Woo'd in Haste

by Sabrina Darby

  Although, standing here with Bianca was nothing like the perfect image he had envisioned. Yes, there had been grass in some of his daydreamed moments. Picnics with her hair entangled in his fingers, her dress spread out over a blanket. But in those visions they never talked. There was nothing beneath the beautiful veneer of their imagined love.

  This . . . sitting here on the damp earth was real. How did one move this awkward conversation toward that idyllic place?

  “But fortuitous. A man should not be without some manner of employment.” Of course, the type of employment a gentleman should take on was that of entertainment, such as gambling and hunting. Painting, even.

  Bianca nodded. “Tell me about your travels, Mr. Dore. I’ve never been beyond Brighton.”

  “As far as that?”

  “Mock me, if you will,” she said. “Women have far less freedom then men, regardless of their place in society. And I less than many.”

  “Yes, I did hear about your sister’s odd decree.”

  “Listen to gossip, do you?” He was too nervous to look away from where his line dipped in the water to look at her, to gauge her mood from her expression. But her tone was light, playful.

  “To Lord Reginald.”

  She laughed. Unreserved laughter that he could take as true. “Yes, one and the same. How did you come to be friends with him in any event?”

  “Harrow,” he said promptly, and then for good measure added, “and his good friend Bunbury.”

  “And where is Bunbury now?”

  Luc blanked. The fictional Bunbury was obviously nowhere. Now he needed to concoct one more lie. Lie upon lie.

  “He chose to stay on the Continent.”

  Thankfully, this didn’t seem to interest Bianca. “Tell me about your family.”

  Was this an interrogation?

  “They are . . . good people,” he said tentatively, before deciding to stick as close to the truth as possible. “I have two older sisters, both married. I am uncle to five, in fact, though I have met only one of those five.” They had each accommodatingly delivered their noble husbands an heir and one more. His eldest sister had added a daughter in for good measure. “My parents are both still living. My father is . . . quite my opposite. Gregarious, outgoing. Always laughing.”

  “Much like Lord Reginald.”

  True. Though he had never considered it before. Odd that the qualities that made living with his father so difficult were the very ones that had drawn him toward his friend. It was a troubling enough thought that he did not wish to examine it further.

  “What about you, Miss Mansfield? Tell me about your family.”

  “I’ve got one!” At Thomas’s cry, Bianca stuck her pole in the ground and waded over to where he was struggling to reel his catch in. She unfastened the net from her dress and a few seconds later a wet, slithery fish flopped about on the embankment.

  “Well done, Tommy!”

  The young boy was beaming from ear to ear so Luc, too, stood up and added his admiration. “Well done.”

  He had green eyes. It was hard to see at first, because he was so tall and she had never before looked at him so directly, but now she knew. They were a murky green.

  And she kept seeing them even though, now that they’d returned to their positions in hopes of catching more fish, her own eyes were trained on the water.

  Not that she should be noticing the eyes of the chatty new tutor. He was friendly. Perhaps overly so. It was clear that he had never before worked in such a capacity, as a servant in a family home. Likely, as companion to that Mr. Bunbury he had been more of a friend.

  He felt like a friend. Like she had known him for ages, could tease him as she might tease Alice. He was surprisingly easy to talk to. And there was that moment when their eyes had met, and it had felt like . . . like by that brief contact of sight they were seeing each other’s true selves. Perhaps it was a fanciful notion, but if he were any other man, if he were eligible, she would have thought that moment meant something. However, she could hardly cast him as an Orville, Darcy, Wentworth, or any other hero of which she had read in fiction.

  In fact, he was a bit too friendly. Perhaps that was the source of Lottie’s discomfort. Her governess was more reserved. Bianca had not witnessed the great majority of their interactions.

  But still, hiding something? That seemed a bit far-fetched. Bianca had discerned no hint of falsehood in his description of his family or of his travels.

