Buch lesen: «The Unconventional Governess»

Chapter One

England

Spring 1814

No conventional daughter of an earl desired to become a physician.

Henrietta Gordon did not fool herself into thinking she was conventional. As a woman of limited funds and genteel birth, there were very few socially acceptable dreams to dream. And while dreams were all well and good, accomplishment came by setting goals and pursuing them.

Which was why, despite the increasing suspicion that in order to avoid matrimony she might have to take on a governess post, she was determined to prepare for the life she wanted, rather than the life being foisted upon her.

If there was one thing she had learned in her twenty-four years that served her well, it was to persist in what she wanted.

On this brooding English afternoon, Henrietta had taken refuge in Lady Brandewyne’s expansive library. To her great delight, she found a copy of A Practical Synopsis of the Materia Alimentaria and Materia Medica. No sooner had she curled up in a plush wingback chair than Lady Brandewyne swept into the room.

The dowager countess, an old friend of Uncle William’s, had kindly allowed Henrietta to stay with her while she recovered from a bout of rheumatic fever. Uncle William had gone to London to teach a medical seminar. He’d promised to return to collect Henrietta, but it had been a month since he left, and she began to doubt his intentions.

Especially with Lady Brandewyne’s daily insinuations.

The fearsome lady now paused when she saw Henrietta reading rather than practicing the pianoforte, or performing some other expected feat of ladyhood. She sniffed, her regal, powdered chin tilted to display her disapproval more effectively.

“I have received a report that a man was found wounded nearby. His servants are bringing him here. Since the apothecary is on another call at the moment, it seems as though I may have need of your expertise.” She delivered the words stiffly, and Henrietta hid a smile behind the professionalism her uncle had taught her to display.

“Do we know the nature of his wounds? Will he require sutures?” She placed the book on a side table and stood.

“No, and I do not want you overly involved with his care. As soon as the apothecary arrives, you will remove yourself.”

Henrietta felt her eyebrows fly upward at Lady Brandewyne’s dogmatic tone. She hadn’t practiced medicine in England thus far. She’d been too focused on recovering from illness and Lady Brandewyne disapproved of her chosen vocation, at any rate. While here, she must observe propriety much more strictly than she had in the Americas.

Not for long, she comforted herself. Soon she’d be assisting Uncle William again, propriety be hanged. There were lives to be saved. Soldiers’ hands to be held while they verbalized their final goodbyes. Mothers to comfort as they birthed their children.

Her throat tightened.

As though noticing her discomfort, Lady Brandewyne drew near. “Calm yourself, my dear. I’m sure the apothecary will care for him completely. Let us speak of a happier subject. I’ve arranged a house party in two weeks’ time to relieve the tedium of your convalescence. You may want to consider encouraging a suitor.”

“A suitor?”

“It is past time for you to marry.”

Before Henrietta could remark on that most outrageous statement, the butler appeared in the doorway. “They have arrived, my lady.”

“Bring them to the front door. The servants’ hall is too narrow.”

Henrietta rose quickly, following Lady Brandewyne out of the room and through a hall lined with antique oil paintings of ancestors, down the ornate, curving stairwell to the entrance of her Elizabethan-shaped home.

As soon as she saw the large man being carried in, mental images assaulted her. The battery was unexpected. She had no time to arm herself against memories of assisting Uncle William during the War of 1812. She willed the pictures of war and death away.

This is not Newark, she assured herself firmly. Memories from that deadly skirmish rushed her. Fire, screams, black smoke blanketing the sky...and then the deaths. So many deaths...

She squared her shoulders. She was a person of great practicality and self-control. Thus equipped with logic, she took a calming breath. Thankfully, no one noticed her angst. Everyone followed the orders Lady Brandewyne snipped out.

Henrietta pressed herself against the wall as the entourage shuffled past.

She noticed a girl in the group, her eyes wide and frightened. She was ushered away by a female servant. Perhaps her nurse?

Henrietta followed everyone up the stairs again, all the way to a room in the east wing facing the gardens. Two footmen laid the prone figure on the bed. Lady Brandewyne glanced over at Henrietta.

“It is Lord St. Raven,” she said quietly. “A neighbor. What do you suggest our first steps to be?”

Henrietta stepped closer. His wavy black hair was in disarray. Twigs and debris were tangled in the strands that curled over what looked like a fashionable collar. In fact, the closer she came, the more she realized this man might qualify as a dandy. Had she ever seen such a perfect knot on a cravat?

