Elisabeth Fairchild (8 page)

His lordship cupped the top of his daughter’s head in the well of his hand, a gentle gesture that tugged at Elaine’s heartstrings, the more so because the child did not appear entirely comfortable with her father’s touch. He gave Felicity’s locks an affectionate tweak, a move that won him a wary look.

“You are not afraid, are you, that I would read to you of Widnots?”

Felicity shrugged, and peered at the pages of the book, as if he held secrets from her there. “Of crows I widnot,” she said.

He chuckled. “The Widnot held the villagers prisoners in their homes with nerve-rending screams. Those who dared go out were never seen or heard from again, swept up in the talons of the great scaled beast.”

“A dragon?” She guessed.

“Yes, a dragon. Shall I continue? Or will Widnots keep you awake? There are other stories.” He turned the pages of the book as if to search out another, less frightening.

Felicity stayed his hand. “I shall not be afraid tonight.”

“How can you be sure?” he asked.

“Miss Deering will be in the bed with me.”

“Ah.” His lips quirked. “How fortunate you are.”

“A fortune?” Mrs. Olive asked, hand to ear. “Is it a story about lost treasure, then?”

Lord Wharton allowed another amused glance to touch his normally restrained features.

“Felicity’s fortune, lost to me,” he said. “What say you, Mrs. Olive? Shall I find all three of you huddled together for safety in the morning if I read this dragon’s tale?”

Mrs. Olive made an offended huffing noise. “I think not, my lord. It is not the dragon’s tail one must fear, but his teeth, and fiery breath.”

“Shall we all of us sleep in one bed tonight for safety’s sake?” he asked his daughter. “I might be frightened myself if I keep on reading.”

Felicity giggled and fell back against her pillows. “No, papa. We would not fit. Besides, it would not be proper.”

“I should think not,” Mrs. Olive said starchily.

“Surely dragons are not the best of bedtime reading, my lord,” Elaine dared to suggest.

“Oh no, Miss Deering!” Felicity hopped out of the bed to comfort her. “Do not be afraid,” she soothed, spreading her arms wide for a hug. “Dragons are only make-believe.”

“So your father claims,” Elaine embraced her warmly, remembering poor Felicity had no mother to fling arms about her.

She looked up to find Wharton watching them in that instant, longing in his gaze. The affectionate yearning meant for his daughter rocked Elaine. Too intimate his glance--too warm--too needy. She did not know what to do with such a look now that she had crossed the room, and sat next to him, Felicity in her arms. Her own father had never, to her knowledge, regarded her with such yearning. And yet, in turning her attention to her charge, she realized that Felicity had no notion her father examined her so intently.

She was playing with a lock of Elaine’s hair, curling the straight, dark strand about her little finger. “I am not afraid, so you must not be either,” the child said firmly.

“Why is that, when a whole village lives in fear?”

“Because, silly.” She shook the lock from her finger, smoothing it. “There is always a brave knight, or a prince, who slays the dragon.”

“That’s right.” Mrs. Olive nodded.

Elaine felt compelled to ask. “Never a woman?”

“I do not know.” Felicity looked to her father for answers.

His lips quirked. “I heard tale once of a woman brave enough.”

“A princess?” Felicity wanted to know.

Lord Wharton shook his head. “No. A brave governess.”

Felicity glanced from Elaine to her father and back again. “A governess?” she asked in disbelief. “Like Miss Deering?”

“Very much like our dear Miss Deering,” her father said smoothly.

Mrs. Olive, brows raised, regarded Elaine as well. “Really?”

His lordship nodded, a smile tugging at the corners of his lips. “Smote him in the heart, she did.”

“And what, pray tell, became of the dragon?” Mrs. Olive laced the question with sarcasm.

“Oh, he roared a bit. But in the end he limped away and was never heard from again.”

Elaine had to smile at that. She knew just the dragon he meant.

“Let us hope so anyway,” she murmured as he began to read again.

H
alf an hour later, stories finished, Val tucked Felicity back into bed and kissed her on the forehead. He pinched out the candles, gathered up books, the lamp that would light his way back to his room and bid them goodnight from the door.

“Nightie night, don’t let the bedbugs bite,” Felicity called sleepily from the depths of her pillows.

