The Game and the Governess (25 page)

And then there was the evening. She was just down the hall from him on the third floor, after all. It was too tempting to simply walk down to her door, and . . .

No. Given how he had acted last time, how abominably he had treated her, approaching her room, at night, while she was alone was the last thing he should be doing.

And yet he felt sort of compelled to do something . . . what was the word?—
nice
for Miss Baker.

“Who is it?” came the astonished voice from the other side of the door when he knocked.

“It’s Mr. Turner,” he returned. “I . . . I don’t want you to let me in or anything of that nature. I simply wanted to give you this lemon cake.”

There was a pause. “A lemon cake?”

“Yes,” he responded cheerily. “They served them with dinner. Did you have one already?”

Another pause. “No.”

“Excellent. I should like you to have this one. I made Cook set it aside.”

“Mr. Turner, do you mean to tell me you are trying to ply me with sweets in my room alone at night—again?” Her voice was crisp, a rebuke.

“Well, when you put it like that . . .” he mumbled. And then he could swear he heard her laughing. And it gave him heart.

“I know you like sweets, given the way you made yourself sick on that blackberry tart—”

“There were extenuating circumstances.”

“I also know you don’t receive many of them. I should like you to have this one. To say thank you, for your advice with the children today.” He shrugged and
put the plate down at the door. “Also, I took a bite out of it to make sure it’s not laced with ipecac.”

“How very thoughtful.” He swore he could hear the smile in her voice.

“I am exceedingly thoughtful.” When no reply came, he simply turned on his heel and let his footsteps put her at ease. “I bid you good night, Miss Baker.”

“Good night, Mr. Turner,” was the reply.

He had gone to his room then and slowly shut the door. When he opened it again a few minutes later, he was gratified to see that the plate bearing the lemon cake (with only a small bite out of it) had been taken up from its spot on the floor.

That missing plate on the floor allowed him to hope that maybe he had earned back a sliver of her trust. The smaller moments, the glances of humor beneath her façade, made him think that maybe he was even winning her to him.

He was wooing Miss Baker. But not in any way he was accustomed to wooing a woman. He was not offering her flowers or sparkling baubles, but rather, half-eaten lemon cake and small bits of revealing conversation. He was, he realized with a start, getting to know her.

And it must have been working, because today Miss Baker had escorted the children after their luncheon while Abandon was going through his paces, and now she hung back with him for several minutes, letting the afternoon begin to stretch around them.

“You are scared to death of letting them on the horse, aren’t you?” She smiled at him.

“I admit it freely.” He chuckled. “I know myself to
be a good horseman, but a teacher? Giving over all of my knowledge to someone with the attention span of a mayfly and praying they retain some of it while on a large animal seems . . . hopeful, at best. I’ve just been repeating ad nauseam all the safety lessons I can remember.”

“And now you know the secret of teaching: repetition, ad nauseam.”

She smiled again. But not the enigmatic, archaic smile of the governess. This was the full, dimpled smile of the woman beneath the gray wool.

And for some reason . . . she hated him.

She hated the Earl of Ashby.

“But, as I was saying—you said something a few days ago. Just after you fainted.” Ned tried the subject again and watched carefully as Miss Baker blushed ever so faintly. But she did not move her eyes from the children, nor hide her face. That she had fainted had been a fact. She accepted it as such.

He cleared his throat and continued. “You said that you hated the Earl of Ashby.”

Her face turned to fire at that. Her body stiffened, her breaths became short and shallow. But still she kept her eyes away from him. Kept them where she could keep herself steady.

“And if I did?” she asked, her voice as placid as a still pond.

“I was simply curious. I have been thinking about it since you said it.”

In truth he had not been thinking about it since she said it. He had thought that when she said, “He’s awful,” she was speaking about how sour Turner was.

No, it was not until Turner made his declaration before they went in to dinner that Ned began to think about what possible grudge Miss Baker could have against the earl—well, against
him
, if he was going to be technical about it.

