The Baron's Governess Bride (19 page)

“Is that why Papa was angry?” demanded Charlotte, her face suddenly pale. “When I first saw you looking pretty you said Papa would dismiss you if he found out.”

Before Grace could reply Phoebe spoke up. “Papa said we must tell you to come down to his study once we were in bed. Is he going to send you away, Miss Ella?”

“No!” Sophie cried, flinging her arms around Grace’s waist. “He mustn’t!”

Touched as she was by their dismay at the prospect of losing her, Grace was sorry to be responsible for causing them any unhappiness.

“Hush now.” Grace ran her hand over the child’s head in a reassuring caress and manufactured a smile for Sophie’s sisters. “Let’s not borrow trouble—it will only spoil your sleep. Your father told me he wanted an explanation for my actions—that must be why he wants to see me.”

If Lord Steadwell did want her gone from Nethercross, tomorrow would be soon enough to talk it over with the girls and make them understand it would be for the best. They would be better able to accept the news after a good night’s rest.

“Come now, let’s get you ready for bed.” Grace strove to sound untroubled so the children would not worry. “I do not want to keep your father waiting.”

“What about our bedtime story?” Sophie asked as Grace pulled her nightgown over her head.

“It is too late tonight, I’m afraid. Perhaps tomorrow you can get ready for bed a little earlier and have two stories then.” Grace tried to sound as if she had no doubt she would be there tomorrow night to read those stories.

The two younger girls seemed to accept her reassurance, but she sensed Charlotte did not. At least the girl had the kindness not to burden her sisters with her worries. As soon as all three were in bed, Grace took a moment to sit with each of them before she headed off to meet with their father.

When she reached Lord Steadwell’s study and tapped on the door he called her to enter. She found him standing beside his writing table with his back to the window and his arms held stiffly behind him. His crisp features were set in a stern frown and his dark brows were drawn together.

For all his well-composed severity, he gave a start when she appeared—as if he had still not managed to reconcile his image of his daughters’ plain governess with her true appearance.

“Now, Miss Ellerby, you promised me an explanation for why you have deceived me from the moment we met.” It was clear from his harsh tone and stiff stance that none of the excuses she had given herself for her behavior would satisfy him.

He had already made up his mind to dismiss her. Nothing she could say would salvage the respect he’d once had for her. It was equally doubtful that anything she said could make him despise her more. That left her with nothing to lose and no reason to conceal a shred of the truth.

* * *

When Grace Ellerby entered his study, Rupert strove to conceal the shock and unease her presence still inspired in him. Ever since she had ambushed him with the revelation of her true appearance, part of his mind had struggled to grasp that his daughters’ mousy governess was the mysterious beauty from the masquerade. What troubled him most was that some deeply buried intuition seemed to have grasped this baffling contraction already. Could it be the same part of him that wanted to invite Miss Ellerby for a walk in the garden to discuss the matter? Reason warned that would be the worst of bad ideas.

Of course, reason was still vexed that it had not succeeded in getting him to propose to Mrs. Cadmore this evening. In spite of its urging and the lady’s pointed hints, he had remained stubbornly silent on the subject. He could hardly blame the poor woman for wanting to be certain of his intentions after he had shown her such particular interest. Yet Rupert knew he dared not take such an irrevocable step until he had sorted out his complicated feelings for Grace Ellerby.

Even as she gathered her composure to offer an explanation, he wondered how he could have been so blind to the beauty hidden only by an ugly cap and a pair of spectacles. Vexed as he was with her for making such a fool of him, he found it impossible to forget the slow-blossoming admiration and immediate fascination her two very different personalities had inspired in him.

Which of them was the real Grace Ellerby? Or was that a woman he would not recognize at all—a cool, calculated deceiver with motives he could not begin to fathom?

“The truth is,” she began, “I disguised my appearance at first because I was not sure if I could trust you.”

“Trust
me?
” The words erupted from Rupert’s lips edged with bitter irony.

Grace Ellerby flinched—but whether it was from his angry outburst or from the pain of her conscience, he could not tell for certain. “I realize now that you are a gentleman of honor but I had no way of knowing it at first. I have been acquainted with too many of the other kind.”

“What do you mean?” Rupert muttered, though he could guess her answer after what he had witnessed between her and that sultan brute at the ball.

Her hands were clasped in front of her. Now they began to fidget. Her delicate features reflected the struggle within her—not wanting to speak of painful events from the past but knowing she had no choice.

“It began during my very first position when I was only nineteen—fresh out of school and hopelessly naive. The brother of my mistress paid me a great deal of attention, flattered me, claimed he loved me and persuaded me to fancy I was in love with him. I assumed he meant to marry me, only to discover that gentlemen like him do not want a penniless, orphaned governess as a wife. When he offered to buy me a house and set me up as his mistress, I ran away.”

“The gall of the brazen whelp!” Rupert cried before he could restrain himself. “I’d have thrashed any brother-in-law of mine who dared to conduct himself in such an infamous manner under my roof!”

It was more than righteous indignation that roused his anger. He envied the young fool who had won Grace Ellerby’s heart when it was soft and trusting.

She raised her gaze to meet his, clearly determined to make a full confession. “It was as much my fault as his. I was completely unguarded. I encouraged his attentions.”

Hard as he tried, Rupert could not let that go unchallenged. “But you said yourself, you were scarcely more than a child! How were you to know his intentions were so thoroughly dishonorable?”

