By the time her afternoon off came around Nell felt as if she needed peace and quiet even more than usual. She thanked Mrs Winch for the housekeeping lessons she had organised to keep the girls out of mischief in Nell’s absence and went out into the parkland armed with her sketchbook. It was urgent with new life, despite the grey and cheerless weather so far this year, but she couldn’t seem to find the right place to settle. A stile or tree stump would offer her a subject; she’d open her sketch book and find her thoughts ran on so busily she’d wasted half an hour doodling before she knew it. Sighing impatiently at another drawing of nothing much, she got ready to move again and find some wonder that might finally hold her wandering attention.
‘Now here’s a dilemma,’ the deep masculine voice she told herself she least wanted to hear drawled from behind her.
She turned to glare at Moss, because somehow she couldn’t endure being written off as a quiz today. ‘You made me jump,’ she accused quite unnecessarily; he must have seen her start half an inch in the air. ‘Must you creep about like a cat on the prowl, Mr Moss?’
‘I do know a true gentleman is not supposed to argue with a lady, but a troop of land stewards could have marched along this path in step with me and you were so lost in thought you wouldn’t have heard us, Miss Court.’
‘What a nightmarish idea,’ she grumbled, then snapped her drawing book closed as she got ready to jump down off the stile and wait for him to pass by.
‘You have no time for us sons of the soil, do you?’ he said as if he knew the inner workings of her soul and found them narrow and rather petty.
‘Your profession has nothing to do with it,’ she said, stowing her precious pencils more carefully than usual because she didn’t want him to know her face was flushed at his faulty judgement.
The awful truth was he intrigued her and neither Miss Court nor Eleanor Hancourt could afford to be drawn to the Earl of Barberry’s land steward. As a governess, she was probably beneath his touch. She had to set a good example to her charges and falling at his feet like a besotted schoolgirl would not be one of those. As the granddaughter of a duke and a lady of birth and fortune she truly was, he was an unequal match for her. Not that he showed any sign of being bewitched by her, so she needn’t worry his tender heart would be trampled by her real status in the world as he clearly didn’t have one.
‘Why do you look down your nose at me whenever we cross paths, Miss Court?’ he asked, like a boy taking a clock apart to find out how it worked.
‘Maybe I am simply a cross-grained creature, Mr Moss,’ she replied primly.
‘Hmm, I doubt you’re anything as straightforward as that.’
‘Of course I am, you remarked on it just now.’
‘If you revise our conversation you’ll find out I did nothing of the sort. I have the evidence of my own ears and eyes on my first night here to argue with that stiff and unyielding image of a lady who doesn’t care for anything but her own comfort. You are a fraud, Miss Court,’ he accused, his gaze steady as he met hers with a challenge to argue and prove it.
‘Am I?’ she asked as lightly as she could when her heart was racing at the very idea he might have found her out and now she would have to tell the truth about herself.
‘Yes; you pretend to be stern and unbending to an outsider like me, yet you cherish and protect the girls in your charge so fiercely I suspect you’d walk barefoot across Britain for them if it seemed the right thing to do at the time. If you ever dreamt of setting yourself up as a strict and uncaring educator, you veered wildly off course the day you agreed to take on the welfare of those girls of yours virtually alone.’
‘This is plain speaking indeed, Mr Moss. I shall return the compliment and ask what I should think of a gentleman who was outfitted nearly as grandly as the Earl the day you came here, yet you stay in a rackety old house as if you don’t care for your own comfort and we’re not supposed to find that odd?’
‘No,’ he said gruffly, as if she had trampled on his pride by pointing out the facts of his life.
‘Then maybe I am as ideally suited to my position here as you are to yours,’ she lied. She wasn’t born to this sort of life and now as an heiress in her own right again there was nothing ideal about it. He was right the first time; Miss Court was a fraud and no doubt he’d be the first to denounce her as such if he ever found out who she really was.
‘I don’t think so,’ he argued. ‘Something about you says no to that notion, Miss Court. I wonder if you have a secret you’re half-afraid one of us will stumble upon if you don’t hold us at a distance?’
‘What nonsense. Of course I haven’t,’ she said briskly, afraid that he might see into her very soul if she let him. The idea that he’d already looked harder than she wanted anyone at Berry Brampton to look made her even more uneasy. She should be eager to get away from him, instead of standing here as if he’d put a spell on her feet so she couldn’t make them move until he set her free. ‘I was fortunate to receive an excellent education so I can earn my keep by passing it on to Lord Barberry’s wards. I’m a simple soul and such fanciful speculation is ridiculous.’
