To Love a Governess

by Josi S. Kilpack

  Mrs. Donning was droning on and on about this grievance and that one against a cousin and a neighbor and her lady’s maid. Miss Johansson made validating comments, even offered advice regarding the maid. Mrs. Donning did not acknowledge this, however, and it became clear to Dina near the same time it must have become clear to Miss Johansson that the old woman only wanted to complain. Miss Johansson drew back to sounds of sympathy at that point, and Dina admired her tact amid an uncomfortable conversation.

  “And you, Miss Cameron,” Lady Clairmont asked several minutes into Dina’s silent presence at the table. “I understand you are a Scottish lass.” She smiled, and Dina smiled back, glad the woman had said it with kindness and not censure. “Where are you from?”

  “Braemar, originally.”

  “Not far from where David also grew up, I believe. Before he settled in England,” Miss Johansson said, turning her attention more directly toward Dina. “I understand the three of you have been friends from childhood.”

  Mary looked between Mrs. Donning and the very pregnant Mrs. Havershorn, whose expressions showed confusion. “Dina is my cousin on my mother’s side,” Mary explained. “Whereas David is a cousin on my father’s side—both Scots. Dina often visited me in Aberdeen, and David’s father’s estate bordered our own, so there was a great deal of time spent together when we were young. I am a few years older than them both, however.”

  No mention of London, which was just as well. Hiring poor relations to care for one’s children was a common enough practice, and Dina had seen going to London as a more grown-up version of her trips to Aberdeen before Mary’s marriage and David’s schooling had taken her playmates away from her. When David came to London a few weeks after Dina had arrived to help care for baby Rebecca, she’d known right away that things were different between them.

  After she’d left London some months later and without notice, she’d taken a teaching position in Braemar and cared for her grandfather who had raised her after her parents’ deaths when she’d been young. After Grandfather passed, she’d quickly come to realize how little Scotland had to offer her. The men who showed her attention were either too hard or too uneducated or too much in need of a wife who baked bread and did laundry, not who read books and spoke their language with an English influence. She had become a woman without a place to call her own, so she had asked Mary if she might return as a governess for Mary’s three children. To Mary’s credit, she had never allowed Dina’s flight from London to change the love they shared for one another. Mary had accepted Dina’s request, and now, two years later, the arrangement continued to meet the needs of all parties. These thoughts passed through Dina’s mind in the space of a blink while Miss Johansson continued looking at her expectantly. “We caught a great many frogs in those days,” Dina said, summing up all the years of connection with one small part.

  The women laughed. Miss Johansson smiled. “You should join us for the visit to the ruined abbey on Tuesday, Miss Cameron. David will be there. The two of you can reacquaint yourselves with one another.”

  To Dina’s credit, she did not shift in her seat in response to the discomfort she felt. Mary, however, did. “I’m afraid I am a bit a tyrant, Miss Johansson. There are daily lessons Dina must attend to, and the girls, as delightful as they are, require a great deal of attention.”

  Mary’s explanation could be interpreted as not wanting Dina to participate, but Dina had asked Mary to help her stay apart from the party. Were she a governess without relation to the family, she would not be included in a house party, and she preferred that position rather than that of a low-class woman putting on airs and vying for a place that was not hers. The exceptions to Dina’s wish for distance, of course, were moments such as these when the children were included. Mary had argued with her for a few days early on in the planning, then thrown up her hands in surrender. “I will never understand you, Dina. You make the oddest decisions sometimes.”

  Like leaving London without notice. Like accepting herself as member of this family until a house party made her stake claim to the role of a governess.

  “Of course, you would have responsibilities. My apologies,” Miss Johansson said, adequately sheepish. She paused, then pressed forward. “When is your half day, Miss Cameron?” She turned to look at Mary. “She has a half day each week, does she not?”

  Mary seemed surprised, as was Dina, by Miss Johansson’s determination. “Oh, well, Dina has a full day on Mondays.”