“I was employed in his sister’s home,” she insisted. “I should not have permitted any familiarity between us. The experience taught me a painful lesson but a useful one I never intended to forget. At my next post, I tried to be more careful. I concentrated on my duties and went out of my way to discourage any attention from visiting gentlemen.

“That worked well enough for a while. But then a friend of the master’s took a fancy to me. For some reason, he seemed to consider my reserved manner a challenge. He set about to win my favors and the more I resisted the more determined he became.”

“Why did you not complain to your employers?” Rupert demanded in a sharp tone. His stomach seethed with indignant anger. He wished he had both the cads who had imposed upon Grace Ellerby in front of him so he could knock their vile heads together!

“I tried,” she insisted in a defensive tone as if she assumed his anger was directed at her. “I spoke to the mistress about my fears, but she refused to believe me even though the man had tried to flirt with me in her presence. She said it was not my place to criticize a guest in her home. I was left with no choice but to seek a position elsewhere.”

Rage rose in Rupert’s throat like thick black bile. The number of people he longed to confront and punish kept growing while Grace Ellerby fell lower and lower on the list. “I suppose it was the same at the next place?”

“Worse.” Her gaze faltered and her hands moved more restlessly than ever. “Not only did I cultivate a more guarded manner, I also dressed as modestly as possible and wore my hair in a severe style. That kept me safe until last fall when Mr. Hesketh’s uncle returned from the Indies to live with the family.”

She went on to describe how the lecher had pursued her and her increasingly desperate efforts to avoid him until the night he had entered her bedchamber and lain in wait. By the time she finished her account, Rupert’s throat was so constricted he could scarcely speak.

“I knew after that,” she concluded, “I could not afford to keep moving from one post to another or I would never be able to save for my old age. I decided I must employ more drastic measures to discourage gentlemen from taking an interest in me.”

“But I am not like those other men!” Rupert forced the words out of his constricted throat. “I would never behave toward any woman as they did!”

As strenuously as he insisted it, his conscience could not deny his immediate attraction to Grace at the masquerade. Nor his current urge to take her in his arms and vow to protect her from anyone who might do her harm.

Was he really any better than those other men? And did he frighten her as they had?

The way her gaze skittered from his made him suspect he might.

“I know that now. But how could I at first? Especially when I learned…”

“That I was widowed,” Rupert finished her sentence. He recalled her intense reaction to that discovery and how it had puzzled him at the time. Now it became clear.

She nodded. “None of the men who pursued me were married. If I had known you were not, I would never have applied for the position. By the time I realized you were a gentleman of honor, I had guessed you only hired me because you believed I was plain and unmarriageable. I feared if you discovered otherwise, you would send me away from Nethercross and I would never see your daughters again.”

Grace Ellerby was the picture of abject remorse, and Rupert found his vexation with her melting away like snow on a mild spring day. How could he blame her for doing whatever she must to remain at Nethercross with his girls? In her place, what might
he
have been willing to do? What rules of proper behavior might he bend? How far would he allow honor to lapse?

“I wanted to tell you the truth.” Her words trembled with that longing. “The more time that passed, the more I wanted to, but the harder it became. I was certain you would not understand and now I know I was right.”

She wasn’t right at all, Rupert yearned to reassure her. There were parts of what she had done that he understood far too well. But other parts still bewildered him.

“My daughters knew, didn’t they?”

Their governess gave a brief guilty nod, as if that was one facet of her prolonged deception that troubled her most.

“When did they find out?” It made him feel a greater fool than ever to have been blind to something his children had long since realized.

Was it their innocence, their lack of concern with appearance that had allowed his children to see through her dowdy disguise? He, however, had looked Grace Ellerby over only long enough to decide that she was unattractive and thus no threat to the stability of his household. After that, he had never bothered to observe her more closely.

“Several months ago.” She went on to tell him how Sophie had coaxed her to don the beautiful old gown and how she’d been discovered by Charlotte.

“They kept your secret all this time.” Rupert could not decide whether he felt betrayed by his daughters or admired the lengths to which they had gone to protect their governess.

“I should never have asked them to take part in my deception,” Grace murmured. “I am not proud of any of my actions, but that is the one I regret most.”

Determined to get to the bottom of this whole business, Rupert asked, “Whose idea was it for you to attend the masquerade?”

When Grace Ellerby hesitated to reply, it occurred to him that she was as determined to protect his daughters as they were her. Clearly she had not intended to engage his affections last night for her own sake, as part of him longed to believe. Instead, seeing how much he fancied her, she had led him on in an effort to prevent the marriage she feared would make his daughters miserable.

“The girls made you go, didn’t they?”

“They did not
make
me do anything,” she protested. “My friend Lady Benedict offered me an invitation. Your daughters only urged me to accept and provided me with a costume. I pretended to let them persuade me, but the truth is I
wanted
to go. What happened last night was not their fault.”

In spite of everything, he could not be angry or sorry she had gone, even if their moonlit encounter had brought him to the troublesome realization that his heart was not entirely ready to give up on love.

“I know you have no reason to believe me.” Grace’s gaze flitted from the floor to his face and back again. “I
was
going to tell you the truth last night. But at the last moment I lost my nerve and ran away. It’s what I always do when things go wrong.”

She put Rupert in mind of a wild doe, ears alert for the slightest noise, nose sniffing the breeze for any whiff of danger, muscles coiled to sprint away at the first sign of peril. She needed a safe haven and a strong protector. She deserved them.

“You didn’t run this time,” he reminded her, aware how difficult that must have been. “You could just as easily have slipped away and left me a note explaining all this.”