St. Claire rose earlier than usual the next morning and actually whistled while his man, Dooley, dressed him and tied his cravat. He felt cleansed somehow and had an earnest desire to see Miss Simons again so he could prove to her in the light of day that he knew exactly how to treat her, and would embarrass her with his attentions no more.
It was too bad the little governess did not breakfast with the family, but of course that would be unheard of. Why was that? he wondered. She was obviously of good family, and if her fortunes had not been depressed she would have been an honored guest. If not of elevated rank, at least her birth was sufficiently genteel for a marquess’s table. But because she had somehow fallen on bad times and had been forced to the extremity of educating a gentleman’s brats in his home, she was now beyond the pale.
He shrugged as he strolled down the wide stairs. Society’s dictates were not for such as he to defy, they just were. Miss Chambly, last year’s governess, had obviously not seen any impediment to attaching the younger brother of a marquess, but then she was a foolish little widgeon, blessed with more hair than wit. Whatever had possessed his sister-in-law to engage her for the education of her daughters he did not know. Perhaps she was doing a favor for someone in taking the girl on, or repaying a favor bestowed.
He was not the first aristocrat to entertain himself with a little dalliance with the hired help. His own father had on more than one occasion lifted the skirts of his staff. In fact, of St. Claire’s own knowledge there was at least one child sired on the wrong side of the blanket. Somewhere out there he had a half brother or sister.
He had never gone so far as his father and had only ever stolen kisses from the serving class, but for Celestine’s sake, this time he would refrain from inflicting his gallantries. St. Claire paused in his descent. Since when had his favors been a penance to be endured? Yet that was how the girl acted, like she was being martyred on the cross of his attentions. St. Claire shrugged off the faint feeling of ill-use and entered the breakfast room, a pretty little dining room decorated in yellow and peach.
Elizabeth was alone, her husband having already eaten and started on his day’s business. The present marquess was one aristocrat who would not bed his hirelings, no doubt. August was too aware of his elevated position, and had a stern morality that made St. Claire want to twit him all the more. He didn’t know what it was about goodness that made him so wicked, but there it was.
“Good morning, my dear,” he said, cheerily bestowing a salute on his sister’s presented cheek. He pulled out the chair beside her and glanced at the newspapers neatly piled on the table for perusal, selecting one and taking his seat.
A footman glided silently into the room with more tea and served the nobleman unobtrusively, while Lady Langlow made small talk about the cold weather and the possibility of snow before Christmas. When St. Claire had been served and had a full plate of eggs, kippers, and kedgeree in front of him, she nodded regally for Albert, the footman, to absent himself.
Her fixed smile changed to a scowl, and she turned and glared at St. Claire. “Now, you unprincipled bounder, I want a word with you.” In her agitation she pointed her fork at him and jabbed it with each word, an unforgivable breach of etiquette unlike Elizabeth to commit.
“And what have I done to deserve my sister’s wrath,” St. Claire said lightly, one elegant brow arched in surprise.
“You know very well! Maude, my dresser, could hardly wait to tell me what Mrs. Jacobs has been saying in the kitchen. She was all atwitter because ‘his lordship’ had deigned to go to choir practice with them. Choir practice? Really, St. Claire, what is your game? Is it Elise or . . .” Her lovely face twisted in a frown. “But it couldn’t be Celestine. You promised not to pursue a flirtation there. Out with it! Who are you trying to bed?”
St. Claire did not have to pretend to be offended, he was, and justly so, he thought. Did his sister think that he could do nothing without an ulterior motive? And when had he ever bedded her servants? “You’ve already stated it can’t be Miss Simons, so it must be Elise, eh? Maybe I lifted her skirts and had her right there in the carriage in front of the governess and the housekeeper. Being I am such a bounder. I invited them to join in but they declined!”
“Don’t be vulgar, St. Claire!”
