Elisabeth Fairchild (6 page)

“Sounds as if you’ve a dragon hiding in there.” She patted the child’s tummy with a chuckle. “I am not quite so hungry as that, but should very much like a hot drink.”

“Papa has tea.”

He glanced their way, a quick, distracted glance, the set of his shoulders changing, tension dissipating.

“And do you know how fortunate you are to be treated to such a luxury?” Elaine felt a need to move, to stir the frozen energy of the room. She bent over the box of tea. “Do you realize how far these very special leaves have come to bring us gustatory pleasure?”

Lord Wharton’s gaze lingered, not a monster, but a man, a man who would drink tea rather than risk inebriation.

“Gustatory?” Felicity repeated the word with precision.

Lord Wharton spoke. “The pleasure . . .” He stopped, raised one brow.

Words died in Elaine’s throat. Yes, pleasure. A rogue would know much of pleasure. All kinds of pleasure. Lord Wharton might be man rather than monster, but he was still a rather dangerous man--one guided, perhaps controlled, by pleasures if even half of his history was to be believed.

“It means pleasure?” Felicity pressed.

Elaine forced herself to look away from that suggestive eyebrow, cleared her throat, licked her lips, focused her attention on her pupil. “The pleasure of taste,” she clarified.

“Is that what gustatory means?” Mrs. Olive gave a chuckle. “I always thought it something rude.”

And he? Does he think it rude? Think me rude? Rude and willing and interested in other pleasures? How rude and willing and interested is he?

“Tea comes from China, does it not?” Felicity asked.

“Very good. Also from Japan, and India,” Elaine found safety in facts, in her role as governess. “Do you know why it has so many names? So many flavors?”

“Papa says one must be careful to buy it from a reputable source.”

“Quite right.” She risked a look in papa’s direction. He would seem to have lost interest in them.
In her?
She ought to be relieved if such was the case, and yet, strangely, she was not. The emotion that flit through her, like a bird on the wing, was disappointment--the faintest sense of melancholy. An impression that she, as governess, and a plain one at that, did not in any way, shape, or form, figure into Valentine Wharton’s idea of pleasure.

“Why does it have so many names and flavors, Miss Deering?” Felicity reminded her of who she was--what she was--her place—her question.

She refocused her eyes, on the tea, not its owner--on the fine, richly perfumed leaves that were carefully separated into small boxes and bags. “Fine tea,” She closed her eyes to breathe deep the aroma, “is much like fine wine, and so precious a commodity that there are underhanded merchants who make a practice of drying out the used leaves and mixing them with other sorts of leaves.” She chuckled wryly. “Inferior stuff.”

Wharton glanced their way. This time with more focused interest.

“You see, like the grapes that are used in wine there are many factors in growing tea that give it its noble flavor.”

“Like sun, soil and rain?” Felicity guessed.

“Precisely. Like any crop. Where you plant your seed makes a difference.”

“Indeed.” Wharton said with a chuckle.

Elaine immediately regretted her word choice. She had not intended innuendo in what she said. Frowning, she went on. “Tea takes on the flavor of a region.”

“Rather like people,” Felicity said.

Elaine nodded. “Yes. We are all shaped by place and time.”

Felicity stood over the box of tea regarding the different containers.

Lord Wharton removed himself from the window, joining them at the table. He tilted his head to regard Elaine rather closely as he passed. “Almost anything is fascinating when you take a closer look,” he said.

Elaine’s pulse fluttered. What did he mean to imply?

“There are lessons to be found in everything,” she said quietly.

Something changed in his eyes. For the briefest of moments Valentine Wharton seemed to let down a wall. He nodded. And then, the moment was gone, and his lips curled sardonically, and he shut her out again with a derisive, “Is there ever a time when you are not the governess, Miss Deering?”

Her back stiffened. “There was a time I never dreamed of being a governess.” She shrugged, and tried not to let his barbed tone wound her. “We must each of us choose a path when life hands us the unexpected.”

“And lessons?” He seemed to mock her, rebuilding walls.

“Paths and lessons,” she said thoughtfully, considering where his had led him. “The trick is to recognize which is which.”

