“If you would? My time is expensive.”
“But a governess should never…enter a duke’s bedchamber,” she at last spluttered.
“This is not my bedchamber. This is my second study. Thus, I can work before sleep. I moved the actual bed to the valet’s room.”
“How…industrious,” came a mumble as she stepped into his second study and peered around. “It’s most…” She trailed off to an exhalation.
Frowning, he peered around also. What was wrong with it?
Shelves with ledgers. Folders. Deeds. Maps of the estate with the lands circled that he’d still to acquire. Including Charlotte’s house.
“Most what?”
She wandered to the bookshelves, placed a finger to the spines of books concerning business. “Do you never read for pleasure anymore?”
“No.”
“Dinah says you never go walking the fells either.”
“No. Do you?”
A wry smile pulled at her lips. “A governess rarely has leisure time, Your Grace. And when I happen to have a day free, I return home to visit Marmaduke.”
“Doubtless he misses you when you are working.”
Her smile dimmed. “I do not know. Time… Time has no meaning for him anymore. A blessing and a curse. But his mind oft lives in the past. Some days, I am a little girl, other days my mother.” She twisted. “Do you recall when we climbed Wansfell Pike on the longest day of the year?”
How could he forget?
The view of Lake Windermere and the fells spread before them had been stupendous, hues of every imaginable green, the waters glittering beneath the ever-shifting skies. Charlotte had been just seventeen and stood upon the summit like a pagan goddess, wind loosening her hair to a stream of chestnut and fire.
“No.”
“Shame.”
“I wanted to inform you,” he abruptly stated, “that your chamber and the schoolroom will be moved. To a differing floor than that of my own quarters.”
“I remember your mother moving them down so she could have you close by her and not shut away on the gloomy third floor.”
“Times change.”
She skewered him with green eyes, evoking that day on the summit – the grass had been scant but mountain sorrel and wild thyme had festooned the edges of the shepherd’s path to the top.
“Yes, they do,” she whispered. “But never so much as that year we climbed Wansfell Pike.”
Marcus comprehended her meaning. For that same year, with just over two decades to his name, he’d left for London. To gain some experience of society.
“Good night, Miss Webster.”
She returned a seemingly sad smile. “Then I shall leave you in your tedium.”
The cheek of the saucebox!
“My ledger summing,” he drawled, staring down his nose at her, “is not tedious.”
A quirk of brow. “I wasn’t referring to the ledgers.” And she swished – if one could swish in dreary grey skirts – to the open door but then turned. “Oh, and we have our first Christmastide event two nights hence.”
Damn.He thought she might have forgotten about all that.
