The Governess Heiress

‘You might as well go to bed now, Mary. If Miss Lavinia was going to take a chill, we would know by now and no doubt you’ll hear if she wakes up and needs you in the night,’ Nell told the maid with a nod at the truckle bed already set up in the narrow little room for her to sleep in and still be close if Lavinia needed her.

‘Thank you, miss,’ the young maid said dutifully.

Nell wondered why nobody found it odd Mary was Lavinia’s age and yet a maid had to be far more sensible and self-disciplined than the girl she was employed to wait on. ‘This isn’t a fair world,’ she murmured when she shut the door on her responsibilities for the night. ‘You ought to know that by now.’

She was only three and twenty herself and had taken responsibility for four young girls when she was barely of age. Looking back, she wondered why Mr Poulson picked her from the list of mature and experienced applicants for this job and decided it could only be because she wasn’t either of those things. Add Miss Thibett’s hard-won praise for Nell’s five years spent as a pupil teacher at her school and she supposed Mr Poulson thought she would understand her charges better and perhaps grow up with them. She recalled her giddy, schoolgirlish rush of excitement when she’d met Mr Moss’s deceptive blue eyes for the first time tonight and wondered if it might not be better if she knew a little more about men and their odd quirks and unlikely preoccupations.

Nell had grown up apart from her brother and she wondered why aristocratic gentlemen were so harsh with dependent children as she recalled the servants’ gossip about how little time the last Earl of Barberry had for his female grandchildren. Her uncle certainly didn’t have any for her. Parting her and Colm when her brother was old enough to be sent to school at eight years old was cruel. The more she pleaded with her uncle for one holiday a year or even Christmas together, the less he was inclined to grant them even a day. The memory of being desperately lonely in her late uncle’s house made her shudder even now. She’d cried herself to sleep for months after Colm had gone away and memories of how it felt to be alone and unwanted in an echoing house was one reason she’d agreed to apply for this job when Miss Thibett suggested she should. The thought of four lonely and abandoned girls got her here when Mr Poulson chose her for the post of their governess and memories of being unwanted by her own family made her grit her teeth and stay, although she wanted to run as far and as fast as her legs would carry her as soon as she met Lavinia’s hostile glare and realised the younger Selford cousins took their cue from her and had very good glares of their own.

Was she sorry she had stayed now? It had taken months of patience to wear their hostility down, but she truly wanted the best for them. She recalled the feel of poor Lavinia sobbing in her arms and letting out so much pent-up unhappiness and at least she understood her a little better now. If she didn’t have responsibility for these lonely girls she might have agreed to join Colm and Eve for the coming Season in London, though. Maybe there she would have found a gentleman quiet and steady enough to marry and make the family she’d always longed for with. Oddly enough an image of Moss interrupted her daydream and mocked her with a cynical smile. He might be right, if he was actually here and knew what went on in her head, because by the side of him her paragon did sound dreadfully dull.

With thoughts like that jostling about in her head wasn’t it just as well she wasn’t about to join the polite world as Miss Hancourt, heiress and elderly debutante? She stared into a mirror softly lit by the candle in the nightstick. Imagining what the so-called polite world would say about her behind her back made her shiver. They would laugh and call her a quiz, she decided, and glared into her looking glass as if they were already on the other side being airily amused by her.

Her father was wild Lord Chris Hancourt, lover of the most notorious woman of her generation and her partner in reckless death when they’d raced to a party in a land at war with Britain. What would Moss make of her shady history if the truth came out? Never mind him, the Earl of Barberry would dismiss her, heiress or not. The mud that stuck to her father’s name would finish his daughter’s career as guide and mentor to young girls. She hated the thought of all the snide whispers that would do the rounds wherever she went if she did as her family wanted her to and tried to ignore them for a Season.

In a decade or so, when Penny was old enough to be presented as the last of the beautiful Selford orphans, it might be time to consider what she would do with the rest of her life, but until then she had a job to do. Nell unpinned her flimsy cap, managed to unlace her dull blue gown without the aid of a maid and sat at the dressing table to unpin her hair and brush it the vast number of times Miss Thibett had always insisted on to transform it into a shining, silken mass that fell heavily about her shoulders and reached as far as her waist.

