“What a lot of hogwash,” he uttered disgustedly. “They were the dishonourable ones to treat you so badly.”
For a few astonished seconds, she couldn’t find words. Gratitude welled up. “That’s so kind of you.”
“No, it’s not,” he said. “It’s true, and if you’d been listening to your great-grandmother’s advice, you would know that.”
Silence stretched between them. A leaf detached itself from a nearby oak and fell twirling to the lawn far below. “She told me to be myself, but I was only a child. She couldn’t have known what I would become.”
“She also said not to let the opinions of others destroy you.”
“But…” Pompeia had assumed that the opinions of her parents, and those of much of society, were correct, but perhaps she’d been mistaken all along. “I should very much like to believe you.” Maybe if she repeated his words to herself over and over, she would believe them wholeheartedly someday. “James, I’m thankful for the passion we shared last night. It was wonderful, and do you know what? Passion feels right to me. I have no choice but to suppress my desires and hide my nature from the world, but I shouldn’t deny it to myself. It’s a great part of who I am.”
“An utterly delightful part,” he said fervently, reaching for her.
She mustn’t let him get carried away with his notions of honour, when he was merely captivated by carnal pleasures. She backed away. “Again, it’s kind of you to say that, but I refuse to trap you into marriage. You hardly know me, and you don’t love me, and—”
He was about to make a retort when the sound of wheels and horses on the road below drew his eyes. Judging by Pompeia’s sudden pallor, she recognized the carriage.
So did he. “It’s the Bailiwick woman. She must have heard about my grandmother’s visit and has come to pay a call.”
She grabbed his arm. “What in God’s name are we to do? Oh, I wish I’d left yesterday while I still could.”
At least she was touching him voluntarily again. “We’ll be fine. The coach will have to take the long way round to the drive and up to the house. If we run, we can reach my grandmother before she does.” He set off toward the staircase.
She picked up her skirts and followed. “And tell her what?”
“The truth, if we must. Believe me, embarrassing Grandmama would have far worse consequences than confessing to any folly of Sally’s. But maybe we won’t have to.” He pulled open the door and she hurried through.
“What else can we do?” she panted halfway down the stairs. “Mrs. Bailiwick knows I’m not married to you.”
“We shall confess to Grandmama that we met not in America, but years ago in England.” The one ray of sunlight inside the keep illuminated her face as he turned and smiled at her. “We fell madly in love at first sight.”
Her voice caught when she said, “Then what?”
They hastened into the muniment room and past the knights lined up in a row, armed to fight for their ladies of long ago. “When I begged your father for your hand, he told me you were promised to another man. Crushed but knowing my duty as a gentleman, I abandoned my suit. And yet, as a young fellow in love, I couldn’t help hoping that someday you would be mine. Before we parted, I swore that should you ever be in trouble, you needed only to write to me and I would come and save you.”
“My knight in shining armour?”
“Precisely,” he said, closing the muniment room behind them and heading down the secondary stairs. “Now for your part of the story. Why did you need my help?”
She had the answer to that one by the time they reached the first landing. “Because after my parents died, my disgusting brother invited his friends and held orgies. I had no choice but to leave home.”
He stopped short, and she bumped into him. “Is that true?” he demanded, holding her still, devouring her with his eyes.
She nodded. “He is a vile sort of man, and his lecherous friends are worse.”
“I’ll kill them all,” he said, and then laughed briefly. “No, far better to let your parents turn in their graves at who is truly bringing dishonour upon their house.” He kissed her hard on the mouth, took her firmly by the hand, and they hurried on down. “What next?”
“When I learned you were in America, I wrote to you, but chose to become a governess until you returned, always hoping to find a position near your home so I would know as soon as you arrived. When Mrs. Bailiwick hired me, I was ecstatic.”
“Until the despicable Harold mauled you. I’d like to kill him, too.” It would be far more fun, though, to be the envy of Harold, Simon and every other man for miles around. “Penniless and alone, your only choice was to flee to my home. I had, of course, already told you that in need you should claim to be my wife.”
