“I got caught in the storm, Lady Barsby,” she explained in a tone that was distinctly firm rather than conciliatory. “Sir Nicholas... Well, he helped me reach the Hall safe and sound.” Turning her direct gaze back to him, she lifted her chin. “Sir, if you would just put me down—”
“The term ‘sound’ is debatable,” interrupted Nicholas. “You almost fainted not two minutes ago.” Returning his attention to Regina, he said, “Summon Mrs. Graham and instruct her to have the servants draw a bath for Miss Adams.” He caught the governess’s eye again. “Now, which way to your room?”
“Nicholas, is this really necessary?” argued Regina taking a few steps closer across the Turkish hall runner. “Besides, I really don’t think a bath will fit—”
“Won’t fit? Good Lord, woman,” Nicholas snapped. “Where are you making Miss Adams sleep? In a bandbox under the servants’ stairs?”
Miss Adams’s mouth twitched with the ghost of a smile. “My room is upstairs on the fourth floor. In the west wing above the nursery. Are you quite sure you don’t want to put me down now? I must be getting quite heavy.”
“Are you questioning my virility, Miss Adams?”
She blushed, but even so, her smile widened a fraction. “Oh, I wouldn’t dare.”
“Nicholas. I will not have the other servants lugging a bathtub and umpteen buckets of hot water to the fourth floor, just because Miss Adams got caught in the rain,” fumed Regina. “What sort of message will that send to the staff?”
Nicholas slightly adjusted the way he held Miss Adams in his arms and began to climb the stairs to the second floor. “I really don’t give a farthing,” he called back over his shoulder. “This Elizabethan monstrosity has more rooms than Carlton House. Tell Mrs. Graham to send the servants up to the Long Gallery. Miss Adams is going to occupy one of the guest rooms. I’m assuming the Amber Room is still habitable?”
“Yes. But, Nicholas...”
He ignored her. Perhaps he was acting like a sapskull for no other reason than Miss Adams was uncommonly pretty with the best legs and arse he’d ever seen. But damn it, his sister-in-law really shouldn’t have installed her in one of those cupboard-like rooms just beneath the attics. In fact, he strongly suspected she’d been given the wet nurse’s old quarters. He wouldn’t even keep his dogs there.
“I didn’t faint you know,” Miss Adams said quietly as he entered the gallery on the second floor. “I was cold, and because I’m not much of a rider, my poor legs—”
“There’s nothing poor, whatsoever, about your legs, Miss Adams.” He was behaving like a cad, and acting well outside the bounds of propriety, but he realized he enjoyed making the young woman blush. Which she did most deliciously after his flirtatious remark. By God, she had a fine complexion. All peaches and cream. He dropped his gaze to her lips, certain her lovely mouth tasted sweeter than honey...
Christ, Barsby. Stop your thoughts right there. You’ll get a bloody cockstand if you keep thinking along these lines...
Halfway along the corridor he paused before a door. “I might need to put you down.”
“At last,” she muttered and he grinned.
“What a wicked tongue you have,” he admonished with mock sternness as he gently set her on her feet. “If I were a betting man, I’d wager it has landed you in trouble on more than one occasion.”
Her cheeks reddened yet again and he had the distinct impression that what he’d just said had struck a little too close to home. Interesting...
“If I have offended you, Sir Nicholas, I apologize,” she said stepping away from him. “The last thing I want to do is displease you or Lady Barsby. Or put out the other staff for that matter. I am quite happy to retire to my usual room—”
Nicholas opened the door. Even though the curtains were partly drawn, he could see the chamber was well-appointed. “Miss Adams, this is my house and I shall do whatever I please. Now, after you.” He cocked an eyebrow. “Or would you like me to carry you in?”
“No, no, I can manage,” she said hastily. She walked past him—or perhaps stalked would be a better word—into the room quite steadily and he couldn’t resist admiring the shape of her long legs and nicely rounded derrière. Her wet muslin gown clung to her in the most delightfully sinful fashion. If Mrs. Graham and the other servants weren’t headed this way, he had a mind to linger a while longer...
Good God, I am really thinking about tupping the governess?
