Gift-Wrapped Governess (7 page)

He felt warm even despite the chill, a twelve-hour stubble roughening his skin: a man who was solid and reliable and honourable. ‘If, indeed, there is anything I might say, it would be to ask you to kiss me again,' she simply stated, standing on her tiptoes so that he might have better access to all that she offered him. She could no longer be careful or circumspect or judicious. She wanted him, his taste, his feel and his warmth. She wanted to know again that which she had in the room full of Christmas, the ache of delight filling every part of her body with heat.

The shards in his eyes lightened from brown to gold, melting into response, and his lips came down to hers, the slam of need attesting to a control he had suddenly lost hold of.

His tongue met her own, duelling against entry as he deepened the kiss, changing that which she offered into something else. Wonderment and lust. She felt his hips move even through the thick layers of wool between them, asking for what men and women through all the centuries had sought to understand in an elemental promise. When she answered back, his voice broke hoarse into the silence, her name whispered fiercely before his lips returned to take—only them in the world, only this feeling of an utter and precise truth, far away from the specifics of any dividing fact or faith. Together, and for this moment, everything was perfect.

A wintry blast of wind brought her back though, the facade of Blackhaven looming above, darkened in the dusk and watching. The bricks of the newer annexe addition glowed almost black and she fancied the shadows of those at work
in the castle flickering across some of the small light in its windows.

Understanding her reticence, he let her go.

‘You are right, for this is neither the place nor the time.' She thought he might stop there and walk away. She could see he meant to from the gleam of distance in his eyes, but he did not go. Rather, he began to speak again and in a tone she had never heard him use before. ‘I am only a man, Lady Seraphina, and every time I look at you I am reminded of the fact, but know that if you wish me to stop any of what has begun between us…I will.'

The memory of Ralph Bonnington, she supposed. It was Trey Stanford's way of telling her that he was nothing at all like him. She was speechless as he bowed his head and left because his troth was exactly that which she wanted, and because the compliments he had given her were so unexpected.

He liked her and so did his sons! Even a new blast of snow did nothing to diminish her happiness as she turned the strange conversation over and over in her mind. He had promised her so much more than she thought he might, and although the gardens were not the place to press anything further, Seraphina was certain they would soon find another occasion.

Laying her fingers across her lips, she smiled behind her hands, a joy rising from deep within her. She was overwhelmed with the astonishment of one who finds herself in exactly the place that she had long hoped to be. Her eyes wandered across the high-and-ancient walls of Blackhaven, the patina of stone worn in places from time and weather, hundreds of years of protection imbued in their very strength. When she had arrived here she had found the castle forbidding and hostile. Now all she could see was the beauty of it.

23 December

V
oices brought Seraphina from her room early the next afternoon to be confronted directly by a large group of strangers in the salon at the foot of the stairs.

She recognised one of them as Lady Frobisher, an inveterate gossip and snoop and her heart sank accordingly. Lord Blackhaven did not look pleased at all as three young women leaned in towards him and amongst their company she saw exactly how he would be received in London. It would be with complete and utter delight, for his form was nothing at all like the fops that overran the social halls and ballrooms with their mincing ways and effeminate habits.

Nay, Trey Stanford with his night-black hair, amber eyes and danger would be like a panther amongst kittens. The Titian-haired beauty next to him had her hand upon his arm. Proprietary and challenging!

‘I should love you to come to our place for Christmas, my lord. Mama has made a great show of the decorations and our cook came highly recommended.'

‘I think not, Lady Lydia.' His fingers unlinked her hand and he moved back.

The Frobisher matriarch, however, was having none of it. ‘You said the same last year, my lord, and we heard that you had hardly celebrated the season. Besides, my daughters and I would be most happy to see you at our table with the children, of course.'

The girl she presumed to be Lydia coloured dramatically. There was not much of an age difference between them, but Seraphina felt a hundred years older. Not wishing to be caught in the awkward position of an uncertain exit, she came forwards. Helen Frobisher raised her monocle, peering up at her with a quizzical expression and Seraphina saw the exact moment she recognised her.

‘Good God, Stanford. This gel on your staircase is the lost Moreton chit, is she not? What on earth is she doing here and in such awful clothes when the whole of London town is searching for her? Come down, gel, and let me see you better.'

The mouths of the three younger ladies behind were wide-open, eyes filled with shock as Seraphina moved to the last step. She was glad for the slight height that kept her above them all—it meant she did not have to meet their glances so directly.

‘Why is she here, Blackhaven?' The older lady's voice had taken on a shrill tone, the flinted anger in her words mirrored in her eyes. ‘If she is alone in your company, then she is exactly as her mother was—a whore who pretended to be a lady.'

