The Hidden Heart (4 page)

The old man eyed Gabriela somewhat skeptically. “Ward?”

“Yes.” Jessica instilled her voice with all the iron she could muster.

The butler bowed and left, but a few minutes later, he returned, looking apologetic. “I am sorry, ma’am, but His Grace is adamant. He is, um, not one who engages in much social intercourse. He suggested that you contact his estate manager, Mr. Williams, tomorrow.”

“His estate manager!” Anger flared up in Jessica. She was tired, thirsty and hungry, as well as grimy from the dust of the road. She wanted nothing so much as a chance to wash off, then tumble into bed for a long sleep. It was galling that the obnoxiously proud duke did not even have the courtesy to meet her. During the years since her father’s death, she had grown used to slights and snubs, to the small, painful pinpricks of humiliation that the rich and powerful all too frequently gave out. But they never failed to raise her ire, and this one was far worse, because it was a snub and insult to Gabriela, as well.

She glanced over at her charge and saw that Gaby’s pretty young face was pale and apprehensive. She would no doubt worry now that her guardian had no liking for her, that he might refuse to be her guardian or, even worse, be a harsh one. The sight of Gabriela’s small hands twisting together in her lap touched flame to the fuel of Jessica’s anger.

“I am so very sorry that it is inconvenient for your master to come downstairs and meet an orphan who has been placed in his care,” Jessica snapped. “But I am afraid that he has no choice in the matter.
He
is Gabriela’s guardian, not his estate manager, and I intend to talk to
him.
We have traveled for a day and a half to see him, and I have no intention of going back to the village at this hour to get a room at the inn.”

The butler shifted nervously under Jessica’s flashing eyes. “I am most awfully sorry, miss….”

“Oh, stop saying that! Just tell me where he is, and I will give him the message myself.”

The old man’s eyes widened in horror. “Miss! No, you cannot—”

But his words fell on empty space, for Jessica walked past him, saying to Gabriela, “Wait here for me, Gaby. I’ll be back in a trice.”

The butler hurried after her, his hands fluttering nervously. “But, miss, you cannot…His Grace is not receiving. It is very late.”

“I am quite aware of the hour. And I frankly do not care whether His Grace is receiving or not. I intend to talk to the man, and I am not leaving this house until I do,” Jessica said as she strode into the huge central room beyond the stairs. “Your only choice is whether you will tell me where he is or let me yell for him,” she informed him over her shoulder.

“Yell?” The man looked as if he might faint from the horror of the idea. “Miss Maitland, please…”

“Hello?” Jessica called loudly, cupping her hands around her mouth. “I am looking for the Duke of Cleybourne!”

The butler gasped behind her. “No! Miss, you must not, it isn’t seemly.”

“And is it seemly for a man to ignore his duties to a dead friend, to tell a fourteen-year-old girl who has just lost everyone dear to her that she should go back to an inn to spend the night and then talk to his estate manager? I may be unseemly, but I am not wicked.”

She walked toward the main corridor leading off from the Great Hall, shouting again, “Cleybourne!”

Down the corridor a door was flung open, and a man stepped into the corridor. He was tall, with an unruly mop of thick black hair and eyes of nearly as dark a color. His cheekbones were wide and sharp, his jaw firm and his cheeks hollowed. He was dressed in breeches and a shirt, his jacket and cravat discarded, and his shirt unbuttoned at the top. He glowered down the hallway at Jessica.

“What the devil is going on out here? Who is making that racket?”

“I am,” Jessica replied, walking purposefully toward him.

“And who the devil are you?”

“Jessica Maitland. The one whose message you just flung back in her face.”

“I am sorry, Your Grace.” The butler hurried toward him, puffing.

“Never mind, Baxter. I shall take care of this myself.” The man swayed a little, putting a hand up to the doorjamb to steady himself.

“You’re bosky!” Jessica exclaimed.