  Miss Johansson smiled wider and turned her sparkling blue eyes to Dina, who was busying herself with showing the girls the proper way to tap off the sugar spoon so that nothing spilled between the bowl and the cup. “Then we shall visit the abbey on Monday so that Miss Cameron can attend.”

  She was a persistent one, Dina thought, trying to keep her irritation and anxiety reined in. “I appreciate th’ consideration, Miss Johansson, but I attend to my personal business during my day off. I thank you all the same.”

  Miss Johansson did not give in and continued to suggest other ways that Dina could be included until Rebecca—who had been working so hard to behave like a proper lady throughout the tea—spilled her tea on both her dress and Dina’s. Dina gathered all three girls and made a hasty and apologetic retreat. When the door closed behind them, she took a deep breath of relief.

  “My dress,” Rebecca whined, holding out the skirt of her dress that was now a patchy blue and brown. Rebecca’s disposition was always quick to tears, and her lower lip began to tremble.

  “Dresses wash, mo chroi,” Dina assured her. Her own lavender day dress was not fancy, but the brown swath of tea down one side did no favors. She’d need to change and set both dresses to soak.

  “I dinnint finish my sweet,” Elizabeth pouted.

  “You had plenty,” Dina said, ushering them toward the stairs.

  “There are my lovely girls!”

  Dina looked up to see Mr. Jennings striding toward them. She smiled in greeting, but her eyes went immediately past him to David, positioned just behind Mr. Jennings’s left shoulder. The other male houseguests were there as well, but she only had eyes for David as the men came to a stop at the base of the wide staircase that led to the bedchambers—family on the right, Dina’s room included, and guests on the left.

  “What’s happened, Beebee?” Mr. Jennings asked, bending to one knee in front of his oldest daughter but also glancing at Dina’s dress as well. The girls immediately crowded him, and Dina attempted to gather the spoiled section of her dress in one hand to hide it from additional notice.

  “I spilled my tea all over everything,” Rebecca said with a tad more dramatic energy than she’d had prior to her father’s attention. Fat tears rolled down her cheeks, which Mr. Jennings wiped away with his thumb.

  “I want more jam,” Elizabeth added.

  Olivia, who was only two, blabbered something impossible to understand and climbed into her father’s arms. Dina forced her eyes away from David and moved to take Olivia, but Mr. Jennings shook his head at her, smiling with good humor.

  “Gentlemen,” Mr. Jennings said, rising to his feet with Olivia in his arms and Rebecca and Elizabeth pressing against him from both sides. “Would you excuse me for a few minutes? I need to see my girls to the nursery.” He turned toward Dina. “Can you relieve me in, say, a quarter of an hour? Is that enough time?”

  “Certainly,” Dina said with a grateful nod, embarrassed to have all this said in front of his guests, but appreciative of his help.

  “We shall wait for you at the archery range, Jennings,” one of the men Dina did not know suggested.

  “Excellent,” Mr. Jennings said as he turned toward the stairs. “Stop at the stables and tell Harold of our plans; he’ll bring the equipment.”

  “I want to arch-hary,” Rebecca whined.

  “Me too,” Elizabeth echoed.

  “Not today, my dears,” Mr. Jennings said. He’d had child-sized bows and blunt-tipped arrows made for the girls last Christmas. Oliva wa
s too young to do anything but throw the arrows by hand at the ground a foot in front of her, but all three girls loved going to the range with their father. Mary’s father, Uncle Albert, had been like that, doting on his only daughter and involving her as much as possible in the things he loved. He had always included Dina when she was visiting. Albert’s older brother, David’s father, had been a harder man. Dina had no memory of her own father, who had died when she younger than Oliva was now.

  The men moved in the direction of the door that would release them to the yard while Mr. Jennings turned to the stairs, his daughters fastened to him like barnacles. “I shall play with them until you return,” Mr. Jennings said over his shoulder, then growled like a bear and made stomping noises on his way up the stairs, eliciting giggles and squeals from his audience of three.

  Dina moved to follow them up but then stopped. The air had not thinned with the men’s departure, and she looked over her shoulder to see David still standing in the foyer.