‘Hmm,’ he murmured with a hint of a smile in his eyes. ‘I don’t doubt your learning, but a simple soul? You seem rather complicated to me, ma’am.’
‘I wish you wouldn’t call me that, sir. I’m not in my dotage,’ she said to try and divert him from his doubts about her.
‘Of course not; you’re nowhere near it,’ he scoffed as if she had managed to irritate him without even trying this time. ‘I doubt you’re much older than Miss Lavinia Selford. I can’t imagine how you came to be appointed governess here two years ago, when you can hardly have been long out of the schoolroom yourself.’
‘Of course I was; I’m a competent and experienced teacher. If I thought you had a right to question my status I’d refer you to my former headmistress in Bath, as I was a pupil teacher at her school from the time I really was Lavinia’s age.’
‘I really can’t imagine anything less likely than Miss Selford teaching small girls their alphabet. You must have been far too young to teach much at such an age.’
‘That’s how we schoolmistresses begin. Access to our universities being denied to us women, how else can we learn our trade?’
‘Not at seventeen,’ he said, as if he knew far more about the education of young girls than she did.
Perhaps he had little sisters, she speculated. Was he too young to have a daughter of his own, but if he had a wife or child he’d have brought them with him, wouldn’t he? Nell felt a chasm open up in her heart at the very thought she might have been having hot and forbidden fantasies about a married man. She told herself to stop having them this very minute and it wasn’t as if she intended to do anything about this feeling that he could be far more important to her than the Earl of Barberry’s land steward ever should be. He’d laugh if he could read her thoughts and hastily decline the honour of fulfilling those wicked imaginings of hers, she decided, with a feeling deep down that might easily be regret if she thought about it.
‘We do if that’s the only way we can pay our fees,’ she replied absently.
The horrid thought of Moss with a wife and child outran Nell’s irritation that he doubted her suitability for this post. She’d spent two years battling with the Selford girls’ defiant ignorance when three more experienced teachers had declared them impossible before she came. Clearly it was unreasonable to expect a man to take the challenges she faced every day seriously, she decided waspishly.
‘What were you doing at such a prestigious school if there wasn’t enough money to pay the fees?’ he asked as if he knew the costs of Miss Thibett’s exclusive school were beyond a penniless orphan. What right did he have to question her, but for some reason she answered him anyway.
‘When my grandmother died my guardian said it was foolish to educate me above my station. He informed Miss Thibett that he wasn’t prepared to throw good money after bad and that I would have to find work.’
‘What sort of guardian was he?’ he said scornfully.
For some reason Nell felt her temper strain against the restraint of years. He didn’t seem to believe her and this part of her story was actually true. ‘Just the run-of-the-mill sort who cared as little how I felt as my current charges’ guardian does about their hopes and dreams. He was as hard and indifferent to me as Lord Barberry is to four girls who have lost their parents through no fault of their own. They didn’t ask to be thrown on his mercy, any more than my brother and I wanted to be dependent on our uncle. As his lordship takes as little trouble as he can over his wards, it seems to me a common enough way for guardians to behave. The Earl gives instructions to keep his charges fed, clothed and alive and as far out of his orbit as possible. No doubt he would rid himself of his wards as rapidly as my guardian did of me, if society would let him turn his back on them and get away with it. So there really must be safety in numbers; four girls cast out into the world to earn a living couldn’t go unnoticed as one seems to have done when my guardian decided to disown me.’
‘You are very hot against a man you don’t know,’ he said as if her outburst was personal and not directed at the employer he claimed not to know either.
‘And you seem determined to support the Earl against the accusations most of his staff and tenants would throw at him if they dared,’ she replied angrily, narrowing her eyes against a rare glimpse of the sun to glare up at him.
‘Don’t look at me as if I’ve been supping with the devil, Miss Court, neither of us know Lord Barberry, so how can we judge him? He may feel he’s done his best for his wards by stopping away, so they can grow up in peace under your care. No doubt you could teach the instant you left your cradle so he may have done all he needed for them on the day he agreed to appoint you.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she said stiffly and wished she could break the spell he seemed to have cast on her and walk away. He was mocking her as well as changing the subject and she made herself look into the middle distance while she wondered about Moss and his peculiar failure to arrive here until they had all but given up hope he was coming. His post was one most young men of his birth and station would have galloped here to grab with both hands. ‘You clearly doubt I can find my way around a primer, let alone being able to teach them suitably ladylike accomplishments.’
