The Game and the Governess (23 page)

The entire room fell silent at that. Phoebe’s eyes went wide, as she could feel any color that she might have gained drain from her face all the way down to her feet, rooting them to the floor.

But Rose simply stood there, waiting for the answer.

And then the most amazing thing of all happened. Sir Nathan laughed.

He threw his head back in a guffaw so loud, it shook the crystal on the gaudy chandelier above their heads.

“Miss Baker.” The hot-faced Lady Widcoate turned her fierce glare on her. “What have you been teaching them?”

“I’m not . . . That is to say, I am so sorry, I have no idea . . .”

“She’s teaching them to experience the world!” Sir Nathan interrupted her objections. “And a good thing too. I had feared that keeping them with a governess
would make them too bookish. But now I see you were right, my love.”

“I . . . I was?” Lady Widcoate turned an astonished gaze to her husband. “But . . . horses. Surely it is too dangerous, and Rose is too young . . .”

But for once, Sir Nathan was not going to let his wife’s fears for their children coddle them. He waved his hand, cutting off all her objections.

“The girl is of an age, my love, and is sitting well on a horse not a ladylike refinement?” And, for the first time in as long as Phoebe had been in Puffington Arms’ employ, she saw Lady Widcoate acquiesce to her husband—really, truly give in! Sitting back, she let her husband take control.

“We were about Rose’s age when we learned,” the countess comforted her sister.

“Well, Rose, I suppose it is time you learned to ride,” her father said, leaning back in his seat. “You’ll begin your lessons as soon as we find an appropriate teacher.”

Rose’s face then broke into the most beatific smile, and she rushed forward with her arms spread wide.

“Oh, really, Papa? Hooray! Er . . .” She had stopped herself from bouncing and forced a deep, gracious curtsy. “I mean, thank you, Father.”

After that, the children were dismissed, and Phoebe escorted them out of there as quickly as possible. If Lady Widcoate stared daggers after them, she did not see it. Indeed, Lady Widcoate seemed to be taken aback by her husband’s countering her own hopes. All Phoebe could do was be grateful that they had overtly pleased one parent and gotten out of there with her employment, and secrets, intact.

“How about me? Could you kiss me?” Henry was asking from her other side, pulling on her skirt. His thumb had not gone into his mouth once all evening, she suddenly realized.

“Yes, I could kiss you too, Henry. But I shan’t, to save your sister alarm.”

“How about me?” The honeyed tenor came from below.

She did not need to turn to know who it was, but did so anyway.

Mr. Turner was looking up at them, considerably cleaner than the last time she had seen him. Pond water did him a world of good, it seemed.

His dark eyes were joking, that lopsided smile playing about his mouth. Hopefully they were joking, she thought—otherwise his question was more remarkably awkward than anything he had done the previous evening.

“Rose, Henry . . .” She bent down. “You have both done marvelously this evening. Go to Nanny now, she’ll have your dinner waiting.”

“Just beware of any berry tarts,” Mr. Turner admonished, and shot them both a wide grin before they scurried off.

She watched them until they disappeared down the hall, and then turned back to Mr. Turner. Who had once again managed to sneak up on her, and was now standing directly in front of her.

And as he was a step or two below her, they were actually eye to eye.

“How did you manage that?” she asked, tilting her head to one side. “Riding lessons for Rose.”

He shrugged and ran his hands through his hair. “It was a guess.”

“A guess?”

“Sir Nathan is a man surrounded by women. Henry is too young to take part in his interests yet, so he has no one to share them with. Thus, anytime anyone pays the slightest attention to one of his passions—hunting or the bathing retreat—he is eager to delve into it. Regardless of gender.”

“And I told you Sir Nathan liked to ride. Or used to.” She nodded with understanding. “But Rose . . . she has never spoken to her father with such . . . directness.”

“All I did was tell Rose to pretend she was asking for something she had already received, like an earl or countess would.”

Phoebe sighed. “Still, if he had said no . . . it seems like quite the gamble.”

But he waved that away, jokingly. “Only if you worry about consequences.”

