Page 30 of The Governess and the Rogue

She stopped in her tracks, turning to face him. “Are you out of your senses? Pearl can’t be my maid!”

“Why in blazes not?”

“She’s my friend!”

Jack cocked a brow. “Ah,” he said. “You have principles.”

“And you don’t?”

“Naturally I do. But if we’re going to pull this off, we’ll have to set them aside until we reach Southampton. In the meanwhile, all that matters is maintaining the fiction.”

“By hiring Pearl to wait on me like a servant?” Bea looked appalled.

“You’ll need a maid once you move into your stateroom. Better one that you’re on good terms with than another gossiping stranger.”

Bea stared at him. “My stateroom? You don’t mean that⁠—”

“You can’t remain in servants’ accommodation. Not when you’re a Beresford bride to be.”

Her jaw stiffened. “I’m not⁠—”

“You are, as far as anyone else knows,” Jack said, with a trace of impatience. “That’s the whole point of this exercise. Which means that you must be treated as a lady, not as a governess, a washerwoman, or whatever else you’ve been accustomed to being.”

“I have been whatever I’ve had to be to survive,” she informed him stonily. “Governess, laundress, maid of all work. And now, apparently, your fake fiancée.”

By her tone, one might easily be persuaded that all the positions were similarly distasteful.

“Quite,” Jack said. “Which brings us to another matter.”

It was something else he hadn’t considered until this moment. But Bea didn’t need to know that. He’d rather she believed that he had all the elements of the plan well in hand than that he was making things up as he went along.

“What other matter?” she asked.

“When we arrive in Southampton, you’ll have to take rooms at a hotel. You’ll need somewhere to stay until I can arrange a position for you.”

Judging by the grim look that came into Bea’s eyes, she hadn’t thought of this part of their plan either. “A hotel,” she repeated flatly. “For how long?”

“A day or two at most. Just long enough for me to speak with my sister-in-law. I shall tell her⁠—”

“That we’re pretending to be engaged?”

“Lord no,” Jack said, appalled.

He couldn’t confide in Hannah about something like this. If he did, she’d inevitably tell James. And James was the last person on earth who could hear of it. He was too cold and implacable, lacking any trace of humor when it came to hare-brained schemes or breaches of gentlemanly conduct. If he learned that Jack had participated in such a deception, Jack would never hear the end of it.

“Then what?” Bea asked.

“I’ll tell her the truth,” Jack said. “That you’re a hardworking, honorable, colonial governess, alone in the world, and anxious to find a position in a respectable British household.”

“How succinctly you put it,” Bea remarked dryly.

“Persuasively, I’d have said,” Jack replied. “Hannah’s got a good heart. She’ll write you a reference straightaway.”

“And I’m to rely on that possibility, am I? As I await this promised reference, alone in a strange hotel, with only a few shillings to my name?”

“You can rely on me.”

“So you claim. But⁠—”