“Then don’t be insolent,” he cried, throwing down his fork and tossing his napkin on the table. He stood and strode to the door of the breakfast room. “I shall do what I want with whom I want, and I will not be hen-led like my dear, saintly brother. From now on keep your elegant little nose out of my affairs, amorous or otherwise!” He slammed the door and headed for the stable, stopping only to have his man called to provide him with his crop and coat. He needed a good long ride to work off this latest indignity.
• • •
“Lottie, help Gwen with the paste. That’s a good girl.”
“Shall we do our play for all the comp’ny, Miss Simons?” Lottie asked, helping her little sister firm her tiny hands around the papier-mâché figure she was making.
“That will be up to your mama, my dear.” Celestine watched the child and her younger sister, their hands white with flour and water paste, as they formed the paper into balls.
She knelt beside them for a moment and showed them how to give the ball a suggestion of a nose and chin, and how to press in their tiny thumbs to make indentations for the eyes. She winced as she struggled back to her feet. It always took a few hours in the morning before her body would do as she commanded easily and without pain. This morning had been particularly difficult, and the cold of her room seemed to have seeped into her very bones. But she owed it to the girls to do her best to not let her physical limitations affect her work.
Gwenevere’s round face was screwed up with concentration and her tongue was pushed out through her teeth. Gwen was a special child, slower than Lottie had ever been, but with a sunny disposition and cherubic smile that melted the heart. Celestine smiled down at her as she wiped her hands off on her apron, giving the swollen knuckles a surreptitious rub to soothe their aching. If only there were something to take the pain away!
Lottie glanced at her, her serious face intent. “Do your hands hurt you, Miss Simons?”
“Sometimes. But not always.”
“What’s wrong with you?”
Celestine smiled at the candor of youth. It was so much better than all the sneaking side glances or disdain of adulthood. “It started when I was a child. My joints ache occasionally, and they get swollen. Not always. In the summer, you remember, they were fine. But the cold makes them ache, and there is nothing I can do about it.” She looked down at her inflamed knuckles and slightly crook’d fingers, so ungainly looking, and remembered Lord St. Claire’s gentle touch the night before.
What had happened to him between the time the choir started and the time they were finished? She had sensed a difference in his manner. It had none of the gallant raillery he had displayed before and more of true gentility of spirit. He was more dangerous to her in that moment than he had been with all his teasing before then, for he became more truly what she had dreamed of in a man in those rare moments she allowed herself to dream of impossibilities.
And she had. She had been a young girl once, a girl with air castles and fairy dreams in her mind. But she was a woman now, and knew the truth of the world. Women married for security, and men married . . . why did men marry? For dynastic reasons, she supposed. Absently she helped the two little girls work as she sorted out her thoughts.
They married for money sometimes, if they were pulled about. They married to beget an heir. Marriage was an exchange of benefits, with each side trying to gain an equivalency in what they were offering. Even in her hopes of a match with Mr. Foster she realized that they would be making an exchange. She would offer him an ancient and unblemished family history and would make him a good wife and helpmeet in the village. In return he would offer her security and a home of her own, and perhaps children if they were lucky.
But sometimes . . . sometimes when she allowed herself to dream she longed for that rare union of two hearts, two souls that upon meeting sang a sweet song of love together. She had yearned for the pulse-quickening, earth-shattering delirium of true love, the tender emotion the poets described. She believed in it, fervently and completely. Then she looked at herself in the mirror. She was no idiot; she had long known that men favored a pretty face, and she did not possess that valuable commodity. Women with that gift could look higher and expect more from a match, with or without love.
Her thoughts drifted back to the previous evening in the carriage with Lord St. Claire. His gentle, thoughtful action in providing her with a kerchief, as simple as it was, was the most gallant she had ever experienced. She had wanted to lean on him as she wept, and had to physically restrain herself from laying her head on his shoulder. Wouldn’t he have been surprised if she had, she thought with a rueful grimace.
“What play shall we do, Miss Simons?”
