“Do you disapprove, then?” he asked. “Do you admit that the story that seems to have affected both you and my niece rather powerfully would not stand up to the test of reality?”
“Perhaps it would not,” she said. “Certainly it ought not to work, that kind of union. But perhaps it would for the very reason that it ought to fail. Perhaps differences between two people make them work harder at the relationship. Perhaps they take nothing for granted as they might if they were of the same world.”
Like him and Miss Hopkins. Laura was of a different world. Oh, not quite, perhaps. She was a lady. But she was not really of his world, for all that. In his world ladies did not have to work for a living or wear cheap, serviceable clothes. In his world ladies did not have to exert their minds in any way.
“You are an incurable romantic, Miss Melfort,” he said, “even though we established on a former occasion, I believe, that your head houses a brain instead of straw. You are doing well with Beatrice. I am pleased.”
Her lips parted and her eyes widened somewhat. “Thank you,” she said so quietly that he read her lips rather than heard the words.
“I suppose,” he said rather grudgingly, “that being able to read, whether for pleasure or information, can be of some value even for a woman. How it is learned is of little significance. Perhaps I should read about Damon and Angeline for myself. Perhaps you would win a convert.” He glanced down at the book, which she held in one hand.
“Yes,” she said.
He wanted more than anything else in the world at that moment to step closer to her and kiss her again. She was becoming rather like an addiction. He wondered how long it would last if he were free to take her and use her at will. He had the strange feeling that perhaps it would never go away.
Because he had the even stranger feeling that the attraction was not just sexual.
An alarming thought.
“I shall leave you to an hour of leisure, Miss Melfort,” he said, “while I go in pursuit of my guests. I am sure privacy during the daytime is a rare luxury for you.”
It was only after he had walked determinedly away, leaving her standing beneath the oak tree, that be realized he had made her his most elegant bow.
His niece’s governess. His servant!
Everyone knew why the guests had been invited. Servants always did know such things. They had known even before their master returned home. Perhaps, Laura sometimes thought fancifully, they had known even before he did.
Mrs. Batters, the housekeeper with whom Laura sometimes took tea in the evening, had told her that the Earl of Dearborne was to entertain his prospective bride and her family and other selected guests.
The Honorable Miss Alice Hopkins was to be his bride. And she was pretty and vivacious and fashionable. The servants all approved of her, especially as she ignored them totally and generally behaved as a very grand lady ought.
“Soon we will have a mistress in the house again,” Mrs. Batters had said. “It is about time. The last one did not stay for much longer than five minutes and has been gone a long time. There will be children in the nursery within the next few years, you may be sure, my dear Miss Melfort. Perhaps you will be kept on for them after Lady Bea has left the schoolroom.”
It had been a comforting thought. Had been. It no longer was.
She waited each day with some dread for his visits to the schoolroom and prayed inwardly that he would not come. And yet on the rare days when he did not, she found herself dejected. It seemed that some light was missing from the day. She dreaded feeling his eyes on her when he should be concentrating his attention on Bea, and yet when he did not look at her, she felt like a worthless nonentity.
She dreamed about him at night. Oh, that was not strictly accurate. She did not often dream about him when asleep. But she lay awake when she should have been sleeping, remembering the look of him, remembering the curiously compelling paleness of his blue eyes, remembering things he had said to her, remembering his kiss, the feel of his body against hers.
Give me love. She remembered with deep mortification saying those words to him. She remembered the arrested look on his face and his answer. Give me love. She wondered what he would feel like ...
She despised herself. Poor lovelorn, lonely, frustrated spinster. Dreaming romantic and even lascivious dreams of her employer. Of a peer of the realm, no less. Hating the very pretty and quite blameless Miss Hopkins merely because he was going to marry her. Hating the thought of his and Miss Hopkins’s children in the nursery, perhaps under her care.
No, never!
She hated herself. And so she threw herself into her work, insisting that Bea practice her pianoforte playing and singing more than usual because she was growing up and would soon need to use her accomplishments in company. And shamelessly enticing the girl to read by giving her stories to feed her romantic imagination and tender heart. Bea, who had had the skills for reading for some time but no inclination to use them, improved remarkably in just a few days. The ancient book from the library worked its magic on her—and on Laura. It was possible for a man and a woman from entirely different worlds to come together ...
No! It was not possible. He had been right to question the idea. It would not work. Not in reality. Within the pages of a romance perhaps. But not in real life.
Not that the matter would be put to the test anyway, of course.
Bea was a great favorite with the ladies. Despite her pleas and wheedling, her uncle would not allow her to join the company for either dinner or the evening entertainments. She was far too young, he told her firmly. Her time would come soon enough. But sometimes, as on that afternoon beside the river, the ladies asked her to join them in some daytime activity.
One afternoon Miss Hopkins and Mrs. Crawford, her sister, came to the schoolroom. They did not knock but just walked in, talking and laughing. They both hugged Bea and admired the watercolor she was painting before inviting her to take the air with them. They completely ignored Laura, who rose quietly from her own painting and started to clear away. She nodded when Bea looked at her with eager inquiry, and the girl rushed from the room to fetch a bonnet.
One day perhaps Bea would learn that ladies did not rush everywhere. One day perhaps she would lose the eagerness of youth. Laura sighed inwardly. Why did she and everyone else responsible for Bea’s upbringing work so relentlessly toward that day? Why did youth and eagerness have to be lost?
“She is tiresomely gauche,” Miss Hopkins said.