“It seems as if the consequences are that you will have to teach her.”

That had been the final amazing thing, the icing on the berry tart. When Sir Nathan declared that a suitable riding instructor must be found, Lord Ashby had recommended, of all people, Mr. Turner.

“For a secretary, he’s the best man I know with horses,” he had said. “I have no doubt he would be able to occupy the children and instruct Rose on the basics quite well.”

A look had passed between Mr. Turner and the earl, a sort of challenge. But then Mr. Turner simply cocked up that eyebrow and happily agreed.

“I’m pleased to be her teacher,” Mr. Turner was saying to Phoebe. “But you might have to give me a primer on best practices for dealing with eight-year-olds.”

A qualm went through her. While she was grateful for Mr. Turner’s assistance today, having him teach Rose to ride would only throw him into her company more. And she was not certain how she felt about that.

Damn it all, before the Questioning, she’d had such a good speech planned too.

She was going to thank him for his help today, although the difficulty was mostly his doing. She would then magnanimously decide that any of his altruistic actions today would serve to cancel out his more base actions of the night before, thus calling them even, and they would part on good terms—he back to the world of land surveys and business deals, and she to her teaching. They would actively avoid crossing paths in the future.

But those eyes . . . those eyes were playful, and pleased. And that lopsided smile was an adorable charm that told her he had every intention of getting away with . . . something.

And all she wanted was to lose herself in both for a little while.

So, instead of saying what she had intended—and letting him off any hook—she said the first words that popped into her head.

“Why did you do it?”

“Because I thought Rose might like to learn to—”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Wh-what did you mean, then?” His smile faltered slightly.

“Why did you kiss me last night?”

“Oh.” His smile slipped completely now, as red stained his tanned cheeks. “That.”

“Yes, that.”

“It was stupid,” he confessed. If he had been wearing a hat, it would have been in hand at that moment.

“Thank you ever so,” she drawled, and watched him blush further at her sarcasm.

“I was overwhelmed by the moment,” he tried, and she let her eyebrow go to the roof. “I was! There was candlelight, and a tart, and I was surrounded by beauty.”

“And it was freezing, and the tart was poisoned, and no one can see beauty by two candles. Come, Mr. Turner, after the rigors of today, the very least you could do is be honest with me.”

He seemed befuddled by the idea of telling the truth, until he simply blurted out, “It was a bet!”

“A bet?” she asked.

“A wager,” he clarified, “with the earl.”

“I see,” she said, her entire body going cold. The earl. The earl was somehow wagering . . . on her?

“No, allow me to explain.” He took a deep breath. “The earl has, for some time, described me as a stick-in-the-mud. Boring and businesslike.”

“I would never think of you as boring, Mr. Turner. Or businesslike.”

“I agree completely.”

“Pushy, yes. Overeager. But not boring.”

His brow came down. “All right, I deserve that. But the wager was that I could not . . . convince a young lady to kiss me while we were here. And apparently, he was right.”

She looked him square in the eye.

“I did not . . . convince you. I took advantage. As you said. It was low and ungentlemanly and I must beg your forgiveness.”

She considered him for a moment. A long moment. An apparently unbearable moment, because he began to fidget under her stare, much like her charges.

“All right,” she finally said.

“All right?” he replied, unsure.

“All right. That explanation I believe, at least. What are the stakes of the wager?”

He looked confused for a moment. “Er . . . pride, mostly?”

“So, nothing too expensive, then.”

He exhaled a short laugh, relieved. And then so did she. She let her dimples show, regardless of who and how she was supposed to be.

She brought her gaze back to his. And found him staring at her, in the most unusual way. As if she had managed, with one simple laugh, to render him dumbstruck.

Which was nonsense, of course. She had never rendered anyone dumbstruck, and certainly not since taking up the mantle of earning her living.

“So . . .”

“So . . .” he countered. His feet not moving, not turning back to leave. He was content to stay there.

As content, it seemed, as she was.

“I . . . fear you will be missed, Mr. Turner,” she tried.

