Gift-Wrapped Governess Read online

  Chapter Two

  ‘Is she a Christmas fairy, Papa? Is that how she mended Terry’s voice?’

  The smallest boy stood in front of her, dark eyes watching warily. The oldest child joined him.

  ‘Did she bring us the dog as a present?’ His voice was imbued with the hope that only children knew how to engender. Even the one who held Melusine looked interested in her answer, though the spell was broken as the Duke of Blackhaven shepherded them away to a further distance.

  ‘This is your new governess, Miss Moorland, and her dog, Melusine.’

  ‘How old is she?’ The finger pointed at her puppy looked decidedly grubby, a large and untended cut across the skin above the thumb and Seraphina sat forwards, her mind clearer and the dizziness in her head lessened now, though nausea still roiled in her stomach.

  ‘A year old. She was born in late November and I found her on my bed on Christmas Day.’

  ‘Who put her there?’

  She had never quite understood how Melusine had come to be asleep in her chamber with a spotted ribbon tied beneath her chin as the sun had come up. Certainly it would not have been her father’s or her brother’s doing and her mama had been a long time dead.

  ‘Someone who knew I needed her, I think,’ she replied, and left it at that. She suspected it to be the cook at Moreton Manor, for the woman had always been a faithful servant.

  Blackhaven was watching her carefully, measuring her person, weighing her up. After such a start, Seraphina was afraid that she would be thrown out on her head before the night fell properly, the darkened freezing landscape of Essex completely foreign. If this was to be the case, then it had all been for nothing, this flight, this subterfuge, this foolish dash into the countryside with terror on her heels and freedom on the horizon. The wet patch on the rug seemed to be growing before her eyes.

  She had failed. Miserably.

  ‘Did you come down the chimney, then?’ The oldest child observed her person as though she might disappear, and looking at her smudged white gown Seraphina could see how such a thought could occur. The part of her personality that found a story in everything resurfaced, surprising her, for it had been a long while since the joy of fantasy had taken her in its grip, and she could not understand how, in the middle of one of her darkest hours, such a trait might flourish.

  ‘No, for I would have been much dirtier if I had, of course. Real fairies would make themselves so tiny so that not a single spot of grime might spoil their dresses because everyone knows that fairy wings are very accurate in the art of flying.’ Trey Stanford looked away, though not before she saw the waning hopes of her teaching the exact sciences to his sons written on his face in a heavy frown. But she could not care. Imagination had a place, too, in the minds of small boys such as these ones.

  ‘Miss Moorland will be here until you go up to Eton after the Yuletide season and I expect the best of manners from each of you.’

  Lord Stanford sounded as if he had had enough of conjecture, a man who dealt only in facts and reason, and when an old woman came to the door he instructed her to take his children along to their room despite all amount of protest. As the portal shut the silence lengthened.

  Melusine had gone with them, trailing behind the boys with a decided interest. Seraphina hoped her dog would be safe, but under the circumstances thought it unwise to voice her worries. Finally, the duke spoke.

  ‘My son Terence has been mute since his mother died. A laugh was a good start, I think.’

  Seraphina was left speechless at the enormity of this confession.

  ‘I had not thought of a pet, you see, but your dog seems to have broken through his reserve. My children have had a great loss and their reactions to it have all been different.’

  Given the tone of his voice, she thought that the loss had been his as well, a man left now struggling with the remains of life. Lord, and how well she understood that difficulty, the tattered remnants of her own torn into shreds.

  Trey Stanford was tall, much taller than she had first thought him to be; as the light scent of spice filled the air between them she breathed in, a feeling of safety garnered in the action. His library was filled to brimming with books and a piano stood to one end of the room, ivory keys well used and worn—a home that was not just a showpiece. Did he play? He did not give the impression of a man who spent a lot of time indoors, his body hewn into the hardness of much exercise. She looked away quickly as she noticed he watched her.

  Shards of porcelain beneath her boot brought her back to reality. Would wages be docked for the breakage of such an expensive treasure and should she as ‘help’ be offering to clear away this mess?

  The rules had changed around her as well and she chastised herself for not taking more notice of the hierarchy of service in her father’s house. The place of a governess was undoubtedly strictly observed in a ducal mansion such as this one. Another problem to overcome. She had not foreseen the enormity or the complexity of her change in station when she had decided upon it. Sitting here, she wondered if she should have run for the port of London instead and jumped on the first ship on an outgoing tide.

  A trolley heavily laden with food arrived, the aroma of chicken and coffee and newly baked bread making her mouth water.

  ‘I can take it from here, Mrs Thomas.’

  The servant’s eyes flicked across to her own, curiosity and regard written within them, the ghost of a smile on her lips before she bobbed and turned towards the door. Another younger maid came to quickly tidy the broken urn and mop up the unfortunate puddle, finishing the task in less than a moment and following the older woman out.

  Lord Blackhaven indicated the fare on the table. ‘After you help yourself we will talk, Miss Moorland. Your dog shall be fed in the kitchen.’

  Relieved that Melusine was to be given a meal, Seraphina piled her plate with food as high as she deemed polite and sat down.