“I am not,” he disputed. “Anyway, the amount of my inebriation is scarcely any business of yours, Miss Maitland. I am still not at home to every hopeful debutante who passes through with her harpy of a mother and hopes to put up at my home. Ever since that fool Vindefors married the chit who put up at his house after an accident, every grasping mama in the Ton has tried to emulate her.”

“I have no idea what you are talking about,” Jessica said impatiently. “But it has nothing to do with me or my purpose here, as you would know if you had listened to what your butler said.”

The man’s brows soared upward. Jessica was sure he was unused to hearing anything he said or did disputed, given his rank. “I beg your pardon,” he said icily.

“As well you should,” Jessica retorted, purposely taking his words in the wrong way. “Miss Carstairs and I have had a long and difficult journey, and it is entirely too much to be told to take ourselves off to an inn at this hour of the night.”

“Some might say that it is entirely too much to expect a stranger to take one in at this hour of the night.” The duke crossed his arms, glaring back at her. “And who in the bloody hell is Miss Carstairs?”

“She is the daughter of a man who thought you were his friend,” Jessica replied. “So good a friend that he named you her guardian.”

His arms fell to his sides, and Cleybourne stared at her. “Roddy? Roddy Carstairs? Are you saying that Roddy Carstairs’ daughter is here?”

“That is precisely what I am saying. Did you not get my letter? Or have you simply not troubled yourself to read it?”

He blinked at her for a moment, then said, “The devil!”

He turned around and strode back into the room from which he had emerged. Jessica followed him. It was a study, masculinely decorated in browns and tans, with leather chairs and a massive desk and dark wood paneling on the walls. A fire burned low in the fireplace, the only light in the room besides the oil lamp on the desk. A decanter and glass stood on the desk, mute testimony to what the duke had been doing in the dimly lit room. On the corner of the desk was a small pile of letters.

Cleybourne pawed through them and pulled one out. Jessica’s copperplate writing adorned the front, and it remained sealed. He broke the seal now and opened it, bringing the sheet of paper closer to the lamp to read it.

“I will tell you what it says. I am Miss Carstairs’ governess, Jessica Maitland, and her great-uncle, General Streathern, passed away a few days ago, leaving her entirely orphaned and still underage. As you were named in her father’s will as her guardian if her uncle could not serve, he thought that you were the proper man to become her guardian upon his death.”

The duke let out a low curse and dropped Jessica’s letter back onto the table. He looked at her again, still frowning.

“You don’t look like any governess I have ever seen.”

Jessica’s hand flew instinctively to her hair. Her thick, curly red hair had a mind of its own, and no matter how much she tried to subdue it into the sort of tight bun that was suitable for a governess, it often managed to work its way out. Now, she realized, after the long ride in the carriage, a good bit of it had come loose from the bun and straggled around her face, flame-red and curling wildly. Her hat, as well, had been knocked askew. No doubt she looked a fright. Embarrassed, she pulled off her bonnet and tried to smooth back her hair, searching for a hairpin to secure it, and the result was that even more of it tumbled down around her shoulders.

Cleybourne’s eyes went involuntarily to the bright fall of hair, glinting warmly in the light of the lamp, and something tightened in his abdomen. She had hair that made a man want to sink his hands into it, not the sort of thought he usually had about a governess—indeed, not the sort of thought Richard normally had about any woman.

Since Caroline’s death, he had locked himself away from the world, eschewing especially the company of women. The musical sound of their laughter, the golden touch of candlelight on bare feminine shoulders, the whiff of perfume—all were reminders of what he had lost, and he found himself filled with anger whenever he looked at them. The only woman he regularly saw besides the maids and housekeeper was his wife’s sister, Rachel. She was, perhaps, the most painful of all women to see, as she looked more like Caroline than anyone, tall and black haired, with eyes as green as grass, but he was too fond of her to cut her off, and she, out of all the world, was the only one who truly shared in his grief.