“Good night, my lord,” Mrs. Olive sounded almost as tired.

Val glanced at Miss Deering, brows raised. “A good night to you, ladies.”

“Sweet dreams, Lord Widnot.” Her voice was gentle.

As if she knew his dreams were anything but sweet. He shut the door and returned to his own bedchamber where he stripped off his clothing, wondering,
What sweetens the dreams of a governess?

It had been a good day, despite the rain, despite Miss Deering’s reluctance to work for him--an inconvenience--no more than an inconvenience. He had known bad days. This was not one by any stretch of the imagination.

A good evening. Felicity and Mrs. Olive had been spellbound by the story, Miss Deering watchful, as was her way--the cat in the corner.
Might she go with us to Wales after all? This shy, watchful creature who captures my daughter’s heart far better than I? Dear Miss Deering?
An inconvenience if she did not. He would have to chase down a governess in Manchester, on the morrow, or in Chester if he could convince her to stay an extra day or two. He had little hope of finding anyone who would qualify for the post in St. David, or anywhere else along the way for that matter.

She wore a look in her eyes this evening, my dear Deering. Tucked in the windowseat, trying not to laugh. A look to give me hope.

If she was set on leaving, he had best prepare an advertisement for the paper in Chester. He sat at his portable secretary to jot something down before he snuffed the candle, before he removed his shirt and breeches, and wasted half the night dreaming of wine or a woman.

He thought of Palmer. The rogue.

I was once a drunken rogue. A dragon to be feared. Lord Widnot.

He wondered, as he undressed, if Penny could ever forgive him completely. He could not help but think of her at this hour of the night, of the dream he had so long held of her love. Her lovemaking.

He laughed, the sound bitter. A false dream.
She never made love to me. I was too drunk to know it was Eve.

Ironic, really, this fixation with his touch-me-not. Doubly ironic that he should attempt to employ another touch-me-not--Miss Deering--who wanted no more to do with him than Penny had in the end.

Women liked him, generally speaking. A certain stamp of woman. Camp followers, whores, lightskirts. Like Felicity’s mother, Eve. She had relished his sarcastic wit, his irreverent, neck-or-nothing style. He had won his share of tender moments, heated kisses, passionate declarations, temporary unions, fevered, futureless coupling.

He had no idea how to go about it, really, the business of wooing a decent woman, of committing himself to a lasting love, marriage. His parents had a lasting marriage, and yet they appeared to him to be mild-mannered examples of tepid companionability. He could not imagine them fervid in their affections, fevered in their lovemaking.

I am nothing like them. Too little passion, and I have too much of it.

He snuffed the light, crawled between cold bed sheets and stared into the sudden unfamiliar blackness of the room’s corners, seeing a flash of faces, the lasses he had bedded. He could hear their whisperings--professions of ardor, of love. His not among them. He had wooed them, but never claimed to love them.

The loneliest time of day, bedtime. Always had been.
Will it always be so?
Surely not, if he took a wife. A tricky business, to find a suitable wife. His father had wagged a finger. His mother had shaken her head, hands up, as if in defeat. “Decent women have been warned against you, my son, against your wild ways.”

He had shrugged, said something flip and caustic, not knowing how to ask his parent’s help. How to tell them he felt the bumbling fool amongst decent women, destined to say and do the wrong thing. Decent women were reduced to babbling idiots by his sharp-tongued attempts at conversation, others simply avoided him. Those who did not, braved an introduction in hopes of future acquisitions. They did not interest him, none had interested him but Penny, so kind to Felicity, so good with animals. She had seemed to him to embody all that he was not--Lord Widnot--a man of scaly reputation. Even when he had been convinced Felicity was hers, when he was certain he had fathered her, Penny had been to him inviolate, innocence unclaimed, the heroine out of a fairy tale.

Fool! What a fool I have been. Will there ever come a day, a woman I can respect who will find enough to respect in me? To love me? To wed a wastrel, a scoundrel, a drunken fool?

He closed eyes and mind to the voices from his past that too harshly reminded him of his own failings. Still wondering, he fell asleep to dream of Miss Deering, the doe-eyed Deering on the run, and he with a pack of hounds that looked like dog-sized dragons, after her.

