The Duke's Governess Bride (5 page)

Any other time, and she might have laughed at the outrageousness of such a suggestion. ‘I am very sorry,
signor,
but I cannot do that, either. My reputation must be impeccable. I have no resources of my own, you see, nor any—’

‘Miss Wood.’ Gently he took her hand again, though this time from affection, not the polite necessity of assisting her. She understood the difference at once, and tensed in response.

He smiled over their joined hands, his fingers tightening ever so slightly around hers.

‘Signor di Rossi,’ she protested, startled. ‘Please. Please!’

‘Know that you have a friend in Venice,’ he said, his voice rich and low. ‘That is all. Know that you are not without resources, as you fear. Know that you are not…alone.’

Was it a dare, an invitation, an offer? Or simply an expression of fond regard between acquaintances and nothing more?

‘Goodbye, Signor di Rossi,’ she said, barely a whisper. ‘Goodbye.’

She pulled her hand free, turned away and, without looking back once, fled.

Chapter Five

‘B
last these infernal foreign clerks,’ Richard said, finally giving voice to his exasperation. He’d scarce sat down to his breakfast before the officials from the Customs House had descended upon him, and it had taken the better part of the morning for him and Potter to settle their questions and finally send them on their way. ‘They’re so puffed with their own importance; they do believe they’re as grand as his Majesty himself. Did they truly believe we’d try smuggling rubbish in our trunks?’

Potter made a small bow of agreement. ‘The Venetians are most particular about their trade, your Grace. They have such a long tradition of trade by sea, that they are most watchful guarding their port.’

‘Their entire city’s a port, as far as I can see.’ Richard sighed, and reached for his glass again. Despite the canals and rivers everywhere, he’d been warned for the sake of his health to stay clear of the water for drinking, and from what he’d seen floating about beneath his window, he instantly agreed. Instead he’d been advised to drink the local wine, a rich, fruity red from the nearby Veneto that was surprisingly agreeable, even when accompanied by drones from the Customs House. ‘At least we satisfied them that we’re no rascally rum-smugglers, eh?’

Potter smiled. ‘Quite, your Grace.’

‘Quite, indeed.’ Richard nodded, then sighed again. What lay next for this morning—or what was left of it—wouldn’t be nearly as easily resolved. He didn’t enjoy admitting he was wrong any more than the next man did. ‘Ah, well, now for the rest of my business. Pray send in Miss Wood to me.’

‘Forgive me, your Grace,’ Potter said with a delicate hesitation, ‘but that is not possible. She’s not in the house.’

‘Not here? Of course she’s here. Where the devil could she be otherwise?’

‘I do not know, your Grace.’ Potter stepped forwards, instantly producing a sealed letter in that mystifying way of all good secretaries. ‘But she did leave this for you to read at your convenience.’

Richard grabbed the letter from Potter’s hand. ‘I cannot believe Miss Wood would simply disappear,’ he said, cracking the seal with his thumb. ‘She’s never been given to such irresponsibility. It’s not like her.’

‘I expect she’ll return, your Grace,’ Potter offered. ‘It isn’t as if she’s run off. All her belongings are still in her room.’

‘Well, that’s a mercy, isn’t it?’ With a grumbling sigh Richard turned to the neatly written page. A single sheet, no more, covered with Miss Wood’s customary model penmanship. If she’d been upset by their exchange last night, she wasn’t going to betray it with her pen, that was certain.

‘Damnation,’ he muttered unhappily. ‘Thunder
and
damnation! Potter, what does she mean by this? You read this, and tell me. What’s she about?’

Quickly the secretary scanned the letter, and handed it back to the duke. ‘It would seem that Miss Wood has given notice, Your Grace, effective immediately.’

That was what Richard had thought, too, but hadn’t wanted to accept. ‘But she can’t resign, Potter. I won’t permit it.’

Potter screwed up his mouth as if he’d eaten something sour. ‘You can’t forbid it, your Grace, if she no longer wishes to remain in your employment. As Miss Wood herself writes, with the young ladies wed and gone, there’s little reason for—’

‘I know what she damn well wrote, Potter,’ Richard said crossly. He set the letter on the desk and smoothed it flat with his palm. When he’d first heard that his daughters had married, he’d been ready to banish Miss Wood from his sight for the rest of their combined days on this earth. But once he’d read the letters from his daughters, he realised that Miss Wood was the last link he might have with them.

