Rexanne Becnel (17 page)

“If you hear of a suitable person, will you send them to me? I’ll be either here or at Farley Park.”

“Very well. But about you working up to the Park, I understand why you’re doing it, child, what with Helen living there now and you being so alone here at Plummy Head. But you mustn’t cut yourself off from your friends in Swansford.” She poured the tea, then gave Phoebe an intent look. “I want you to come down to dinner after church this Sunday. I’ve invited a few friends, nothing elaborate, mind you.”

Phoebe blinked in surprise. Mrs. Leake wanted
her
to come to dinner? That had never happened before, and it didn’t bode well. “I, um…I’ll probably spend the day with Helen.”

“Nonsense. Everybody deserves a day off. Besides, you’re spending enough time with the child—and you’ve done so every day of her life. It’s time for you to seek a life outside of hers, Phoebe girl. Soon enough she won’t need you anymore. What will you do then, all alone up here, too old to marry? You come to dinner Sunday. I’m not leaving here until you agree.”

In the end Phoebe agreed. It was the only way to get rid of the woman. Mrs. Leake was up to something, and judging by her remarks, it probably had something to do with getting her married off.

“Thank you,” she said, bracing herself on the door frame as Mrs. Leake climbed up into her wagon. Phoebe grimaced at the sight. If
she
had to climb into a wagon today, she’d never manage. Her legs were that weak.

Mrs. Leake lifted the reins, then paused. “Land’s sake, I almost forgot. There’s more goings-on at Farley Park, which you’ll discover when you go up there today or tomorrow.”

Phoebe’s heart began to pound with dread. Not Lady Catherine. Not so soon. But she hid her fears behind a mask of polite curiosity. “Goings-on?”

“Oh, yes. A highfalutin carriage pulled by a high-stepping foursome came into town late last night. Very posh with two footmen and a maid to tend the two fine ladies who took rooms in the inn.”

“Two ladies?” Of course. Lady Catherine wasn’t likely to travel without a companion. “How interesting.”

With a knowing tilt of her head Mrs. Leake said, “It seems one of them is that Lady Catherine we read about, that earl’s daughter that your fine master humiliated so shamefully in London town. Well, it appears she must not have banished the troublesome viscount from her mind. Seems she’s here to visit him, her and her friend, a Mrs. Donahue.”

Mrs. Leake made a clucking sound as she shook her head. “Ooh, but that Lord Farley, he’s a one, Phoebe girl. Very slick, very fast. After all, he took Louise in, didn’t he? And we all know she’s a woman of the world. So you just watch yourself with him. I don’t trust him, and you shouldn’t trust him either.”

She huffed out a disapproving breath. “Given all that, however, I must say that I feel better about your situation as governess to those girls now that this woman’s come back to claim him—at least, I’m guessing that’s her intent. All the same, we don’t need that man leading another one of our good girls astray.”

Too late, Phoebe wanted to say as Mrs. Leake drove down the rutted lane. Too late. She watched as the heavy store wagon dipped and swayed like a foundering galleon.

Just so had Phoebe foundered on the slippery rocks that surrounded James Lindford. Love, lust. Three darling girls, and now a fiancée who wanted him back.

Shaken more than she wanted to admit, Phoebe returned to the house and sat down before her now tepid tea. Yesterday she’d agreed to live in as governess to his children. Last night she’d as good as agreed to become his mistress.

And now his fiancée had returned.

But despite Lady Catherine, as long as Phoebe loved James and his children, she feared there was no going back on either front.

Helen and Izzy arrived in the afternoon, carried in the pony cart by a groom who’d been instructed to bring Phoebe’s trunks and luggage back with them. Not that Phoebe had either a trunk or a valise to pack her meager possessions in. Her father’s old carpenter’s bag had to suffice, along with her mother’s sewing basket.

In truth, it hardly mattered to Phoebe what she brought with her or what she carried it in. Her mind was too caught up with the dread of meeting the spectacular Lady Catherine, and the terror of seeing James gaze upon the elegant woman with admiration—and desire—in his eyes. He’d planned to marry her until she’d called it off. The London newspaper had made that plain. So why wouldn’t he wish to marry her again? And why else would she have traveled this long way except to forgive him and take him back?

