The Governess Club: Sara (30 page)
Read The Governess Club: Sara Online
Authors: Ellie Macdonald
“Oh.” Bonnie was startled. She took a deep breath and looked down at Henry. “Shall we greet this visitor, my lord?”
Henry regarded her with solemn eyes. “You don’t need to address me like that. I am still Henry.”
Bonnie knelt down to his level. “You know well enough that you are the viscount. It is proper. You had best get used to it.”
“As the viscount, I insist you address me as you always have, as Henry.” He looked at Burdis. “And for the other servants to call you Miss Hodges.”
The butler inclined his head in acknowledgment. Bonnie gave Henry a weak smile and smoothed his coat lapels. “Mr. Montgomery is waiting.” At Henry’s nod, they moved to the drawing room, Arthur’s hand in hers, his older brother with shoulders squared and chin raised.
Mr. Montgomery looked up at their entrance, his hands stretched toward the fire, warming his fingers. Seeing them, he turned and moved across the room, his eyes sharp as he looked them over. He stopped in front of Henry.
“Henry,” he said, his voice infused with a Scottish burr. “You have grown. Do you remember me?”
Henry didn’t answer. Glancing down at him, Bonnie could see his throat working as though he was trying to force a sound out of his mouth. She rested a hand on his shoulder and felt his paralysis.
The man looked to the other boy. “Arthur, is it?” The younger boy buried his head in Bonnie’s skirts.
It was Bonnie’s turn to fall under the man’s regard. His green eyes gazed at her, unblinking. “You are?” he prompted.
Automatically, Bonnie cast her eyes down and dipped a small curtsey. “Hodges, sir, the governess.”
“Did the boys want to see me then? They heard their uncle had arrived?”
Bonnie was confused. “I was unaware they had any uncles.”
He waved her off. “I will see them later. I am awaiting the viscount.”
Henry drew a deep breath as though he were about to speak, but nothing came out.
Bonnie kept her voice steady and quiet. “Henry is the viscount, sir.”
Mr. Montgomery furrowed his brow. “I know very well who the viscount is, Miss Hodges. I am friends with their father.”
Now Henry had moved to stand against her skirts, although he didn’t clutch her legs as Arthur did. “I regret to inform you that both the viscount and his wife recently perished in a coaching accident. Henry is the viscount.”
His eyes narrowed. “Impossible.”
“I assure you, I speak true.”
Ellie Macdonald has held several jobs beginning with the letter “T”: taxi driver, telemarketer, and most recently, teacher. She is thankful her interests have shifted to writing instead of taxidermy or tornado chasing. Having traveled to five different continents, she has swum with elephants, scuba dived coral mazes, visited a leper colony, and climbed waterfalls and windmills, but her favorite place remains Regency England. She currently lives in Manitoba, Canada. The Governess Club series is her first published work.
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Coming Soon
Give in to your impulses . . .
Read on for a sneak peek at eight brand-new
e-book original tales of romance from Avon Books.
Available now wherever e-books are sold.
By T. J. Kline
T
HE
W
ALLFLOWER
W
EDDING
S
ERIES
By Vivienne Lorret
By Lena Diaz
B
OOK
T
HREE:
T
HE
M
C
B
RIDES
By Jennifer Ryan
A
B
ILLIONAI
RES AND
B
IKERS
N
OVEL
LA
By Cynthia Sax
A
T
RUST
N
O
O
NE
N
OVEL
By Dixie Lee Brown
A
H
ARD
I
NK
N
OVELLA
By Laura Kaye
A
F
RENCH
K
ISS
N
OVEL
By Gwen Jones
An Excerpt from
By T. J. Kline
From author T. J. Kline comes the stunning follow-up to
Rodeo Queen
. Reporter Angela McCallister needs the scoop of her career in order to save her father from the bad decisions that have depleted their savings. When the opportunity to spend a week at the Findley Brothers ranch arises, she sees a chance to get a behind-the-scenes scoop on rodeo. That certainly doesn’t include kissing the devastatingly handsome and charming cowboy Derek Chandler, who insists on calling her “Angel.”
“A
ngela, call on line three.”
“Can’t you just handle it, Joe? I don’t have time for this B.S.” It was probably just another stupid mom calling, hoping Angela would feature her daughter’s viral video in some feel-good news story. When was she ever going to get her break and find some hard-hitting news?
“They asked for you.”
Angela sighed. Maybe if she left them listening to that horrible elevator music long enough, they’d hang up. Joe edged closer to her desk.
“Just pick up the damn phone and see what they want.”
“Fine.” She glared at him as she punched the button. The look she gave him belied the sweet tone of her voice. “Angela McCallister, how can I help you?”
Joe leaned against her cubical wall, listening to her part of the conversation. She waved at him irritably. It wasn’t always easy when your boss was your oldest friend, and ex-boyfriend. He quirked a brow at her.
Go away,
she mouthed.
“Are you really looking for new stories?”
She assumed the male voice on the line was talking about the calls the station ran at the ends of several news programs asking for stories of interest. Most of them wound up in her mental “ignore” file, but once in a while she’d found one worth pursuing.
“We’re always looking for events and stories of interest to our local viewers.” She rolled her eyes, reciting the words Joe had taught her early on in her career as a reporter. She was tired of pretending any of this sucking up was getting her anywhere. Viewers only saw her as a pretty face.
“I have a lead that might interest you.” She didn’t answer, waiting for the caller to elaborate. “There’s a rodeo coming to town, and they are full of animal cruelty and abuse.”
This didn’t sound like a feel-good piece. The caller had her attention now. “Do you have proof?”
