The Game and the Governess (30 page)

“So you were going to use my money for your bribe?”

“If she had taken it, I would have won our wager, and I would have been able to pay for it out of my winnings. If not, there was no payment to be made, and nothing lost in the offering.”

Turner stepped aside from the door. “It’s stuck. Didn’t open easily last time either. Is there a garden door, or . . . ?”

“Oh, hell, give me a go.” Ned then turned the handle, lifted it up, and put his shoulder into the door. His muscles remembered the rhythm of his youth without his even knowing it was happening.

And then . . . they were inside.

The house was so much smaller than he remembered. He had left it when he was twelve, before he had reached his full height and breadth. The drawing room was a complete mess—beams hung loose from the hole in the ceiling. Dark, too, as the tarp covering the hole was made of heavy canvas, double and triple folded to keep out the elements. All the furniture was familiar—his mother’s writing desk, the settee that she had read to him on—but it had been moved in topsy-turvy fashion to the corners of the room, and covered in dust cloths to protect it from the elements. But the paper on the walls was the same striped pattern, and the door to the kitchen revealed that the warmth of that small, practical room still remained.

It was everything and nothing that he remembered. It was terribly the same.

He glanced up at the ceiling, the large, gaping hole.

“The report said this tarp was provided by a retired seaman who rents a house on the other side of Hollyhock. It was the only piece of canvas big enough to be found,” Ned murmured.

“Apparently, he took the pieces of his ship he could carry with him,” Turner replied. Then, “You actually read the report?”

“And the business proposal, and every other piece of paper in your trunk,” Ned replied. “When no one wants your company, there is plenty of time to do work in the interim.”

Turner grunted in agreement. And perhaps envy. “I would kill for such solitude. But what is your opinion?”

Ned sighed. “It’s good for the town, although they would do better to open their own mine and keep up with industry.”

“They are trying to preserve their way of life, not actively keep up with industry.”

“And a bathing retreat would allow for that?”

“For a while, at any rate. Who knows, it could become popular.”

“Which is why you feel that leasing the property is the better move,” Ned concluded.

“You are not pressed for funds. You recovered from your losses with Mr. Sharp ages ago. Lease the land and make a profit from it. Become even richer. It’s as simple as can be.”

Ned slowly wandered from the drawing room to
the far side, through an entryway that led to the sitting room, then to the stairs leading to the bedrooms.

“Except for the fact that this house would be gone.”

Ned idled his way through the sitting room. Pulled open a drawer here, took a book off the shelf there. His whole life, bound up in this place, and yet none of it familiar, or his.

“Turner, when we first met, did I seem like a happy person?”

“What?” His friend’s head came up.

“Did I seem happy? When I first came into the regiment.”

“Ned, you are the luckiest goddamn person I have ever met,” Turner sighed. “Of course you were happy.”

“Was I?” Ned looked down at his hands. “All I remember is . . . craving distraction. And letting those distractions amuse me, as much as they could.”

In camp he had distracted his misery with cards. When he was a new earl and faced with the terrible truth of Mr. Sharp, he had distracted himself from it by hiring his friend.

“What the hell does this have to do with anything?” Turner asked. “What does it have to do with tearing down the house?”

“Nothing,” Ned mused, letting his attention drift again over the appointments in the room. When he was a child, this had been where they ate breakfast. A large, polished wood table with three chairs, two of which were only ever used. “Something that Phoebe said to me, that’s all.”

Happiness is a decision.
One Ned had always avoided making. Instead, he pretended.

She was expected to be miserable, and rebelled by secretly holding on to happiness. Meanwhile, Ned was expected to be happy, and . . . he just went along with it.

“Phoebe. Phoebe Baker.” Turner shook his head. “Ned, listen to me. She is the last person you should be spending your time with. She is not who you think she is.”

Ned shot his friend a calculating look.

“Are you that desperate to separate her from me?”

Turner looked him dead in the eye, as calm and cold as the pond Ned had had to jump in before he returned to the house that morning. “Yes.”

“You think I’m going to win, don’t you?” Ned crooked up a smile at that.

“Maybe. Or maybe I just think she’s dangerous, and that possibly it is a very bad idea to be playing such a tricky game using her as a pawn.”

“Dangerous?” Ned practically guffawed. “How could she possibly be dangerous?”

“You didn’t read that letter, Ned. I did. And I remember it, for the anger and pain and vitriol she aims at you.”

“She was seventeen years old. She was sad, and grieving. People do very rash things while grieving!” Ned yelled, anger turning his vision red. “Hell, I went and joined the army out of grief!”

Turner straightened, blinking in surprise. “Out of grief? You told us you did it to annoy your great-uncle.”

“I likely half believed it.” Ned went to go look out the window, out onto the overgrown garden, the blackberry bramble that overflowed from the woods into the unkempt lawn. “A week before I quit school and joined
our regiment, I received a letter from my great-uncle. Surprising, as my uncle rarely wrote, and I had been expecting a letter from my mother. She wrote monthly, like clockwork.” Later he would learn that it was all she had been allowed. “I was informed that my mother had died three weeks past, of a lung complaint.”

Turner remained grimly silent. Ned knew there was really nothing to be said.

