Page 37 of The Governess and the Rogue

Miss Farraday and her mother were both staring in Jack’s and Bea’s direction from across the carpeted room. So were Mrs. Rawson and Mrs. Dimsdale. Jack even caught a furtive glance from Mr. Dimsdale who was seated round a low table, nursing his drink, with two similarly occupied gentlemen.

Jack banished the scowl from his brow. He forced himself to smile, as though the two of them were engaged in congenial conversation. “It isn’t what I meant, termagant,” he said quietly. “And we have an audience.”

Bea’s gaze flicked straight to the Farradays’ table.

“Don’t look,” Jack advised under his breath.

Bea returned her attention to her cards. A flush of heightened color briefly darkened her cheeks. “Did I raise my voice?”

“We both did.”

“Something we have in common,” she observed. “We’re both over passionate.”

Jack suspected she was right. He hadn’t realized it when he’d proposed the false engagement to her. He’d known she was starchy, of course, but he’d seen precious little of her spirit. That singular blaze that came into her face and her eyes when she was arguing against an injustice or coming to the aid of a friend.

It was really quite magnificent.

He didn’t like to acknowledge just how magnificent.

“And I wasn’t implying that you were a drudge,” he added gruffly.

“What were you implying?” she asked.

“That a man has already tried to impose on you once during your wanderings. If I hadn’t been there⁠—”

“Well,” she interrupted, “fortunately for me, you were.”

“But not anymore.” Jack no longer went above deck after dark. He had no need to. Thanks to Bea, he could now move about freely during the daylight hours and leave his nights for sleeping. “What do you plan to do if such an outrage should happen again?”

“I don’t imagine it will,” she said. “Not now I’m engaged to you.”

“A drunkard who comes upon you in the moonlight won’t care who you’re engaged to.”

“As to that⁠—”

“Besides which,” Jack continued, with fresh irritation, “I thought you only emerged at night as a respite from the children?”

“From my work, yes.”

Jack had to make an effort not to scowl again. “Which you still require, apparently.” He rearranged his remaining cards with unusually brusque movements. “Tell me, do you put me in the same class as those savages?”

Her mouth tipped in the barest suggestion of a smile. “Indeed, I do not.”

Jack was unmollified.

It occurred to him that, in becoming engaged to Bea, all he’d done was hire himself a vexing and rather attractive nurse. Perhaps that was how she saw their arrangement too, less as his fake fiancée and more as a paid companion to a demanding invalid.

Judging by her desire to venture above deck alone after dark, it wasn’t a position she was enjoying overmuch. Though honestly, Jack reflected bitterly, he would have thought it preferable to the alternative.

“Why did you choose to become a governess?” he asked.

The question seemed to take her aback. “What?”

“Do you like children?”

She resumed perusing her cards. “I don’t dislike them.”

Under other circumstances, Jack would have laughed. But not this evening. “Then the position wasn’t your heart’s desire?”