Page 48 of The Governess and the Rogue

Then again, it hadn’t been congenial since he’d kissed Bea that night on the deck.

Jack regarded her with a brooding frown. He’d originally thought that time and distance would put their relationship back on a steady footing. Instead, he’d hour-by-hour found himself watching her when she wasn’t aware of it, trying to puzzle out what she was thinking about their arrangement. About him.

All these days later, he was none the wiser. His little governess was a vault when she chose to be. He was rather impressed by her self-possession, even as it nettled him.

“You don’t want to stop in Paris, do you?” he asked.

Bea settled in her seat next to him. “What would be the purpose? Lest you forget, I haven’t actually got a trousseau to purchase.”

Jack’s frown deepened. “No. I suppose not.”

She arranged the folds of her full skirts. “Who was that gentleman you were speaking with on the platform?”

“Thornhill? What about him?”

“Mrs. Rawson said he was a prisoner during the rebellion. That he’d been tortured.”

“He was,” Jack said. “I asked him to join us. I thought he might benefit from our company.”

To her credit, Bea didn’t look appalled by the idea. “I wasn’t aware you knew any of the other soldiers on board.”

“I don’t. Thornhill and I first met when we boarded the ship in Alexandria. He’s kept to himself since then. I’ve tried to draw him out, with no success.”

“You feel sorry for him.”

“It’s not pity,” Jack said. “It’s empathy. When one is hurt, one often turns inward. It’s not the wisest course.”

“Perhaps he simply prefers his own company,” Bea said. “Many people do.”

Jack wondered if she was one of them. “There are other things to buy in Paris besides a trousseau,” he said.

Her hands stilled for a moment as she finished smoothing her skirts. “I don’t doubt it. But stopping for a pleasure jaunt was never part of our plan. You said from the beginning that we’d be traveling straight through.”

“So I did,” Jack acknowledged. “Speaking of our plan…”

She turned to him fully, catching the note of hesitation in his voice. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong.”

Except that he was going to have to leave her in Southampton, unchaperoned, without a maid or companion to see to her safety.

The plan had seemed reasonable enough when he’d first proposed it. Governesses and women of the servant class frequently traveled alone when taking up positions in new towns. There was nothing out of the ordinary in it.

Even so…

“When we reach Southampton, you must allow me to choose the hotel that you’ll stay in,” he said.

“Does it matter?” she asked.

“I want you somewhere safe and respectable, where no harm will come to you, not at some coaching inn filled with dissolute sailors and rabble.”

“I’m not unaccustomed to rabble.”

“Nevertheless,” Jack said. “You will do as I say and remain in your room until you hear from me.”

He had no sooner uttered the words, than he suppressed a wince.

Good Lord. He sounded rather horrifyingly like his brother, James. Just as top lofty and insufferable.