  “I don’t mean to be forward, Miss Mansfield, but it was all too obvious at dinner last night that you are not content to remain here.”

  He didn’t mean to be forward, but he was. Nonetheless, he was right. She was not content. Why shouldn’t she speak of it? Why keep it bottled up as she had all these years when clearly all of the village knew? Likely even the neighboring ones. Gossip traveled fast in this quiet area of England.

  “I am not. I am nineteen and we have the means for me to enjoy life. To seek a husband.” She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. If he was anything like his friend, Lord Reginald, marriage was furthest from his mind. Of course, Mr. Dore’s reasons would also be more pragmatic. How could he afford to keep a wife on a tutor’s salary? And where would he keep a wife? “But please, let’s not talk of this. My life is hardly of interest when one has traveled the world. Tell me a story, anything.”

  “As you wish,” he said, but there was an odd tone in his voice and she spared him another quick glance. He shook his head and gave an ineffectual tug on the line. “One of our last stops was Marseilles. It was there that the indomitable Geoffrey decided he no longer wished to be a valet.”

  Surprised, she looked at him again, forgetting to do so surreptitiously.

  “What did Mr. Bunbury do?”

  Mr. Dore paused oddly. “I believe he planned to do without until he returned to London. He knew how to fend for himself and, of course, I was there to assist if need be. Then he remained on the Continent and I do not know what he has since chosen to do. But the story of interest is Geoffrey. If you had known him, you would have thought him the most staid, proper valet in the world. But he fell in love and ran off with our innkeeper’s daughter.”

  “Love makes people do surprising things,” she said, thinking of Fanny Burney’s Cecilia and the heroine’s willingness to give up her fortune for love.

  Mr. Dore coughed. “Yes,” he said, and there was something in his tone that made her look at him closely. Made her wonder what he had done for love. Made her wonder if she, too, would be equally daring. “Yes, it does.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  * * *

  “I did a tour in my day,” her father said, in a tone of fond reminiscence. “Before the revolution, of course. I imagine Paris must be different after all that Bonaparte did to it.” Bianca listened attentively. He rarely ever talked about the past, about anything further back than Thomas’s birth. In fact, mealtime conversations usually revolved around hunting, fishing, estate management, Thomas’s education, and all the other mundane details of daily life.

  “Did you go alone, Papa?” she asked, even as Mr. Dore said, “I imagine so.”

  They looked at each other and each laughed. Mr. Dore was tall and big but at the same time he was lean, and when he smiled, the corner of his eyes and mouth crinkled. He smiled and laughed a lot. It was one of the things Bianca liked about him. Not that she liked him. He was just her brother’s tutor and not someone she should feel one way or the other about.

  She tilted her head to indicate that he should continue. She wanted to hear about Paris. After all, it was likely she’d never leave this corner of England her entire life, let alone the country.

  “I was told that the sewers are much improved, as well as the Louvre and the Tuileries.”

  Bianca laughed. “Do you think Bonaparte would have appreciated that his palace is considered as beautiful as his sewers?”

  “Travel is for the young,” her father said, patting his gut, which, though admittedly was
decidedly paunchy, hardly stopped him from riding to the hounds. “But I firmly believe every young man should do so, if he has the means. If we’re at peace.”

  “I want to go,” Thomas said.

  “And so you shall.”

  “You’ll be well prepared with Mr. Dore here,” Lottie said. “Perhaps he’ll even be available to accompany you when the time comes. After Thomas begins at Eton, do you plan to continue accompanying men abroad or will you seek another position such as this?”

  Mr. Dore’s smile faded. As if he didn’t like to think about the future. It must be hard for a man who must be independent but also had no income other than what he earned.

  “I hardly know,” he said, “though I wish to settle down.” He glanced at her and for a brief moment she was caught by the intensity of his gaze. Thus far he seemed affable, and at turns serious. But she didn’t think of him as a man of secrets or deep passions. More Orville than Darcy, not that she was comparing him to her favorite heroes.