Lottie’s high treble disrupted her thoughts, and Celestine forced herself to pay attention to her charges. It was all fairy dust, her dreams, the lightest spun sugar, pretty to look at but dissolving at the merest touch. Love and marriage had nothing to do with her, and she must not expect it, even from Mr. Foster. He was likely just being kind in his attentions to her.
“I don’t know yet, dear. Shall we clean up the schoolroom and ourselves and go look for a good one from the bookshelves?”
• • •
It was dark in the room, the morning sun having risen high enough to desert the east side of the building, and so the schoolroom. The governess was sleeping, St. Claire thought, peeking around the door. The schoolroom door swung in on well-oiled hinges, and he could see Miss Simons, her head back in the ratty, overstuffed chair that was drawn up to the fireplace. A tiny fire was almost out in the grate and she sat curled up with a pile of books on the table beside her and one on her lap. The two girls were downstairs with their mother, practicing at drinking tea in company, in preparation for the houseful they would have over Christmas. Elizabeth insisted they do that occasionally with her to accustom them to polite society and the expectations of adults.
He closed the door quietly behind him and walked across the room, wincing when a floorboard creaked under the faded carpet. She was sleeping, or she would have heard him and opened her eyes. In repose, her plainness was all too evident. Her hair was a mousy brown and pulled back in a severe bun, too big for her fragile neck. A few tendrils had escaped and curled around her face. Her skin was pale but her complexion was freckled, an unforgivable blight, and her mouth was too big for fashion, though her lips were rosy and would no doubt be satisfyingly soft to kiss.
He smiled down at her, thinking how surprised she would be if he did just that. Her figure was slight and the worn gray dress she wore did nothing to enhance it, probably hiding any attributes she did possess. She was a schoolroom mouse, the perfect governess, likely to tempt neither master nor servant to take liberties with her. What a sad life for a woman of so much intelligence and gentle wit as he had found her to possess in the hours he had spent with her.
After Elizabeth’s intolerable accusations that morning he had ridden for two hours in a blind rage that contrasted sharply with the tranquility he thought he had achieved. His sister-in-law was an interfering harpy, and her demand for absolute control over those in her sphere was disturbing. Why should a governess not have a life of her own, the chance to savor the joy and sweetness other women took for granted? Was it evil to offer Celestine Simons a few stolen moments of romance?
He thought not. She might not agree right now, but he felt sure that if she knew her job to be secure, she would sing another tune entirely. Her fear of him originated in her need for this paltry position; release her from the fear and she would welcome his attentions. He knew when a woman responded to him and had felt the suppressed longing radiate in waves from her. He would help her free that hidden core of passion.
He would see that no ill befell her. There was no good reason why she should not enjoy his considerable skill at lovemaking, but to overcome her scruples without telling her that little secret; now that was a challenge worthy of him. She would be grateful, eventually, when he taught her how sweet stolen kisses could taste. It would give her something to dream about in her spinsterhood. And perhaps Elizabeth would learn a salutary lesson from the experience; she would find that one could allow one’s dependents the freedom to live a little, and no harm would come of it. Together he and Celestine would strike a blow for all of the meddling marchioness’s household.
He knelt beside her and noted again her hands, folded together in her lap. The knuckles and joints were swollen and he wondered if they were painful. Her expression in sleep was smooth, with no hint of suffering, but she was really not old enough for lines of pain to have etched themselves permanently . . . yet.
That would come, no doubt. In ten years, or even less, she would be even more faded and would have pinched lines between her brows, under her eyes and around her generous mouth. Soon even her limited attractions would have faded away, leaving a sad little songbird whose feathers had lost their luster. He felt a tiny pang at that moment and wondered if he had eaten something that had disagreed with him, for that small twinge was persistent, and he could only think of indigestion as its cause.
