The Duke's Governess Bride (12 page)

Chapter Twelve

B
y moonlight, it had all made perfect, even logical, sense. But by the time the first rays of the morning sun were creeping into Jane’s bedchamber—and Jane herself finally creeping into her bed—all sense of logic was gone, let alone perfection.

Her conscience in turmoil, Jane could not begin to sleep, no matter how exhausted she was. Instead she lay curled in her bed beneath the feather-filled coverlet, watching the dappled reflections of the water dance across the ceiling overhead and trying to determine exactly what had happened last night with Richard.

Richard.
How easy it had been to slip into addressing him with such familiarity! A week ago she’d been living in dread of the almighty Duke of Aston, and his judgement of her and her actions. Now, after one night and two glasses of wine, she was not only calling him by his given name, but kissing him.
Kissing
him! Oh, preserve her, what folly and foolishness had she committed in that siren moonlight!

She groaned, and pressed her face into the pillow. Nothing good would come of this—this flirtation last night. Nothing. She’d resolved to be less reserved while she was here in Venice, and to try to enjoy herself more fully. Not wanton, of course, but a bit more adventurous. Where would be the harm in that?

But she’d never meant to behave so foolishly in Richard’s company. She’d acted boldly, without shame, announcing she’d kiss him and then doing so, like any practised harlot. Worst of all, she’d enjoyed doing it, more than she’d enjoyed herself in—oh, in her entire life, if she were honest. She’d enjoyed his company, his conversation, their dinner, and then she’d enjoyed walking out in the moonlight with him, and his embrace, and every word of the sweet nonsense he’d told her.

She groaned again at the memory. What demon had possessed her and urged her to act in such a brazen fashion? It was entirely her fault, of course. She’d no doubt of that. How could it be otherwise, when the Duke of Aston was such a paragon?

In all her days at Aston Hall, the duke had never so much as pinched the bottom of a parlour maid. There was a certain bewilderment among the staff that their duke had kept so faithful to the duchess’s memory and hadn’t remarried, or even been tempted beyond a dance or two at a county ball. The footmen and grooms in particular couldn’t believe that a gentleman as fine and rich as their master didn’t keep a mistress in London, the way other peers did. Wilson assured them he didn’t, and Wilson would know.

But now she had come along and somehow bewitched their saintly duke into kissing her beneath the Venetian moon. He had drunk considerably more of the
signora’
s Valpolicella than she, which might account for how susceptible he’d been to the lure of the moonlight. Yes, that must have been it, the wine and the moonlight besides. She wasn’t so foolish as to believe it had been her dubious charms that had lured him to misbehave with her. He had been in his cups, and she had been willing.

Was he now feeling the same remorse? Was he also tossing and turning with shame over this dreadful misstep, wishing with all his heart that it could be undone? Surely dallying with a woman from his household must be a dreadful burden to a man who behaved as honourably as the duke.

And how would he treat her when they met again? Would he pretend nothing had happened? Would he apologise? Or would he dismiss her as a loathsome wanton, and finally cast her out in this foreign city as she’d been expecting him to do ever since he’d arrived?

Yet as tormented as Jane felt herself to be, she still had stayed awake for the entire night and more, and even the most guilty conscience needed rest. Finally she had fallen asleep, and so deeply that it took Signora della Batista’s determined thumping on her bedchamber door to finally rouse her.

‘Miss, miss, miss!’ the
signora
was calling on the other side of the panelled door. ‘Hurry, miss, and waken! Make haste, if you please. His Grace grows weary of waiting!’

‘His Grace!’ cried Jane, her voice thick with sleep. ‘One moment,
signora,
one moment.’

At once she rolled from her bed, dragging the coverlet with her, and tried to hurry across the long room to answer. With fumbling fingers, Jane unlatched the door, and the
signora
herself swept inside, bearing a tray with a steaming teapot and a plate of biscuits.

‘It is late, Miss Wood,’ she scolded, setting the tray on the table by the window. ‘Only the infirm and the debauched are abed at this hour.’

