AllFreeNovel
Share Us
For at Lady Elen’s behest, an autumn house party was to be hosted at his estate with the sole purpose of choosing him a wife – as the less said of his current heir’s clandestine activities the better.
Shoving the damn sag of hair from his forehead, he frowned. The sooner Miss Beaujeu was employed, his niece cared for, the house party completed and the procreation of a more suitable heir begun, life could return to normal.
He’d never been one for procrastination.
“I appoint you as governess. The pay is ten guineas a month. When can you start?”
Her gaze neither quivered in delight nor quailed in dismay despite the generous sum, and he briefly pondered on what it would take to rouse her…
“I’m able to inform you that I can accept your appointment, Your Grace, but am committed in my current employ until the end of September when my young charge is to marry.”
He grunted. “I’ll make arrangements for your travel as my household will have already removed themselves from London by then.”
With a gracious nod, she patted her skirts, those thumbs still twitching. “And may I ask, Your Grace, where we shall be residing for the cold and bitter winter months, if not here in London?”
With a curt nod, he pulled at his cravat. “Wales.”
For a moment, the briefest moment, her breath hitched and he noticed a glitter of something quite untamed in those pewter eyes.
“W-Wales, Your Grace?”
“Indeed. My English ducal title is a recent inheritance from a once fought over dukedom on the border, but I was born in Wales, consider myself a Welshman and invariably spend winter there.”
“Oh,” she uttered impassively. “I have never visited this…Wales.”
He tilted his head as, for the first time during the interview, she’d faintly dropped her H in the French manner.
“It’s a rugged, beautiful place. My estate is on the coast, the mountains behind, with such intense hues of green one never knew existed, Miss Beaujeu.”
She appeared unimpressed by his eloquence. “From all the…rain, one supposes?”
“Just so,” he answered, standing. “The very tears of angels.”
His new governess stood also. “I see,” she murmured, now with a distinct French inflection.
Such a husk to that accent caused the hairs on his arm to rise.
She smoothed her perfectly smooth coiffure, clasped her hands once more and nodded. “I will await your instructions then, Your Grace, and look forward to educating your niece in…Wales.”
Rhys strode to the door, kicked a pile of papers to one side and thrust it open. “Good day, Miss Beaujeu. I’ll have my secretary contact you and return your references with all due haste.”
“Your Grace.” She sketched him a curtsey more suited to a king’s coronation. “Au revoir.”
He shivered.
And without a backwards glance, she stalked down the hallway towards his expectant butler.
Cursing, Rhys slammed the door and gathered up the bundle of crushed papers from behind it. There were important matters to attend to and he paced the rug. Then scowled and threw the papers onto the fire, blackened fragments of ash floating up the chimney and eradicating the scent of jasmine which drifted in the–
Jasmine?
He sniffed the air.
Definitely jasmine, which could only have come from…
Could a governess be permitted to smell of exotic jasmine?
Striding to the window, he caught a glimpse of the confident paragon halting a hurtling hackney carriage with a mere waft of brown parasol.
Rhys pinched his brow.
What had he done?