  Mr. Jennings continued up the stairs. Dina stayed where she was, as did David, until they were alone. Several feet apart, eyes only for each other.

  A dozen things came to mind that Dina should say: “It is inappropriate for us to be alone.” “Why didn’t you go with the other men?” “I need to see to my dress.”

  “I enjoyed meeting Miss Johansson at tea today. She seems like a good woman,” she said instead.

  He nodded. “She is a good woman from a good family.”

  “She was very kind toward Mrs. Donning.”

  He nodded again but said nothing.

  “I am happy for you, David.” He believed her, didn’t he?

  “Yes, you have already told me that; Beannachd Dia dhuit.”

  She smiled at his repetition of the blessing she’d pronounced at their first meeting.

  He shifted his weight and looked side to side as though assuring they were unobserved before meeting her eye again. “I am unsettled about us, Cullodina.”

  She should remind him to call her Miss Cameron. She didn’t. “I wish you were not unsettled.”

  “As do I.” He took a step toward her and lowered his voice, which created a shiver upon her skin and tempted her to reach out and touch him. Feel the sandy texture of his chin, smooth the line between his eyebrows, run her fingers through his hair. “Why did you leave London so suddenly all those years ago? What happened?”

  She was standing at the base of the stairs and could take a step up if she wanted to preserve a more comfortable distance between them. In London she had once done exactly that when he had walked her to the base of the stairs at the end of the night. Mary had remained in the parlor with a few friends who did not seem inclined to leave any time soon. On that night, she had taken that first step on the stairs, realized they were eye level, and leaned forward to kiss him without having to go onto her toes as she usually did. It had not been their first kiss, but it was the first time she’d taken the lead. He had liked her boldness, and her going up one stair had become a pattern they’d repeated whenever the chance arose.

  She dared not risk him remembering and therefore kept the smaller-than-appropriate space between them instead and clasped her hands behind her back to prevent her giving in to temptation. “It is as I’ve told you, I realized that I had not been ready to leave Scotland after all.”

  “Overnight?”

  “It had been on my mind awhile and then became impossible to ignore.”

  His furrowed brow said that he did not fully believe her.

  “We were nineteen years old,” she explained further, though he knew all of this too. If he hadn’t known they were too young back then, he’d have realized it later. “You had schooling left to complete and holdings to learn to manage and . . .” Did she dare say more? Would additional details help him or hurt him? Perhaps that was not her decision to make and she should trust him to make sense of what she could offer. “And since I could never have become your wife, what did that leave fer me besides ruin and heartbreak?”

  His eyebrows made the slightest jump together, and his eyes narrowed. He held her with the look, and she sensed he wanted to say more, but then his expression settled to neutral. “I see.”

  They held each other’s eyes a few moments longer, then he bowed slightly. “I should rejoin the party. Good day, Miss Cameron.”

  It became her turn to feel unsettled. She reviewed their conversation as she changed out of her dress and petticoat, which had also fallen victim to Rebecca’s tea. Had she misspoken? She reviewed her words again and determined that she had not. Everything she said had been true, yet how could he not be offended? He’d never taken advantage of her. She’d been willing, even eager, but her words just now had implied that she put the responsibility of their actions on him. She’d all but said that she believed he would ruin her and carry on with his life. Her cheeks heated and her eyes filled to know she’d hurt him with those words, but maybe that was for the best too. As she’d told herself a hundred times before, a wee bit of pain now was better than a wash of it later.

  Movement in the yard caught her eye as she crossed the window on her way to the wardrobe for a fresh dress. The rudimentary archery range was on the west side, out of view from her bedchamber window, but the area of the garden she and the children frequented was directly below. A man and a woman were walking quickly toward the tree line of the woods hand in hand. She stepped back in case they were to look up and see her dressed in only her shift and stays, but once she realized they were only intent on their destination, her curiosity got the better of her and she stepped closer to the glass. She recognized Miss Johansson by her dark hair and the pale pink dress she had been wearing at tea, and her throat became thick with the weight of witnessing what was likely the beginnings of a tryst in the thick woods beyond the yard. She was quite content to believe that Miss Johansson and David did not share the touches and affection she and David had once shared.