He braced his hand on one side of the tea chest, hers on the other. “And you are convinced your path must diverge from mine? From Felicity’s?”

So direct that question. The look in his eyes. Not flirtation. A challenge.

She considered the path that had led her to a box of teas, and a tea drinking monster who might not be monster at all. “The harder lessons in my life would seem to teach me as much,” she said with regret.

His lips thinned, but anything he might have said was interrupted by the arrival of their food. The innkeeper’s wife herself carried in a steaming kettle full of hot water, which she used, first to warm, and then to fill a fat, white teapot.

Valentine Wharton, true to his word, brewed a generous pot, the precious tea leaves kept from the concoction by way of a silver strainer. The first pale amber, milky cup full was given to Felicity, who added three lumps of sugar before lifting it to her lips with a happy sigh.

Wharton ate in silence, his gaze drawn to the fire on the hearth. Felicity chattered with Mrs. Olive. He glanced often at the child, his expression gentle, observant, vaguely puzzled, even sad, as if he studied an unknown he had little hope of understanding.

Elaine understood completely that probing, even frustrated regard. She wondered more than once if a similar expression knit her brow as she slid glances at Lord Wharton. Once or twice he glanced at her, when she remarked upon how wonderful it was to warm oneself inside and out after such a damp ride, when she instructed Felicity on the proper usage of the lemon fork, and when she suggested to the child that it was impolite to interrupt Mrs. Olive’s comments. Just as quickly he looked away, mind elsewhere. He would return to those distant thoughts.

Elaine found her attention fixing on the glittering raindrops that lingered in the dampened gold of his hair. The fair locks were almost dry where the crown of his hat had protected them, a mass of golden, unruly curl, the sort of hair that she would have thought symbolized his character perfectly until today, until he had asked for--no--insisted upon--hot water, that he might take tea rather than the local brew.

How beautiful he is. How sad his eyes when he looks at his daughter. I find myself drawn to him. How unlike me. Fair is as fair does. His person is handsome, but what of his intentions, his temper, his commitment?

She had only to look at Felicity to be reminded of what this handsome devil was capable. She forced herself to look away, focusing on the child. Too unsettling, this fair-haired rogue. Too fascinating a contradiction. And yet, her thoughts would not be penned, as she willed them. Too often they returned to that brief and shining moment, when she had caught glimpse of something more, the man, the innermost man, rather than the monster she had mistakenly believed Valentine Wharton must be.

T
hat afternoon they plodded on in the misting rain without break: in the weather, their progress, or Mrs. Olive’s incessant snoring. Felicity slept, too, curled like a kitten in the corner of the coach, the cradle-like rock of the vehicle lulling. Elaine found herself inclined to drift away, to become one with the rumbling of the coach wheels. She might have been tempted to sleep had not sight of a horseback Valentine Wharton so completely captured her attention.

He looks like a centaur. His horse’s legs became his, the two magically joined by a flaw in the window glass and the rain’s uneven pattern. The rippling muscles of the horse found echo in this man’s body, the swaying mane’s wet slap was mirrored by the man’s dripping locks.

A fine seat. She had excellent vantage point to observe her benefactor’s tightly muscled rump, coattails buttoned back, united in swaying rhythm with the bay’s saddled back. So perfect was the match of that pounding rhythm, that Elaine felt it in her own body, in the carriage’s pitch and sway, in the flexing of muscles in her own posterior that she might stay upright in the seat.

How fevered I feel. How flushed.
Despite the damp chill, she loosened the buttons at her throat. The touch of her own fingers, there beneath her chin, upon her heated cheeks, reminded her of Palmer, of the reason she sat swaying in this coach today, invited to go all the way to Wales by a rogue with a reputation of monstrous proportion.

Palmer had never struck her as a dangerous creature. Poor, pitiful Lord Palmer’s hot fingers groping for her buttons one evening in the schoolroom had come as a complete surprise. His voice thickly hoarse--so recently employed in the act of wishing his boys good night--had professed adoration, while she had backed away, heart pounding, eyes wide, voice caught in her throat.