  But then he looked at her like this, as if he wished to impart some deeper meaning, or as if he were some tortured soul.

  “What of you, Miss Mansfield? Would you like to travel?”

  Everyone looked at her. Her father stared as if he had never imagined such an idea.

  “You could come with me, Bea,” Thomas offered. “Since a lady shouldn’t travel alone.”

  From everything Bianca had ever heard or read of Grand Tours, it was a time for single men to be . . . single men. A sister would likely be in the way. But she refrained from saying so.

  “That’s very kind of you, Tommy. To be truthful, I’d simply like to go to London. And Brighton. And Bath. And all the seaside towns. Sooner, rather than later.”

  Her father huffed. “You’ll go soon enough, Bianca. I want no more talk of such bothersome things.”

  Which was exactly why she never wasted time thinking about traveling. There was no point.

  Despite the slight tension, at night, across the dining table, conversation had never been so lively. Simply having another person present changed the dynamic. Of course, when Kate and Henrietta returned home, there was chatter about everything they had done and everyone they had seen, but that was always underlain with everything that went unsaid, and was said.

  After dinner, as Bianca played on the pianoforte while her father and Thomas played a game of chess and Lottie worked on her sewing, Mr. Dore lingered near her under the excuse of turning her pages for her.

  It was all very proper, but he seemed to be paying her an inordinate amount of attention.

  “You should see London,” he said quietly. “It’s unfair that you should be forced to rusticate while your sister gallivants about.”

  “What do you know of it?”

  “Gossip,” he admitted, using the same word she had accused him of during the fishing expedition. “But your father seemed to give truth to those rumors. You are like the Sleeping Beauty here.”

  “From Little Briar Rose?” She laughed. “How ridiculous.”

  He smiled, too. “You are rather widely read for someone who has never left her village.”

  “Oh, I’ve left. I actually have been to Brighton,” she reminded him. “It’s so close and we do have family there, but only the once. However, books are my escape. It’s how I travel. How I see the world. I suppose that’s why, even though a tutor, you claim to not believe books the source of best knowledge. When one can move freely, experience things for oneself, one need not rely on a book.”

  “Exactly, Miss Mansfield! Have you read any Rousseau?”

  “I have not,” Bianca admitted.

  “In his book, Emile, he says, and I paraphrase, ‘if one would learn, live life.’ If there is one thing I have learned from my travels, it is that education may take place in the oddest of places.”

  “But you were not a boy of eight,” Lottie reminded him loudly. Dear Lord, had she been listening to the entire conversation? Did that mean her father and Thomas had heard? But no, they were across the room, and though they both looked up now, they had been engrossed in their game. Lottie was much closer.

  “Which is why I believe in mixing excursions with more classical learning,” Mr. Dore returned.

  Although not a skilled chess player like her sister, even Bianca knew when a point was won. But it was a point that simply made her resentful of her sister yet again. Of the ease with which Kate went about her life, trampling upon everyone else’s.

  CHAPTER SIX

  * * *

  None of it was proper, but Mr. Dore insisted on coming along on all of Bianca’s outings with Thomas, under the excuse that every experience was a learning experience. That one could learn as much from a morning of fishing as one could from a dry text. It was an interesting theory. Bianca wasn’t certain how rigorously it would prepare Thomas for Eton, but her brother responded to Mr. Dore far better than he had to Lottie. Even if it didn’t seem as though the lessons were particularly advanced.

  None of this was proper. Especially as today, as they stopped for a picnic after a morning of fishing, their small party consisted only of Mr. Dore, Bianca, and Thomas. Lottie hated fishing, well, disliked fish in general, but as long as Bianca had known her, she had begged off joining in on fishing expeditions.

  Which was particularly odd considering the warning she had imparted just the day before.

  “Bianca, I think you have been spending too much time with Mr. Dore.”

  “With Mr. Dore and Thomas, you mean?”

