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‘No.’ Laura smiled at him. Clear-eyed, innocent. ‘I gave her a long holiday with her family. Now Miss Pemberton is with us I thought it was time she had a rest.’
Miss Pemberton, his wife’s choice made without reference to him. His wife’s employee, loyal to her. Avery schooled his expression into bland approval. ‘Of course, my dear. She deserves her holiday.’
*
He waited until the next morning. It was Miss Pemberton’s half-day and Laura went out shopping, taking Alice with her. Avery waited for the front door to close behind them, then he climbed to the nursery floor and tapped on the door of the governess’s sitting room.
She was sitting at the table, darning stockings, but she got to her feet when she saw who it was. ‘My lord. Please come in.’
Avery left the door ajar in case she felt uneasy about being alone with a male employer. ‘Miss Pemberton, I hope you will excuse me interrupting you in your free time, I will not take much of it, I hope. Shall we sit?’
She took the chair opposite his and folded her hands neatly on the table. A self-contained, intelligent young woman.
‘I do not interfere with my wife’s running of the household, you understand. And, naturally, your appointment is within her sphere of influence.’ She looked a trifle puzzled, but she nodded. ‘However, Alice is my daughter. She is my wife’s stepdaughter.’ The governess nodded again and sat a little straighter in the chair. ‘Naturally she is very fond of Alice, but she is not her guardian, not her mother.’ His tongue almost tripped him on the lie.
‘Yes, Lord Wykeham. I am aware of that.’ Miss Pemberton was cool.
‘I am sure you are. I wanted to make it clear that my daughter does not leave the house without my knowledge and consent. She most certainly does not go on carriage journeys without it. Do you understand?’
‘Your instructions are very clear, my lord, although I confess I do not understand.’
‘Lady Wykeham is prone to occasional flights of fancy that usually manifest themselves as erratic journeys. It would be unsettling for Alice.’
‘I see.’ She looked very perturbed. ‘I can assure you, my lord, that if there is any suggestion of such a thing I will inform you at once.’
‘Thank you.’ Avery stood up. ‘I can rely on you not to mention this to my wife? She becomes very distressed when we argue about these…whims.’
‘Of course, my lord. I greatly respect Lady Wykeham, I would not wish to upset her in any way.’
*
Laura barely made it downstairs in time before the sound of footsteps on the upper landing sent her headlong through the first bedchamber door she came to. She closed it gently and leaned back, one hand pressed to her lips to stifle the sound of her panting breath.
She had come back into the house because Alice had forgotten her gloves and, leaving the child in the carriage, had run lightly upstairs in her thin kid shoes to fetch them herself. It was much easier than trying to explain to a footman where they might be.
The sound of Avery’s deep voice coming from Miss Pemberton’s room had caught her attention. What on earth was he doing there? Not interfering in the carefully constructed lesson plan, she hoped! She tiptoed along the landing and found the door ajar, so she stood and listened, indignation at interference swept away by horror at the tale Avery was telling about her.
She was within an inch of sweeping in and demanding to know what he meant by it when she realised what was happening, what he feared. Despite the lovemaking, the appearance of friendliness, the pleasant partnership that she was so hoping would blossom into something else, he trusted her not one inch.
He believed she would betray him. He thought she wanted to steal Alice from him.
Chapter Twenty-One
Laura listened to the sound of Avery’s footsteps dying away, then she heard the door to their bedchamber open and close and she ran down the stairs, jerking to a walk when she reached the hallway.
‘I couldn’t find them,’ she said to the footman. ‘Never mind.’ She had to get out of there before Avery realised she had been in the house. ‘I couldn’t find them,’ she repeated to Alice and sank back against the squabs as the carriage moved off.
Was Avery insane? He knew she had no hope of setting up
a separate household with Alice. He could simply walk in and claim them both, order them back home. She had no legal power and, now she was married, virtually no money either.
Then she realised. He was perfectly sane, perfectly logical. He genuinely thought she would snatch Alice away from him to hurt him. To punish him for Piers, for the things he had said about that letter and for taking her daughter in the first place. He thought she would do something so rash simply to wound him, make him suffer. After all, she had jewels, pin money, so she could, she supposed, vanish and manage for weeks, if not months, before he found her. If she told the child the truth about her parentage she might be able to do it in such a way that Alice would come to regard Avery as some kind of monster, so that when he eventually caught up with them Alice would hate him…
‘Mama, are you all right?’ Alice bounced across to sit beside her. ‘You look frightened.’
‘Do I?’ Laura conjured a smile from somewhere. ‘Not at all. I was just…thinking.’
Pretending to be Caroline Jordan had been a dreadful mistake. But there was no going back from it, even if it proved fatal to her marriage. Avery condemned her for entrapping him, lying to him and she could not find it in her to blame him. Somehow she had to convince him that he could trust her and hope he might come to understand why she had done what she had. Would he ever forgive her? She had no idea, but she had to try, she loved him too much not to.