‘Spare me a list; my mother’s vast numbers of friends line up to provide me with a list of what to expect of a truly accomplished young lady whenever I rashly put my head inside her drawing room of an afternoon.’
‘Goodness, I thought you lived in a remote neighbourhood.’ Nell allowed herself to be diverted and wonder how big a manor house his father resided in.
‘It sometimes seems entirely made up of young ladies who insist on playing pianofortes and flutes very badly, or displaying pages of indifferent watercolours as if they were inspired. Perhaps a man needs to be deaf, short-sighted and oblivious to the frippery nature of most young ladies’ accomplishments to be a true gentleman.’
‘You are too severe. Perhaps you should consider how it feels to walk in a lady’s kid slippers next time you judge one so harshly. A woman may have the acute mind and cunning instincts of a Duke of Wellington in petticoats but, for all the good they will do her, she might as well be born a fool.’
‘You long for the smoke of battle and the smell of slaughter then, Miss Court?’ he asked with such pointed irony she longed to smack his unfashionably tanned cheek or, even better, plant him a facer in true manly style.
‘I doubt any woman does,’ she said, her very real memories of the terrible aftermath of Waterloo making her shudder. ‘Most of my sex have too much to fear for those who fight and die for our safety to think war anything but a tragedy. We sit at home and hope our loved ones survive, all the time knowing we can do nothing to stop the slaughter but pray for peace. Maybe I chose a clumsy example of how hemmed in and confined the female sex is compared to the masculine one, but how would you feel if every path you chose, every talent you truly possessed and longed to follow up and expand upon was closed off to you by an accident of birth, Mr Moss?’
‘Frustrated and angry,’ he admitted slowly. He looked thoughtful about his dismissal of half the world though and that was something, wasn’t it? ‘Do you secretly long to join the Royal Society, or mount an expedition to hunt for pirate treasure?’
Nell looked for mockery, but saw only interest in his eyes as she blinked back at him and almost forgot the question. Being alone with him under the budding oak trees lent a dangerous edge to their conversation and she should have bid him a chilly good day and moved on. If they could meet on equal terms, how irresistible he might seem next to the idle fops and rakes of the ton. Ah now, wasn’t that the timely reminder she needed not to dream of this man kissing her in the shadow of my lord’s venerable oak grove? She wasn’t only Miss Court and he was Lord Barberry’s steward. Even if he could lower his pride to live off his wife’s fortune, she didn’t know if she could endure an unequal marriage like the one her parents had made. Look what happened when you let your inner dreamer run away with you—one minute you were standing here wondering how it might feel to be thoroughly kissed by a fit and vigorous gentleman you had done your best not to admire from afar; the next you were marching him up the aisle and wondering how you could live together in harmony when your fortune was so much greater than his.
‘No,’ she replied as if that was all she was thinking of while she considered the biggest intimacies there were between a man and a woman and decided they were impossible for them. ‘I don’t have a scientific bent or long for wild adventures. Surely even you will admit I’ve a right to be bitter about the lot of women in our supposedly enlightened times though, Mr Moss?’
‘Will I?’ he asked contrarily.
‘Of course; in a fairer world I could have attended a university if I was clever enough and never mind male or female. A scholar can’t have too much scholarship.’
‘Now there I can disagree and refuse to feel guilty. Who would want you to spend years hunched over your books until you grow a dowager’s hump and need to wear spectacles, Miss Court? Not I, for one,’ he said with far too much masculine interest in her currently clear-eyed and straight-backed form for comfort.
‘Complimenting me won’t change me into a fluffy female who simpers and agrees you know best because you’re male, instead of thinking for herself. What if I heard the music of the spheres or found the cure for all ills? No matter if I am man or woman, such knowledge could be of infinite use to mankind.’
‘Do let me know when you’re close to tracking down either wonder, won’t you?’ he replied cynically as ever.
Nell knew she was clinging to an argument to shield herself against the glimmer of masculine interest in his eyes and that half-smile of his that threatened to make her heart flip over. She couldn’t afford to stare boldly back at him or enjoy the novelty of not being invisible to a vigorous and personable gentleman for once.