  ‘What was your brother’s name?’ His lack of small talk made caution surface, his presence filling the room to bursting.

  ‘Andrew.’

  ‘Andrew Moorland? Which regiment did he serve with?’

  ‘The 18th Light Dragoons, sir.’ Lord, pray that the duke was not a soldier within those ranks as well or her ruse would be up.

  When he shrugged his shoulders and leant back against the chair, she relaxed. In another life she might have asked what regiment he marched with and what the conditions had been like on the Peninsula at that particular time, just to give herself a better idea of the place where her beloved brother had fallen. But that life was long lost to her and a servant who had come to care for children would have no place in the asking of it. So instead she stayed silent. She was aware that he was observing her most closely.

  ‘Have we met before? You look…somewhat familiar.’

  She reddened again, the curse of her fair skin and blonde hair. She remembered him, of course, for she had seen him once a good seven years ago, before he was injured and when his wife Catherine had conquered the ton with her beauty. Seraphina had been thirteen and gauche when he had stopped her wayward mount from bolting across a newly laid garden off the Row in Hyde Park. She had thought then that he was like the princes in her storybooks, handsome, kind, brave and wonderful.

  He would not remember. It was her mother he would have some recall of. Elizabeth Moreton. A rival of his wife. An Original. Every man who had ever laid his eyes upon her was entranced by her beauty and kindness, except for her husband, Seth Moreton.

  But she wouldn’t think of this now, here in a room full of books and music and the smell of spice, here in a castle far from London and the dangerous jealousies of men. Swallowing, she took a drink of lemonade.

  ‘There are probably many others who look like me, sir.’

  She had the feeling he wanted to say something else, but did not. The clock at one end of the room ticked loudly into the silence and farther away in the house there was the sound of a crying child. She saw how he tilted his head to l
isten until the noise stopped.

  A watchful father. In this light the scar on his cheek was wide and reddened—the mark of fire, perhaps, or a wound that had festered and been left untended. She did not dare to ask him of it.

  ‘Did the agency tell you that you are number six in a long line of governesses?’

  ‘They did, sir.’

  ‘And did they tell you of the reason many left without notice?’

  ‘No.’ Seraphina shook her head. The woman at the agency had cited unresolved differences when she had asked and made it clear that she would divulge nothing further.

  ‘The Castle is haunted, it seems. The science of such a possibility belies any rational thought, but belief is injudicious and once an idea is seeded…’ She saw resignation on his face, a man who spoke of the supernatural with no true belief in any of it, but she could not leave it just at that.

  ‘I have always been interested in the metaphysical, my lord, and there is much in life that cannot be simply explained away.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Six governesses, perhaps?’

  His brows rose alarmingly and she fancied the dent of a dimple in his chin. ‘Your dog, of course, is named after the Phantom Lady of the de Lusignan family.’

  ‘I am surprised you should know of this, sir, without having the need to revert to a book. Usually I have to explain the connection.’

  ‘Melusine, one of three sisters cursed with an undisclosed flaw.’ He shifted on the seat and looked directly at her. ‘I think I comprehend the secret nature of your dog already, Miss Moorland.’

  ‘And what is that, my lord?’

  His answer was quick and firm. ‘Chaos.’

  Her laughter was like music, soft and real, as joy lit her face. Where had he seen her? How had he known her? Trey’s mind sifted back through the years, but he could make no placement whatsoever. Moorland? The name was without memory. He would ask around, of course, though he had no wish to return to the crush of the city.

  Catherine had dragged him down to London a number of times and it had always been the same. She had loved it and he had loathed it. He wondered how he had ever been foolish enough to ask such a woman to be his wife. Granted, she had given him heirs to inherit the Blackhaven fortune and titles, but little else in joy or comfort—a woman whose looks belied a nature that was selfish and cold.

  He had vowed to stay well away from beautiful women ever since and yet here was one now laughing in his library, her dirtied white gown many sizes too big and an honest, self-confessed belief in the truth of ghosts.

  Sarah Moorland had worn rings on her fingers until quite recently, the sun-touched skin on the first joints of her third and little digits showing white. Both hands now pulled at the fabric in her skirt. Nerves, he supposed. Every fingernail was bitten to the quick.

  It was the small details that gave a person away, he ruminated, the experience he had gained during his time with Wellesley as an intelligence officer brought into play. Sometimes he wished it was not there, this innate distrust of human nature that kept him isolated from the sort of discourse that others favoured.

  ‘You seem well schooled in the classics, Miss Moorland. What brought you into the profession of governess?’

  ‘Necessity, sir.’ The truth of such an answer was written all over her face.

  ‘Where was it your brother lived?’

  There was a slight hesitation before she offered up the name of Oxford.

  ‘My sister is from those parts. Once I knew the area well.’

  Worry filled blue eyes and the same wash of redness that he had come to expect when she gave him any personal information whatsoever made her face flame.

  Another thought chased the first one as memory clicked into recognition: Lady Elizabeth Moreton!

  That was the woman she reminded him of; her colour of hair and eyes were exactly the same. But it was more in the way she looked at him, chin tilted upwards with regard. Almost regal.

