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Hell and damnation. She told you she had lost a child. Get your great boot out of your mouth, Falconer, and stop daydreaming. It had been a nice little fantasy about Caroline Jordan as Alice’s governess, but what did that make him, lusting after his daughter’s teacher, a woman who would be under his protection in his house? A lecher, that’s what, Avery told himself. He despised men who took advantage of their female dependants.
‘You see how much I need you to stop me wandering off at tangents,’ he said.
‘It seems strange that a man who can steer the fate of nations at the conference table finds it hard to advertise for a governess.’ Caroline sounded faintly amused, thank heavens.
‘The devil’s in the details,’ he said, snatching at a cliché in desperation. He had told the Duke of Wellington to stop interfering before now. He had faced down the most powerful of the Emperor Alexander’s ministers and he could negotiate in five languages, but this one woman, with her emotional buttons done up so tightly over whatever was going on in her bosom, had him in knots.
And that’s because when you are dealing with Wellington you aren’t thinking with the parts of your anatomy that are giving you hell now. Although it isn’t simply desire.
‘Papa! Aunt Caroline! Luncheon is ready and I am starving.’
‘Coming, Alice.’ Avery lowered his voice as he took the paper from Caroline. ‘Do you suppose a governess will be able to stop her stampeding about like a herd of goats and shouting at the top of her voice?’
‘Oh, I hope not.’ Mrs Jordan’s smile was curiously tender. ‘Not all the time.’
*
Avery watched Caroline during the meal and Caroline watched Alice. Not him. Which meant he had either so comprehensively embarrassed her that she did not dare risk catching his eye or that she was completely indifferent to him. And yet his reckless remark about desire had discomforted her to the extent that she had challenged him about it this morning. She had neither screamed, nor slapped his face when he had kissed her, but she had given him no encouragement either.
So…not a merry window or even one sophisticated enough to contemplate an irregular liaison. He suspected she was not mourning her husband in anything but the outward show of black clothing and quiet living. There was a mystery there.
‘Was your husband a landowner, Mrs Jordan?’
‘In a small way. He was a military man.’ She prepared an apple for Alice, scarcely glancing at him as she controlled the peel that curled from her knife.
‘From this part of the world?’
‘We lived in London when we were together.’ Her hand was quite steady with the sharp blade. ‘There, Alice. Now, I was careful to get it all off in one piece, which is very important for this magic to work. If you hold up the peel, very high, and drop it, it will make the initial of your husband-to-be.’
Alice giggled. ‘That can’t be right, Aunt Caroline. You peeled it, so you will have to drop it.’
‘I have no intention of marrying again.’
‘Please?’
Avery watched, amused that the wide-eyed green stare, combined with the faint tremble of the lower lip, worked just as well on Mrs Jordan as it did on him. He shuddered to think of the impact on young men when Alice was old enough to make her come-out. He would have to carry a shotgun at all times.
‘Oh, very well. It will come out with a Z or an X or something improbable.’ Caroline held up the peel and dropped it. She and Alice studied it with all the care of scientists with a lens. ‘I cannot make anything of it,’ she said at last. ‘The magic obviously works and it knows I will not marry again.’
Avery leaned across the table. ‘It is a lower-case a,’ he said. ‘It is facing me, that is why you cannot read it. See, the round shape and the little tail.’
‘A is for Avery,’ Alice exclaimed.
There was a deadly little silence, then Caroline said, ‘Your papa will be marrying a titled lady, Alice. She is probably dropping her apple peel at just this moment and it is coming out as a capital A, the right way up.’
‘You have the makings of a diplomat,’ Avery remarked softly as Alice became engrossed in making letters with pieces of peel while she nibbled on her apple segments. ‘I am sorry if we have embarrassed you between us this morning.’
‘I am not embarrassed,’ Caroline said and returned her attention to the piece of fruit on her own plate.
And she was not, he realised. But she was distressed. He was learning to read her emotions behind the calm facade and her eyes were sparkling as if with unshed tears and her hand shook, just a little, as she wielded the sharp little knife. What the devil had her husband done to her to make her so fragile on the subject of marriage?
*
He is going to marry some day and Alice will have a stepmother. She will call her Mama and she will love her. They will be a family in some glamorous European capital while Avery is a diplomat and then they will host great house parties at Wykeham Hall when they return to England. Alice will grow up and another woman will help her choose her gowns and will share her secrets and those first tears over a flirtation. Another woman will… Stop it!
It was self-indulgent and as foolish as prodding a bruise to see if it hurt. Of course it hurt, but her heartbreak was not important. Alice was what mattered. Only Alice. Laura glanced up and saw Avery was watching her. He knew she was upset and his face was grave. Strange how she was beginning to be able to read his face, the thoughts behind the skilful diplomatic mask. Would there have been as much subtlety and intelligence in Piers’s face as he matured to the age this man was now?
He smiled at her, a little rueful, the expression of a friend who wants to help, but is not quite sure how. He would not look like that if he knew she was deceiving him or who she was, she thought with a kick of conscience.