The voice gave a bitter laugh, sounding vaguely familiar. “Have you ever seen a rodeo? Electric prods, cinches wrapped around genitals, sharp objects placed under saddles to get horses to buck . . . it’s all there.”
She listened as the caller detailed several incidents at nearby rodeos where animals had to be euthanized due to injuries. Angela arched a brow, taking notes as the man gave her several websites she could research that backed the accusations.
“Can I contact you for more information?” She heard him hemming. “You don’t have to give me your name. Maybe just a phone number or an email address where I can reach you?” The caller gave her both. “Do you mind if I ask one more question—why me?”
“Because you seem like you care about animal rights. That story you did about the stray kittens and the way you found them a home, it really showed who you were inside.”
Angela barely remembered the story other than that Joe had forced it on her when she’d asked for one about a local politician sleeping with his secretary, reminding her that viewers saw her as their small-town sweetheart. She’d found herself reporting about a litter of stray kittens, smiling at the animal shelter as families adopted their favorites, and Jennifer Michaels had broken the infidelity story and was now anchoring at a station in Los Angeles. She was tired of this innocent, girl-next-door act.
“I’ll see what I can do,” she promised, deciding how to best pitch this story to Joe and whether it would be worth it at all.
An Excerpt from
The Wallflower Wedding Series
by Vivienne Lorret
Delany McFarland is on the hunt for a husband—preferably one who needs her embarrassingly large dowry more than a dutiful wife. Griffin Croft hasn’t been able to get Miss McFarland out of his mind, but now that she’s determined to hand over her fortune to a rake, Griffin knows he must step in. Yet when his noble intentions flee in a moment of unexpected passion, his true course becomes clear: tame Delaney’s wild heart and save her from a fate worse than death . . . a life without love.
S
he
had
been purposely avoiding him.
Griffin clasped his hands behind his back and began to pace around her in a circle. “Do you have spies informing you on my whereabouts at all times, or only for social gatherings?”
Miss McFarland watched his movements for a moment, but then she pursed those pink lips and smoothed the front of her cream gown. “I do what I must to avoid being seen at the same function with you. Until recently, I imagined we shared this unspoken agreement.”
“Rumormongers rarely remember innocent bystanders.”
She scoffed. “How nice for you.”
“Yes, and until recently, I was under the impression that I came and went of my own accord. That my decisions were mine alone. Instead, I learn that every choice I make falls under your scrutiny.” He was more agitated than angered. Not to mention intrigued and unaccountably aroused by her admission. During a season packed full of social engagements, she must require daily reports of his activities. Which begged the question, how often did she think of him? “Shall I quiz you on how I take my tea? Or if my valet prefers to tie my cravat into a barrel knot or horse collar?”
“I do not know, nor do I care, how you take your tea, Mr. Croft,” she said, and he clenched his teeth to keep from asking her to say it once more. “However, since I am something of an expert on fashion, I’d say that the elegant fall of the mail coach knot you’re wearing this evening suits the structure of your face. The sapphire pin could make one imagine that your eyes are blue—”
“But you know differently.”
Her cheeks went pink before she drew in a breath and settled her hand over her middle. Before he could stop the thought, he wondered whether she was experiencing the
fluttering
his sister had mentioned.
“You are determined to be disagreeable. I have made my attempts at civility, but now I am quite through with you. If you’ll excuse me . . .” She started forward to leave.
He blocked her path, unable to forget what he’d heard when he first arrived. “I cannot let you go without a dire warning for your own benefit.”
“If this is in regard to what you overheard—when you were eavesdropping on a
private matter
—I won’t hear it.”
He doubted she would listen to him if he meant to warn her about a great hole in the earth directly in her path either, but his conscience demanded he speak the words nonetheless. “Montwood is a desperate man, and you have put yourself in his power.”
Her eyes flashed. “
That
is where you are wrong. I am the one with the fortune, ergo the one with the power.”
How little she knew of men. “And what of your reputation?”
Her laugh did nothing to amuse him. “What I have left of my reputation will remain unscathed. He is not interested in my person. He only needs my fortune. In addition, as a second son, he does not require an heir; therefore, our living apart should not cause a problem with his family. And should he need
companionship
, he is free to find it elsewhere, so long as he’s discreet.”
“You sell yourself so easily, believing your worth is nothing more than your father’s account ledger,” he growled, his temper getting the better of him. He’d never lost control of it before, but for some reason this tested his limits. If
he
could see she was more than a sum of wealth, then
she
should damn well put a higher value on herself. “If you were my sister, I’d lock you in a convent for the rest of your days.”
Miss McFarland stepped forward and pressed the tip of her manicured finger in between the buttons of his waistcoat. “I am
not
your sister, Mr. Croft. And thank the heavens for that gift, too. I can barely stand to be in the same room with you. You make it impossible to breathe, let alone think. Neither my lungs nor my stomach recalls how to function. Not only that, but you cause this terrible crackling sensation beneath my skin, and it feels like I’m about to catch fire.” Her lips parted, and her small bosom rose and fell with each breath. “I do believe I loathe you to the very core of your being, Mr. Croft.”
Somewhere between the first
Mis-ter-Croft
and the last, he’d lost all sense.
Because in the very next moment, he gripped her shoulders, hauled her against him, and crushed his mouth to hers.
An Excerpt from
by Lena Diaz
As a trained assassin for EXIT Inc—a top-secret mercenary group—Devlin “Devil” Buchanan isn’t afraid to take justice into his own hands. But with EXIT Inc closing in and several women’s lives on the line, Detective Emily O’Malley and Devlin must work together to find the missing women and clear both their names before time runs out . . . and their key to freedom is thrown away.
