“Thank you for your assistance tonight, Miss Rowe.” Without the shield of the child to hide behind, he was immediately back to being all stiff and awkward again. He could barely meet her eyes. Could barely hold himself still. Could barely contain his obvious desire to be well rid of her. Which all rather suggested that her touch repelled him far more than it attracted, and that made her feel both stupid and inadequate to have reacted so differently. “And thank you for the chocolate.” He inclined his head as if they were two distant acquaintancespassing on the street rather than two half-dressed people alone on his landing who had just behaved like a married couple. “Good night.”
“Good night, Captain.”
She bobbed a stiff curtsy and turned, forcing her feet not to bolt to her bedchamber as they wanted while still moving toward it at pace.
She did not want to turn around and yet could sense him watching her, because the heat of his gaze seemed to burn through her nightdress as it followed her. In case she was imagining it, she turned, and their eyes locked.
Only briefly because he curtly inclined his head again before he spun away. But still… that intense look had felt poignant. Significant.
Seductive.
Thoroughly confused and totally overwhelmed, Georgie leaned her back against the door the second she closed it. She hugged her own mug to her rapidly beating, totally befuddled heart while clutching her mother’s locket for strength as she listened to his retreating footsteps return down the stairs to his own bed.
Wondering how on earth it was possible that the stiff, authoritarian, annoyingly perfect but pompous military stickler whom she loved to hate had somehow managed to go from being nine-tenths disagreeable to at least three-quarters agreeable in the space of just one day.
ChapterELEVEN
“This morning we are going to work on fractions—one of my absolute favorite mathematical topics.” As Georgie had been making headway with their daily routine, she saw no reason to change the children’s schedule for their second week, even with the captain gone. Getting the mathematics done first thing got it out of the way and with Felix’s combative attitude toward it, felt prudent.
Once that chore was done, they would move to something all the children enjoyed—history. Made all the better by the fact that they had reached William the Conqueror in their chronology of notable kings and queens of England, and that tyrant was a fun one to teach. There was blood and guts and gore galore from the beginning of the fellow’s reign to the end. And then there were all the oppressive castles he built. Who didn’t want to learn about castles? Or sieges and rebellions?
And perhaps, simply to prove the point to the captain that chaining the children to their desks for hours on end every day wasn’t the best way to encourage them to learn, she would teach the historyoutside. Set them all free of this classroom for an hour or more despite knowing that he wouldn’t be happy about it. If, by his own admission, Mrs. Rigsby did not have to suffer his interference in her kitchen because she had put her foot down, then surely Georgie could do the same? Especially as he was currently miles away in Portsmouth. She only had till August, after all, to prove all her untested theories about education correct. She had certainly waited long enough for the opportunity, so it seemed a shame to waste it. Especially if the captain’s bark was worse than his bite, as she was increasingly convinced that it was, beneath all his regimented pomposity.
The easily waylaid part of her certainly wanted that to be the case, as he had rather occupied her thoughts since Sunday night’s thunderstorm. So much that it had taken over an hour to plan this one lesson alone. It didn’t help that she’d been having vivid dreams involving a dimly lit but homely kitchen, damp clothes drying before the fire while she warmed the naked captain up in the most improper way. Dreams that felt so real she had awoken breathless and flustered this morning. That was most unlike her. She blamed that scandalous wet shirt, his deep, silken whispers, and the potent finger brush, as clearly those three things combined in such quick succession had done wonders to scramble her wits.
And everyone knew that the night played tricks on the mind, especially when Lottie’s improper suggestion about Georgie using her wiles had also been so fresh in it. She had also never been so intimately alone with a man, so was it any wonder her tangled thoughts had run together and had given her imagination nonsensical romantic ideas since?
It really all had little to do with him.
When Georgie allowed a man to properly scramble her wits, she was resolute that it would not be a nitpicking and pompous military man.
No, indeed! She’d had enough of those to last a lifetime.
Two lifetimes!
Although why she was compelled to keep pondering it at all was a mystery.
It wasn’t as if a handsome, wealthy, eligible, ambitious officer of the crown would even think to look at a lowly, stumpy, orange-haired temporary governess as anything but what she was.
Thank goodness.
And there she went again, thinking of him when she was supposed to be teaching the children maths. “Can anyone tell me what a fraction is?”
“Urgh.” Felix displayed his disapproval by lolling back in his chair. “Who cares.”
Georgie smiled as she rolled her eyes at Marianne, expecting his sister to roll hers right back as had quickly become their habit whenever Felix complained about doing any sums. Except she didn’t. Marianne huffed too.
“For once I agree with Felix. It is too nice a day to waste on dreary fractions. I think we should put on a play instead.”
“Yes! Let’s!” Little Grace bounced in her seat so fast she almost fell off it. “Can I play a princess?”
“No.” Marianne did not even bat an eye. “I am always the princess because I can sing and dance like one, but you can be a fairy.”
“Urgh.” Felix again, sliding down the chair. “I think I’d prefer fractions.”
“That is just as well because fractions are what we are doing.” Georgie handed out the diagrams of circles that she had prepared, all with a dot to mark the center. Then she gestured at the two separate blocks of fractions written on the board. Grace would work on the top to find the half, then the quarters. Marianne and Felix would do the same but would continue to measure out the eighths and thesixteenths. Once that was done, the eldest two would use their diagrams to learn to add the fractions together while the youngest used hers to find and shade in three quarters.
“A fraction is what we call a segment or part of a whole—”