‘No, you have it most wrong.' Seraphina finally found her voice at such a brutal criticism. ‘I am at Blackhaven Castle because—'

‘Because she is my intended.' Trey Stanford finished the sentence for her as he strode forwards, taking her hand in his and pulling her close. ‘Just this morning, Lady Seraphina has done me the honour of agreeing to become my wife.'

Seraphina felt the pressure in his fingers bearing down on her own.
Keep quiet
, they said,
and we may yet get through this
. Her heart was beating so fast at this unexpected new turn of events that she doubted speech could have come anyway.

‘Your intended? There are rumours she is promised on the bequest of her father to Ralph Bonnington, the Earl of Cresswell, and now you say she is also your bride-to-be? If this is a trick, Stanford, you will pay for it. My Lydia was under the impression that it was her hand in marriage you had sought and to be so rudely compromised…'

The young woman in question began to sob, softly at first, but then building, until the whole room was filled with her anguish.

Trey stepped forwards. ‘I have been largely reclusive in Essex, Lady Frobisher, and I am sorry if you were under the impression that my one meeting with your family in town a month ago constituted anything like a proposal of such permanency. It was not my intention at all.'

‘Lydia said there were other more clandestine arrangements made?'

The howling heightened.

‘I see.' The woman pulled herself together and faced Seraphina straight on, the chagrin on her face because of her daughter's lies sharpening her query. ‘I take it that you are without a chaperone?'

Seraphina was relieved when the Duke answered for her. ‘My sister Margaret, Lady Westleigh, and her husband are in residence and she is a stickler for the correct.' His lie sounded eminently authoritarian, but short of demanding the presence of these others, Lady Frobisher had no way of accounting for the truth or otherwise.

‘Then be careful, Stanford, that this betrothal is not as foolish as your last one and hope that the daughter of Elizabeth Moreton failed to inherit the wanderlust her mother was cursed with.'

The stillness in the Duke of Blackhaven was more menacing than any raised shout. ‘You have said enough, Lady Frobisher. It would be wise if you went now before you say more.'

‘Now listen here, my lord…' A man at the rear of the group had taken up the argument, his face florid with anger.

But the Duke was at the very end of patience. ‘Get out.'

With a heavy click of her fan the woman turned, then thought better of it. ‘I feel it to be my God-ordained duty to let the magistrate in Maldon know of this contretemps. If I were you, Stanford, I should keep all the silver ewers well out of sight before you, too, feel the heavy weight of the Moreton temperament descend upon you just as Cresswell did.'

With that they were gone, the door shut behind them and a servant Seraphina did not recognise standing at attention by the door.

Trey unlaced his grip on her hand in a quick movement and waved the man away, the tension in the room building as all the shouted insults of the woman were remembered. Finally, he spoke.

‘Lady Frobisher will probably calm down once she has had the time to think things over. I doubt she will want to alert the magistrate.'

‘How could she know anything about me?'

‘The papers are full of the mystery of your disappearance from London and with you gone…'

He stopped as she looked up at him.

‘With you gone anyone can say anything. And they have.'

‘I see.' He had not mentioned the matter of her being his intended at all. Rather he moved back and poured himself a drink from a decanter on a small desk. Brandy, Seraphina thought by the colour, so shocked that she had begun to shake. Trey Stanford swallowed his tipple in a single shot and poured another. This one he handed to her.

‘I find a clear mind often only makes matters worse,
Seraphina.' The first time he had ever used her Christian name and she liked the sound of it off his tongue. Upending the liquid just as he had, she coughed as the burn crawled down her throat.

‘Lady Frobisher is a woman who could ruin your reputation in a heartbeat,' he said at length. ‘And to find you here at Blackhaven without a chaperone would constitute a great scandal.'

She smiled, fortified by the effects of the drink, for if only everything could be so very easy.

‘Oh, I think my reputation is already ruined, my lord.'

‘Perhaps not. The world will be wary of the word of a man who is both a gambler and a heavy drinker. Although Ralph Bonnington might say you attacked him, he is without witnesses. Conjecture is all anyone has to work with.'

Seraphina had had enough. ‘I can see no conjecture bigger than the false news of the betrothal you confided to the group who have just left, sir.'

He laughed at that. ‘Surely you understand that a governess looking as you do would be fodder for endless debate. No one would believe you were here merely to watch over my children and you would never again be accepted back into the society you are used to.'

‘I had no mind to go back, my lord.'

‘Your mother said exactly the same thing to me after Terence died, but she was at odds to find another place to be at peace in, no matter how hard she tried to.'

This truth made her sad, but she could not leave it there. ‘My parents' marriage was as false as you profess your own to have been and both ended badly. I should never agree to marriage unless there was love.'

‘Indeed, those are my sentiments exactly.'