Gently he lifted one hand from the other and caressed it, rubbing lightly the swollen joints. She shifted restlessly and her lips parted. He watched as she shifted again, and noted that under her ill-fitting gown there was a suggestion of small, well-shaped breasts and gently flaring hips. Odd that when one was this close the freckles under her eyes were charming, a dusting of tiny dots just over her nose. Her complexion was so fair that on her eyelids he could see the delicate tracery of blue veins under the milky whiteness. He raised her hand and touched his lips to the swollen knuckles of her right hand.
“Mmmm?” she murmured and flexed her fingers.
He did it again, letting his warm breath caress the back of her hand, then pressed his lips in turn to each painful joint. He watched her face as he did that and saw a tiny smile hover on her lips and a soft sigh escape as she murmured again.
“St. Claire.”
His name came out as a sigh, her voice soft and caressing, and a shiver ran down his spine. Her voice held the seductive warmth of a lover in the velvety darkness of the night. Ah, sweet success; it was so close he could taste the ambrosial flavor of his favorite dish! She clearly was already besotted with him. It was merely a matter of making her admit as much when awake. He waited for the triumph to flood his being. And waited.
He shrugged.
He supposed that would come when she admitted it to his face, as other ladies and not-ladies had done in his long career of seduction. It was a game that was won when a woman gave him her heart, or at least said she did, with winsome professions of undying devotion that he never believed for a second. He had no real illusions on that score. Few women gave their heart or their hand without a mercenary motive, and that was fine. The triumph was in capturing their undivided attention and tempting them into throwing away everything for him. It was a game that he seldom lost.
The conquest would be all the sweeter this time, surely, because his motives were to some degree altruistic. He would win his bet with himself and show Elizabeth, at the same time, that a governess was also a woman and should be allowed a woman’s right to romance. All would emerge winners in this tender game, including Celestine Simons, who would have a brief, piquant season of love to remember.
The governess’s large gray eyes fluttered open and she appeared disoriented. Her gaze fixed on St. Claire’s face, her eyes widened, and she snatched her hand from his grasp. “My lord,” she gasped. “What . . . what . . .”
“I had hoped to be like the prince from the fairy tale and awaken Sleeping Beauty with a kiss.”
She pressed the back of her right hand to her lips and her eyes widened. They really were the most remarkable shade of gray with a thick fringe of dark lashes, and looking so frightened and bewildered she was almost pretty, St. Claire thought. Almost? Perhaps he was being unduly harsh. Many a London debutante, boasting no more attractions than Miss Simons, had been called a beauty. Clothe her more elegantly and dress her hair in the latest fashion and she would not disgrace Almack’s.
“No,” he answered the unvoiced question in her exquisite eyes. “I did not take that liberty. I merely pressed an ardent salute on your hand, the very hand you have pressed to your lips.”
“Oh, my lord, you must not!” She rose in her agitation, a wince of pain flitting across her face as she stood. Her stance was hunched, and she straightened with difficulty. Not meeting his eyes, she picked up a pile of books from the table beside her chair and retreated to the library shelf. It was simply a low white shelf suited to the height of young children, situated behind her chair. A heavy tome dropped from her hands and he bent to pick it up for her as she rubbed her knuckles.
“It was an innocent expression of my devotion to you, Miss Simons.” A smile played over his lips. He retrieved the rest of the books from the table and handed them to her one by one. “My, my. Gibson’s Book of Children’s Plays. Plays for the Very Young. Almanac of Plays Intended for a Youthful Audience. What is this all about?”
She turned back to him and took another book from his outstretched hand. “The children are making puppets. We are planning a play for the family, but I cannot find a suitable one for the season.” She frowned and bit her lip. “They are so excited about it, and I don’t want it to fall flat because of the wrong material.”
St. Claire tilted his head to one side, considering the matter. “What about A Midsummer Night’s Dream?”
The governess surprised him with a laugh, a light tinkling sound that would be the envy of many a schoolroom chit trying to learn social skills. “Does not the very title make it ineligible, my lord, as well as a hundred other things? Shakespeare is much too old for Lottie, let us not even mention Gwen.”
