Elisabeth Fairchild (7 page)

She nodded, took a fortifying breath, and squared her shoulders. “In handing me from the coach, which I could not safely exit without assistance, I do know well enough to deem your action a kindness.”

“Come, my dear, no foolish refusals. Sup with us,” Mrs. Olive coaxed, weaving her arm through Elaine’s. “Felicity and I would be happy to make room for you for the night, would we not, Felicity?”

“Oh, yes, my dear Miss Deering, do not rush to go,” Felicity clung to her free hand. “Papa is reading to us every night from a book of Welsh fairy tales. You must not miss the chance to hear at least one of them.”

To share a room with these two? Was that what he had in mind all along? But of course. He would not dare to suggest anything untoward in front of his daughter.

I cannot refuse. My purse is not plump enough.
As if to put a seal upon her decision, it began to rain again in earnest. Felicity squealed.

“Run for it, my dears,” Mrs. Olive shouted.

And so they ran for the door to the inn, toward warmth and light, and the smell of good food, and the promise of a bed for the night.

Valentine Wharton had the longest stride. He reached the door first, holding it wide, rain bouncing from his hat brim. Felicity dashed in first, then Mrs. Olive, and finally, Elaine, who had not run so much as hastened her walk.

“I take it this means yes, Miss Deering?” Lord Wharton inquired as he followed her in, sweeping his hat from his head, leaning just outside the threshold to shake it dry.

“You are thoughtful and generous to offer me hospitality on such a dreadful day.” She removed her own hat, her drenched cloak.

The narrow entryway to the inn forced them into rather intimate proximity as he shrugged his way out of his dripping overcoat.
Close. Too close. Palmer would have tried to brush against me.

“Is it possible you might still experience a change of heart, Miss Deering?” Valentine Wharton’s brows arched playfully. He seemed to be laughing inwardly at her as he hung his coat on a carved oak coat rack, then reached for hers.

She spoke quietly. The child must not hear. “It would not do to raise Felicity’s hopes, my lord.” The feeling of intimacy was enhanced by her whisper.

Elaine thought of Palmer. His eyes would have raked over her as she removed articles of clothing. Lord Wharton’s glances were keen, even unsettlingly delving at times, and yet his cool, shuttered gaze remained distant--all emotion hidden other than a jaded contempt for the world.

He was not a man of covert glances and suggestive leers. Only his language was, on occasion, suggestive. Provocative. Open to misinterpretation. And he would have her misinterpret. It was to his advantage to keep his opponent off balance. Like swordplay, her every conversation with him. Barbed. Sword blade keen. His wit piercing.

“It would not be a kindness to falsely raise my daughter’s hopes,” he agreed with a trace of sarcasm. “She has too often been disappointed.”

He stepped past her without so much as the brush of a sleeve, that he might help Felicity and Mrs. Olive from their coats--the perfect gentleman.

Elaine could not help wondering. Do I misjudge this man as much as I misinterpret him?

V
al set aside the book of fairy tales, removed the freshly pressed coat he had donned for dinner, as well as the formal waistcoat and confining neckcloth. A quiet affair, the evening meal--predictable but welcome. Nothing like a long, wet day’s ride to stimulate his appetite.

They had been served a very good leek soup, a well-seasoned leg of lamb, roasted potatoes, with a bread pudding to finish off the meal. He had refused the recommended wine, the port, rum, brandy and ale offered in its stead. He had even refused the hard sauce for his bread pudding. He had done his best not to think of the spirit’s bloom of welcome warmth on a chill, wet evening such as this.

He had turned instead to his lifeline, his fresh source of belly warming teas. It was the only time she looked up from her plate, Miss Deering--when he reached for the box.

Quiet, keep-to-herself-and-her-own-private-thoughts Miss Deering had kept her head down when he said “no thank you, and no, and again, no thank you to all offer of spirits, but up her head bobbed when he said quietly, “I would like more hot water.”

Their eyes met. She looked at him with something akin to approval. Oddly pleasing, that this wary tabby-cat should approve of him, of his tea.

What would he do without his little brown leaves, in their brass bound caddy? He had grown fond of the ritual in steeping their riches in steaming cups. Rather like his former ritual of making rum punch. One must request a teapot, of course, not a punch bowl, and the musical clink of china rather than crystal.

