ll be able to shed some light on the situation.’

  Aleksei got to his feet, looking a very different man than the one who had joined her in the garden an hour before. ‘I’m going to spend a few hours going through Elizaveta’s papers. And I’m going to excuse myself from tonight’s dinner at the Winter Palace. I think we both deserve some time off. Would you do me the honour of dining with me?’

  Allison pursed her lips. ‘I will have to consult my diary, it is very short notice.’

  ‘May I hope that if you do have a prior engagement, you will cancel it?’

  She laughed. ‘You may. I look forward to it.’

  Aleksei smiled, bowing over her hand, and pressing a fluttering kiss to her fingertips. ‘As do I.’

  * * *

  They dined as before, à deux, in the Green Dining Room, and as before, Allison wore her green evening gown. Though he needed some tactful encouragement, she persuaded Aleksei to tell her something of his life in the army. An itinerant life, it seemed to her, where the excitement and terror of battle were intermingled with long periods of tedium, waiting out winters or waiting for new orders.

  ‘I’m making it sound as if I’ve spent my life doing other’s bidding,’ he said, frowning. ‘In a way, I suppose I have, though it did not seem so at the time.’

  ‘But you cannot remain in the army and be a law unto yourself, unless you have set your sights on General Arakcheev’s job,’ Allison said.

  Aleksei shuddered. ‘Heaven forbid. Besides, ultimately Arakcheev dances to our Emperor’s tune.’

  ‘Then you must set your sights even higher,’ Allison teased.

  ‘If I wished to do that, I’d stay in St Petersburg. I’d find a couple of European princes to marry Catiche and Elena off to. I’d abandon my plan to employ some of my former comrades as estate managers and keep Nikki’s empire in my own iron grip. And I grow weary of talking about myself.’

  Allison pushed her empty plate to one side and leaned on the table, resting her chin in her hand. ‘Then let us talk of other things.’

  Aleksei pushed back his chair, pulling her to her feet. ‘Or we could stop talking altogether.’

  There was a gleam in his eye that made her stomach flip. ‘We could. We are off duty after all.’

  His hands smoothed up her evening gloves to rest on her shoulders. She stepped closer, reaching up to touch the white-blond kink in his hair. He dipped his head, nipping her earlobe, then kissing the column of her neck. She moaned softly, flattening her hands over the expanse of his shoulders. He slid his hands down her back, cupping her bottom to pull her up against him, and then their mouths met.

  Such a kiss. Sweet and deep, a long, slow slaking of a thirst. Enough, just this meeting of lips and this tangling of tongues, it was more than enough for now. Allison closed her eyes, surrendering to the sensations, drowning in their kisses, sinking slowly, into the dark folds of their passion. His hands swept over her body, her bottom, her breasts, the curve of her hip, the dip of her waist, sensing her, mapping her, learning her, rousing her. More kisses, and she touched him too, learning his body as he did, not yet frustrated by their clothing, wanting only to kiss and to touch and to kiss, and to lose herself, to forget herself, to submerge herself in the languorous, melting sensations of their kisses, more and more kisses.

  And then the nature of the kisses changed, became more urgent, and their hands became more demanding, and their clothes became a barrier, and Allison pressed herself against Aleksei, and he staggered back, and a large serving tureen crashed on to the floor, and they both leapt apart as the door opened, and a sheepish footman asked if they required him to clear the table.

  ‘No!’ Aleksei cursed under his breath as the servant retreated hastily. ‘Do not tell me he was simply doing his job, I am perfectly well aware of that.’

  ‘I wasn’t going to say any such thing.’ Allison stared in dismay at the shattered, no doubt priceless, Derevenko china. ‘I can’t think how we came to...’

  Aleksei grinned. ‘We were not thinking.’

  ‘No. But we can�
��t possibly—at least, not here.’

  Her words, the product of her thrumming body, spoken without thinking, seemed to crackle in the air. ‘Do you mean that?’ Aleksei asked. ‘That you would, if...’

  Her mouth went dry. She could deny it, but it would be a lie, and who was to say when there would be another chance? ‘Yes.’

  Yet he did not move. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes, but not...’

  ‘Not here.’ He kissed her. ‘We will go where we will not be disturbed.’ He kissed her again. ‘Not your chamber. Nor mine. Not any room in this damned palace where a servant is a bell-pull away.’

  ‘The barge?’ Allison suggested, half-teasing.

  ‘Too far away, but if you are in the mood to be transported, I have just thought of the perfect venue.’

  * * *

  Ten minutes later, after traversing a bewildering maze of corridors and staircases, Aleksei pushed open a huge wooden door. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, as he held the door open, ‘the stables and the grooms’ quarters are in quite another part of the grounds. This is the carriage block, and no one will come here unless summoned, but just to make sure we are not disturbed...’ He turned the key in the lock, then held the lamp high. ‘What do you think? Are you transported?’

  ‘Good heavens.’ Allison stared around her in astonishment. ‘How can one family possibly require so many sleighs?’

  ‘The rivers and canals of the city are generally frozen from December until March. A sled is the quickest and safest way to get around. Here,’ Aleksei said, pointing, ‘are the small ones used by servants, which can be drawn by a pony or dogs.’

  There were several simply constructed sleds, the main body a basket-like structure, balanced on wooden runners. ‘They are compact enough to be used on the narrowest waterways,’ Aleksei told her. ‘Michael and I had our own sleighs when we were children. Mine was just exactly like this one, but Michael, naturally, had his livery painted on it. It will be Nikki’s now.’

  ‘And will you teach him to use it?’