But was it against him? Perhaps his great-uncle had committed the unknown offense. But no—she had frozen upon first setting eyes upon them, days ago, when they encountered her in the road and asked for directions to Puffington Arms. If the slight was committed by his great-uncle, surely she would not have been thrown by the sight of a young man wearing the earl’s mantle.

And . . . was it a slight? Something small could not inspire that much hatred. Thinking back on it, every time she had chanced to be in the same room (or lane) as Turner, she had frozen, shut down, hidden. Why, even the first few times she had been in his own presence, she had the same demeanor. He had been tainted by association.

Of course, the association was technically with himself. Which made the whole thing all that more complicated.

But it didn’t have to. There was no reason that Miss Baker should ever know his
true
identity, he rationalized to himself, every time that sick, hollow feeling began creeping up on him again. After all, he need only dance with her and learn some intimacy of her, and then he could leave her be.

And then he would win the wager, and be gone.

But it still did not abate his curiosity about why she might hate him.

Er, the earl, that is.

“I have known the earl for a long time. And I know that you and he have never met before this week,” Ned tried, after Miss Baker’s long silence.

And she was silent still, staring off after her charges. Until she finally spoke.

“How long?”

“How long have I known him?” Ned asked, and she gave a short, single nod. “Since the war.”

“Then you must have known him when one Mr. Sharp was in his employ.”

Ned could feel his blood run cold, his feet rooting in the spot, as if icicles had stabbed them in place.
He
remembered Mr. Sharp very well. He tried to place where Turner’s memory of the man would begin.

“I do know of him. I never met him. He was the old earl’s secretary, and then the current earl’s for a little while. Until he left his employ and I took over.” Yes, that sounded about right.

“I know of him too.” She shot a glance his way then, and her clear, sky-blue eyes were as hard as crystal. “For, you see, after he left the earl’s employ, he traveled the country, and eventually came to Dorset, where my father lived.”

The color that stained her cheeks had drained, leaving her again the pale, hard governess, the persona that she put up like a wall. Dread swept over him. Whatever had happened, this had been the result.

“Mr. Turner,” she said suddenly, “I am going to ask a very strange favor of you and I hope you will oblige me.”

“Anything that’s in my power,” he answered immediately.

“I . . . I don’t often speak of my father. And I . . .
whenever I had something hard to get through, my father was always there, listening and holding my hand.” She turned her gaze to him now, and he was surprised to find it so controlled. Oh, but just behind her eyes was a sea at storm. “Would you mind if—while I told this story—I held your hand?”

Ned didn’t know what to say. It was supremely untoward to hold hands in public with any woman, let alone the governess. But he wanted to hear her story. And it seemed . . . she needed help to tell it.

He moved his hand so it covered hers, resting on the fence. To someone looking closely, it was a breach of conduct, but if anyone merely glanced their way, it would not seem as if they were being scandalous.

“You can tell me anything.”

And she did.

“My family—my mother’s side—was wealthy. But when my mother married my father, they felt she had limited herself. He was a joyful little man who made her happy, but they could not see past his modest fortune and lack of connection,” she began, her eyes shifting back to the children, ever vigilant.

“They’re fine,” he said gruffly, about Henry and Rose.

“Yes,” she agreed with a sigh. After a moment, she continued.

“They were a very happy couple. They enjoyed their life in Dorset. But my father wanted me to have the same advantages my mother had been given. My mother worked toward reconciliation with her family and asked that they send me to school. They were generous enough to do so, and off to Mrs. Beveridge’s I went.

“I was nearly sixteen when my mother died. Still in school. My mother’s family did not really see the point in continuing my education after that, but my father”—her breath hitched, as if she swallowed a tear—“my father was adamant that I continue. So, my father was grief-stricken over his wife, and desperate to support his daughter—perfectly primed when Mr. Sharp came along.”

Ned’s voice was a dry rasp. “What did he do?”