Was this the true Nell at the heart of Miss Court’s dreary plumage? The girl looking back at her seemed far too young to be the guide and protector of four vulnerable young ladies. She looked too uncertain to resist the charm and experience of a gentleman who wasn’t anywhere near as humble as the third son of a country squire ought to be. Her brown eyes were soft and dreamy as she stopped brushing and felt the silky thickness of those tawny waves tumbling around her like a shining cape. Her workaday locks felt sensuous and heavy and a little bit wicked against her shift, as if a lover might loom out of the soft shadows of this familiar room and run his hand over the silken ripple of it at any moment, then whisper impossible things in her eagerly listening ears.

Nell shivered, but it wasn’t from cold; the hand she pictured adoring and weaving a sensuous path through her thick pelt of shining hair to find the woman underneath was firm and muscular, but gentle and a little bit reverent. The owner of that hand was intent on her, his blue eyes hot as he watched the way her creamy skin looked through fine lawn and a veil of glossy golden-brown hair that didn’t feel ordinary any more. As she went breathless with anticipation his touch would get firmer and his gaze even more intent and wickedly sure she was ready for more.

No, here she sat, shivering with hot nerves and anticipation—like the caricature of a frustrated, dried-up spinster governess, longing for a lover in every personable man she met and never finding one to watch her with heat-hazed eyes as he stepped into her dreams and took them over. Nell snapped her eyes shut, squeezing her eyelids so tight it almost hurt. Then she took up her comb to part her heavy locks, ready to make plaits for the night ahead and forget imaginary lovers of any sort. She swiftly wound it into two thick tails of hair without looking at herself in the mirror, her fingers deft and driven to tighten the silky mass as her thoughts raced. Argh, but that hurt. She couldn’t sleep with hair that pulled at her scalp like a harsh saint’s scourge for sinful thoughts. She must begin again and pay attention to what her fingers were up to this time. That was it, her hair was tied easily enough for sleep and just tight enough to remind her to sin no more, even in her dreams.

Now for her formidably proper nightgown. Plain and buttoned sternly to the neck, made up from warm and practical flannel, it was a garment without a hint of sensuality. Let anyone find a hint of seductress in such a respectable get-up and she’d shout her true identity from the rooftops. She gave herself a severe nod, knelt to say her prayers and begged to be delivered from such silly fantasies, then got into bed. Staring into the night, she ordered herself not to dream of dark-haired, piratical gentlemen who could raise such silly fantasies in a spinster’s heart without even trying as she snuffed her candle and hoped for quiet sleep against the odds.

* * *

In a faded corner of the great city of London another member of the nobility was finding it impossible to sleep. ‘Thought I’d never get away from the jackals, Lexie,’ Lord Derneley told his wife as he settled into a grim corner of a wine cellar in this rotten old house on the Strand with a sigh of relief. It might not be much for a man born to splendour and great wealth, but at least it wasn’t the Fleet Prison.

‘So did I, my love,’ she whispered back, as if their creditors might manage to hear them even down here if she wasn’t very careful. ‘Lucky for us that my Aunt Horseforth is such a misery nobody will believe you’re here. I think she expects me to be an unpaid companion and skivvy for the rest of my life,’ she added gloomily.

‘She’s a dour old trout, but it’s the only port we have in a storm. At least everyone knows she can’t abide me and wouldn’t have me in her house if she knew I was here. I could always come out of hiding and scare her into an apoplexy.’

‘No, no, Derneley, don’t do that. Her grandson will come down from Scotland and put me out on the street before she’s cold if you do and you’ll starve to death down here without me. There’s nowhere else for us to go now the creditors are after you as if you murdered someone instead of taking their horrid loans when we ran out of things to sell. Heaven knows I got nothing but snubs and refusals to acknowledge they even knew me for my pains when I tried to visit my friends,’ she said mournfully and even her selfish, careless lord looked humble and almost defeated for a moment, before his true nature reasserted itself.

‘Have you found anything worth selling yet?’

‘No, her grandson’s man of business has everything locked up that isn’t already in the bank. He doesn’t trust me,’ she said, sounding very put out.