He had backed her against a wall, despite her murmured protest, fear keeping her voice low, fear of waking his sons in the next room, fear of alerting Lady Palmer to her husband’s iniquity. There were guests in the dining room below. A most alarming and embarrassing position. He had continued to advance when she could no longer back away, indeed he had used the wall to his advantage, pressing himself against her, thigh to thigh, one hand rising to cup her breast, the other covering her mouth, stifling her low-voiced cry of “No!”

There had been something of the horseman in the hard, rhythmic pressure of his hips to hers, the bruising kisses he had lavished upon her neck, his breath hot, his tongue hotter. She had been startled by these sudden, aggressive advances, by the unexpected flame of fear he had generated at the apex of her thighs.

For a moment she imagined this well-seated centaur pressing her to a wall, the rhythmic pressure of his hips to hers. Her heart raced. Her pulse throbbed loud, throbbed in a sudden pulsing flame within.

She took a deep breath, and closed eyes to sight of him, mind to thought of him and all he was known for. How odd! She felt need rather than fear. With Palmer she had experienced nothing but fear.

His actions had spelled her ruin, the termination of their roles as employer and employed. And so she had bitten the hand with which he stifled her protest, and slipped away from hands that would slip beneath her skirt while he cursed her impudence with a string of foul epitaphs.

He had sopped the blood from his swelling fingers with his coattail.

She had spat the salt taste from her mouth, wiped his unwanted kisses from her lip. Shaking like a leaf in a gale, she had thrown her things in a bag and fled downstairs to inform Lady Palmer of her intention to leave at once. She had spent every penny in getting to Leeds, as much space as she could place between herself and Palmer.

Not so long ago. An eternity. Another life. Another person it had happened to. She had been happy to find a place at Gatehouse School for girls--lucky they had desperate need of a governess, most fortunate they did not question the references from Lady Palmer.

And now?
My world is shaken. My feelings shaken, my heart touched by a man who intrigues me against my best intentions. A new sort of monster, walled in, but no less dangerous. I must go. I will go, though what is to become of me, without proper references I do not know.

She looked for answers on the horizon and found only Lord Wharton. Mrs. Olive was quite right. He rode better than anyone Elaine had ever seen astride. How many maidservants has he ridden just as adroitly?

It would be a mistake to go to Wales in such a man’s company.

T
hey reached Manchester as daylight waned by way of the Oldham Road, driving into the increased gloom of wet streets and warehouses. Felicity called out street names, turning now and again to look at Elaine, who spread her arms, and stretched and yawned, and wondered anew what was to become of her.

“A gloomy place, Manchester, even with the rain stopped.” Mrs. Olive set aside her knitting to peer out the window. “Are you sure you wish to leave us here, Miss Deering? I cannot imagine why you should prefer this to Wales.”

Felicity pouted as she traced a sudden muddy splatter at the window. “You ought not leave us,” she grumbled.

Elaine made no attempt to argue. As the coach splashed to a halt in the yard of a prosperous looking inn, her charge turned to her and asked earnestly, “Do you not like papa? Is that why you will not stay with us?”

The footmen leapt down from above. In a scurry of activity hostlers ran from the inn to take the horses. The iron step was let down with a thump, the door flung open.

“I do not know your papa well enough either to like or dislike him, Felicity.”

Elaine took the gloved hand that was thrust into the coach--a firm grasp. Lord Wharton’s grasp! She knew it with a sinking feeling the moment his fingers closed on hers, the size and shape of that hand, the very stitching of the glove, grown familiar from his handing her in.

Their gazes met as she emerged, his penetrating, as much of a connection as his grip. And in his sky blue eyes she saw some hint that he had heard. So closed his gaze, so hard, none of the softening, the interest she had found there earlier.

“You are very kind,” she murmured.

“Am I?” His brows rose. His lips curled sardonically, while his lashes fanned down to veil the chill gaze. “I do not think you know me well enough to say so, Miss Deering.”

He released his bracing hold. She took an unsteady step away, feeling light-headed--in need of sustenance. No question he heard.

“I beg to differ, my lord.”

Eyes narrowed, he tipped his chin--coldly curious. “Do you?”