They hurtled into the passage, out of breath and grinning crazily at one another. “That lets Sally off the hook,” Pompeia said. “Do you think it will do?”
“It will have to,” said James. “Let’s go beard the lion.”
The Dowager Lady Carling heard them out in silence. She sat champing for perhaps five minutes, which seemed like forever to Pompeia.
“I don’t believe a word of it,” the dowager said at last, “but as a story, it will do.” She scowled at the two of them, while Sally and her mother huddled on a sofa and Simon lounged in a bergère chair. The butler had been instructed to usher the unwelcome visitors into one of the parlours and leave them there. “I’m not the fool you think me. I knew there was something going on.”
“I never thought you a fool, Grandmama,” James said fondly. “Most of what we told you is true.”
“Enough of trying to bamboozle me, young man,” she said. “However, if one thing is entirely plain, it is that the two of you really are in love. You must marry immediately.”
“And we shall,” James said, squeezing Pompeia’s hand. She bit her lip, but said nothing. What in heaven’s name was she to do now?
“Go upstairs,” the dowager said, “and do not come down until I summon you.” A tiny smile curved the corners of her grim old mouth. “I believe this will be an amusing afternoon. I shall give that Bailiwick woman the set-down of her life.”
Sally and her mother giggled in unison, Simon shouted with laughter, and the dowager rounded on them all. “You three will keep your mouths shut except to agree with everything I say.”
“Yes, ma’am,” they all said as James and Pompeia hurried out of the room.
Upstairs in his bedchamber, James took her into his arms. “You have to marry me now,” he said. “Grandmama’s orders.”
Pompeia wanted to weep with frustration and sadness. “Don’t you understand? Even if I’m not quite as dreadful as I believed, it simply won’t do. Your grandmother is an astute old lady, and she was partly right. I am in love with you and have been since the day we met, but the fact remains that you don’t love me.” She turned her head and struggled to get free.
“Of course I do,” he said, holding her closer. “Weren’t you listening to the story? It was love at first sight.”
“That was just a tale,” she said. “Like the rest of it, about asking my father for my hand.”
“That was no tale,” he said. “I did ask him.”
No. What? “You did?”
“Of course, and exactly as I told my grandmother, he said you were promised to another man.”
She stared, thinking back. “I was not! He fawned all over Lord Rolstead for the better part of a year, hoping he would offer for me, until I disgraced myself. Not having to marry that boring baron was the one good outcome of giving in to my wanton nature, but if he had let me marry you, I wouldn’t have even looked at Mr. Belfort.” She ground her teeth. “How dared he refuse you without even telling me?”
James kissed her, and kissed her again. “I was foolish to accept what he said, but at the time, I was young and believed I had no choice but to withdraw. Needless to say, I thought about seducing you, but that was socially unacceptable, too. I suppose th
at’s why I almost killed poor Belfort. Without a second thought, he did what I should have, if I’d had the courage to flout society’s rules.”
“Oh, James,” she said softly, still not believing the impossible. “You really do love me?”
He smiled, and those intent grey eyes pierced her uncertain heart. “Since the day we met, Pompeia. Will you marry me?”
And so she did.
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Barbara Monajem grew up in western Canada. She wrote her first story, a fantasy about apple tree gnomes, when she was eight years old, and dabbled in neighbourhood musicals at the age of ten. At twelve, she spent a year in Oxford, England, soaking up culture and history, grubbing around at an archaeological dig, playing twosy-ball against the school wall, and spending her pocket money on adventure novels. Thanks to her mother, she became addicted to Regency romances as well. Back in Canada, she wrote some dreadful teen melodrama, survived high school, and studied English literature at the University of British Columbia. She spent several years in Montreal and published a middle grade fantasy when her children were young. Now her kids are adults, and she writes historical and paranormal romance for grownups. She lives in Georgia, USA, with an ever-shifting population of relatives, friends, and feline strays.
ISBN: 978-1-4592-0744-8
The Wanton Governess
Copyright © 2011 by Barbara Monajem
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