‘If we could only lay hands on a few hundred guineas we can slope off to Italy and at least be warm while we think what we’re going to do next. Right now I can’t even afford a decent bottle of wine, for if there were ever any in here someone drank it years ago.’

‘If only Lord Chris hadn’t deceived poor Pamela so badly we’d have all the Lambury Jewels in our possession now and none of this would have happened.’

‘Except if he wasn’t dead she wouldn’t be either and if you think we’d have got a single jewel out of her, you’re more of a fool than I thought. Chris was a lot more cunning than we gave him credit for being once she’d got him under her spell though, wasn’t he?’ Lord Derneley sounded almost admiring for a moment. ‘Who would have thought he’d be able to palm her off with paste versions of the emerald and sapphire sets after she had the rubies tested to make sure they were real the moment he handed them over.’

‘Everyone said the rubies were cursed and it turned out to be true, didn’t it? My poor sister was dead within six months of wheedling the wretched things out of him. And he never even pretended to hand over his wife’s diamonds to her, so he must have put them somewhere for that horrid little girl to find.’

‘We could make far better use of them,’ her lord said thoughtfully, ‘but nobody said a word about the Lambury Jewels turning up when young Hancourt came into that blind trust thing, did they? You could be on to something, Lex,’ he added and his wife stared at him in wonder.

‘You mean we could find them?’ she said.

‘I daren’t show my face, but that tough your sister used to play with when Chris wasn’t looking might track them down for you if we promise to share.’

‘No, he’s dead and I was too frightened of him to go anywhere near him if he wasn’t. I might be stuck upstairs waiting on my nip-cheese aunt most of the time, but I suppose I could find out when they were last seen if I get her talking about the old days long enough, but are you sure we’ll be able to find them, my love?’

‘Why not? And we have nothing to lose, do we?’

‘No, we’ve already lost it,’ her ladyship said gloomily, the fabulous wealth her lord inherited the day he came of age seeming to haunt her for a moment. ‘They only let me leave Derneley House in what I stood up in and they searched me for anything valuable before they even let me do that,’ she remembered mournfully.

‘You can keep a ring and one of the small necklets when we sell the rest,’ her lord said almost generously.

‘Thank you, my love,’ she said meekly.

‘Hmm, it might work, but Hancourt’s too tough a customer for us to get anything out of him and he knows us too well.’

‘Yes, and he must be dangerous with all those scars and fighting in all the battles he survived when Gus Hancourt sent him off to be killed in the army,’ her ladyship said matter of factly, as if she saw nothing very wrong in the late Duke of Linaire’s heartless scheming to gain his nephew’s fortune.

‘Cunning as well—think how he deceived us. He was only a secretary when he came to Derneley House to take my father’s books away. He must be hiding that sister of his somewhere though, because she certainly ain’t doing the Season, is she?’

‘No, I would have heard. Aunt Horseforth may not go out much, but she corresponds with half the old dowagers of the ton.’

‘I dare say the Hancourt wench is as plain as her mother was then, or he’d have insisted she came to town by now.’

‘I wish Pamela never met their father, but she and Chris would have had far more beautiful children together if he’d been able to marry her.’

‘You’re the aunt of the wench Hancourt married though, ain’t you? You must call at Linaire House when she and Hancourt get back from the north and make sure he feels a pressing need to write to his sister. That way we’ll be able to find out her address and somehow get her to lead us to the jewels. Chris must have realised how plain she would turn out to be and he knew a man needs a good reason to wed an antidote. Lady Chris could never have hooked the son of a duke without the Lambury Jewels and the old man Lambury’s fortune as bait. The diamonds would set us up nicely and the old man gave them to Chris’s wife after the marriage, so they weren’t part of the settlements and he could leave them to his daughter if he wanted to.’

‘You’re so clever, Derneley,’ his wife said with an admiring sigh. ‘I can’t imagine how I’m to make that horrid boy of Chris’s so worried he’ll give her address away by writing to her, though.’

‘Oh, really, Lex, do I have to think of everything?’ her lord said sleepily and waved her away so he could sleep after a strenuous day of escaping his creditors and looking for new money to waste.

