The Hidden Heart

“Good Lord. I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

“And I know Gabriela’s life,” Jessica went on. “She has seen a great deal more sorrow than anyone her age should have to see. She was orphaned when she was but eight, and now her only real relative, the man whom she loved as a grandfather, has been taken from her. She has been turned over to a stranger, but even he does not want her and cannot wait to give her away to some other stranger, because she is too much trouble.”

“Damnation!” Cleybourne roared, and his face, which had softened with sympathy during Jessica’s recital of the events of her life, turned hard and angry once again. “That is not the case at all! I am not rejecting the girl. It is not because she is too much trouble.”

“Oh, no, that’s right. I forgot. It is because she would put a crimp in your plans to do away with yourself. And no one must be allowed to do that, must they?”

“You overstep yourself, Miss Maitland.”

“Do I? I am so sorry. I know that you are used to dealing with servants, loving servants, who would gladly do anything for you, who worry themselves silly about you—until they almost had me convinced that you must be a better man than I thought for them to care so much for you. Well, I am not your servant. General Streathern hired me, and when he died, he entrusted me with Gabriela’s welfare. However little you may want responsibility for her, I accept it gladly, and I don’t intend to let you damage her life still further by killing yourself while she is in your house. If you haven’t the courage to accept life and its troubles, if you care so little for your servants that you will let them stumble upon your bleeding and lifeless body some morning, that is all right with me. But pray do not do so until Gabriela is gone.”

“Enough!” Cleybourne’s face was white and stark, his eyes glittering with fury.

There were many who would have quailed at the sight of his rage, but Jessica stood calmly, facing him, her hands linked in front of her. He was a little frightening, but she had provoked him deliberately, seeking such a reaction. She was not about to back away from it now.

“You are a poisonous, razor-tongued witch, and I want you out of my study this minute,” Cleybourne went on, his voice low and furious. “Indeed, Miss Maitland, were it not for the impropriety of a girl of Miss Carstairs’ age residing here without a governess, I would turn you out of the house immediately.”

“No doubt you would, but as I said, my charge to take care of Gabriela came directly from the General, and I will not shirk that duty, no matter how little you like it.”

“Leave my study now. And pray let me see as little of you as possible in the time that you and Miss Carstairs are here.”

“My pleasure, Your Grace.” Jessica inclined her head slightly, then turned and swept out of the room, head high, back straight. Behind her, she heard the crash of something heavy on the Duke’s desk, followed by a series of curses, cut off by the slamming of his door.

There would be no further thoughts of killing himself tonight, Jessica knew. Cleybourne would be far too busy thinking of delightful ways to do her in. Smiling to herself, she started back toward her room, all thoughts of reading forgotten.

The book Richard slammed down on his desk after Miss Maitland left his study did little to relieve his bad temper, nor did the crash of his study door as he closed it. In fact, it left him feeling a trifle childish. He strode aimlessly around his study for a while, but that did not bring him much peace, either, and finally he gave up and went upstairs to his bed. There Noonan managed to annoy him further by clucking over the bit of port that he had spilled on his coat sleeve, but of course he could not take out his bad temper on the man. Noonan had been with him since he was barely out of short pants, and his look of wounded dignity made Richard feel like the worst sort of monster.

Baxter, of course, was almost as bad. Caroline had laughed and told him he was the only man she had ever met who was hag-ridden by his servants. But he could not be severe with either of the old men—or Miss Brown, either. The three of them had practically raised him, far more so than either of his parents had. And Nurse, of course. He had set her up in her own little cottage with a niece to care for her; she was so far gone in her mind now that she scarcely recognized anyone, but she still knew him.

It took him over an hour to fall asleep. He kept thinking of the things he should have told the venomous Miss Maitland. He wondered what her first name was, then told himself that by all rights it should be Medusa, to fit her nature. He thought with great glee of firing her. He would find another woman to look after the girl, and then he would tell Miss Maitland, quite calmly and coolly, that he would not need her services anymore. He smiled to think of the look upon her face then.