‘You know very well I’m too busy and too poor to indulge in serious and expensive study,’ she said as briskly as she could. Shivers of something she didn’t even want to think about were racing up and down her spine.
‘And yet I heard this was your afternoon at leisure,’ he murmured from far too close and the words on their tongues seemed to have very little connection to the hot thoughts in their heads if the fire in his gaze was anything to go by.
Had he sought her out deliberately? A flush of pleasure and something a lot more complicated threatened to give her away as nowhere near as indifferent to him as she ought to be. ‘Yes, it is,’ she said breathily and the small freedom of that half-day of leisure tugged her inner rebel to the fore and threatened to tempt her into the impossible after all.
The girls were occupied; she was not expected to supervise or teach them for the rest of the day and there was nobody to frown and shake their heads at the sight of the governess and the steward so deeply absorbed in one another. She remembered Colm and his beloved Eve and the stolen afternoons they spent together when everyone pretended not to notice they had sneaked off to their rooms yet again. The unexpectedness of their passionate love still seemed to surprise even them. They would laugh and agree with each other how unlikely their marriage was and wasn’t it the most delightful wonder anyone ever came across that the Winterleys and Hancourts were now united by marriage instead of scandal? For a moment Nell longed to visit the same exotically unknown and fascinating territory they went to together with a most unlikely lover of her own.
No, love did neither of her parents any good and somehow she knew her mother had loved the dashing young husband who only wed her for her father’s fortune. And after she died Lord Christopher Hancourt blindly loved a wanton, a renegade viscountess who blithely abandoned her husband and child to live the wild life she chose with any personable man who could afford her, until she bled him dry and moved on to the next fool in line. It felt so lonely inside the safe, dry little world Miss Court had made for herself today, though. Nell’s father, besotted lover of a notorious woman, dared his very life for Pamela, Viscountess Farenze. Yet even with that warning example of how far Hancourt folly went, his daughter felt the thunder in her blood at the thought of letting all the passion inside her roar. Horrified by her own frailty, she still stood and wondered about the notion she could enjoy being a passing fancy for this man, if only she dared.
How would it feel to be kissed by Moss as if she was lovely, sensuous and desirable? How might it feel to actually be those things to a man she wanted so badly it didn’t matter about social distinctions or correct behaviour any more? For the longest and most charged moments of her entire life so far those questions sang between them as if she had spoken them aloud. Her lips parted without her permission, his fascinated gaze encouragement enough. Her entire body was aware of itself as never before. Every breath was a novelty as the scent and power and sight of him reached a curious and dangerous place inside her and whispered maybe. Had her mouth actually shaped the word to cause his gaze to sharpen on these suddenly rather full and needy lips of hers? His guard seemed to have fallen nearly as far as hers as he looked back at her with sharp interest and something gentler and warmer in his eyes. A curve of almost tender amusement lifted his mouth in a wry smile. Her feet raised on tiptoe, inviting him to lower his head and let wild, reckless Nell Hancourt out of her cage the instant he kissed her...
‘Ah, there you are, Moss,’ Mr Rivers’s genial tenor voice drawled from far too close for comfort. Nell sprang back as if she’d been stung and the land steward stepped away as if he and the governess were always poles apart.
‘Indeed I am, sir,’ he said blandly with a not very respectful bow, as if the Earl’s half-brother was intruding and ought to know better.
‘Good afternoon, Mr Rivers,’ Nell greeted the newcomer with a hasty curtsy and saw how horrified Moss was by how close they’d sailed to the disaster of being caught together as lovers by this inconvenient gentleman. Well, if he thought it a disaster, Miss Eleanor Hancourt should be congratulating herself on a lucky escape. So why did she feel something rare and precious had been snatched away?
‘My brother’s lawyer has sent those maps and deeds on, Moss. No doubt he will expect us to pore over them until we resolve the northern boundaries he’s so concerned about all of a sudden. Best get on with it as soon as we can, hey?’
‘Very well, sir. I’ll join you in the muniment room as soon as I’ve escorted Miss Court to her destination,’ Moss said rather shortly, considering the gentleman might get him dismissed if Moss was as awkward and abrupt with his employer’s brother as he was with her.