Chapter Five

‘Oh, do stop the carriage, Binley!’ Georgiana shouted before Nell could check her. ‘Good morning, Mr Moss.’

Nell managed a sickly smile for the man who had been haunting her dreams.

‘Good morning, Miss Georgiana, Miss Court,’ he said politely.

‘But we are keeping you standing in the rain, Mr Moss,’ Nell said in the hope he’d agree and hurry on without further ado.

‘A mere drizzle, Miss Court. We land stewards have to accustom ourselves to the whims of the English weather.’

Now why did she think he was mocking himself as much as her this time? ‘All the same it is another cold and dreary day—can we take you up as far as Brampton Village?’ she offered as politely as she could manage when she didn’t want to be shut in a closed carriage with him even for that long.

‘That is very kind, ma’am. My horse is being re-shod so it will save me a half-hour’s walk to collect him from the forge,’ the man said cheerfully and Nell bit back a protest she was being polite and didn’t mean it.

At least he sat with his back to the horses, but that meant she must look at him instead of feeling his muscular male limbs next to her and it was only marginally better. He had acquired more suitable clothes in the three days since he appeared out of the night to plague her. In practical leathers and countryman’s boots and coat he should be quite unremarkable, but somehow he was nothing of the sort. His linen was spotless and his plain waistcoat was cut by a master, but it wasn’t his clothes that made him stand out, it was the man underneath them. His masculine vitality seemed almost too big for a confined space and Nell felt she couldn’t even breathe without taking in more of him than she wanted to. And she didn’t want to, did she? Her doubts about that had been creeping into her dreams. Every morning she had to tell herself they were nightmares when she woke up with those fading rags of unthinkably erotic fantasies shaming her waking hours. How was she to look him in the face with the thought of them plaguing her with impossible things?

‘The others are sewing with Mrs Winch this morning,’ Georgiana informed him happily. ‘I share Maria Welland’s music lessons and Miss Court comes with me to have tea and a comfortable coze with Maria’s Miss Tweed while our teacher shouts at us in French.’

‘You unlucky creatures, no wonder the other Misses Selford prefer their embroidery frames.’

‘Lavinia has no ear for music; Madame says she would rather—’

‘Never mind her exact words, Georgiana,’ Nell interrupted hastily, having overheard the lady’s agonies before she’d declared Georgiana the only Selford girl with even the suggestion of a voice and refused to hear the others sing ever again.

‘I was only going to say she would rather teach cats to sing than Lavinia, Miss Court,’ Georgiana said with such mischief in her eyes that Nell would usually have to laugh, except she refused to do so in front of Mr Moss.

‘Well, don’t,’ she said crossly instead. ‘Lavinia can’t help being about as unmusical as possible without being tone deaf.’

‘I know and she does embroider exquisitely,’ Georgiana admitted. ‘She can paint far better than the rest of us as well. But that’s why we’re out and about on our own this morning, Mr Moss,’ she went on with an expectant look at him that said it was his turn to recite a list of engagements for the day.

‘I am engaged to meet several of your guardian’s tenant farmers at the market in Temple Barberry, so I shall have to hurry there as soon as my horse has his new shoe, Miss Georgiana,’ he replied obediently.

Contrarily, Nell felt excluded as they chatted about the market and how most farmers were gloomy about prospects for the harvest, whatever the weather. They conceded this was a very peculiar spring and this time they were right to be pessimistic. Being brought up in London, and then Bath, Nell had had to learn even to like the countryside when she first came here and she was the first to admit she didn’t know its ways and habits as well as her pupils. She felt like a town mouse as Georgiana and Mr Moss happily discussed the difficulty of sowing crops and getting them to grow when it was cold and the skies so grey nothing seemed likely to thrive. Sunshine was now needed to make it all work and Nell felt she might be withering for the lack of it herself by the time the carriage rolled into Brampton and pulled up at the smithy.

‘You seem unnaturally quiet this morning, Miss Court,’ Mr Moss observed as he gathered up his crop, hat and a leather case that must contain tenancy agreements or leases, or some such dry stuff it was as well not to be curious about.

‘I have nothing to say, Mr Moss. I am an urban creature and know little of agriculture and country lore.’