Truthfully, she couldn’t claim any knowledge of what was considered fashionable these days. Nor had she ever cared. But his longish hair and tanned skin were at odds with the lifestyle suggested by his clothing.

A lifestyle of vanity, certainly.

His lips, unfortunately, were the color of ash. Blood smeared his jaw. His whole body was so completely still that she felt certain he must have passed on. She touched his neck. His pulse limped quietly beneath his skin.

He lived, but for how long?

“We will need to remove the soiled clothing and clean his wounds. That should allow us more information.”

The dowager sent for hot water while Henrietta continued her cursory examination.

Rumpled clothing. Dark smears that constituted a combination of dirt and blood. She saw no fresh oozing. A blessing. Perhaps the dirt had acted as a bandage, stemming the flow.

His eyes fluttered. A moan crumpled between his lips.

“Shh.” She placed her palm upon his brow. “You are safe now, sir.”

At her touch, his eyes opened, revealing jade irises. She inhaled quickly, struck by the intensity of the coloration.

“Beautiful...” The word came haltingly, his voice unsteady, but the way he looked at her sent her nerves on a tumbling spiral.

She and Lady Brandewyne exchanged a glance.

“Nonsense,” she said briskly. “I’ve been plain since childhood, and plain I shall be long into spinsterhood.” A term she loathed, but nevertheless, she lingered on the cusp of being labeled a spinster by society. “Now save your breath, for you are wounded and I know not the gravity of your injuries.”

“Bandits.”

“They say you led them a merry chase, my lord.” Lady Brandewyne came to his side. Recognition, and perhaps relief, flared in his eyes.

“Is my...attire irreparably beyond repair?”

“If that is your main concern, then your problems are far greater than I feared.” Henrietta pressed her lips together, refusing to let his cavalier comment perturb her. “I shall need to fetch supplies. Perhaps comfrey as an astringent for his wounds.”

“A fresh cravat,” Lord St. Raven groaned, and then the poor man fainted.

* * *

Dominic Stanford, reluctant earl of St. Raven, woke from pleasant dreams to even more pleasant humming. He stretched before a spasm of pain in his ribs reminded him of his unfortunate altercation with a group of vagabonds. He’d almost had them beat, too, he remembered with a half-edged smile.

With that comforting thought in mind, he opened his eyes a crack, just enough to find the source of the humming. The woman’s voice was melodic. Husky and flavored with a depth rarely heard in young ladies. She came into view, her unassuming clothes attesting to her station.

An ordinary housemaid.

A seemingly productive one, though. She wore a serviceable cap in which strands of hair escaped in tendrils about an ordinary face. In fact, there was nothing about her to draw his attention, and yet he could not look away.

Perhaps it was the sound of her low humming that welcomed him. Or the purposeful way in which she moved. It was not that she bustled, as he’d often observed the servantry doing, but she glided with a purpose. A singularly minded woman.

“You’re awake,” she said, without even turning to look at him. She stood at a small table at the side of the room, clinking metal against cup, as though mixing something. He could not see what. Her voice was as soothing as her unworded song. “How do you feel?”

A good question. How did he feel? He tested various parts of his body, flexing his fingers, drawing a deep breath that ended shortly with a stab of pain in his side. “I believe I’ve a broken rib or two.”

Full consciousness returned. He jerked upward, then fell back as daggers sliced across his torso. “My niece,” he rasped. Had he protected her? Had he saved her from those men?

“She is fine, my lord. Safely here at Lady Brandewyne’s.”

He struggled to breathe past the pain still lacing his chest. “She is safe. And we are at the dowager countess’s home?”

“Correct.”

“Where is the doctor?”

“The village apothecary is on his way.” If his question surprised her, she showed no sign of it. “I am your nurse, for the present moment. You have been unconscious since yesterday, when you were brought here. You’ve a few contusions and most likely some bruising to your internal organs, though no hemorrhaging that I can tell.”

“So, for now, I shall live,” he said drily, his body relaxing as he was convinced that Louise had not been harmed. He suspected the convulsions that had plagued him these last months would be the death of him, anyhow.

“Indeed, you shall certainly live.” She chuckled, and once again, he was struck by the cadence of her voice. Her pronunciation was rounded with a foreign flare. American? She did not speak like a servant, but neither did she sound wholly English. For the first time in what had been months of a terrible lethargy of the spirits, the tiniest flicker of intrigue stirred within.