The most troubling aspect of the entire situation, though, was her own part in it. She had known about Lady Catherine’s impending arrival before last night.

So why had she allowed herself to succumb to him?

Was she so desperate and pathetic as to think she could steal James’s affections from his former fiancée by using her body as the lure? She already had three living, breathing examples that a physical entanglement would gain her nothing permanent from James. Nothing permanent except for heartache. Already she felt a distinct hole of misery growing in the vicinity of her chest.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen your bedroom in such disorder,” Helen said, scanning Phoebe’s attic bedroom, a surprised expression on her heart-shaped face.

“It looks all right to me,” Izzy said, hopping onto the rumpled bed, then plopping backward. “Nice and soft.”

“Get off there,” Phoebe said. “You two go downstairs and find the kitten.” Her activities with James in this bedroom—on that bed—were too fresh in her mind for her to be comfortable with the girls frolicking on it. It wasn’t as if they could ever know. Still…

But as if thinking it made it so, Izzy turned her face into the pillow, then sat up as if stuck by a hat pin. Her sharp gaze flew to Phoebe’s face; her suspicions were clear in her eyes. Then like a lamp being blown out, her expression swiftly altered from suspicion to innocent neutrality.

She knew!

Phoebe wasn’t sure how she could—except that Izzy had been exposed to a very rough life in London. Could she know about what went on between men and women?

Inside Phoebe cringed. Of course she did. James had removed her from her mother because the woman was unfit. She could guess what that meant. It didn’t help matters that the room fairly oozed the scents of lust and sex and the hundred other emotions released during those tumultuous hours before dawn’s intervention.

Her heart thumped high in her throat as she watched Izzy slide with studied nonchalance off the bed. “We can make up the bed while you finish packing,” she said. “Get on the other side, Helen.”

“You needn’t do that,” Phoebe said.

But they did it anyway, and the whole while Izzy shot veiled glances at her. Phoebe concentrated on the contents of her armoire: chemises, nightgown, petticoats, five gowns, her good shoes, and her slippers. But she knew that Izzy had figured things out, and that changed everything. A governess was supposed to set a proper example to her charges. She most certainly was not supposed to act the harlot with her students’ father.

Phoebe fretted the whole way to Farley Park, and when a sudden chilly rain caught them at the turn into the long driveway, it seemed somehow fitting.

They entered the house cold and dripping. Her bonnet drooped on either side of her face, and her hair hung in a wet hank over her eyes. Izzy and Helen promptly scampered up to their side-by-side bedchambers. But Phoebe remained in the foyer below, awaiting the ever tardy butler and wondering if there was any way to turn around and go home with no one the wiser.

Of course, as befitted the foulness of the day, it was Lady Catherine who first found her. Phoebe needed no introduction to recognize the woman. She was everything the newspaper had said: exquisite, elegant, every bit the fashionable young lady of society.

Phoebe almost gasped when, like a delicate, golden vision, the woman glided out of the billiards room. She was so genteel and ethereal in her movements she appeared almost to float. That she bore so many similarities to Louise was doubly depressing. The slanted, golden-lashed eyes, the blushing complexion, the perfect, Cupid’s-bow curve of her lips.

For a moment she wondered if that elegant, fragile-looking beauty hid the same core of steel that Louise’s did? But in the next moment she dismissed the possibility. Why should this powdered, pampered, perfumescented woman be hard on the inside? She’d never wanted for anything in her life—except, perhaps, for the Viscount Farley.

Phoebe’s already drooping shoulders sagged lower. No wonder James loved Lady Catherine. Which begged the question, what did he see in Phoebe?

Phoebe knew her limitations. She was tall and sturdy, with unfashionably dark hair and tanned skin sprinkled with freckles where she ought to be pale and soft. Her hands were rough and her nails short. Practical. Her hair was practical too, clean, but tautly pulled back and held in place with simple, unadorned combs.

Her mother had worn her hair in the same fashion.

Phoebe winced at that horrid realization. But it was true. She had all of her mother’s worst traits. She was shrewish and judgmental, and she too often held a disapproving attitude toward others. Yet at the same time she was as wanton as ever her wanton sister had been.

