Barberry on one side and an Irish gypsy on the other. None of them would believe he never really wanted the titles and lands hanging around his neck like a millstone, so he’d left the country when the old Earl was barely cold in his grave. There were so many things he could do elsewhere, so many adventures to have, but he’d been doing his best to ignore the voice of his conscience and his mother’s pleas to come home ever since he’d fallen in love with the vastness and promise of the so-called New World. Another thing he could blame being Earl of Barberry for, having to leave a place he could have made his home if not for all the responsibilities he’d been so intent on running away from ten years ago.
Still, as Moss he could learn what he wanted to know, then go away again if he chose to and nobody here would even know he’d been. He ought to thank the woman striding along the path ahead of him as he stumbled in her wake like a rowing boat chasing a stately galleon.
Now what was her name? He was ashamed to find he couldn’t remember it, despite the quarterly reports she insisted on sending him of the state of his cousins’ health, happiness and progress, or lack of it. Still, she was the latest in a long line of governesses who’d all insisted on writing to him about their woes with the Selford girls when they were paid handsomely to deal with them. Just as well this one had no idea who he was, because he paid little attention to her meticulous lists of how Miss Lavender or Miss Patty, or whatever they were called, were progressing when his lawyers sent them on. Thousands of miles away he’d had to trust that his senior lawyer knew what he was doing when he’d insisted that young girls needed someone youthful to care for their happiness as well as teach them to paint screens and sew samplers, or whatever young ladies did until they were old enough to marry. Considering this female had carelessly mislaid one of his wards, he was beginning to wonder about the fellow’s wisdom and sanity right now.
‘Where are we going?’ he asked as he followed Miss Whoever into a generous old orchard.
‘If I told you it would mean nothing, unless you’ve been studying estate maps before taking up your employment?’ she said with too much irony for his taste.
‘I’m here now, aren’t I?’ he said defensively.
‘And only three weeks late as well. How very diligent, Mr Moss.’
‘That discrepancy is between me and my employer.’
‘And he doesn’t sound the most patient or tolerant of them. In your shoes I’d be careful how I conducted myself, now you’re here at last.’
‘Is that a threat?’ he asked, with what his half-sisters said was his most annoying sneer. Annoying or not, it was wasted on this woman. She was peering at what looked like a tall hutch in the twilight as if he didn’t exist.
‘An observation,’ she said absently. He felt like a fly so trivial it wasn’t even worth slapping him. ‘Don’t get too close,’ she warned and he instantly wanted to.
He was beginning to sympathise with his absent ward’s need to escape her governess’s authority. Then he got too close and an angry buzz shot past his ear. He stepped back hastily as the persistent little creatures took exception to him but, annoyingly, left the governess alone as if she belonged here and he didn’t.
‘I did warn you,’ she said with I told you so in her voice.
‘What is this place?’ he asked gruffly.
‘A bee house, of course,’ she said and followed him away as if nothing about this place troubled her, which it didn’t, he supposed—she wasn’t the one in danger of being royally stung.
‘Oh, of course, and what an ideal place for a runaway schoolgirl to hide.’
‘Lavinia is a fanciful creature and local lore insists the bees be told whatever happens in a household if they are to be part of it.’
‘And they really want to know when a girl is out of sorts with her governess?’
‘It was a possibility. Now maybe you’ll go back to the house and ask for your dinner so I can get on,’ she said as if tired of indulging him.
‘While you wander about in the dark and risk life and limb? Even I’m not that much of a yahoo, Miss... Who are you anyway?’ he demanded irritably, glad now he hadn’t remembered her name and given himself away.
‘Miss Court and I’m not in any danger since, as you pointed out just now, we are in his lordship’s private grounds. And I’ll get on a lot faster if you leave me be.’
‘No, if the wench has done something to herself in the dark you can’t carry her, great girl of fifteen or sixteen as she must be.’
‘How do you know the age of my eldest charge?’
Curse the woman, but now she sounded suspicious. Fergus searched his memory for lies he’d already told her. Even the son of a country squire would know enough to guess how old the Earl of Barberry’s wards must be now.
‘Everyone knows Barberry was left with a stable of female cousins when he inherited,’ he said and even managed to sound plausibly impatient. ‘The old lord’s quest for another male heir is hardly a secret and if those girls were old enough to be presented they wouldn’t need a governess, so even the eldest cannot be out yet.’
‘Clever,’ she said flatly and why didn’t he think it a compliment?
They reached the end of the orchards and the interfering female found a wicket gate out into the park as if by instinct, or perhaps she came here rather too often in the dark, a jealous impulse prompted Fergus. The notion she was so familiar with his grounds because she came here to meet a lover and flit through the moonlit park at the idiot’s side for a stolen idyll goaded him to the edge of fury for some odd reason. He hadn’t even seen her properly yet, but she sounded just the sort of woman to order some poor besotted idiot to dance attendance on her in the dusk so they wouldn’t be caught courting and risk dismissal. He employed the woman to look after his cousins, he told himself uncomfortably. She should be keeping a close eye on his little cousins, not planning to run off with a local curate or farmer’s son even her family might consider a misalliance.
‘Where are we going now?’ he demanded rudely, but he’d ridden all the way from Holyhead and felt as if he was entitled to be a little out of temper.
Miss Court might have a lover lurking nearby and she was being rude to the very person she ought to impress if she wanted to keep her post. Was he more impressed by his title than he thought, then? No, he didn’t want to be an earl today any more than he had ten years ago. Miss Court made him feel like a grubby schoolboy who hadn’t washed behind his ears even as his inner demons tempted him to kiss the wretched female and find out if she was as headlong and determined a lover as she was as a rescuer of wild girls in the semi-darkness. And it would be nice to find a way to make her stand back and take notice. Not that she’d waited for him to fight his inner demons back where they belonged. She was almost beyond reach by the time he realised he didn’t want to be left here like the last lame nag in a stable. He speeded up and almost fell over a tree root in the shadows.
‘Devil take it, woman, will you slow down?’
‘No. You didn’t want to come in the first place, so I don’t understand why you won’t go away. I should never have made you come,