Such words confused her and a hope long missing from her life bounded into possibility. Was he saying he could love her? Did he mean to keep to the words given to Lady
Frobisher because of such an emotion? She shook her head. A man like him would have the choice of any woman he wanted, one spotless of reputation and from a family well able to bring in a substantial dowry.

But what if it
was
she he desired? What if even for this small moment she might be his?

The clock on the mantel struck the hour of four and outside she could hear heavy rain against the window, melting the snow. The boys would be being readied for a bath by the night nurse and supper was more than three hours away.

Here, then, for this time she was cocooned in a room with a man who had stood up for her in front of strangers. No, more than that even—a man who had placed his own name on the line for hers, protective and honourable. The kisses from yesterday still burnt into her lips and the drink she had taken made her bones feel languid and heavy.

 

Lord, she was so very beautiful, the blue of her eyes fanned by a pale grey ring and her nose sprinkled with freckles, true and straight. As beautiful outside as she was inside, the soft honesty of her words in the garden still rang in his brain. She had admitted her share of the depth of feeling between them and had told him directly that the kisses they had enjoyed in the gardens were a gift. Catherine would have allocated only blame and reproach, but Seraphina Moreton spoke of truth and love.

The pad of his thumb drew along her jaw carefully and up across her swollen top lip and her gaze did not falter as her lips came to meet him, sampling, pushing forwards.

He knew that he should pull away, but it was too late for that, too late for anything altruistic or honourable because he wanted Lady Seraphina Moreton as he had never wanted anyone else before in the whole of his life.

Helen Frobisher's false and perfidious assumptions were everything he hated in society. Lord, his wife had been a
master at gossip and innuendo and the memories of those hurt by her sharp tongue were numerous. Seraphina, in contrast, was an innocent, crucified by all those about her who held a duty of protection and had neglected such obligation. As his hands tightened about her arms, his mouth came down upon hers.

Soft warmth met him in an equal measure, his lips slanting hard, seeking entry and finding it, no mind now for anything save the feel of loving, the promise making his heartbeat quicken. Aye, bodies had their own particular language and the feel of her skin, lustre smooth and unblemished, made him groan.

She was like rain after a long drought, moisture to fill all the dried and lost recesses of heart and soul. The words he had given to the Frobishers burned between them too, thrust into a kiss that was unequalled, a stack of papers on his desk falling around them as he inadvertently knocked them over, no sense in anything save that which nullified reason, the melding of two souls long left alone. He pressed in closer, his manhood swelling, all time and place lost as each sought the promise of more. He felt her shaking, moving, wanting, her fingers threaded through his hair as she drew him in, the honesty of her tender touch shattering the cold anger that had resided in him.

Released and unfettered.

When he pulled away he cradled her head against his chest. Protection had its own voice too, and it was not one that thought only of the heat of the moment. Seraphina neither deserved nor needed that.

‘Lord, help me,' he said even as he meant not to, frustration cresting against pure and utter lust. The buds of her nipples showed hard against the perished blue velvet of her bodice and he softened his grasp.

‘My sister and her husband should have been here by now.' Words of warning and intent. Words to take the sting from
any perceived pressure and leave her with a choice she had long seemed bereft of. To do just as she wanted!

The blue of her eyes filled with question. ‘The Moreton name does not hold the power it once did. She might hate me, this sister of yours, as much as the Frobishers. She might hear of the false promises you have made and believe that you meant them.'

The bitter taste of his last marriage rose up to silence the words that he should have given back in reply, but nothing came out. He should say that the promises were not pretended and that all he felt between them was real and true and right. But Catherine's poison had seeped in deep and there had been so many years of only regret.

 

Seraphina saw the shock reflected in his eyes, burning amber with a hint of something lost, the wound that marred half his cheek redder today than she had ever seen it.

He was a gentleman caught in the crossfire of society rules, one half of him wanting her too much and the other half not enough.

False promises? He made no move to deny them. She might have wept had he moved away altogether, but he did not, his grasp on her cast in steel.

Was it too soon to tell him that she would take such a lightly given troth and always honour it? If she gave him the words that hammered beneath every touch of skin and breath and heartbeat, what might happen?

I love you. I have always loved you. I shall love you for ever and ever until I take the last breath of life and then beyond.

Tears filled her eyes and ran down her cheeks unbidden. She did not brush them away or hide her face against his clothing. No, she looked at him with all that she felt, hoping it would be enough for him to understand, though when he set her apart she knew that he had not and the moment of honesty was lost.

‘You are young, Seraphina, and I should not wish to rush you into something you might later regret.'

It seemed so very simple to place the onus of his withdrawal onto her because she could make no defence against such an argument. The ghost of Catherine Blackhaven floated around them, too; Seraphina could almost see her in the expensive braided velvets she favoured, her décolletage as low as permitted in her search for favour from all manner of men. Lord, how Trey Stanford must have hated that.