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The hand dropped. “Of course, Your Grace.”
Which instantly caused him to feel guilty as hell. “There will be occasion enough for conversation with all the ladies at the ball, will there not, Elen?”
She brightened, so he smiled and slipped away to approach the little group.
“If it’s not too forward of me, Mr Cadwalader,” the young Miss Craddock had begun, eyes dancing in glee, “can I ask how you came to injure yourself?”
Miss Beaujeu’s gaze was also upon Hugh, sharp and as animated as he’d ever seen it. Then she glanced across to himself and the smile straightened a smidgen before she curtseyed. “Your Grace.”
Tugging on the cravat that his valet must have overtightened, he brought to the fore a governess’ most esteemed worth – identifying the location of Peru on the globe and dates pertaining to the Battle of Hastings.
“Ah ha,” cried Hugh with a thump to Rhys’ shoulder, “here’s the prize trout ready for hook–”
Rhys thumped back with a little more force and his heir winced. “I believe, Hugh, that you were about to tell the ladies how you were injured? Can’t wait to hear this vainglorious tale myself.”
Hugh tightened his blue gaze. “Er…”
“Surely an irate husband,” cried Mari.
Miss Beaujeu patted her in reproof but his niece rolled her eyes. “He’ll make it up anyway.”
Out of the mouths of babes…
“A duel?” speculated Gwen.
“A dastardly handsome and sinful highwayman?” said Miss Craddock.
“With his dastardly handsome and sinful accomplices?” added her mother.
Guesses were bandied hither and thither, becoming ever more outlandish as other guests and Lady Elen joined them.
“An Almack’s patroness?” declared Lady Bronwen, who shoved herself into their midst, her father patting her shoulder in commendation – for the guess or the shoulder barge, Rhys could not be sure.
“An odious French spy?” said Miss Pritchard, who straggled in her wake.
Only Rhys noticed the quirk of Hugh’s lip.
“Be careful not to cause offence with that guess, Hannah.” Lady Bronwen nudged her friend. “After all, we do have a Frenchwoman in our midst.”
He noted Miss Beaujeu startle. “I have lived in England many years, my lady.”
“So Lady Elen told me. But do you consider yourself French or English, I wonder? In light of the recent war.”
Captain Brecken scowled in Miss Beaujeu’s direction.
His governess blinked, stilled, then smoothed her skirts, that agreeable animation rolling away from her eyes like mist from the Llanedwyn mountains, leaving her as she was at the interview – ordered, calm and rather impassive.
Except for those thumbs.
“I consider myself…of nowhere. I am neither.” Her lashes lowered. “A governess has no home, my lady, be she French or English.”
An uncomfortable silence bled around them.
Rhys could bear it no longer. “You have a home with us, Miss Beaujeu,” he could not help but utter.
She had spoken her words without melancholic inflection yet, when she cast a smile of gratitude in his direction, it still failed to reach the corners of those silvered eyes, perhaps because she knew the home he’d offered would only ever be transitory – a governess’ lot in life to be the fleeting interloper within a constant bustling family.
“You have little accent, ’tis true,” Lady Bronwen continued, oblivious – or not – to the hurt she had bared with her question. “I’m well versed in French, of course, but oft feel it does not have the…depth of English.” She twirled a gloved hand. “We have so many more words.”