  Bianca had said the words carefully, trying to ignore the way her pulse raced with panic, as if she’d been caught at something naughty. Even though she’d done nothing at all. Nothing but become aware of the tutor as a man, the way Alice was.

  No, not the way Alice was.

  She was aware of Luc because they had shared a moment.

  Many moments.

  Sometimes she even thought of him as Luc now.

  “Yes. But Thomas is no proper chaperone.”

  Bianca had laughed. Yes, Lottie had instilled in Bianca all the niceties necessary for a Season in London, but here in Watersham there was little reason to practice such unnatural behavior. So what if she took long walks alone across the fields, or spent a morning with her brother and his tutor?

  “You’ve been there most times,” Bianca protested. “And Mr. Dore is hardly someone to worry about. Surely by now you’ve amended your suspicions. He is the most amiable, gentle man I’ve ever met.”

  “And how many men have you met?” Lottie said.

  Which had been a good point, but still.

  And perhaps a point she should have considered more. Because as she took a bite of her jam-covered biscuit, she noticed Mr. Dore staring at her.

  “What is it? Why do you stare?” Bianca touched her lips lightly, searching for crumbs or some smear of jam she had missed.

  He flushed. He looked around and she followed his gaze to where Thomas was crouched down several yards away staring at some crawling thing in the grass.

  “It is just . . .” He sounded choked. “Your eyes.”

  She blinked. “My eyes?”

  “I do apologize. I shouldn’t . . .”

  Heat filled her own cheeks and a tingling of awareness scattered over her skin. He was not suggesting there was anything amiss with her at all.

  No. This was admiration. The way Mr. Darcy had complimented Elizabeth Bennet’s fine eyes.

  This was admiration for Bianca’s eyes.

  Shock warred with embarrassment. She swallowed it all down. Forced a small smile. “What about my eyes, Mr. Dore? Do you find them entrancing? They are blue.”

  Perhaps she had not yet officially been out in society, but that did not mean she had not carefully observed human behavior in Watersham for the past nineteen years.

  It was strangely fun to tease him. He had been so effusive a conversationalist only minutes ago when he had commented on her appearance, bordering dangerously on flirtation. But Luc was no cliché of th
e dancing teacher, sweeping in with his dashing ways to ruin the daughters of the house. Instead, he seemed at this moment painfully shy.

  And yet, he was supposed to be quite worldly. Had traveled the Continent as companion to some rich nobleman. Had perfected his French, Greek, Italian, and German. Had seen all the great art, had experiences Bianca didn’t even know enough of to imagine.

  And yet . . . shy?

  She reached for the bread in the basket to have something to do with her hands. Found his hand an inch away. And then . . . the tips of his fingers touched hers. Her gaze flew to his.

  “They are not just blue,” he said, his voice low and fluid, no trace of the nervous beau at all. And his fingers rested over hers, warming her from the outside in, even as his voice did. “They are the blue of the sky on a clear, sunny day. The blue of a morning of possibility, of joy. Not just blue.”

  His gaze was so intent that she had to look away. Now she was the one with a blush surely staining her cheeks. They felt hot enough. And his fingers were not just resting over hers. They were caressing.

  Seducing.

  All of a sudden he was dangerous. She shouldn’t be alone with him, not that they were alone with Thomas nearby, but nonetheless it was entirely improper.

  He shouldn’t be touching her.

  She pulled her hand away, the bread forgotten.

  “Tell me, Mr. Dore—”

  “Luc.”

  “Pardon me?” Was he in earnest or was this the flirtatious version of him?

  “Call me Luc.”

  “I can’t.” But his name was already running through her mind like water in the stream. Luc. Luc. Luc.

  “Why not? It is my name.”

  “Your Christian name, and . . . it would hardly be proper.”

  “As if that matters to you.” Flirtatious now. Dangerous even.

  “What would you know of it?” she demanded, surprised.

  “We are here together. Your Miss Smith nowhere about to guard your virtue.”