Nicholas drew a deep breath, ran his hand through his damp hair and took a decided step back toward the door. He’d never bothered the female staff in his life. And he’d never thought he’d be tempted to. But Miss Adams was tempting indeed.
As he stood on the threshold warring with his base male impulses, the governess threw open the gold damask curtains at one of the windows and lightning illuminated the room and her finely drawn features. Even in a torn, wet dress with her brown hair tangled all about her neck and shoulders, Miss Adams was captivating. Pretty but not in a fragile way. There was an elegant sensuality about her. An innate confidence in her bearing he found utterly appealing. If only he could get the sexually beguiling image of her standing half-naked with her skirts caught up around her waist, out of his head. His cock twitched. Yes, he really should go.
He cleared his throat. “If there’s nothing else I can do to help, Miss Adams?”
“I will be fine, Sir Nicholas. I thank you again for your assistance.”
He smiled at her dismissive tone. Oh, she was definitely a feisty miss. She turned her back and walked to the other window, and as he watched, he was struck by something else that he should have noticed sooner.
“Miss Adams, it seems you’ve had more than a gown ruined today. It appears you have also lost a shoe, your bonnet and your basket.”
She threw open the second set of curtains and when she turned around, gave a shrug. “It does not signify. I will manage.”
Nicholas crossed his arms and leaned against the doorframe. “I beg to differ. I think it is significant. I know how much my sister-in-law pays you—she wrote to me when she hired you—and it is not very much.”
Miss Adams’s delicately shaped eyebrows snapped together and even though the room was still dimly lit, Nicholas detected a flash of anger in her eyes. “Perhaps to you, sir, but for someone like me, it is enough,” she said with a proud lift of her chin. “It is certainly more than I have been paid in other positions. I cannot complain.”
“Nevertheless, I insist you receive recompense. I want you to make a list of everything you lost this afternoon—including the contents of your basket. I was taking the road from Hedgecombe to Hartfield when I saw you cutting across the field, so I’d say you had been shopping in the village, no? I want to replace whatever you purchased as well.”
Miss Adams shook her head. “That is completely unnecessary, Sir Nicholas. It is not your fault I was caught in the storm.”
Nicholas lifted an eyebrow. “No, but I am responsible for insisting you come with me. Oberon is a fast horse and it was a rough ride. Besides,” he threw her the grin he routinely used to disarm the opposite sex, “you do not wish to displease me, do you?”
Miss Adams blushed but her gaze didn’t waver. “Of course not, sir. It is just that I also do not wish to be inde—”
She broke off as the distinct trudge of approaching servants invaded the room and Nicholas sighed. He suspected she had been about to say she did not wish to be indebted to him. He could understand her reluctance.
He was not a good man. And it was likely Miss Adams had sensed that. But that wouldn’t stop him from replacing her lost clothes and other items. “I will expect a list tomorrow morning, Miss Adams,” he said in a tone that brooked no argument. “You may leave it on my desk in the library.”
She bowed her head and dipped into a small curtsy. “Yes, sir,” she said quietly. Her behavior might appear perfectly docile but judging by the stiff line of her shoulders and ruler straight posture, Nicholas rather thought she hid h
er expression for good reason. Oh yes, she was spirited all right.
Unable to conceal his grin of amusement, Nicholas stepped back from the door to admit the habitually sour-faced Mrs. Graham, a pair of footmen bearing a large tub and a small group of chambermaids armed with steaming buckets of water. As much as he longed to stay, he’d best go. Turning on his heel, he strode off down the corridor to seek the comfort of his own rooms in the adjoining east wing.
Who’d have thought a governess could be so diverting?
Too bloody diverting. His blood pounded straight to his groin yet again as he pictured the delicious Miss Adams standing completely naked in the tub as she washed herself. How the water and the suds would slide over her high, round breasts, her flat belly and over her buttocks. Her long, slender legs. Her fingers would delve between her thighs, touching where it was all slippery, warm and wet. All the places he suddenly burned to touch. And taste...
Nicholas groaned as he threw open the door to his room and shrugged off his damp traveling cloak. God, he needed to stop thinking about the woman before he did something completely insane like going back to the Amber Room and seducing her. He didn’t need or want that sort of complication in his life—bothering one of the servants would undoubtedly lead to all kinds of inconvenience.