  Only . . . she leaned in closer. The man pulling Miss Johansson into the cover of the woods had brown hair, not David’s tell-tale red.

  CHAPTER THREE

  I cannot be sure what I saw . . . although I’m pretty certain.

  It is none of my affair . . . except that I care very much about David’s happiness, and this would affect his happiness a great deal.

  Perhaps there is a perfectly chaste and reasonable explanation for sneaking into the woods alone with a man who is not your fiancé.

  This is ridiculous!

  Dina told herself these things and many others throughout the afternoon, and when Mary asked Dina to bring the girls for another performance that evening, Dina went with the purpose of determining the identity of the brown-haired man Miss Johansson had slipped into the woods with. As much as she wanted to give the benefit of the doubt to both parties, she did not think the couple had gone into the woods to gather sticks and leaves for building fairy houses.

  Dina led the girls to the hearth, arranged them with Olivia in the middle so that her older sisters would keep her in place, and then moved to the side. She’d trained Rebecca to take the lead for performances, and the little girls followed within two notes. Their sweet voices rose with confidence and melody as they sang “The Bonnie Banks o’ Loch Lomond,” anchoring the attention of the adults enough that Dina could survey the room unnoticed.

  The women were of no consequence to her investigation, and she passed over them quickly until a face she had not seen thus far in the party caught her attention. David’s mother, Mrs. Macarthur, gave her a tight smile, and Dina inclined her head in greeting. Dina had taken Mrs. Macarthur’s concerns to heart six years ago and still did not regret the choice she’d made back then. In the years since then, however, Dina had come to recognize the unfairness of Mrs. Macarthur deeming Dina responsible for David’s affection. Her exchanges with David these last few days made clear that it was only Dina who had been on the receiving end of Mrs. Macarthur’s concern. That was not fair either.

  Dina’s grandfather
, Mary’s too, had raised Dina after her mother died when she was five. Dina had loved him, and in his way she knew he had loved her too, but he had been a gruff man and she had always felt like a burden. Mary’s mother, Dina’s aunt Aileen, had often opened her home to her orphaned niece for periods of time, but her constant attempts to improve different aspects of Dina left Dina feeling like a disappointment. Mrs. Macarthur’s worry for her son’s future should Dina continue to monopolize his attention had brought back those same feelings. It was not wanting to be a negative in David’s life, as she so often felt she had been in the lives of others, that had driven her from London, and she could not help but wonder if Mrs. Macarthur had known that was how Dina would react.

  Mrs. Macarthur turned her attention back to the performance, and in an attempt to spare herself the further discomfort of lingering her thoughts on David’s mother, Dina recommitted herself to her goal of identifying the man Miss Johansson had stolen into the woods with that afternoon.

  There were six men in attendance at the house party, but she could cross Mr. Jennings, David, and the white-haired Mr. Donning from her list of possibilities. That left three men with differing shades of brown hair to be considered. One was Mr. Havershorn, whose wife seated beside him was expecting their first child. It seemed a stretch to consider that he would act upon a tryst at a party where his pregnant wife was in residence. But Dina knew enough about human nature to know not to dismiss him completely. She did not know the name of the other two men and wished she’d been able to make out more of the man’s features from the window. He had been wearing a gray coat this afternoon, but all the men were in evening dress tonight, so that was no clue.

  The first of the two men was tall, with a narrow face, lighter hair, and an attentive expression for the performance. The last man of scrutiny was thicker in the middle than the man in the window had been, but, again, how trustworthy was her observation of only a few seconds? The idea that any of these men would sneak away in the middle of the day to meet up with a woman was astounding to consider, and yet she’d have done as much for David. Had, to a lesser degree, more than once. She had not been engaged to another man, however, or at the house party being thrown by that man’s cousin to celebrate the engagement. That the man Miss Johansson was engaged to was David took Dina’s investment to another level. She had accepted long ago that David would fall in love with another woman, but the idea that she would not cleave to him and no other was a consideration Dina wished she was not entertaining now.