‘Then it was rude of me to bore you with them.’

‘Not in the least, sir. I hope I can still listen and learn as well as hold forth about what I do know.’

‘Then I shall send over one of the agricultural reports on this county for your further education, ma’am, since you want to know it better.’

‘Only if you are not using it, sir,’ she said coolly. She could imagine nothing more likely to send her to sleep so perhaps it would have its uses.

‘Oh, no, I’m a quick study when a topic interests me and the state of land is important. I suppose that’s one reason my wider family disapprove of me and mine,’ he said, then seemed to regret his frankness and his expression was closed and formal as he jumped down and gave them a fine bow, before waving goodbye to Georgiana and nodding stiffly at Nell as the carriage drove past on its way to the Wellands’ manor house. Why would a country squire regard his interest in the land as undesirable? Mr Moss might not be able to inherit the family acres, but not all younger sons were destined for the army, the navy or the church. Becoming a land steward was a perfectly respectable ambition in a gentleman of slender means. On a large estate like Berry Brampton the position was often filled by a junior line of the family who owned it. So why was Mr Moss so defensive about his chosen way of life?

* * *

By the time Brampton Village was behind them at least Georgiana had stopped speculating about Mr Moss and the reception he would get from the notoriously close-mouthed farming community, so that was a relief, wasn’t it? Hearing her most lively pupil shift her attention from the steward to what her friend Maria might have been about since they last met might make her head spin, but Miss Welland’s sayings and doings were a much safer subject and she let her pupil chatter on unchecked. It didn’t matter how well or badly the man got on with his family, he was here, at last, and Nell hoped the injustices and oddities Jenks had closed his eyes to on the estate would come to an end. Anyway, she could hardly condemn Moss for being so late to take up his post when she had deserted hers twice in the last year. Governess or not, responsible for the girls as she was with no resident guardian to look out for them when she was gone, nothing could have stopped Nell finding her brother after Waterloo and, six months later, attending his wedding to the love of his life. It had been a joyous marriage ceremony, despite the time of year and the rough weather and terrible roads. At last Colm had looked as joyous and carefree as a man of his age, birth and fortune ought to when he stood up so proudly to wed his unexpected bride. The last marriage in the world anyone would have predicted for the children of the Hancourt–Winterley scandal and there they both were, as shiningly happy as any couple Nell had ever met. It felt strange coming back here from Darkmere Castle and those bright celebrations to be Miss Court again and pretend nothing had changed. Until Mr Moss arrived she’d been plagued by a feeling this world seemed dangerously unstable after the bustle and common purpose in Lord Winterley’s northern heartland. If she left Berry Brampton House as her brother and sister-in-law wanted her to, what would become of the girls? Without a competent manager, the estate had been like a rudderless ship in these hard times. The war was over, but the whole country sometimes seemed about to plunge into chaos as they floundered from one crisis to the next. Now her worry about the lack of a strong man to keep all steady here was gone, she realised how uneasy she’d been before he arrived.

Mr Moss was an unlikely protector of a pack of schoolgirls, but he would still do it if he had to. The footmen and butler were tall and strong and the formidably respectable Mrs Winch gave the household gravitas, but nobody else had the status of my lord’s land steward. She didn’t have to like him for it, though. He had sat opposite her and talked to Georgiana of matters she didn’t understand, then offered to lend her a book. Well, she’d read the dratted thing if that would stop him doing it again. As for that habit he had of calling her ma’am—there might be more exasperating ways to address a lady not yet four and twenty, but she couldn’t currently think of any.

‘Mr Moss was right; you are quiet today, Miss Court. Do you have the headache?’ Georgiana asked as the carriage turned towards the next village and the Wellands’ neat manor house.

Not yet, Nell thought, but I soon will have if I brood about the impossible man for much longer. ‘No, but I couldn’t get a word in when you two were chattering nineteen to the dozen.’

‘Papa always said my tongue ran on wheels when we were little...’ She paused and looked out of the small carriage windows at the dull grey sky before sighing heavily. ‘I know I was only a child when he died, Miss Court, and I was so lucky my parents loved me and Caro, but will I ever stop missing them, do you think?’