But he knew, even as he thought it, that he would not do so. Miss Maitland had been with the girl for some time, and the poor child had had enough to bear without losing her companion of the past few years. He felt guilty enough as it was to be sending the child to someone else. He could not stop thinking about the fact that Carstairs had entrusted the child to him, and he knew that he was, in effect, letting his friend down. At the time Roddy had died, he would have taken the child gladly and raised her with Alana, but her great-uncle had been the proper choice, of course. And now…well, it didn’t bear thinking of to have a child in the house again. True, she was older than Alana, but he knew that she would be a constant reminder of what he had lost.

She would, anyway, be better off with Rachel and Michael. They had no children of their own, and he suspected that Rachel felt the absence of them keenly. Rachel would welcome Gabriela. They were good people and would be much better at raising the girl than a widower sunk in sorrow. He was doing the right thing, he knew—no matter what that harpy of a governess might say.

Thinking of her made him grind his teeth again. It occurred to him once again that a governess should not look as Miss Maitland did, either. Governesses did not have manes of curling red hair that invited a man’s touch, nor wide eyes as blue as a summer sky—nor sweet curves beneath soft velvet dressing gowns. A proper governess, in fact, would never have intruded upon a man in her dressing gown, anyway!

She was, in short, a most improper person to be a governess, and he wondered if he ought to look into her suitability further. She had spoken of her father’s scandal; he faintly remembered it, though he had been recently married then and far too wrapped up in his new bride to pay attention to military scandals. But Major Maitland had come from a good family; his brother was a baron, if Richard remembered correctly, and the family had never been stained with scandal before. He thought perhaps there had been whispers of treasonous matters, and then, when the man had died, there had been a consensus that it was not surprising, the sort of end one might expect for a man who had been cashiered out of the army a few months before. No doubt the brother had done his best to cover it up.

Of course, Richard thought, he would not hold a father’s misdeed against his child, though many would have. No doubt her life had been very hard after the scandal. He knew the poisonous tongues of society matrons, and he had little doubt that she had been ostracized. To have had her fiancé jilt her would have been an added blow. It was no wonder that she had become hardened and embittered. It was a difficult life for a woman with no means of support. She would have had to depend on the generosity of her relatives, and that could be a cruel existence. The only way a woman could respectably make her living was by becoming a governess, but it would have been a bitter come-down for one who had once moved in high circles. Nor, he imagined, had it been easy for one who looked as she did to get or keep a job. Not many women were willing to introduce a flame-haired beauty into their house.

But even as he felt pity for her stirring in him, he recalled the look of contempt she had visited on him this evening, the scornful way in which she had accused him of rejecting Gabriela. She had as much as said he was a coward! Pity quickly vanished before another spurt of anger.

And so it had gone, his thoughts circling round and round, until, finally, he had fallen into a restless sleep.

Then he dreamed of her.

In the dream, he was walking down a long hallway. He did not recognize the place, but in his dream he knew that it was part of the Castle. A woman stood in front of a tall window at the end of the hallway, light streaming in through the glass. She was tall, silhouetted against the window, and her white dress, with the sun pouring through it, plainly revealed the soft curves of her body. His pace quickened.

She turned as he approached, and as he drew nearer, he saw that it was the girl’s governess. Her red hair tumbled down past her shoulders in a fiery fall. Her blue eyes were lambent, and her face was soft and beckoning in an expression that he had not seen on it before. She smiled, slowly, and he felt it in his gut.

Then, somehow, they were no longer in the hall, but on a bed, and she was beneath him, naked and yielding. Her breast filled his hand, supremely soft, her nipple in hard contrast pushing against his palm. She moved beneath him, her voice a low moan. He knew that she wanted him, and that knowledge spurred his own desire. He was hot and hard, aching for her.

She spread her legs, and he moved between them, groaning as he thrust himself home inside her.

The sound of his own groan awakened him. His eyes flew open and for an instant he stared in confusion at the tester above his bed. His body was damp with sweat, his lungs laboring, and he was stiff with desire and painfully unsatisfied.