As soon as his own bath was ready, he’d dismiss his valet and take his rampant lust in hand. He’d have to, or else his bollocks would ache like the very devil for the rest of the afternoon and night.
Loosening the leather ties on his suddenly too tight buckskin breeches, he sincerely hoped he wouldn’t be a damn, lust-ridden mess the whole time he was at Hartfield, but he feared he might. After he’d dealt with long neglected estate matters over the next week or two, he’d best return to London and secure a new mistress. It had been some months since he’d bid farewell to the very luscious Signorina Luciana in Florence. No wonder he was feeling as twitchy as a March hare.
Although, a good half hour later when his bath had been prepared and he was at last all alone, it wasn’t Luciana he thought of as he stroked himself. It was a long-legged, brunette vixen with bright hazel eyes who looked remarkably like Hartfield’s resident governess.
* * *
As soon as Sir Nicholas left the Amber Room, Abigail attempted to draw a deep calming breath. And then another. Good Lord, the man made her knees tremble and her heart pound in the most frightening way. With his saturnine good looks, devilish grin and arrogant charm, he was the type of nobleman who was dangerous in every sense of the word. The kind of nobleman who was probably used to getting what he wanted, whenever he wanted it, and who treated women like disposable playthings. Enjoyed for a brief time and then discarded when the next pretty thing caught his attention.
If the wicked glint of interest in Sir Nicholas’s cobalt blue eyes was anything to go by, she might just be on the list of latest toys to try. Perhaps she should lock the door to the Amber Room when she retired for the night.
She was about to sink onto the window seat when Mrs. Graham stopped her. Eyeing her with a good deal of dislike and suspicion the sullen housekeeper snapped, “Don’t you even think about sitting down, Miss Adams. Just look at what you are wearing. You’ll soil the velvet. Even though Sir Nicholas has issued instructions that you are to spend the night here, I wouldn’t be putting on any airs and graces if I were you.”
Several of the maids—including Keziah—cast her curious glances. What on earth must they be thinking? Exactly what she was thinking, she supposed. The master of Hartfield was bestowing favors on the governess. And he would most likely want the favor returned.
Abigail had heard about men like him. The female staff at her last place of employment had oftentimes tattled about the beneath-the-stairs exploits of the dashing young buck of the house before he’d gone up to Oxford. Fortunately, she’d never been subjected to any unwanted male attention in any position she’d held.
But the problem with Sir Nicholas was that part of her did want the attention. The weak, wanton, wicked part that she’d been trying very hard to restrain since the age of fourteen. That very same part that had almost landed her in deep trouble two years ago when she’d indulged in a brief liaison with a much too handsome footman, simply because he had a charming smile and a mischievous twinkle in his green eyes. In a way, she was lucky that all she had lost was her innocence to Mr. Harry Blake and not her position. They could have been caught out. Or worse still, she could also have ended up with child. She had sworn to herself she would never, ever take such an absurd risk again—to have intercourse with a man she wasn’t wed to, no matter how handsome he might be or how flattered she was to catch his eye.
But today, Sir Nicholas had made her think about all manner of lustful things. And a woman in her position couldn’t afford to. He wasn’t helping matters by insisting she change rooms for the night. Her gaze drifted to the massive, sumptuous looking four-poster bed of carved oak and she immediately pictured herself and Sir Nicholas tangled up together in the pristine linen sheets.
Oh, sweet Lord, that superbly made man would be sure to take her breath away if she ever saw him naked. He was undoubtedly a rakehell and as such, she was certain he would know exactly how to pleasure a woman in bed. She covered her burning cheeks with her cold, trembling hands as she blushed to the roots of her hair.
Even if Sir Nicholas’s reasons for installing her in the Amber Room were completely noble, he was putting her in a most tenuous position. Lady Barsby had been right to question him. Mrs. Graham and Keziah in particular kept eyeing her like she was a strumpet from the gutter. And she couldn’t bear it.
Because deep down inside her heart, she feared they might be right.