“My great-uncle said that since exams were looming, he did not wish to inform me until after. Which, incidentally, meant after the funeral and burial.” He shrugged. “I hadn’t seen my mother in the flesh since I was twelve. Since we were standing in this house together. He could have been simply assuming that I cared more about my schoolwork than I did about her.”

“I doubt that,” Turner said quietly, earning a small smile of approval from Ned.

“As do I.”

No, his great-uncle had not done it out of concern for his heir’s studies, and to Ned, it had been the last straw. He knew he wanted to lash out, but more than that, he wanted to go, to be, to do something. Anything else.

He wanted to be distracted.

But instead of drinking, or gambling, or whoring—those distractions were only good in the short term—he turned his attention to something far more drastic, and hurtful to his uncle.

His mother had left him a small sum of money, as well as the house. His luck with cards at school had padded out his allowance from his great-uncle. He took his funds and purchased himself a commission, what he could afford, and before he knew it, he was on his
way to the Continent. And it was from there that he dispatched his answering letter to his uncle.

Of course, there was nothing like war to distract a man. The imminent threat of death was a distraction, the long bouts without clean and dry socks were a distraction, and the camaraderie he found with his new friends Turner and Rhys had changed his life.

But had he ever actually mourned his mother’s death? Or the life he might have had, had he not been plucked out of obscurity? Ever actually felt it, and let it go, the way Phoebe had with her father? And then made the decision to be happy?

For the first time, Ned could look at his life with open eyes—clear eyes, like Phoebe’s—and see that his jovial demeanor had been an act. Trying to convince himself and the world that he did indeed belong. That he was Lucky Ned.

But perhaps he had never been lucky at all.

And it had taken less than a week of living without his title for Ned to realize how much he had been hiding behind it.

“Brilliant,” he exhaled. “Marvelous.”

“Ned . . . we don’t have to lease the land . . .” Turner began, but he was cut off by a wave of Ned’s hand.

“The point is,” he said, clearing his throat, “Phoebe—er, Miss Baker is in no way a danger to me. She is only a danger to you, as she might cause you to lose your precious wager.” His eyes narrowed. “And your mill.”

But Turner was not willing to accept that as an answer.

“What is it you said to me about the countess?” he asked. “That she is a barnacle?” He leaned in close to
Ned. “What makes Phoebe Baker any different? What do you think she wants from you? And what is she going to want when she finds out the truth?”

There wasn’t a thought that passed through Ned’s head then. Not a word or sound could make it past the rush of blood in his ears.

His fists were up before he realized it. Grabbing at Turner’s collar, he pressed his fists against the bastard’s throat and shoved him against a cupboard, rattling the dishes inside with the force.

“You will keep your goddamn mouth shut, Turner,” he growled, his vision red. “She doesn’t want anything! She’s better than that.”

Turner grabbed at Ned’s arms, gasping for breath. “Ned—” he croaked.

Only then did Ned realize what he was doing. And let go.

“Christ.” Turner gulped for breath, as he steadied himself on his feet again. His eyes met Ned’s—they were wide. Stunned. But he had not been stunned by the fists in his shirt, or by Ned’s words. No, what stunned him was the feeling behind them.

As Ned looked at his own shaking hands, he realized it stunned the hell out of him too.

They both shuffled themselves upright, not bothering to straighten their coats or cravats.

“Careful, Ned,” Turner warned. “Don’t do anything you can’t undo.”

“I’ll do what I like, damn you,” Ned spat. “Sell the land. The house. At whatever price they can afford.”

“Sell it?” Turner asked, surprised. “But that makes no—”

“Get rid of it.” Ned shook his head. “I don’t ever want to come back here.”

IT WAS NOT
long after the earl and his secretary went into the little falling-down house that they emerged from it. The earl’s secretary came out first, his face a thundercloud, his mind obviously elsewhere. The earl followed shortly thereafter, straightening his cravat and quickly assuming the look and imperious nature of a man who has the world at his fingertips, all he need do is snap.

Both men were so preoccupied with the contents of their short discussion inside the house that they did not notice the person crouched outside, under the sitting-room window, behind some overgrown shrubbery.

They walked away from the house, never glancing back, instead stepping into the afternoon sunshine and to the post where their mounts had been tied up, then riding away.

And they had no idea that, indeed, their conversation—and altercation—had, at least in part, been overheard. Nor what their eavesdropper was prepared to do about it.

      18

Breaks are permitted in play, and are often restorative.

N
early perfect, Rose! Sadly, ‘equine’ does not have a ‘w’ in it.” Phoebe corrected her slate of vocabulary words with a smile. Since Rose was denied riding lessons today, as the entire house party had gone into Hollyhock, disappointment abounded in the schoolroom. As did inattention. To combat this, Phoebe had turned every single subject into a horse-related lesson.

All mathematic problems involved adding and subtracting horses in the field (multiplication of horses, she did not wish to get into). All vocabulary and spelling lessons were with horse-related words. Henry had even drawn a rather impressive—for a six-year-old—picture of Mr. Turner’s mare.

“You do not wish to draw Abandon?” she had asked, a little surprised.

But young, thoughtful Henry had just shrugged. “I like Mr. Turner’s horse.”

Yes, Phoebe thought to herself, she liked Mr. Turner’s horse too. And Mr. Turner, for that matter. But before she let herself get too lost on contemplating that subject, she turned from Henry and began to work with Rose on her spelling, and forced herself to be occupied with her occupation.