Swallowing against a throat that had gone dry, he said, “Fetch me water.”

Her gaze flew up to meet his, her fingers pausing. Such direct eyes, a deep brown at odds with her lighter hair and fair skin. They chastised him. “No manners?”

He lifted an eyebrow. “You dare criticize me?”

At that, the corner of what he realized was a very pretty set of lips tilted upward. A housemaid he had not noticed in the room brought her a different glass filled with water. The woman turned to him, a sparkle in her eye. “Your lack of observation is forgiven, as you’re no doubt groggy, but I am not a maidservant. I shall speak to you however I wish.”

“Point taken, madam.”

“As well as it should be.” She reached behind his head, gently lifting him to allow his mouth to connect with the cup. “A gentleman always admits to being wrong.”

He almost choked on his water, but managed to swallow without his laughter killing him. The chuckle that had bubbled up at her words was quickly sobered by reality. In truth, he was no gentleman, but he did not intend to disclose such a thing.

He drank deeply, ignoring the ache in his midsection and concentrating on filling the thirst that beset him. All the while he was aware that she studied him. Not in the way he was used to being studied, though.

He was well aware of how ladies used to ogle him. They wanted his family lineage, his wealth. They liked his darkly handsome features and green eyes, telling him so on numerous occasions in which propriety was lightly skirted. With their fluttering lashes, their colorful fans, their shallow giggles, they admired his elegant cravats, his French tailoring, his expensive rings.

And he had enjoyed it until ten months ago.

They knew nothing of his damage now. And he enlightened no one, for should society know, it was almost certain that he’d be sent to an insane asylum. Or at best, confined to his estate, talked about with condescending pity while someone else enjoyed his title, his lands and his inheritance. Little was known about his disease, but most assumed it stemmed from mental illness.

He knew he wasn’t crazy, but he couldn’t return to his old way of life until he found a cure.

Therefore, due to the uncertain nature of his illness, he had hidden away at a little cottage he owned in northern England for these past few months. He had ignored his duties, both to Louise and to the St. Raven estate where she lived.

Until he’d received the letter from his sister threatening to take Louise from the St. Raven estate and send her to a girls’ school on the Continent. That threat, combined with yet another governess quitting, urged him to leave his self-induced solitude to collect his wayward niece from St. Raven and take her back to his cottage in the north.

Then they’d been attacked by bandits. He’d successfully coerced the criminals to follow him away from his party, but alas, had not been able to keep them from attacking him. Thankfully his party had followed at a distance and found him.

He shuddered to think of what might have become of them all, but this woman insisted Louise was well. She was his main concern.

He grew aware of the woman staring at him. Her gaze was intense. Scientific, even. Completely devoid of personal feeling. As if he was a specimen beneath the light. He shifted, handing the cup back to her.

She took it, a puzzled expression on her face. “Forgive me if I speak out of turn, but whatever are you doing so far from London in such finery? Especially with the Season in full swing.”

She did not sound contrite over her impertinence. He met her curious look with a crooked smile. “Ah, that is a question I do not care to answer... Mrs.?”

“How is our patient, Miss Gordon?” A man who looked to be the epitome of physicianhood walked into the room. He must be the village apothecary. He came to stand above Dominic. The man rubbed at his finely tuned mustache, studying him with all the objectivity of a cat studying a mouse.

These people were all the same.

“Your patient is fine.” Dominic wrestled himself into an upright position, despite the razor-edged pain beneath his ribs. “I must be on my way to London. Duty calls.” He couldn’t stay here. Should he have an episode, there was no telling how this doctor might respond.

“Hmm.” The apothecary turned to Miss Gordon, who looked a tad perturbed that Dominic had answered for her. Or perhaps he imagined the peevish set to her mouth. The woman amused him for some very odd reason. He had been gone from society too long, he supposed.

Nothing had ever induced him to take residence in the cage of responsibility foisted on his older brother, the earl of St. Raven, until his brother and sister-in-law had died in a tragic carriage accident, leaving him heir to the estate and guardian to one little girl, who refused to do what she was told.

And yet he adored her. His brother had entrusted him to care for Louise, and he was not going to allow anyone to take that responsibility from him. Not even his little sister.

“Duty?” asked Miss Gordon.

“Yes, a twelve-year-old girl in need of a new governess.” He paused, eyeing the woman before him. “You don’t perchance know of someone looking for a position?”