Gift-Wrapped Governesses: Christmas at Blackhaven Castle / Governess to Christmas Bride / Duchess by Christmas

But she wouldn’t think of this now, here in a room full of books and music and the smell of spice, here in a castle far from London and the dangerous jealousies of men. Swallowing, she took a drink of lemonade.

‘There are probably many others who look like me, sir.’

She had the feeling he wanted to say something else, but did not. The clock at one end of the room ticked loudly into the silence and farther away in the house there was the sound of a crying child. She saw how he tilted his head to listen until the noise stopped.

A watchful father. In this light the scar on his cheek was wide and reddened—the mark of fire, perhaps, or a wound that had festered and been left untended. She did not dare to ask him of it.

‘Did the agency tell you that you are number six in a long line of governesses?’

‘They did, sir.’

‘And did they tell you of the reason many left without notice?’

‘No.’ Seraphina shook her head. The woman at the agency had cited unresolved differences when she had asked and made it clear that she would divulge nothing further.

‘The Castle is haunted, it seems. The science of such a possibility belies any rational thought, but belief is injudicious and once an idea is seeded …’ She saw resignation on his face, a man who spoke of the supernatural with no true belief in any of it, but she could not leave it just at that.

‘I have always been interested in the metaphysical, my lord, and there is much in life that cannot be simply explained away.’

‘Such as?’

‘Six governesses, perhaps?’

His brows rose alarmingly and she fancied the dent of a dimple in his chin. ‘Your dog, of course, is named after the Phantom Lady of the de Lusignan family.’

‘I am surprised you should know of this, sir, without having the need to revert to a book. Usually I have to explain the connection.’

‘Melusine, one of three sisters cursed with an undisclosed flaw.’ He shifted on the seat and looked directly at her. ‘I think I comprehend the secret nature of your dog already, Miss Moorland.’

‘And what is that, my lord?’

His answer was quick and firm. ‘Chaos.’

Her laughter was like music, soft and real, as joy lit her face. Where had he seen her? How had he known her? Trey’s mind sifted back through the years, but he could make no placement whatsoever. Moorland? The name was without memory. He would ask around, of course, though he had no wish to return to the crush of the city.

Catherine had dragged him down to London a number of times and it had always been the same. She had loved it and he had loathed it. He wondered how he had ever been foolish enough to ask such a woman to be his wife. Granted, she had given him heirs to inherit the Blackhaven fortune and titles, but little else in joy or comfort—a woman whose looks belied a nature that was selfish and cold.

He had vowed to stay well away from beautiful women ever since and yet here was one now laughing in his library, her dirtied white gown many sizes too big and an honest, self-confessed belief in the truth of ghosts.

Sarah Moorland had worn rings on her fingers until quite recently, the sun-touched skin on the first joints of her third and little digits showing white. Both hands now pulled at the fabric in her skirt. Nerves, he supposed. Every fingernail was bitten to the quick.

It was the small details that gave a person away, he ruminated, the experience he had gained during his time with Wellesley as an intelligence officer brought into play. Sometimes he wished it was not there, this innate distrust of human nature that kept him isolated from the sort of discourse that others favoured.

‘You seem well schooled in the classics, Miss Moorland. What brought you into the profession of governess?’

‘Necessity, sir.’ The truth of such an answer was written all over her face.

‘Where was it your brother lived?’

There was a slight hesitation before she offered up the name of Oxford.

‘My sister is from those parts. Once I knew the area well.’

Worry filled blue eyes and the same wash of redness that he had come to expect when she gave him any personal information whatsoever made her face flame.

Another thought chased the first one as memory clicked into recognition: Lady Elizabeth Moreton!

That was the woman she reminded him of; her colour of hair and eyes were exactly the same. But it was more in the way she looked at him, chin tilted upwards with regard. Almost regal.

Sarah Moorland’s mother? Moreton and Moorland. Anderley Moreton, a young man shot through the head under the push forwards by General Stewart at Rueda, when the 18th Light Dragoons had surrounded the village after dark. Her brother? Andrew? Lord, it all fitted save for one thing.

Why was this Moreton daughter here posing as a governess of no means and little substance when clearly she was a lady of the very first water?

Necessity, she had said and looked as if she meant it. Tipping up his glass, he swallowed the remains of his fine brandy as his housekeeper came into the room and announced that the new governess’s sleeping quarters were ready and that she was there to show the way.

The chamber Seraphina was led into was beautiful, large and airy with tall windows looking out onto the hills, the view reminding her a little of Moreton Manor, the Moreton country seat.

The housekeeper continued to fuss about, plumping cushions and picking up non-existent lint from the scrupulously clean waxed floorboards. When the woman turned towards her there was curiosity in her dark brown eyes.

‘If there is anything else you might wish for, you just need ask, Miss Moorland.’

‘Thank you, Mrs Thomas, I shall.’ This seemed to calm the servant, though as she gained the door she stopped, a look of resolution on her face.

‘The boys have imaginations, miss, vibrant imaginations that set all the other governesses to odds with them because they could not understand enchantment. But I’d be thinking you can see things bright in the air around you that others tend to miss. At least I hope you do.’

With that she disappeared and Seraphina stared after her. The whole day had been awash with emotion and this small part of it was as confusing as the rest.

She had slept in the corner of a building on her last night in London, tucked under the overhang of an eave and frightened out of her wits in case anyone should find her there; now she was here in a room that was more than adequate with a servant confiding much about the nature of her charges.

Sitting on the bed, she felt a cloud of comfort envelop her, the icy rain beating against the windows as though it might never cease. Everything here was a warm reminder of how her life had been once before …

No!

The only way she had survived the past weeks had been to not think. She shook her head, but with this small quiet amidst the larger chaos her mind returned again to the horror of her last days in London.

Lord Ralph Bonnington, the Earl of Cresswell. Even the name scared her. Her father had made certain that they were left alone in the front room of the London town house, no care given for her safety; the large florid-faced man with the balding pate and beady eyes telling her exactly what he wanted out of this unexpected opportunity. She had bitten his lip when he had pressed in unbidden, demanding much more than she was willing to give, his hands ripping the bodice of her best gown in a rough attempt to sample that offered by her father in an agreement to save Moreton Manor. The sight of her skin had sent the earl into frenzy and he had forced her to the couch and laid himself on top of her, his hand across her mouth to stifle noise.

The heavy metal ewer had come into her grip as she struggled against him and she had used it to good effect on the shiny top of his head. It had been easy then to simply open the window and escape.

Her father, Seth Moreton, the Earl of Banbury, had shot himself the next evening; she had seen it in the papers as she roamed the back streets of London, trying to decide what to do. Mrs Whittle’s Agency for Prospective Governesses had solved the problem.

Lying back, Seraphina felt hot tears scald down the side of her eyes and disappear into her hair at the temple. ‘Mama,’ she whispered softly, ‘Mama, I need you.’

Trey sat in his library, listening to the rhythms of his house: the creak against timber from the elm-tree branch too low on the eaves; the hiss of a spark in the grate where a final ember flared. Heavy rain slanted in from the west, widening the Crouch River, he supposed, as it made its way to the sea.

The natural progressions of nature on land held in the Stanford family name for centuries, and his sanctuary.

In the hallway outside the library a servant hummed a carol softly. Crossing to the piano, Trey laid his hands down on the ivory keys, letting them sink into other music to block out the Yuletide notes.