But never, in the four years since Caroline had died, had he looked at a woman and felt a stab of pure lust. Oh, there had been times when he had felt a man’s natural needs, but that had been simply a matter of instinct and the amount of time that had passed since he had known the pleasure of a woman’s body. It had not flamed up in him because of the look of a particular woman’s hair or the curve of her shoulder or the sound of her voice.

It seemed absurd that he should feel it now, with this harridan of a governess. God knows, she was beautiful—vivid and unusual, with startlingly blue eyes and pale, creamy skin and that wild fall of hair—and her tall, statuesque figure could not be completely toned down by the plain dark dress she wore. But she was also loud, strident and completely without manners. He did not know if he had ever met a less feminine-acting woman.

He did not want her in the house—neither her nor the young girl whose guardian she claimed he was. He had come here to end his days in this place where his life had stopped four years ago, even though his heart had continued vulgarly to beat. How could he do it with this virago and some silly girl in the house with him?

“How do I know that any of this is real?” he asked her abruptly. “What proof do you have of it?”

Jessica had tried unsuccessfully to wind her hair back into a knot, but finally she had simply let it go. She bridled at his words. “I would hate to be as suspicious as you,” she said bitingly. “First you assume we are some sort of rapacious husband-hunters, and now you doubt whether a poor orphaned girl is actually your ward.”

“One learns to be suspicious through hard experience,” Cleybourne said flatly. “Well? If your story is true, there must be some proof.”

“Of course there is proof.” Jessica had stuck the folded will and the General’s letter into her pocket when she emerged from the carriage, and now she reached in and pullled them out, handing them over to the duke. “Here is the General’s will, as well as a letter that he wrote to you, explaining the circumstances. I do not have a copy of his death certificate with me, however, if you doubt whether he has actually died.”

Cleybourne’s mouth tightened, and he snatched the papers from her. His eyes ran down the will until they reached the clause naming him guardian of General Streathern’s great-niece, Gabriela Carstairs, the daughter of Roderick and Mary Carstairs. He sighed, folding the will back up.
Poor Roddy.
He remembered well when his friend and his wife had died, both felled by a vicious fever that had swept through the south of England that year. Their young daughter had survived only because the doctor had insisted that she and her nurse be quarantined in her nursery, never visiting her parents.

He opened the letter and read it, squinting to make out the scratchings of an ill old man. At one point, he exclaimed, “Vesey is her only living relative! Good God!”

“Precisely.” Jessica was relieved at his reaction to Vesey’s name. From the way the man had been acting, she had been afraid that he might decide to hand Gabriela over to Lord Vesey rather than trouble with her himself. “The General was afraid that Lord Vesey might try to wrest the guardianship away from you—I’m not sure how, exactly. That is why he insisted that we leave immediately after the reading of the will and drive straight here. It has been a long and exhausting journey. Gabriela is very tired.”

“Yes, of course.” His eyes flickered to her, and he noticed for the first time the pale blue half circles of weariness and worry beneath her eyes. “You, too, I should imagine.” He sighed and laid the documents on his desk. “Well, there is nothing for it but for you to stay here, of course.” He paused, then added stiffly, “My apologies for your reception when you arrived. I had no idea who you were. I—everyone will tell you that I am not a sociable man.”

Jessica felt like retorting that this was scarcely news to her, but she held her tongue. The man might be a snob and a boor, but she did not want to offend him so much that he took Gabriela out of her care. She swallowed her pride and said, “Thank you, Your Grace. We are in your debt.”

“I will direct Baxter to set you up for the night.”

“Thank you.” Jessica started for the door, then paused and swung back to him. “I—I suppose that you would like to meet your ward. Shall I bring her here?”

“No!” His answer was swift and adamant, and his face, which had relaxed its lines somewhat, was suddenly as set as stone. He apparently realized the rudeness of his response, for he added, “That is, I think it would be better not at this time. I am sure that Miss Carstairs is quite done in by her journey. Meeting me would only be an unnecessary burden to her.”

Jessica met his eyes unflinchingly for a long moment. “Very well,” she said quietly. “Until tomorrow, then.”