Miss Baker simply gave the smallest shrug and answered, “Much what he did to others, I suspect. He presented himself as a man of business. He said he had been in service to the Earl of Ashby for over twenty years, and when the new earl had come in he had tried to advise him, but to no avail. So he was now looking for a place to retire, a small cottage would do, and, oh, while he’s at it, if you like, he can triple your investments. After all, he had handled the Earl of Ashby’s estate. He knew all the tricks.” She looked at him again, but this time her eyes were sad. “For so many, it was a dream come true. As it seemed to my father.”

Ned could only nod grimly. Mr. Sharp was a part of his history that he had thought done, completed, put away . . . but, as with many memories recently, those put-away things had been unpacking themselves.

Mr. Sharp had been his great-uncle’s secretary for as long as Ned had known of his existence. A man with tufts of white hair coming off the side of his head, he’d been smart, always with a kind word for young Ned when he saw him. For a time, Ned had thought he wished
he
was his great-uncle, rather than the stern, counting man who looked severely down upon him.

But when the severance in his great-uncle’s will did not live up to what Mr. Sharp expected, the kindly man with the tufted hair let his true colors show.

He was gone, with a sizable portion of Ned’s disposable income, before Ned could even settle into his new role as earl.

“How much did he take?” Ned asked. He wished they were standing at the fence line, like Rose and Henry. He could do with a railing to grab on to. And squeeze until his knuckles turned white.

“Everything my father had—everything my mother had left for me.” There was a catch in her voice. Her affect was resigned, but this was not easy for her to relive. Ned felt his fingers grip hers tightly—too tightly. He forced himself to gentle his hold.

“But why—how—does the earl figure into this? Mr. Sharp was not his agent at the time.”

“It doesn’t matter,” she said quietly.

“Yes, it does.” Ned was shocked by the vehemence in his voice. It did matter, damn it. He needed to know. He needed to know why this one person disliked him. No one ever disliked him—not Lucky Ned, at least—and yet . . . she did. Without ever having met him, she did. She hated him.

“Miss Baker.” His voice was a command. “Why?”

“Because he could have prevented it!” Her voice was suddenly fierce, her head whipping around to face him. “Mr. Sharp was most at fault, but he fled, likely to the Continent, we are told. My father bore the next-heaviest weight, and it was too much for him. He . . . drowned. Shortly after. And when I went through his effects, I found a letter from the earl.”

Ned’s head whipped up. “I never—that is, I never heard about you. From the earl. Are you certain about the letter?”

“Oh, yes.” She nodded. “Apparently, my father had been suspicious of Mr. Sharp in those final days, and wrote a letter to his last employer—coincidentally, your current employer. He was advised that Mr. Sharp was by no means to be trusted, and that he had even taken some of the earl’s money and fled. Then he asked that my father not tell anyone that sensitive information, because it would be unbecoming to the earl’s legacy, and ruin his social standing.

“So the Earl of Ashby’s reputation was more important than making Mr. Sharp’s treachery known, or prosecuting him, or keeping him from doing the same thing to anyone else.”

She sniffled, taking a stuttering breath.

“I couldn’t be angry at anyone else, so I was angry with the Earl of Ashby. I wrote him my own letter, telling him that he was to blame for my current lot in life, and that I would never stop hating him.” She took one last calming breath, and the shine of tears that had threatened to fall disappeared from her eyes. She was herself again.

Slowly she extricated her hand from under his. He felt the loss keenly.

“And then I forgot all about him, until he showed up here. With you.” She turned her face to him again. “Does that satisfy your curiosity?”

Ned looked out into the field. He saw Abandon, enjoying his freedom, the golden sun of the afternoon cutting through the thick summer trees, turning the
scene into a tapestry of light and shadow. Rose and Henry leaning against the fence, watching from the road. A secretary and a governess watching from a distance. It was the essence of pastoral peacefulness.

No one looking on could possibly know that a shift of the most dramatic magnitude had just occurred, right beneath their feet.

Ned could only nod dumbly. “I am sorry. Miss Baker, I am so sorry.”

“What could you possibly be sorry for?” she asked him, with that funny, tight smile at the corners of her mouth that made her look like she was swallowing a secret. “It was not your fault, Mr. Turner.”