would be exceptionally useful to any army.”
“Your Miss Blake is quite the expert on elephants,” said Revell, beaming dangerously at Sara. “I doubt there’s another governess in Sussex—no, all of England!—that has so much experience with the creatures.”
“Miss Blake?” asked Clarissa, simultaneously enormously impressed yet uncertain as to whether she should believe Revell or not. “However would she have any experience with elephants?”
“Because I learn through reading,” said Sara quickly, before Revell could offer any additional helpful insight. Blast him for teasing her this way! Didn’t he realize the kind of trouble he was making for her? “One can learn everything about anything through books.”
But Clarissa was paying much closer attention to the elephants than to the wisdom to be gained through reading.
“We should put elephants in Mama’s greenery,” she said, grinning up at Revell. “Miss Blake and I have been charged with making the greenery in the ballroom more festive for Mama. It’s our special task. We were going to make camels for the three kings, but now I think they should have elephants instead.”
“Oh, Clarissa, I do not believe that is the wisest idea,” said Sara doubtfully. Lady Fordyce’s tastes were exceptionally traditional, and likely she would not be pleased to find elephants—even elephants cut from white pasteboard and daubed with colored inks—parading over her mantels and sideboards between the silver candlesticks, through boughs of holly and boxwood.
“Why not, Miss Blake?” asked Revell blithely. “There are plenty of elephants in the Bible, aren’t there? Begin with them, then some tigers.”
“Tigers!” exclaimed Clarissa with a small roar of relish. “Tigers for Christmas!”
Revell nodded, his eyes glinting with wicked mischief that would have shocked Albert and the others. “What better time of the year, eh? And what of a mongoose or two? Miss Blake knows of them, too, you know.”
“You must come help us, Lord Revell,” ordered Clarissa. “This afternoon, in the schoolroom. You can help Miss Blake and me cut out the animals and paint them, and then tomorrow we can arrange them in the ballroom.”
“I’m sure Lord Revell has other plans, Clarissa,” said Sara, silently praying that he did. “Doubtless he’d rather spend his afternoon in the company of the other gentlemen like your brother, not in the schoolroom with us.”
“Not at all,” said Revell, holding his hand over his heart so gallantly that Clarissa giggled. “I cannot think of a greater pleasure than spending the afternoon in the company of two such delightful ladies.”
“Please, my lord,” said Sara, almost pleading. “It is not necessary.”
“And I say it is my decision if I choose to splatter myself with glue and paint for the sake of the elephants and tigers and mongooses, too.” His grin softened as their gazes met over Clarissa’s head. “Besides, isn’t Christmas the time for miracles and magic of every sort?”
Chapter Four
Revell stood before his bedchamber window, watching the two figures make their way in a zigzagging path across the snowy field toward the house. Against the stark black and white of the wintry landscape, the pair stood out in sharp contrast: the little girl in her bright red cardinal and blue mittens, the woman in a cloak of darkest green. But then, for Revell, the two would be the first he’d spot even in the most crowded street in London.
“That be Miss Fordyce and her governess, my lord,” said the maidservant, following his gaze as she set the tray on the table beside him. The woman was past middle age, a servant who’d likely been with the Fordyces for so long that she felt entitled to certain conversational freedoms like this. “No matter what the weather, them two always go walking at this time of the day, regular as clockwork after first lessons.”
Revell, of course, had discovered this for himself, having already visited the schoolroom as promised to help with the tigers and elephants. The schoolroom had been empty except for a mystified parlor maid who’d informed him of Miss Clarissa’s customary walk. He’d have to control his impatience for another half hour or so until they returned, and without much interest he glanced at the plates of sliced cold meat, breads, and cheese on the tray that the cook had sent up to him out of a certain pity.
He knew he was already being regarded as something of an oddity. The other houseguests had scattered for the day, the gentlemen out riding and visiting the local tavern with Albert and Sir David as their leaders, and the ladies, under Lady Fordyce’s guidance, putting the final touches on their masquerade costumes at the local milliners and mantua-makers. His polite refusal to join either party had raised eyebrows, and he could only imagine what manner of wicked pastimes the others had imagined for him instead. How wonderfully shocked they’d be when they, inevitably, learned the truth!
“Aye, my lord, that Miss Blake has worked magic with the little miss,” continued the maidservant with approval, taking Revell’s silence as encouragement. “Like a little wild creature, she was, before Miss Blake came. ’Course ’tis to be expected, being so petted and all, but Miss Blake was the only one to give her manners to match her breeding.”
“How long has Miss Blake been with the family?” asked Revell, striving to sound only idly interested. He knew it wasn’t wise to encourage such confidential discussions with servants, but he’d learned next to nothing from Albert, and God help him, he’d so blasted much at stake.
“Five years this spring, my lord,” answered the maid-servant promptly, her hands folded over the front of her apron. “Before that she was with Lady Gordon, whose husband made such a fortune in India. A regular nabob, he was. Oh, begging your pardon, my lord, meaning no disrespect to yourself.”
“None taken,” said Revell, his thoughts racing. He remembered Lady Gordon—Lady Gorgon, they’d called her, on account of her imperious manner—from Calcutta’s small English social world before her husband had retired from the Company and returned home. But how would Sara have become a servant in Lady Gordon’s household, and why in blazes would she have left India—and him—so suddenly to do so? “Though I suppose they must have become acquainted in India together.”
“Miss Blake in India, my lord?” asked the servant, scandalized. “She’s a proper English lass, is our Miss Blake, not one of those wild, brown-skinned hussies from the colonies! Begging pardon again, my lord, but ’tis different for gentlemen. You know how it be, my lord. Lady Fordyce would never have taken Miss Blake if she’d lived wild among the pagan savages like that.”
“I understand,” said Revell, and he did, far more than the servant could realize. He’d forgotten the prejudice against women who’d gone out to India, let alone the ones like Sara who’d been born there. She hadn’t even had the advantage of being sent home to England for education as a girl, the way most British children were, simply because her widowed father hadn’t been able to bear parting with her. When he’d teased Sara about tigers and elephants before Clarissa, he’d only meant to remind her of the past they’d shared. Instead, great bumbling ass that he was, he’d put her entire livelihood and reputation at risk.
“If that will be all, my lord,” the maidservant was saying as she dropped a quick curtsy, the edges of her apron clutched in her hands.
“Yes, yes, and thank you,” said Revell, then shook his head as he thought of the final