‘I am sorry,
signora,
’ Jane said, yawning as she stood at the door with the coverlet as a makeshift cloak around her shoulders. She knew she should be rushing to dress and not keeping the duke waiting, but she was having a dreadful time waking. ‘I was very late coming to bed.’

The
signora
clicked her tongue with contempt. ‘
Very
late,’ she muttered in Italian. She touched her fingers to the handle of the teapot, judged it too hot to lift, and bunched her skirts in her hand to protect her fingers. ‘Very late, or very early, and with the man you said was your master. My cook could tell the hour you went to bed.’

‘His Grace
was
my master,
signora,
’ Jane said. ‘Because his daughters have wed, I am no longer in his service.’

‘As you say, miss,’ the
signora
said, pouring the fragrant tea and arching one of her neatly plucked brows to signal her scepticism. ‘As you say.’

Jane noticed that she had brought not one, but two cups with the teapot, and was briskly filling them both. ‘Only one cup, please,
signora.
There’s no need for—’

‘Good day, my dear Jane, and good morning,’ declared Richard, suddenly appearing to push his way past the door. ‘Or perhaps I should be saying “good afternoon”, given that it’s almost mid-day. Rouse yourself, sweet, else our entire day will be lost.’

She stared at him, stunned into silence. While she felt grey, dishevelled and raspy with lack of sleep, he seemed so fresh as to almost be spritely, his cheeks ruddy and newly shaved, his eyes cheerfully bright, and his linen immaculate. Painfully aware of her own sorry state, she clutched the coverlet more tightly around her shoulders.

‘Come, come, Jane, enough of this lolling about abed,’ he said in the same booming voice he used when riding to hounds. ‘I asked the good
signora
here to fetch you tea, the same as at home. That’s sure to fortify you better than that sweetling chocolate. Drink up and make ready for the day’s adventures, or what’s left of the day, at any rate.’

‘Forgive me, your Grace, but I’d believed you’d no further interest in seeing Venice’s sites,’ she said, crossing the floor with the coverlet trailing behind her like a train. ‘I’d not expected you to wish to go about so soon after retiring.’

‘Hah, you believe I must still be drunk from last night,’ he said almost gleefully as he popped one of the biscuits into his mouth. ‘I’m as sober as a curate on the Sabbath, my dear. It will take more than that Italian grape to set me back.’

The
signora
snorted, not hiding her disgust as she made a perfunctory curtsy. ‘If you do not need me any further, your Grace.’

‘Thank you,
signora,
you may leave us.’ He nodded as the
signora
left, not quite waiting for permission. He helped himself to one of the two cups of tea and sat in an overstuffed armchair. ‘Fah, this is a strange brew! I had the
signora
offer up tea, figuring it would be a comfort for you, but this is no proper English tea.’

‘There is no such thing as “proper English tea”, your Grace,’ Jane said tartly, ‘because tea doesn’t come from England, but from China. Nor can I conceive of why I should be in need of “comforting”, whether from tea or otherwise.’

He spread his hands, unperturbed. ‘You have always been a creature of predictable habit, Jane, a most admirable quality. You did not come down to breakfast at your usual hour. The
signora
said you were still in your bed. What else was I to think, but that you were indisposed?’

‘You might have thought the truth, your Grace,’ she said, coming to stand beside his chair. ‘That I was very late in going to bed, and thus I would be equally late in rising from it.’

‘Oh, Jane, enough.’ He set the dish of tea down on the table, and gently prised her hand free from the coverlet, taking her fingers in his own. ‘No more of these practised school-room recitals, I beg you.’

That was wounding. ‘Forgive me, your Grace, but I do not understand.’

‘You should,’ he said with a sigh. ‘Last night we agreed to take each day as it came in turn, without worry or concern. To my mind, looking back over one’s shoulder to try to re-order the days that are done does not seem to be in the spirit of that agreement. Where’s the use in it, I ask you?’