Yes, she’d best lock the door tonight. It seemed she couldn’t trust herself either.
To cover her discomfiture, Abigail hurried over to the fireplace and began to help one of the other maids, Bessie, light the fire.
“Would you like me to fetch you a change of clothes and your night attire, miss?” the girl whispered as they pushed twig fagots between the logs neatly stacked in the grate.
“Oh, thank you so much, Bessie,” returned Abigail in a soft, shaky voice. Touched by the young woman’s kindness, she found she was suddenly having to blink away tears. “And if you could retrieve my soap and hairbrush too—they’re on the washstand—I would be most grateful.”
“Of course.” Bessie put down the tinderbox and touched her hand. “I wouldn’t worry so, miss. Sir Nicholas is a good and fair employer. He’s handsome to be sure, but he’s not the type of man to take advantage, if that’s what you are thinking. Well, not in the time I’ve been here which is near on three years now. I’m sure—”
“Bessie. Enough of your prattling and get on with lighting that fire,” sniped Mrs. Graham from right behind them, making Abigail jump like a guilty child caught reaching for the dish of sweetmeats. “Miss Adams, your bath is ready. Please mind the Aubusson rug. I can see you’ve already muddied it by the door.”
Abigail rose from the hearth but didn’t bother retorting that the muddy footprints were clearly made by Sir Nicholas’s boots. She was already in the prickly housekeeper’s bad graces and she didn’t want to make things worse. Instead she inclined her head and replied as meekly as she could, “Of course, Mrs. Graham.”
Mrs. Graham humphed at her by way of reply and with an imperious wave of her bony hand, cleared the servants from the room. When the door clicked shut, Abigail poked the logs to encourage the flames to take purchase and then carefully removed her remaining kid slipper, ruined gown, petticoats, half-stays, shift and stockings and placed them in a neat pile on the hearthstone. Sinking into the tub of steaming water, she at last gave herself permission to enjoy the luxurious sensation of having a proper bath. It had been far too long since she’d indulged in such an extravagant thing.
All too familiar sadness filled her heart at the thought that there wasn’t really anyone in this world who cared for her. Her aunts, Meredith and Euphemia,
were distantly fond of her at best, considering the cloud of disgrace she’d left under when she’d been sent away to Mrs. Brooke’s Young Ladies’ Academy in London to receive some ‘much needed discipline’.
But as Abigail lay back in the bath and let the glorious warmth seep into her bones, she reminded herself as she had so many times in the past, there was no point in dwelling on things she could not change. She could only look forward. And regardless of Sir Nicholas’s motivation for bestowing such an unexpected privilege upon her, or the censure of Mrs. Graham or anyone else at the Hall, she was determined to enjoy every minute of it.
She’d worry about the aftermath, tomorrow.
Chapter 3
Nicholas scanned the list of lost items Miss Adams had dutifully written out for him.
One poke bonnet, straw
One medium-sized wicker basket
Two & half yards of worsted wool with matching thread
Two yards of sateen lining
Six Dorset buttons
A small bottle of lavender water
Ten sheets of good quality parchment.
He frowned and put down his first cup of coffee for the morning. Good God. Did Miss Adams really make her own clothes? Not only that, the dashed woman hadn’t added her gown, slippers and stockings to the inventory. He wasn’t used to having his orders circumvented like this. And he’d been most explicit with his instructions the day before. Miss Adams’s concern about being obligated to him must be genuine. And for some reason he didn’t really wish to explore, her distrust bothered him.
“Nicholas. You haven’t heard a word I’ve said, have you?”
Nicholas sighed wearily and glanced over the top of Miss Adams’s flagrantly deficient list to where his sister-in-law sat at the other end of the long mahogany breakfast table. Attired in a frivolously trimmed silk gown of a truly dreadful shade of purple that seemed to clash with, rather than compliment her guinea gold hair, Regina reminded him of a gaudy butterfly or perhaps even a parakeet. Bright, flighty and loud. It was moments such as these that made him question his brother’s state of mind when he’d chosen such a querulous mate. It also reminded him of the reason he tended to stay away from Hartfield.
An Improper Governess: An Improper Liaisons Novella, Book 2 Page 2