“Really? I’m not.” He shrugged. “They have all spent the day together, shooting arrows and sipping lemonade, and are much more content reliving new
found jokes with each other than they are with what I spent my day doing.”

“What did you spend your day doing?” she asked. “You were covered in dirt.”

He shot her a wicked grin. “I tried very hard to remember all the maths and rules for proper grammar that I thought you would be teaching the children . . . then I just took them into the woods to go exploring.”

“Exploring?”

“After a stop at the stables, where Rose convinced me of her dire need to pet Abandon’s nose, of course. All children need woods to explore. Places to make forts and wage wars and find trouble. There are remnants of an old keep in those woods, did you know?” His eyes lit up with childlike enthusiasm. “I remember when I was young we used to . . .” He paused, pulling out a cloth from his sleeve and coughing into his hand. “That is, near where I grew up there were some ruins too, which I used to declare myself king of on a semiweekly basis.”

She was suddenly assaulted by a vision of a young Mr. Turner, scampering over logs and woods and old stones, remarkably dirty, still with that mischievous smile. She had no doubt that he had excelled at finding trouble, and laughing it off.

And at some point that must have changed. He was no longer able to laugh things off. And something in the way he had acted when they first met, trying hard to be pleasing, and failing . . . he seemed to mourn it as if its loss were recent.

She knew what it was to lose like that. And to have to find your ground again.

But instead of contemplating a young Mr. Turner,
and analyzing the current version overmuch, she let her eyes fall to something that, without the awkwardness of the conversation, would not have captured her attention.

“Is that . . . my handkerchief?”

He looked down at the cloth in his hand, an old piece of threadbare linen with a simple identifying
PB
stitched into one corner.

“Yes! You’ll have to forgive me . . . I stole it from you this morning to clean off my shoes when you . . . well, you remember that part?”

She blushed furiously, closed her eyes as she nodded. “Yes, I remember that part.”

“Anyway”—he cleared his throat—“I washed it. In the pond, but washed it still. I meant to return it to you, but forgot and just stuck it in my pocket.”

He held it out to her.

She eyed it ominously. “There is no need. You can feel free to keep it. Or dispose of it.”

“Really?” he asked, curiously. “I . . . forgive me, but you cannot have drawers of handkerchiefs to spare.”

True, but she also did not have a desire to keep a pond-water-and-vomit handkerchief. “Yes, but that is a scrap of linen from one of Lady Widcoate’s old petticoats, repurposed. I will not miss it.”

“Oh, well, then.” He looked confused, but then with a shrug, shoved the cloth back into his pocket. “Brilliant. Marvelous.”

“I should head back,” she said suddenly. “I confess, the Questioning took up more of my strength than I thought. I must lie down again.”

“Do you need help? I’ll escort you upstairs.”

His hand was at her back in a moment. It was meant
as kindness, just the smallest pressure, to help hold her up. But it did something strange to her nerves. It made every tired joint and muscle in her body suddenly awake. Through the wool of her gown, she could feel the heat of his palm, the gentle strength of his fingers.

She could feel it as surely as if he had been touching her naked skin.

“That’s not necessary,” she said, jerking back in surprise. His hand dropped, a shocked look crossing his face. As if he realized the inappropriateness of the touch. As if his skin burned too.

Then her eyes flitted to over his shoulder. He turned, and saw the Earl of Ashby, standing downstairs in the doorway to the drawing room, clearly newly arrived, and not pleased with the scene.

She could feel her body freeze at the sight of the man. And the quizzical look this earned from Mr. Turner.

Indeed, it was time to leave.

“Thank you,” she whispered, “for your help today.”

“It was my pleasure, Miss Baker.” He bowed to her.

She did not let her expression shift from the plain politeness of a governess, but still, a single eyebrow lifted an inch at that.

“All right, perhaps it wasn’t ‘a pleasure’ per se. I had mud in places I don’t want to contemplate, but . . . at least I wasn’t bored.” He smiled as he came up.

She gave a short curtsy.

“Now, that, Mr. Turner, I believe.”