The last link.
Lightly he traced her signature with his fingertip. He thought of how hard she’d tried to make the news as palatable as possible to him last night, how she’d tried to ease both his temper and his sorrow. She’d done her best for his girls in this, the way she always had, yet she’d also done her best for him. How many years had she been in his household, anyway? He couldn’t remember for certain. It seemed as if she’d always been there, setting things quietly to rights whenever they went awry, looking after his girls as loyally as if they’d been her own. He could hardly expect more, nor would he have asked for more, either. Surely he must have told her so, somewhere in all the time that his daughters were growing up. Somewhere, at some time, he must have, hadn’t he?

Hadn’t he?

‘Miss Wood is still a young woman, your Grace,’ Potter was saying, stating the patently obvious as he too often did. ‘No doubt she is already looking towards her future, and a position with another—’

‘I know perfectly well how young she is, Potter,’ Richard said, and as soon as he spoke he remembered how she’d looked last night, her hair loose and full over her shoulders and her eyes wide and glowing with the fervour of her argument. Oh, aye, she was young, a good deal younger than he’d remembered her to be. Now he couldn’t forget it, and his confusion made his words sharp. ‘Nor do I need you to tell me of her future.’

Potter sighed, and bowed. ‘No, your Grace.’

‘Miss Wood’s future, indeed,’ Richard muttered, pointedly turning away from Potter to gaze out the window. Nothing had prepared him for losing his girls as abruptly as he had, and now he’d no intention of letting Miss Wood go before he was ready. ‘As if I’d so little regard for the young woman that I’d turn her out in a foreign place like some low, cast-off strumpet.’

‘Your Grace.’

He swung around at once. Miss Wood herself was standing there beside Potter, her gloved hands neatly clasped at her waist and her expression perfectly composed.

‘Forgive me for startling you, your Grace,’ she said, ‘but Signora della Battista told me you wished to see me directly. I have only now returned, and I came to you as soon as I could.’

He nodded, for once unable to think of what to say. Hell, what had he been saying when she’d entered? Something unfortunate about strumpets and being turned out.

‘Potter, leave us,’ he ordered, determined not to embarrass her any further. ‘I will speak to Miss Wood alone.’

The secretary backed his way from the room, and shut the door after him. Miss Wood continued to stand, her expression so unperturbed that Richard found himself unsettled by it.

‘Sit, Miss Wood, sit,’ he said, waving his hand towards a nearby chair. ‘That is, if you wish to.’

‘Thank you, your Grace.’ She sat with an unstudied grace, the slight flutter of her plain woollen skirts around her ankles reminding him painfully of her nightshift last night in the hallway.

Unaware of his thoughts, she sighed and glanced down at her letter, still open on the table before him.

Her smile became more forced, its earlier pleasantness gone. ‘I suppose you wish to discuss terms, your Grace. I can be gone from this house by nightfall today, if that is your desire.’

‘It most certainly is not!’ he exclaimed, appalled. ‘Look here, Miss Wood, what I was saying when you came in—I didn’t mean you, or that you were to leave.’

Her eyes widened with bewilderment, and she flushed. ‘Forgive me, your Grace, but I don’t understand. When I entered just now, you were looking through the window, saying nothing.’

‘Very well, then, very well.’ He cleared his throat to cover his discomfort. That was a fine start to things, stammering out an apology when none was needed, like some tongue-tied schoolboy. ‘I’ve no intention of sending you off to fend for yourself without any warning. It’s not right, and I won’t have it said that I’d do such a thing to any woman in my employment.’

‘You’re very…kind.’ Now her smile was tremulous with an uncertainty he’d never seen from her before, and that touched him at once. Little tendrils of her dark hair had escaped from beneath her linen cap, doubtless coaxed into curls by Venice’s perpetual dampness, and reminding him again of last night. Why had he always believed her hair to be straight and uninteresting before this?

‘It’s not kindness,’ he said as firmly as he could. ‘It’s my duty to you, in return for how well you have served my daughters.’

‘It
is
kindness, your Grace,’ she said carefully, ‘and I thank you for it. But I cannot continue here, a governess with no charges to govern. It would not be right.’

‘And I say it is.’ To prove it, he took her letter and tore it in two. ‘There. We’ll forget about this notice, and you can continue with the same wages. I’ll have Potter settle the particulars, to make sure I’m not in arrears with you for the quarter.’