He loved opening the shining brass clasps on his inlaid wooden box, the whiff of tea leaves, the curved neck of the squat, round-bellied pots, the heating of the china, hot water steaming, swirling, poured out again for fresh hot water into which the dark mysteries of the leaves were immersed. He had grown to appreciate the anticipatory wait as the water darkened, the perfume of tea and freshly cut lemons rising along with the steam. Allowing the leaves to settle, the strainer to catch stray leaves, offered welcome distraction as those around him were entertained by the music of corks popping and the clink of bottle to glass.

Her eyes were the color of steeped tea, dark and liquid, a promise of steaming heat. Their depths pinned him with measuring looks, assessing and reassessing his every move. He read truth in those tealeaf eyes.

He could read her stillness, her silence, as clearly as if she had spoken. He had surprised her with tea and hot water, and it pleased him to be unpredictable.

Why should her opinion matter?

He rid himself of the confinement of his neck cloth, as he unbuttoned waistcoat, and rolled up shirtsleeves. He thought of Palmer, of what he might have done to his Deering. A story there, and not a happy ending.

He flipped through the book of fairy tales, looking for the right one. The nightly reading was his favorite time of day, a relaxed moment between he and Felicity, a moment when they formed fresh father-daughter bonds. The habit had begun while his leg healed, and Felicity recovered from the fever that had almost been the death of both of them.

Reading of princesses and magical creatures and trolls who guarded bridges or granted wishes had given them something to talk about.

A tap sounded upon his door.

He opened it, book in hand, to find Miss Deering, neat, tidy and fully clothed in dreary black, pale hands demurely clasped.

 “Felicity is ready--” In a glance she took in his casual state of undress, eyes quickly downcast, pale cheeks staining raspberry, “for her bedtime story.”

“And you?” He turned his back on her and tucked the storybook under his arm.

She peeped uncertainly through the door.

Come in, come in, said the spider to the . . .

He chuckled, thrust aside the thought, and took up two candleholders in one hand, a lamp in the other. “Are you ready for a good bedtime story, Miss Deering?” He knew his question, his tone, made her uncomfortable. The devil in him wished to tease her, to test the level of that discomfort, for it was this, he thought, that made her long to seek employment elsewhere--her fear.
She fears I might be the man gossip makes of me. That I weave a web of deceit to ensnare her. Like Palmer.

He handed her the lamp, pushed past her into the hallway and shut the door on the room that made her so uncomfortable. His room.

She watched uncertainly, demurely strangling the lamp’s neck.

“Anxious?”

Her chin lifted. A trace of offended defiance lit her eyes. “No, my lord.”

She lies. She is anxious, even afraid--of me, of the position I offer, of this summons from my bedchamber, of how close I stand.
She kept looking at his bared forearms, as if his skin were dangerous enough to keep her poised to run.

“You look rather anxious.”

She shook her head again, eyes downcast.

“I had hoped you might be.”

That won him a frown. How forbidding the ordinarily demure sweetness of that face when she frowned.

“I love a good story, myself.”

“Story? Oh! Story. I did not think . . .”

“But of course you did--think,” he said. “It is why I wish to hire you--for that thinking mind of yours.”

She looked at him, earnestly trying to understand when he deliberately meant to confuse.

He stopped outside the doorway to his daughter’s room, hand on the latch. “There are dragons of course, and fairies, and spells that must be broken, princesses in need of rescuing, all sorts of intriguing dangers. But only in storybooks. I am no dragon. I vow to you, I cast no spells. You need not fear me, nor the taking of this position.”

She wet her lips with the nervous dart of her tongue. “No, my lord?”

“And yet you do.”

Fear peered from the dark drink of her eyes. The lamplight wavered, wick burning low. He reached out to adjust its height, careful not to brush her fingers.

She seemed bent on the same objective. In a small movement, a casual twitch, she inched her hand away from his.

“You did nothing to tempt him, did you?”

She blinked, as if he had slapped her across the face with the question. The oil in the lamp swayed.

“Palmer?”