“However, it seems to me that it has the right feel, if you know what I mean—fairies and enchanted forests. In fact, I seem to remember that the play was performed for her majesty Queen Elizabeth at Christmas. Tell you what.” He shelved the last two books for her, then took her hand and drew her back to her chair. “Sit, Miss Simons. I have a proposition for you.”
She looked alarmed and the vague idea floating around in St. Claire’s brain solidified. The very thing! What he had in mind would bring him into much closer contact with her and allow him to break down her defenses that much easier. She was susceptible to him, he knew it. Her murmuring of his name had given it away even though she was not aware of it. But she had reservations that must be overcome, and he required time to do that. In the interests of a true challenge he had forsworn reassuring her that he would intercept her employer’s wrath and make sure that she was not turned off without a reference, that most feared of plights. That would make her too easy a pigeon to pluck, and he had long ago learned that the sweetness of success in any venture was commensurate with the uncertainty of the outcome.
And so he would win this game without making it any easier for himself. If he involved himself in this puppet play it would require spending a little time with her and further his aims; Elizabeth would be suspicious, no doubt, but would likely not interfere in something to do with her daughters.
Celestine pulled her hand away from him and her pale cheeks turned rosy. From any other woman he would have suspected coquetry, but there was no pretense in her. She folded her hands together and sat demurely looking down at them as he knelt beside her chair. He chuckled to himself, aware of the absurdity of his position. It was a picture of the gallant swain offering heart and hand to a young maiden. But he must focus on the matter at hand.
“There is nothing suitable in the books, you say, and it must be something very special and suited to the season. Would you allow me to write a short play for my nieces? Just a brief one, with a nod, perhaps, to Will’s summer fantasy?”
Her lips parted and she was startled enough to look up into his eyes. “You would do that?”
He gazed at her lips, distracted for a moment in spite of himself. He looked forward to caressing their softness and becoming her teacher in a lesson of love. “For my nieces? Of course. It may not be fashionable to admit, but I love the little pusses.”
“And they love you,” she said softly, those full petal lips curving in a smile that took his breath away. “They often speak of you, you know. I knew you before I met you, through Lottie’s stories. She was very disappointed when you didn’t come last summer. And it isn’t just the sweets you bring them. You have a way with them, my lord.”
Her voice was low and sweet, not the affected, shrill tone of Miss Chambly or the overly correct diction of the one before her. A warmth spread through his inner regions and he smiled back up at her, surprised at how gratified he was that she had known of his existence and had spoken of him with his nieces. “Now, that’s another thing. If we are to work together, I want no more of this ‘my lording.’ And that is an order! You must call me St. Claire.” That one murmuring of his name hadn’t been enough; he wanted to hear her say it again, with just that soft tone she had used.
She stiffened, and he saw that he had gone too far. “That would not be at all proper, sir.” She rose and shook the wrinkles from her dress. “I must see to the girls—”
“Stop!” He took her arm. “You are doing it again, Miss Simons. You are running away.”
“No, my lord, I am seeing to my duty. And it is not at all proper to be here with you alone.”
“What? You are not some green girl who needs chaperoning, my dear. You are a grown woman.” He pulled her closer, wanting to dissipate the nervousness he felt tremble through her body. He spoke quietly with the reassuring tone that usually calmed the most giddy filly. He did not want her to be frightened of him; he only had the best of intentions. Besides, he could not believe she was truly frightened of him, only of discovery and the price she would pay; he would make sure she did not suffer from his attentions. He couldn’t explain that to her now, but . . . “Come, my dear, you have no reason to be afraid of me. I promise, I will never do you harm.” Almost against his own will he pulled her toward him until their bodies were touching at the knee and her bosom grazed his chest.
Her eyes widened. “I must go, my lord.” She pulled away and ran from the room, her gray skirts billowing out behind her.