‘Miss Court can get there without help, thank you,’ Nell snapped because it hurt to be only an obstacle in his path now they’d been brought back to earth so abruptly. ‘I am not yet in my dotage, Mr Moss.’
‘Indeed you’re not, ma’am, but with these rumours of down-at-heel strangers in the area looking for mischief any sensible lady must be wary of roving about alone.’
‘Even the governess?’ she said bitterly. His refusal to meet her eyes or be other than stiff and correct in front of Mr Rivers felt like a slight, however hard she told herself she hadn’t really wanted his sensual attention in the first place.
‘Especially her,’ said the man who charmed her one minute and disclaimed any interest the next.
‘Perhaps we could both escort you, Miss Court?’ Mr Rivers asked more politely when she shook her head and stepped back from the man who had her senses so confused they were still yearning for his touch. ‘As we’re on our way to the estate office anyway it’s a good excuse not to talk business until we get there.’
‘I’d best agree to be escorted back to my duties then, sir. Mr Moss seems disinclined to move out of my way unless I do,’ Miss Court said with her best smile for the Earl’s gilded brother and a cool look of disdain for his land steward.
‘We had best prove agreeable company then, Moss, since we’re reordering Miss Court’s leisure,’ Mr Rivers said with an odd, mocking look at the man that gave Nell something else to think about as he offered her his arm and they strolled back towards the stately old mansion with Moss following behind like a bad-tempered hound.
‘I’m not doing well at my drawing today, so I suppose it is not a hardship to be interrupted,’ Nell managed to say lightly enough.
It was the peace and leisure to think that she regretted. Back at the house she was always listening out for the girls; out here she was free to consider the dilemmas her restored fortune and Colm’s marriage had thrown her way and now there was Mr Moss and his not-quite kiss to consider as well. The contrary man was stiff and reserved to a fault as she strolled towards the great house at Mr Rivers’s side and she decided she didn’t understand the opposite sex and didn’t particularly want to right now.
* * *
‘Whatever are you be about now, Fergus?’ Brendan demanded the moment they were alone in the ancient muniment room with the stout oak door shut.
‘I’m getting ready to read a pile of dusty documents in a room I never saw the inside of until Miss Court thrust the role of land steward on me all those weeks ago and what an idiot I was not to correct her.’
‘Don’t try and sidetrack me; you’ve been leading that poor girl astray since you got here. You were about to do something unforgivable until I came along and stopped you.’
‘Which poor girl would that be?’ Fergus said in the mocking drawl he knew would annoy his little brother most.
He didn’t want to be reasoned with about his bothersome fascination with a lady unlike any other he’d come across. So, did she seem unique because he wasn’t his true self here, or even the modest Mr Ford he’d pretended to be on his adventures? Moss was a working man. Could that be why a much quieter and plainer young lady than he was usually attracted to had come fully into focus and made the rest seem dull and frivolous? Brendan was right, though; it was cruel to raise false hopes. Moss could be Miss Court’s way out of the life of hard work and responsibility she was trapped by now. Yet she was still so young it pained him to see her frown over Lavinia’s antics or look tired and pale at the end of a long day doing her best to teach his wards to at least act like proper young ladies.
‘You know perfectly well which lady I mean—don’t try to goad me into a temper or change the subject. You can’t change the facts. Lord Barberry can’t wed a governess and you know it as well as I do.’
‘Aye, I do,’ Fergus admitted with a heavy feeling in his chest that felt oddly like loss. He couldn’t lose something he’d never had and didn’t particularly want—Moss was a convenient disguise, but he didn’t want to wear his workaday boots for ever.
‘Although you pretend not to care a fig for the wider world’s opinion of my Lord Barberry, I know you couldn’t make a refined and proper lady like that one your mistress and live with yourself afterwards, Fergus. Only imagine trying to meet Ma’s eyes over the breakfast table after ruining the girl without your sins being obvious to her and tell me that I’m wrong.’
‘You’re right,’ Fergus admitted reluctantly.
He imagined the brilliance of Miss Court’s intriguingly fathomless brown eyes dimmed by shame and an even deeper loneliness than she endured now, if she lowered herself to be an idle aristocrat’s plaything. Her current path in life was a hard one, but at least it left her some self-respect.
‘Maybe I ought to send for a doctor, big Brother; you can’t be well.’
‘Worse; I think I might have to grow up,’ he said ruefully.