Sick at heart, Phoebe shoved her drenched collapse of a hair arrangement back from her brow and faced this woman of impeccable appearance and morals.

“Good day. You must be Lady…Catherine.” She stumbled over the words.

The blond beauty graciously inclined her head, then arched her delicate swooping brows. “And you are?”

“Phoebe Churchill. The governess.”

“Oh. I see. The governess.” The woman’s cool blue eyes ran over Phoebe’s bedraggled form, top to bottom, no doubt cataloging every single flaw.

Phoebe felt her first jolt of indignation. “Yes. The governess.” She raised her chin a notch. “As you may have noticed, we were caught in the rain. Perhaps you could summon one of the staff to assist me?”

“Of course. I’m afraid, however, that you may find the staff at Farley Park wanting. But now that you’re here to handle the children, and I’m here to assist James—that is, Lord Farley—perhaps we’ll soon find him a proper housekeeper. If you’ll wait here, I’ll summon a maid to assist you.” A faint smile curved her lips. “We wouldn’t want you to catch a chill, would we?”

Alone in the foyer, standing in an increasing puddle of her own making, Phoebe felt a chill all right, but one entirely unrelated to her soaked clothing. That was the woman James loved, the woman he’d asked to be his bride. That was the sort of woman a man like him married, one with a well-connected family and a wide arc of social acquaintances. Phoebe’s mother’s extensive instructions in the social graces paled in the face of such a perfect example of the feminine arts.

Even Louise was but a weak imitation of the real thing. And Lady Catherine, by anyone’s standards, was the real thing.

Clutching her mother’s sewing basket to her chest, Phoebe peered about the magnificently appointed foyer and up the soaring stairwell. Here was the setting for a true lady: marble, mahogany, gold leaf, and fine art. She was more accustomed to plaster and sturdy oak, to whitewash and a simple crucifix upon the wall.

Just then the butler arrived, and at the same time, but from the opposite direction, so did James.

“My apologies, miss.”

“There you are.”

Behind the butler came Lady Catherine. James’s eyes veered from Phoebe to the other woman, then back. After a momentary pause he said, “Miss Churchill, may I present Lady Catherine Winfield.”

Like a golden cloud, Lady Catherine glided forward as before. Halting beside James, she tucked her beringed and braceleted hand into the crook of his arm, as if anchoring herself to him so that she wouldn’t float away. “Miss Churchill and I have just met, James. But rather than keeping her here to chat, perhaps we ought to send her up to her room so she can make herself more presentable.”

“Of course. You must be freezing,” he said to Phoebe.

Phoebe nodded, feeling as if she’d just been dismissed. Though relieved to quit the foyer and the humiliation of her embarrassing appearance, the trudge up the stairs behind the slow-moving butler offered no relief. She could feel James’s eyes upon her the entire time. It only made things worse to know that he was attached to the perfect woman, someone Phoebe could never compare to, save unfavorably.

She waited an hour for hot water to be delivered to her room. The fire she built up herself, warding off the cold in the interim by wrapping a blanket over her damp chemise. By the time two fellows arrived with water for the tub, her hair was almost dry. She washed it anyway, and afterward donned her best gown. Foolish, of course. Her best gown was a turnip sack beside Lady Catherine’s everyday one.

She was bent over before the fire, combing out her hair and mentally debating how to style it, when a knock sounded. “Come in,” she called, expecting a maid. When James entered, however, she lurched upright, whipping her hair back in a half-dried tangle. “You’re not supposed to be in here!”

“You invited me in.” He closed the door with a portentous, delicious-sounding click.

“That’s only because I didn’t know it was you.”

“Were you expecting someone else?” He grinned.

“No. Well, yes. A maid or perhaps one of the girls.”

He shook his head. “I apologize for the disorganization of my household staff. At present no one seems to be in charge. As for the girls, they wouldn’t bother to knock.”

“You’re deliberately ignoring my point,” Phoebe said, flattening one hand against her nervous stomach. “You must not be in my private chamber. But since you know that, I can only assume you want to torment me. Well, I will not allow it.”