Sweet Jesus! What a rude jest—could he actually desire that redheaded witch?

Richard sat up, plunging his fingers back through his hair. The governess! He could scarcely believe he had actually dreamed about her—and such a hot, lascivious dream, at that. His veins were pulsing, his loins aching—and all for a woman the very sight of whom raised his ire.

She was irritating, infuriating. He scarcely knew her—he did not even know her given name—but what he did know he disliked. She was overbearing, opinionated, unwomanly. Richard paused. He had to change that thought: she was unwomanly in manner. In appearance she was deliciously curved, even in the plain, dark sort of dresses she wore. In appearance she was…beautiful.

He sighed, flopping back on the bed and staring sightlessly above him. For a moment he gave himself up to thinking of the way she looked—the springing flame-colored curls, the vivid blue eyes, the pale skin as lustrous as satin. He thought of her as she had appeared in the dream, the warmth in her eyes that he had never seen, the softening of her mouth in desire. He remembered the feel of her beneath him, the trembling excitement of touching her….

Cursing, he sat back up. What the devil was he doing? How could he think of her? Dream of her?

It had been years since he had had that sort of dream about any woman but his wife. From the moment he met Caroline, he had been faithful to her. It had not taken a tremendous effort; quite frankly, he had not wanted any woman but Caroline. And after her death, he had no longer cared about anything or anyone. No woman had stirred him, and the few times he had felt desire, it had been merely an animal instinct, directionless lust, or, sometimes, like now, a dream. But in those dreams, it had been Caroline to whom he made love, and he had awakened, not only sweating, but crying, too.

Guilt twisted through him. He loved only Caroline, desired only Caroline. Even putting aside the bizarre fact that it was the governess who was the subject of his imagination, it shocked him that he had dreamed about another woman. But he knew that if he were honest, he would have to admit that he had had lustful thoughts about Miss Maitland even when he was awake and rational. He knew that others would tell him his wife had been dead for four years, that it was only natural for him to find another woman attractive, even to think of the pleasure of bedding her. Less than a year ago, he remembered, his brother-in-law Devin had pointed out to him that it had been Caroline who had died, not Richard, and that no one expected him to never look at another woman.

But, as he had told Dev at the time, he felt as if he had died, too, that night four years ago. Without his wife and daughter, his life was ashes, and every day held the same empty, lifeless round of activities, worth nothing except to say that he had made it through another day.

How, then, could he now feel desire for another woman? Caroline was the only woman he had loved, could ever love.

The dream had been an aberration, he told himself. It was bizarre and unreal and clearly the opposite of what he really felt. After all, he disliked the woman intensely. The desire, he thought, must have been spawned in some strange way by the intense anger he felt for Miss Maitland. He did not understand it, but that had to be the reason. It was the same sort of thing as the way one laughed sometimes when what one really wanted to do was cry or scream. It had to be. Anything else was impossible.

With a sigh, he lay back down, turning onto his side, and set his mind to thinking of something, anything, besides Miss Maitland. Sleep, he found, was a long time coming.

Richard sat in lonely splendor at the dining table the next evening. He looked down the length of the gleaming mahogany table and thought, not for the first time, how foolish it was to sit here by himself to eat at a table and in a room meant to accommodate a small army of people. A huge silver epergne graced the center of the table, filled with fruit, and silver candelabras, each as ornate as the epergne, were spaced down the length of the table, candles ablaze. Two footmen stood at the ready, should Richard require something not on the table.

It would make more sense, Richard knew, to put a table in one of the small rooms downstairs and eat there, but Baxter, of course, would be horrified at the idea of his not dining formally. There were, after all, certain standards to maintain when one worked for a duke.

Richard began to spoon up his soup. He wondered idly where Miss Maitland took her meals—in the nursery with her charge, he supposed. It must be difficult for her, he thought, living in that odd limbo occupied by governesses, where one was neither a servant nor a member of the family, especially for someone like her, who came from a good family and had even had her season in London. Surely she must miss the life she had once had—doubtless that was one reason she had turned so sour!