Page 62 of The Governess and the Rogue

James remained in his chair. “There is, however, one other matter I must bring to your attention.”

Jack stilled. “If it’s another anonymous telegram, I won’t be held responsible for my actions.”

“It’s not another telegram.”

“Then can it wait?”

James gestured for Jack to resume his seat. “I’m afraid it can’t.”

Chapter Twenty

Bea was awakened the next morning before sunrise, not by the efforts of the maid her hostess had lent her the previous evening, but by a soft and rather insistent knock on her chamber door. She had an immediate sense who it might be. Answering the surreptitious summons a moment later, clad in her dressing gown, with her hair still in its nighttime plait, her feminine intuition was proved right.

“Jack,” she whispered. “What are you doing here?”

He stood in the darkened hall, leaning heavily on his cane. He was dressed for the out of doors in a wool topcoat and trousers. “We need to talk,” he said quietly.

“We absolutely do,” she agreed. “But not, I should think, in my bedroom.”

“Naturally not in your bedroom. Not in the hall either. How soon can you be dressed?”

“What did you have in mind?”

“There’s a secluded place along the banks of a stream that runs through the grounds. It’s far enough away from the house that we won’t be disturbed.”

Bea nodded solemnly. “Give me five minutes.”

Closing the door, she hurried to wash and dress. It took longer than she’d anticipated, owing to difficulties finding a suitably warm dress and stockings in the hodgepodge of packing cases the footmen had brought up last night. Once discovered, she hastily put them on, and equally hastily brushed out her plait, twisting her hair back into a loose chignon at her nape. Collecting the cashmere shawl Jack had given her, she at last exited her room.

Jack was leaning against the wall outside her door. He straightened when he saw her. “Ready?”

“Ready.”

“It’s this way,” he said.

Wrapping her shawl around her shoulders, Bea silently followed him along the corridor and down the curving staircase. Rather than crossing the marble entry hall to the house’s front doors, Jack led her down another flight of stairs to the kitchens.

Unlike the rest of the house, the kitchens were already lit, with servants bustling about, and an aged, aproned cook standing over an enormous iron stove, presiding over an array of steaming pots and kettles.

Jack winked at the old woman as they passed through, provoking her into a smile. “She’s been here since I was a lad,” he said to Bea as he opened the back door for her.

Bea preceded him outside, where dawn was breaking rapidly over the verdant, mist-covered landscape. A chill wind nipped at her face and ruffled her hair. “Is this where you grew up?” she asked.

Jack closed the door after them. “In large part.” He offered Bea his arm. “My parents split their time between Beasley Park and Worth House, our family seat in Hertfordshire. But they far preferred it here. This is where my mother was born, and where she met my father as a girl. It’s where they fell in love.”

Bea slipped her hand through Jack’s arm. As they left the kitchen yard, making their way over the sloping lawn toward a stand of trees in the distance, she couldn’t be entirely sure whether she was relying on him for support or he was relying on her.

It occurred to her that, perhaps, it was mutual. Each of them needing the other an equal amount to get where they were going. To keep from falling or losing their way.

The thought brought Bea some small comfort. Especially now, when Jack’s family, and anyone else she and Jack met, might reasonably view their arrangement as being appallingly one-sided.

Sunlight streaked through the branches ahead of them, burning away the morning fog and lighting their way through the trees. Bea heard the stream before she saw it—the melodic trickle of softly rippling water. And then it was there, before them, framed by gently sloping banks covered in a profusion of blue wildflowers.

They were forget-me-nots, Bea realized. As dazzling a display of them as she’d ever seen in her life. “How beautiful,” she whispered.

“It always is at this time of year,” Jack said. He guided her carefully down the bank, finding purchase with his cane.

“Are you sure you’re able⁠—”