In the face of her distress, James’s taunting grin faded. “You’re upset about Catherine, but there’s no need. She’s only visiting here for a few days.” He advanced toward her and with his every step Phoebe felt her resolve falter. They were alone. Behind her was a bed, large and soft, and just waiting to be put to good use. On top of that, he wanted her—she could tell. And oh, how she wanted him.

But succumbing to their desire would provide only a false sort of reassurance. He wanted her in his bed just like he’d wanted an infinite number of other women. It was a fleeting need on his part. If she were to survive the coming weeks or months until he eventually returned to London, she must adopt a similar attitude. Their interludes—if there were any—could only be pleasant moments outside the strictures of their real lives. At least outside the strictures of
her
real life.

“Please. I beg you not to expose me to the censure of either your friends or the servants.”

He stopped a single pace from her. “That’s not my intention.” Then he reached out and with his thumb lightly caressed her lower lip. One single stroke, then his hand fell to his side. “That’s not my intention,” he repeated. “But neither do I mean to ignore what we have, Phoebe.”

“Miss Churchill,” she said, but in a ridiculously weak and breathy voice. One touch and she dissolved. One touch.

Childish laughter, a clatter of feet, and a dog’s animated bark put a swift end to their emotionally charged encounter.

“Phoebe! Phoebe—” Izzy broke off when she charged into the room. James was right, she hadn’t bothered to knock. Helen piled in behind her with Bruno yapping at her heels. He had a blue ribbon tied prettily around his neck, and a smaller bit tied upon his tail. Once in the room he started to chase his tail and they all laughed. But Phoebe didn’t mistake the suspicious glint in Izzy’s eyes.

“Your room is a floor below ours,” Helen said. “Why can’t you be right next to us, like at home?”

“This is your home now, sweetheart. But that’s a very good idea.” Anything to put more distance between her room and James’s. “Could I be moved into a room nearer the children?” She looked at him, her face as bland as she could manage.

One side of his mouth slanted down in wry acknowledgment of what she was up to. “I’m not certain there are any more suitably furnished rooms up there.”

“Oh, yes.” Helen earnestly nodded. “There are.”

“The third floor is for children,” Izzy countered. “This is a good room for Phoebe. She should stay here.”

Izzy obviously was throwing Phoebe at her father, and Phoebe appreciated her good intentions. But the child didn’t understand the complexities of the situation, nor the impossibility. All the little girl knew was that Phoebe would make a good substitute mother for her and her half sisters.

Though it seemed cruel to deflate her dream, Phoebe feared it was kinder than allowing Izzy to go on imagining a rosy sort of future that never could be. Phoebe was the governess and the viscount’s current lover. She would never be his wife.

“Actually, I would prefer to be next to the girls. Why don’t you two show me your rooms? You needn’t worry, Lord Farley,” she threw out as she took Helen’s hand and started for the hall. “I’ll make all the arrangements with the butler.”

Izzy caught up with them at the stairs. “But that’s such a nice big room. And all your things are already there.”

“They’re easy enough to move,” Phoebe replied. As they started up the stairs she glanced down the hall. He was watching her, a speculative look in his eyes. She’d won the first round, but he was no less bent on seduction than before.

She was no less bent on it either. But she didn’t intend to be walked on, not by him or by Lady Catherine. “By the way,” she said to the girls, but loud enough to carry to him. “Have you met your father’s guest yet, Lady Catherine?”

James heard the gauntlet Phoebe had thrown down, and he accepted the challenge with relish. “Dinner at eight,” he called up to them. “At the big table.”

If nothing else, dinner would be entertaining.

The dining room glittered, like the inside of rose-cut diamonds. The flames of three dozen candles glanced off the crystal, the silverware, and the gold-leafed mirrors that lined the walls. Phoebe’s awed gaze swept the impressive chamber, though she tried hard not to gawk. Thankfully the table was set only on one end, with James presiding at its head. To his right sat Lady Catherine, Mr. Fairchild, and an overdressed woman who was introduced to Phoebe as Mrs. Donahue. On his left Phoebe took a seat between Izzy and Helen.