Light flared briefly in her eyes as the wick burned higher. Or was it anger flashing there?

“No, my lord. Nothing.” Heat in her response. Definitely anger.

“Then you’ve no reason to be anxious.” He flung open the door.

Confused by his roundaboutation, she followed him into his daughter’s room. He was deliberately confusing, at once direct and indirect. And she was intrigued.

The room boasted a crackling fireplace that blessedly did not smoke, a window that looked down over a busy street, and a rather large curtained off dressing room fully accoutered with a hip bath, French commode, a full-length mirror, and two large pitchers and basins on a marble-topped washstand piled with armloads of fresh white linens.

The bedchamber’s furnishing consisted of two walnut framed beds and a tall clothes press. The beds stood at cross-purposes to one another, creating an L against two of the walls. Felicity was tucked into the larger of the two. She had insisted that Elaine must share it with her rather than make a pallet upon the floor. Mrs. Olive sat upon the other.

Valentine Wharton sank onto the bed his daughter occupied.

She seemed used to this arrangement, and made room for him. Once he was settled, lamps and candles positioned just so for the best available reading light, the book opened, the right page found, Felicity leaned closer. His lordship situated his arm more comfortably behind her, and tilted the book that she might better see the painted illustrations.

Elaine went to the window seat. It seemed inappropriate to sit too close to Valentine Wharton even while he focused on his daughter. There was danger in him. She had never known a man more overtly dangerous, of more monstrous reputation.

Wharton looked up from the page. For a single heartbeat his eyes locked with hers. His well-shaped brows lifted, as if he found something amusing in the distance she placed between them. As if he knew her fear. As if he reveled in it.

Felicity called out in wheedling tones, “Come sit with us, my Deering. Ooops!” Her hands flew to her mouth to stifle a burst of laughter. “I mean . . .”

His lordship could not contain his own laughter. Handsome blue eyes sparkled. Dimples carved his cheeks. His amusement contagious, Felicity could not contain her giggles. Their laughter was echoed by Mrs. Olive’s plaintive cry of, “What did she say? Pray tell, what is so funny?”

Elaine smiled. She was not made of stone. She did not care for students dubbing their governesses with nicknames, and so she refrained from laughing outright.

Felicity noticed. She stopped giggling.

“I called poor Miss Deering,
my
Deering,” she explained to Mrs. Olive before rushing to profess, “I meant no disrespect, Miss Deering.”

“Of course you would not,” Elaine said quietly.

“What’s that?” Mrs. Olive sounded affronted. “Did you call her a coarse widnot?”

That set Felicity to giggling again, coarse widnot that she was.

Her father smiled and turning to Mrs. Olive said quite distinctly, “Of crows she widnot.”

Even Mrs. Olive laughed heartily at that. And Elaine in her window seat could not resist joining in. How good it felt to laugh. How unexpected to sit in a bedchamber with his lordship’s unexpectedly merry gaze meeting hers as his daughter chuckled and chortled and made herself silly.

Felicity patted the counterpane beside her as she came out of a giggling fit. “Come, Miss Deering,” she coaxed.

Elaine shook her head. “I prefer to sit here if you do not mind.”

Valentine Wharton gave his daughter’s shoulder a squeeze and said with a knowing glance, “You must allow Miss Deering freedom to choose for herself where she would sit, Felicity, and as much as we found amusement in your temporary lapse of memory, I would prefer that you addressed your governess by her correct name in future.”

“Yes, papa.” Felicity nodded, head down, all laughter stilled, shoulders bowed, as if with the faintest of reprimand he managed to cow her completely.
What a pity.

His lordship eyed his daughter over the edge of the book, as if at a loss, as if he would say something and yet he seemed unable to find the words. He rubbed at his brow before settling the book firmly in his lap.

“There once was a village in Wales, the villagers of which lived their every day and night in mortal fear.”

A quick glance at Elaine, no more than a flicker of eye contact--long enough for Felicity to ask, “What did they fear?”

“The Widnot,” he said.

Felicity pounced on the book. “You made that up.”

“Right there.” He pointed, a teasing light in his eyes.

“What’s a Widnot?” She did not sound convinced, and yet there was laughter in her voice. A good sign.