‘I wasn’t attempting to re-order the past.’ She tried to pull her hand free, but he held it firm, leaving her to feel embarrassed and foolish. She was all too aware of his gaze upon her, and how her feet were bare and her body covered only by her night shift and the coverlet, and anywhere in England this would have been the most scandalous situation imaginable. ‘Not at all, your Grace. Rather I was merely—’

‘No more of that, either,’ he said gently. ‘I want you to call me by my name, not my title.’

‘I thought that was a folly from last night,’ she said, choosing her words with care.

‘A folly?’ he repeated with patent disbelief. ‘A
folly
?’

‘Yes,’ she said as firmly as she could. ‘A folly seems as appropriate a term as any.’

Now that the moonlight had been replaced with the harsher reality of the mid-day sun, she’d let him change his mind if he wished it. Really, she expected it. All she asked in return was to be permitted to save her own pride—and her heart—in the process.

Which was, of course, most difficult while he was holding her hand and gazing up at her with such a show of good humour and, yes, of affection, too.

She made herself look slightly to the left of his face and away from his eyes, his lovely, lovely eyes, so full of kindness.

‘I will not hold you accountable for things said or done last night, your Grace,’ she said, purposefully keeping her manner formal. ‘I understand that it was a jest. I know you meant to prove to me how sentimental a place Venice can be, and that you did not intend to—’

‘I meant every word,’ he interrupted. ‘It wasn’t a jest. Every word. All of it. I meant it, Jane, and you can’t make me take any of it back.’

‘You do?’ Her voice squeaked upwards with surprise, and two words were the sum of what she could manage. Perhaps she had misunderstood. Perhaps he didn’t mean to turn her out after all. And perhaps, perhaps, her heart would be safe. ‘You would—you would honour such a statement?’

‘I would,’ he said, ‘and I’ll swear to it in any fashion you please. I like your company. I like your conversation. I like listening to you, and teasing you and kissing you. I liked that very much. But most of all, Jane, I like you. Not as my daughters’ governess, but as a woman. There, I can speak no more plainly than that.’

‘No,’ she said, her voice quaking. In all the time she’d thrashed about last night and this morning, she’d never imagined him saying this. ‘I do not suppose you can.’

‘I can’t, so don’t hope that I will. I haven’t your way with words, you know. They’re not my friends, the way they seem to be with you.’

‘Oh, but that’s not true!’ she exclaimed. ‘I think you speak beautifully!’

‘Be that as it may.’ He sighed, and looked up at her beneath his brows. ‘At least this time you appear to have heard what I’ve said, so I won’t have to repeat myself again.’

‘No, no,’ she said slowly, trying to accept the magnitude of what he’d just told her. This time, there was no moonlight or wine. If he spoke this way to her when she was in such slovenly disarray, why, then he
must
mean it. ‘That won’t be necessary.’

‘Thank the heavens for small favours.’ He took her hand and pressed it briefly to his lips, his gaze never leaving her face. ‘You do realise, Jane, that, after the sort of speech I made to you, it’s considered customary for the other party to make some sort of reply in kind.’

‘In kind?’ she said, puzzled.

‘Do you in turn like me, Jane?’ he demanded, a demand that was endlessly sweetened by the gruff, unvarnished beseeching in his voice. ‘Do you find me tolerable company? Or am I nothing more than a hoary old tyrant, and was last night the most tedious and dreary of your entire life?’

‘Tedious?’ she exclaimed, horrified that he’d so wrongly misconstrued her response. ‘Nothing could be further from the truth! Last night was more beautiful, more perfect, than ever I could dream, and to call yourself a hoary old tyrant—that is simply not true!’

‘No?’ He smiled slyly up at her. ‘My dear, you give me hope.’

‘Hope!’ she cried indignantly. Now she did pull her hand free, and with it give his shoulder an impatient small shove. ‘Hope? I should offer you a great deal more than that hope if you weren’t so—so—’

She broke off abruptly, sputtering as she realised that all of the conclusions she might have used to complete that sentence were not suited for polite conversation. Richard might claim that words were her friends, but at this moment, she felt as if they’d betrayed her.