Mrs. Olive snored, which kept Elaine tossing and turning in the bed beside a completely motionless Felicity, her mind on the question of her future. No references! What was to become of her without a single decent reference?

The possibilities seemed limited, and hopelessly dreary. No one of standing would take a governess without references. Must she turn to a different source of income? Should she write to Anne? Her sister might be able to find her a position as companion to a lady of means.

She came to no clear answer before she finally drifted off. There were good reasons to leave Lord Wharton’s party, chief among them what she knew of his past. And yet, Felicity’s plaintive voice sounding in her mind, Mrs. Olive’s cheerful coaxing, Lord Wharton’s dry, disinterested sarcasm.

He was not what she had expected--not a wild, womanizing drinker. Tea. He wants tea, and cold rides in the rain, and bedtime stories of dragons and princesses!

She could not decide if he breathed fire or wisdom when he spoke to her, when her heart lurched at mere sight of his handsome, knowing face.

Can I be objective? even sensible serving such a man?

It had been easy to resist Lord Palmer. He was a beast. But how would she react if this beauty of a man turned his attentions her way?
Can I resist such temptation?

Elaine rose to the first graying of dawn with a feeling of exhaustion when Mrs. Olive cheerfully prodded at her shoulder. “Come, my dear. The master likes an early start.”

Early start, indeed. The sun had yet to fully illuminate the sky. Felicity still slept the deep, impenetrable sleep of youth. Elaine stood at the window, brushing out her hair in the pale morning light as she stared down at the bustling street, her mind equally busy.
Where am I to go? What am I to do?

Manchester was known for weavers and spinners. There would be wealthy merchants here, a half dozen country squires, perhaps a nobleman or two. She could find a job here if she decided not to go on into the wilds of Wales with Wharton. She wanted to laugh. The whole idea was too alliterative by far.

“What think you of the master?” Mrs. Olive asked.

Elaine set aside the hairbrush, her hair crackling from the briskness of her ministrations. Think of him? What did she think of him?
I do not trust him.
She could not admit as much to the man’s housekeeper.
He is handsome. An enigma.

This, too, she could not voice. She parted her hair into three sections with her fingers and started to plait it in the French style from the crown of her head. “I have yet to form an opinion, Mrs. Olive.”

“You see him in better times, you do. I will say that. Tell me, do you mean to come with us, Miss Deering, to Chester?” Mrs. Olive sponged her face and upper arms from one of the basins, groping for the linen Elaine placed to hand. “Or do you bid us farewell after breakfast?”

“I do not know.”

Mrs. Olive cupped a hand to her ear. “What’s that?”

Elaine spread her hands and shrugged.

The older woman dabbed moisture from her face and smoothed back her fly-away hair. “Ask for a sign, my dear, “ she said as she went to work on the arrangement of her lace cap. “I asked for a sign when I questioned whether I should come back to him.”

“You left his lordship?”

“Oh. Aye.” The old woman glanced at the sleeping child, keeping her voice low and confidential. “He was deep in his cups. Had cast off his friends, and sent the child away to boarding school where she contracted an illness and must be sent home again, and all the while he was drinking himself into an early grave.”

Here it is, just as I suspected.

Mrs. Olive stepped closer to whisper, “’E shouted and raved when ‘e was drunk. Not a pretty sight.”

Father, stumbling in late at night, brandy on his breath, hat and neckcloth askew, casting up accounts in the garden, on the stairs. Not a pretty sight.

“His parents were repulsed by his behavior. They’d no idea how to tame him. So, they took off for a tour of Europe. Left his lordship to sink or swim on his own, and he was sinking, my dear. I thought sure he would drown himself.”

“I do understand,” she said.

“I’d no wish to be around, you will understand. It was a dreadful business. Only Yarrow, the butler, and a few of the maids stuck with him through the worst of it.”

Worst, indeed! Here are my greatest fears confirmed. His lordship is all that I have heard of him and more! He is, God forbid, my father all over again.

Shaken, she asked, “What sign did you get?”

“Hmm?” Mrs. Olive cupped her hand to her ear.

“You mentioned a sign. How did you know it was right to go back to him?”