‘You mean come here as your real self? Truly be the Earl of Barberry; after you swore not to step into your grandfather’s shoes when he died?’
‘Hmm, well, maybe one day I might do that,’ Fergus half-agreed.
A mental picture of the governess’s face when she found out the truth made him squirm at the deception he’d set out on that first night, even if she did offer it up to him on a platter with an apple in its mouth. If he wanted to stay here he’d have to confess sooner or later, but he wasn’t sure he could face blank contempt in Miss Court’s fine eyes when he admitted to being Earl of Barberry when even the idea of it made him feel slightly sick. No, he became Moss to get a true picture of how things stood here. His lordship could still be fobbed off, so he had at least one good reason to stay as he was.
‘This year, next year, some time, never, then?’ his brother asked as if he could read all his basest motives for staying quiet and didn’t approve of a single one.
‘You think I’m being a coward?’ Fergus asked haughtily, wondering if his little brother wasn’t right.
‘I think you don’t know who you truly want to be and it’s high time you made up your mind. You’ve been Earl of Barberry for a decade and refused to admit it whenever you can get away with pretending to be someone else. Until you decide to live comfortably in your own shoes, you’ll be a danger to yourself and any stray governesses who expects more of you than you’re capable of giving.’
‘I hate the fact you’re probably right, little Brother. You’re five years younger than me and nobody seems to have told you I should be the wise one.’
‘Natural genius trumps ageing cynic,’ Brendan said smugly, but Fergus knew his brother was worried and why wouldn’t he be? He was quite concerned about himself as well.
He had a brother and two sisters a prince of the blood would envy him, as well as a mother and stepfather who’d have gone to the stake to protect him when he was young and vulnerable. His mother even tried to forgive and forget the fact she and her baby could have starved when his real father died for all the noble Selfords cared. She pitied them for refusing to meet her son unless she agreed to relinquish him, but Fergus grew up hating them anyway.
All there was left of the mighty Selford family to be angry with when he inherited were four young girls who would have outranked him if they had been born male. His young cousins were more vulnerable than he’d ever been and he turned his back on them. He’d failed them as badly as his grandfather and uncles did him when his father died. He had a lionhearted mother to love him and they’d had nobody until old Poulson employed Miss Court to be their lioness.
He caught himself comparing Miss Court with Kitty, Lady Rivers, and smiling foolishly at the idea he’d hate to come between Miss Court and anyone she truly cared about as well. The old Earl’s dead hand was all that had stopped Kitty dashing to England and gathering his orphans under her wing. That was another vile act to lay at the old devil’s door instead of blaming the victims. Fergus was the girls’ guardian only as long as his mother had no contact with them that had not been sanctioned by their trustees. And Miss Court wasn’t bound to stay here and care for the Selford girls. Any day now a real land steward or curate would do his best to marry her and even the idea of her walking down the aisle and into another man’s bed made him feel queasy. Yet as a wife she would be mistress of her own home and mother to her own brood, so why would she stay here and risk an uncertain future when her last pupil left the schoolroom?
All the clever, questing spirit would be knocked out of her if he seduced her because he wanted a woman in his bed, though. It was more than that, he knew it deep down even if he didn’t want to. Miss Court fascinated him. He looked for her when he was near the house or in the Brampton villages. His day seemed brighter when he met her out and about with her charges, or busy on some errand in the shabby gig drawn by the placid old horse kept for her use. Although she would greet him stiffly and go on her way as fast as she could, his day improved on first sight of her awful bonnet and dreary pelisse in the distance. Not many ladies owned up to having any brains at all, but she was employed to use hers and had no reason to keep it a secret.
Admit it though, Fergus, his inner cynic whispered, it’s not only her inner beauty you’re drawn to, is it?
Not even Miss Court could completely hide her natural assets under those awful gowns and old-maid caps and bonnets. His mother and sisters could spend hours choosing frivolous hats and poring over fashion plates and he tried to picture Miss Court joining them, but it didn’t work, so he must have been right all along—she would never fit into his real life if he was fool enough to pursue her with honourable intentions. He was about to kiss her just now, so he owed Brendan for stopping him committing such delicious folly with his wards’ governess.
He spent the hours before dinner deep in estate business so his brother didn’t have to. At least then he couldn’t wonder how Miss Court’s generous mouth would feel under his, if she didn’t slap his face for taking liberties and storm off in a huff.