‘But for what, your Grace?’ she asked. ‘Before you arrived, I could continue to stay here until I took the passage for home because I was following my orders as we had arranged last summer. I could continue as I was, because I’d no reason not to, even without any responsibilities. But now that you
do
know my situation, everything changes. To accept wages from you for being idle would be perceived as unseemly, your Grace.’

Her cheeks had remained pink, and he wondered if she, too, were remembering last night. Had he surprised her as much as she had him? Had she been aware of him as a man, and not just a master? Is that what she meant by ‘unseemly’?

‘You’ve been in my household for years, Miss Wood.’ A thousand memories of her with his daughters came racing back to him—more, really, than he had of the girls with his wife. All he asked now was that she share that with him for another fortnight. ‘You are in many ways a part of our family, you know. Certainly my two daughters feel that way towards you.’

With triumph he saw the brightness in her eyes that meant unshed tears. She wouldn’t go now, not so long as she thought of Diana and Mary.

He lowered his voice, softer but no less commanding. ‘Please, Miss Wood. No one would question it if you remained here another few weeks.’

But instead of immediately agreeing, as he’d expected, she shook her head. ‘Forgive me, your Grace, but I believe they would. A governess is always vulnerable to talk.’

‘No female servant has ever come to grief in my household,’ he declared proudly, ‘and I defy anyone to say otherwise. That shall not change, Miss Wood. I give you my word of honour.’

‘I thank you, your Grace.’ She rose, and he stood, too, on the other side of the table with her torn letter lying between them. ‘But I must refuse. I have no choice, not if I hope to be at ease with myself. I cannot remain here to take money from you for doing nothing in return.’

‘Nothing?’ Swiftly he turned away from her again and back towards the window, unwilling to let her see his surprise at her refusal. When was the last time anyone had refused him like this? What more did she wish from him, anyway? What more could he offer her?

‘For the sake of my girls, I would ask you to stay,’ he said to the window. ‘Reconsider, and stay. Please.’

Yet she did not answer, and he sighed impatiently, clasping and unclasping his hands behind his back.

‘An answer, Miss Wood,’ he said. ‘Damnation, you can at least grant me that courtesy, can’t you?’

No answer came, not a word, and with a muttered oath he swung around to confront her.

And to his chagrin, learned that she had left him and he was already alone.

With feverish haste, Jane packed the last of her belongings into her travelling trunks. Despite the luxury and comfort of this house and the hospitality shown to her by Signora della Battista, the sooner she left this place, the better. No matter how much the duke insisted she stay, she could not remain here with him. She could
not.
It was as simple, and as complicated, as that.

She muttered with frustration, a rolled-up stocking clutched tightly in her hand. She had anticipated this tour across the Continent so much. Likely it would be the one time in her life she’d be able to see the places and paintings she’d only read about in books. While most tutors to noble families had travelled to France and Italy, very few governesses ever left their schoolrooms, and she’d counted on these new experiences to increase her value to families who’d hire her in the future.

But what she hadn’t counted on was how this trip had altered her.

The changes had been imperceptible as they’d happened, or at least they’d been so to her. When she studied her reflection in the looking-glass, she appeared much the same as she always had, with more thoughtfulness than beauty in her face. She wore the same clothes as when she’d left Aston Hall, and pinned her hair back into the same tidy knot as she had since she’d been a girl. She still wore no scent, no ornaments or jewels, no extra little enticements designed to beguile. She dressed for sturdy, respectable practicality and nothing else.

Nor could she say exactly when or how the changes had occurred. Was it because she’d been forced to step so far beyond her usual place in life, and accept more responsibility for herself and her young charges? Was it the art she’d seen in the galleries here, frankly sensual images of pagan love among the ancient Greeks and Romans, of writhing nymphs and satyrs, of Romish saints in the throes of exquisite ecstasies, that had subtly marked her? Or had the proximity to the heated affairs of Mary and Diana affected her, too, softening her, burnishing her, making her less like her familiar spinster self and more receptive to male attention, even admiration?

Because that was what had happened. Not only was she noticing gentlemen with more interest than she ever had before, but they were noticing her. To be sure, Signor di Rossi was Italian, and by his nature much given to emotional displays, but for him to have proposed assignations had stunned her. The very word sounded beyond wicked. She would be thirty on her next birthday, well beyond the impulsive age for making
assignations
with gentlemen. Wasn’t she?