  Sarah Moorland’s mother? Moreton and Moorland. Anderley Moreton, a young man shot through the head under the push forwards by General Stewart at Rueda, when the 18th Light Dragoons had surrounded the village after dark. Her brother? Andrew? Lord, it all fitted save for one thing.

  Why was this Moreton daughter here posing as a governess of no means and little substance when clearly she was a lady of the very first water?

  Necessity, she had said and looked as if she meant it. Tipping up his glass, he swallowed the remains of his fine brandy as his housekeeper came into the room and announced that the new governess’s sleeping quarters were ready and that she was there to show the way.

  The chamber Seraphina was led into was beautiful, large and airy with tall windows looking out onto the hills, the view reminding her a little of Moreton Manor, the Moreton country seat.

  The housekeeper continued to fuss about, plumping cushions and picking up non-existent lint from the scrupulously clean waxed floorboards. When the woman turned towards her there was curiosity in her dark brown eyes.

  ‘If there is anything else you might wish for, you just need ask, Miss Moorland.’

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Thomas, I shall.’ This seemed to calm the servant, though as she gained the door she stopped, a look of resolution on her face.

  ‘The boys have imaginations, miss, vibrant imaginations that set all the other governesses to odds with them because they could not understand enchantment. But I’d be thinking you can see things bright in the air around you that others tend to miss. At least I hope you do.’

  With that she disappeared and Seraphina stared after her. The whole day had been awash with emotion and this small part of it was as confusing as the rest.

  She had slept in the corner of a building on her last night in London, tucked under the overhang of an eave and frightened out of her wits in case anyone should find her there; now she was here in a room that was more than adequate with a servant confiding much about the nature of her charges.

  Sitting on the bed, she felt a cloud of comfort envelop her, the icy rain beating against the windows as though it might never cease. Everything here was a warm reminder of how her life had been once before…

  No!

  The only way she had survived the past weeks had been to not think. She shook her head, but with this small quiet amidst the larger chaos her mind returned again to the horror of her last days in London.

  Lord Ralph Bonnington, the Earl of Cresswell. Even the name scared her. Her father had made certain that they were left alone in the front room of the London town house, no care given for her safety; the large florid-faced man with the balding pate and beady eyes telling her exactly what he wanted out of this unexpected opportunity. She had bitten his lip when he had pressed in unbidden, demanding much more than she was willing to give, his hands ripping the bodice of her best gown in a rough attempt to sample that offered by her father in an agreement to save Moreton Manor. The sight of her skin had sent the earl into frenzy and he had forced her to the couch and laid himself on top of her, his hand across her mouth to stifle noise.

  The heavy metal ewer had come into her grip as she struggled against him and she had used it to good effect on the shiny top of his head. It had been easy then to simply open the window and escape.

  Her father, Seth Moreton, the Earl of Banbury, had shot himself the next evening; she had seen it in the papers as she roamed the back streets of London, trying to decide what to do. Mrs Whittle’s Agency for Prospective Governesses had solved the problem.

  Lying back, Seraphina felt hot tears scald down the side of her eyes and disappear into her hair at the temple. ‘Mama,’ she whispered softly, ‘Mama, I need you.’

  Trey sat in his library, listening to the rhythms of his house: the creak against timber from the elm-tree branch too low on the eaves; the hiss of a spark in the grate where a final ember flared. Heavy rain slanted in from the west, widening the Crouch River, he supposed, as it made its way to the sea.

  The natural progr
essions of nature on land held in the Stanford family name for centuries, and his sanctuary.

  In the hallway outside the library a servant hummed a carol softly. Crossing to the piano, Trey laid his hands down on the ivory keys, letting them sink into other music to block out the Yuletide notes.

  Once he had loved Christmas. The thought surprised him, but Catherine had found the season a burden with all the effort required and so it had been largely forgotten about altogether. He was certain that Lady Moreton would be the sort of woman who might attack the idea with vigour: the Christmas pudding, the decorations, the charity visits and the long table full of food and family.

  Standing, he walked to the window, looking at the snow deep around the house, bands of rain slanting against the light from his library. Terence had made the jump from the land of the still and the silent and his governess had undone years of aristocratic manoeuvring by mysteriously leaping backwards into an unexpected servitude. Uncertainly, he lifted his finger to the shadow of himself in the glass. He should send her back to London on the morrow, the trail of intrigue woven about her wearisome and unwanted, but there was something that stopped him.

  She was Elizabeth Moreton’s daughter and her ghost would not allow him to simply turf her out into the winter cold. Besides, there was something about his new governess that was beguiling. Swearing under his breath, he turned to find his best bottle of brandy.

  Chapter Three

  20 December

  The maid brought her down to the dining room in the morning and Seraphina saw that the duke sat there already, a plate of breakfast before him and no one else at the table.

  Surely as a governess he did not wish for her to be joining him for the first meal of every day? She remained still as she gained the room, uncertain as to what was expected.

  ‘Please have a seat, Miss Moorland, for I would like to talk to you,’ he said as he folded away the paper he had been reading. When she hesitated, he looked around. ‘I take it your dog has been whisked off by the boys. A jaunt through the park should do Melusine no harm and a full breakfast may do you some good.’