she is in your house. If you haven’t the courage to accept life and its troubles, if you care so little for your servants that you will let them stumble upon your bleeding and lifeless body some morning, that is all right with me. But pray do not do so until Gabriela is gone.”
“Enough!” Cleybourne’s face was white and stark, his eyes glittering with fury.
There were many who would have quailed at the sight of his rage, but Jessica stood calmly, facing him, her hands linked in front of her. He was a little frightening, but she had provoked him deliberately, seeking such a reaction. She was not about to back away from it now.
“You are a poisonous, razor-tongued witch, and I want you out of my study this minute,” Cleybourne went on, his voice low and furious. “Indeed, Miss Maitland, were it not for the impropriety of a girl of Miss Carstairs’ age residing here without a governess, I would turn you out of the house immediately.”
“No doubt you would, but as I said, my charge to take care of Gabriela came directly from the General, and I will not shirk that duty, no matter how little you like it.”
“Leave my study now. And pray let me see as little of you as possible in the time that you and Miss Carstairs are here.”
“My pleasure, Your Grace.” Jessica inclined her head slightly, then turned and swept out of the room, head high, back straight. Behind her, she heard the crash of something heavy on the Duke’s desk, followed by a series of curses, cut off by the slamming of his door.
There would be no further thoughts of killing himself tonight, Jessica knew. Cleybourne would be far too busy thinking of delightful ways to do her in. Smiling to herself, she started back toward her room, all thoughts of reading forgotten.
The book Richard slammed down on his desk after Miss Maitland left his study did little to relieve his bad temper, nor did the crash of his study door as he closed it. In fact, it left him feeling a trifle childish. He strode aimlessly around his study for a while, but that did not bring him much peace, either, and finally he gave up and went upstairs to his bed. There Noonan managed to annoy him further by clucking over the bit of port that he had spilled on his coat sleeve, but of course he could not take out his bad temper on the man. Noonan had been with him since he was barely out of short pants, and his look of wounded dignity made Richard feel like the worst sort of monster.
Baxter, of course, was almost as bad. Caroline had laughed and told him he was the only man she had ever met who was hag-ridden by his servants. But he could not be severe with either of the old men—or Miss Brown, either. The three of them had practically raised him, far more so than either of his parents had. And Nurse, of course. He had set her up in her own little cottage with a niece to care for her; she was so far gone in her mind now that she scarcely recognized anyone, but she still knew him.
It took him over an hour to fall asleep. He kept thinking of the things he should have told the venomous Miss Maitland. He wondered what her first name was, then told himself that by all rights it should be Medusa, to fit her nature. He thought with great glee of firing her. He would find another woman to look after the girl, and then he would tell Miss Maitland, quite calmly and coolly, that he would not need her services anymore. He smiled to think of the look upon her face then.
But he knew, even as he thought it, that he would not do so. Miss Maitland had been with the girl for some time, and the poor child had had enough to bear without losing her companion of the past few years. He felt guilty enough as it was to be sending the child to someone else. He could not stop thinking about the fact that Carstairs had entrusted the child to him, and he knew that he was, in effect, letting his friend down. At the time Roddy had died, he would have taken the child gladly and raised her with Alana, but her great-uncle had been the proper choice, of course. And now…well, it didn’t bear thinking of to have a child in the house again. True, she was older than Alana, but he knew that she would be a constant reminder of what he had lost.
She would, anyway, be better off with Rachel and Michael. They had no children of their own, and he suspected that Rachel felt the absence of them keenly. Rachel would welcome Gabriela. They were good people and would be much better at raising the girl than a widower sunk in sorrow. He was doing the right thing, he knew—no matter what that harpy of a governess might say.
Thinking of her made him grind his teeth again. It occurred to him once again that a governess should not look as Miss Maitland did, either. Governesses did not have manes of curling red hair that invited a man’s touch, nor wide eyes as blue as a summer sky—nor sweet curves beneath soft velvet dressing gowns. A proper governess, in fact, would never have intruded upon a man in her dressing gown, anyway!
She was, in short, a most improper person to be a governess, and he wondered if he ought to look into her suitability further. She had spoken of her father’s scandal; he faintly remembered it, though he had been recently married then and far too wrapped up in his new bride to pay attention to military scandals. But Major Maitland had come from a good family; his brother was a baron, if Richard remembered correctly, and the family had never been stained with scandal before. He thought perhaps there had been whispers of treasonous matters, and then, when the man had died, there had been a consensus that it was not surprising, the sort of end one might expect for a man who had been cashiered out of the army a few months before. No doubt the brother had done his best to cover it up.
Of course, Richard thought, he would not hold a father’s misdeed against his child, though many would have. No doubt her life had been very hard after the scandal. He knew the poisonous tongues of society matrons, and he had little doubt that she had been ostracized. To have had her fiancé jilt her would have been an added blow. It was no wonder that she had become hardened and embittered. It was a difficult life for a woman with no means of support. She would have had to depend on the generosity of her relatives, and that could be a cruel existence. The only way a woman could respectably make her living was by becoming a governess, but it would have been a bitter come-down for one who had once moved in high circles. Nor, he imagined, had it been easy for one who looked as she did to get or keep a job. Not many women were willing to introduce a flame-haired beauty into their house.
But even as he felt pity for her stirring in him, he recalled the look of contempt she had visited on him this evening, the scornful way in which she had accused him of rejecting Gabriela. She had as much as said he was a coward! Pity quickly vanished before another spurt of anger.
And so it had gone, his thoughts circling round and round, until, finally, he had fallen into a restless sleep.
Then he dreamed of her.
In the dream, he was walking down a long hallway. He did not recognize the place, but in his dream he knew that it was part of the Castle. A woman stood in front of a tall window at the end of the hallway, light streaming in through the glass. She was tall, silhouetted against the window, and her white dress, with the sun pouring through it, plainly revealed the soft curves of her body. His pace quickened.
She turned as he approached, and as he drew nearer, he saw that it was the girl’s governess. Her red hair tumbled down past her shoulders in a fiery fall. Her blue eyes were lambent, and her face was soft and beckoning in an expression that he had not seen on it before. She smiled, slowly, and he felt it in his gut.
Then, somehow, they were no longer in the hall, but on a bed, and she was beneath him, naked and yielding. Her breast filled his hand, supremely soft, her nipple in hard contrast pushing against his palm. She moved beneath him, her voice a low moan. He knew that she wanted him, and that knowledge spurred his own desire. He was hot and hard, aching for her.
She spread her legs, and he moved between them, groaning as he thrust himself home inside her.
