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

Once he had loved Christmas. The thought surprised him, but Catherine had found the season a burden with all the effort required and so it had been largely forgotten about altogether. He was certain that Lady Moreton would be the sort of woman who might attack the idea with vigour: the Christmas pudding, the decorations, the charity visits and the long table full of food and family.

Standing, he walked to the window, looking at the snow deep around the house, bands of rain slanting against the light from his library. Terence had made the jump from the land of the still and the silent and his governess had undone years of aristocratic manoeuvring by mysteriously leaping backwards into an unexpected servitude. Uncertainly, he lifted his finger to the shadow of himself in the glass. He should send her back to London on the morrow, the trail of intrigue woven about her wearisome and unwanted, but there was something that stopped him.

She was Elizabeth Moreton’s daughter and her ghost would not allow him to simply turf her out into the winter cold. Besides, there was something about his new governess that was beguiling. Swearing under his breath, he turned to find his best bottle of brandy.

Chapter Three

20 December

The maid brought her down to the dining room in the morning and Seraphina saw that the duke sat there already, a plate of breakfast before him and no one else at the table.

Surely as a governess he did not wish for her to be joining him for the first meal of every day? She remained still as she gained the room, uncertain as to what was expected.

‘Please have a seat, Miss Moorland, for I would like to talk to you,’ he said as he folded away the paper he had been reading. When she hesitated, he looked around. ‘I take it your dog has been whisked off by the boys. A jaunt through the park should do Melusine no harm and a full breakfast may do you some good.’

The servant held out her chair and Lord Blackhaven waited as she sat, his calm menace more easily seen in the new light of day. The scar across his eye was reddened, the angled planes of his cheek moving under a pull of muscle and there was a tick visible around the damage. As if by magic the two footmen who stood at attention to each side of the hearth disappeared, though she had seen no sign from him to make this happen. Outside through the tall windows the day looked much brighter than it had yesterday.

‘Your references are more than salutary, Miss Moorland, though were I to guess their origin I would say that they all came from the same hand.’

The drink Seraphina had taken a sip of was swallowed with a gulp at his words, shock leaping where caution had lingered. ‘I do not know what you mean, sir.’

His dark-velvet eyes caught her own. ‘The hand of a woman who, by her own admitted necessity, took this position of governess and far from London?’

When she did not speak he went on regardless. ‘I worked in intelligence and part of my mission in Europe was deducing which written orders were fakes and which ones were original. The job requires a special attention to the sweep of letters, you understand, and the repeat of line. Put succinctly, I do know a forgery when I encounter one.’

‘I see.’ Her heart was thumping wildly. ‘Under the circumstances, would you like me to leave then, my lord?’

He smiled. ‘And have Terence revert again into silence when your dog disappears with you? Oh, I think not … Lady Sarah?’

She stood at that, barely able to breathe. He knew her name and station as well? He knew exactly who she was? Would he turn her in as an impostor and send her back? Would he summon the law and have them deal with something he would have no mind for? A hundred questions surfaced and she wanted to run, but her feet seemed carved of wood. The reputation she had in London was hardly salubrious.

‘You could flee from this room and this house as certainly as you fled from London, my lady, or you could sit down and listen to what I have to say to you. Which is it to be?’

Seraphina sat, the sweat between her breasts building in fear.

‘Good, I had rather hoped that you might do that. We both have our secrets, I would guess—undisclosed mysteries that tie us to a particular path or a preferred option. You need employment and I need a governess, for the probability of finding another with your long list of accomplishments would be slim until well after the Epiphany. So I propose a truce. You stay and tutor my boys until the end of January, after which I shall see to it that you are transported to the place you next wish to travel to and nothing more said of any of it. A month. Lodging. Food. A wage and no questions?’

She could only nod, for his terms were more than generous.

‘Is Sarah your first name or is that a lie, too?’

‘Seraphina. It can be shortened to Sera, though the spelling is different.’

‘Then can you promise me that the law shall not arrive on my doorstep any time soon demanding recompense for some ill doing on your behalf?’

Horror threaded her words. ‘If wrongdoing was committed, it was not my own, my lord.’

‘Your father’s, then. Seth Moreton, the Earl of Banbury. I had heard that he was having money problems before he … died.’

He was kind in the description of death, she thought. ‘Lengthy card games tend to encourage bankruptcy, just as brandy addles the brain. He had a hankering for both.’

‘Such excesses had come to my attention.’ His anger was evident. ‘My sister will arrive in three days’ time, for as the daughter of an earl I should not wish your reputation to be ruined by the lack of a chaperone, even given your reduced circumstances. A letter has left this morning asking for her presence here.’

Ruined? Sera looked up. There were some things the powerful Lord of Blackhaven had no notion of, after all.

‘Margaret is a stalwart for the correct and the acceptable. With her residence in the house your name shall stay safe.’

Safe? As in the same argument of shutting the gate after a rampaging stallion? At this moment all she wanted was to be in her sitting room at Moreton Manor, next to her beautiful mother, embroidery in hand. The way it used to be before everything changed. Instead, she was in the home of a duke who was as clever as he was dangerous, hiding from a miscreant who in all probability was even now prowling the streets trying to find her.

Time.

She was running out of it as fast as the Duke of Blackhaven was guessing every sordid detail. She couldn’t breathe with the worry of it all, the woman she had been once replaced by a stranger she barely recognised.

To her alarm tears welled in her eyes, pooling and rolling down her cheeks to fall upon the soiled bodice of her much-too-big gown, and she could not stop them as all the horror of the past few weeks came crashing in upon her. Here, she was safe for one whole long month, no questions asked and board and wages given.

It was a miracle.

‘Essex is a long way from London, Lady Seraphina, and the heavy snows of winter are making themselves felt. If it is security you are worrying about …?’

She shook her head as he went to stand by the window, the furthest point in the room from her. He was embarrassed by such a show of emotion, probably. He wanted a competent governess for his boys; instead he had got a watering pot of a woman who was not only a bland copy of her beautiful mother, but a pauper to boot.

She must not forget her station again, so she was careful in her reply as she gathered her lost composure. ‘I should wish for anonymity here if this is at all possible, my lord?’

‘You prefer to stay as Miss Moorland, then?’

‘I do, sir.’

‘Sense tells me that there must be a further reason for your flight?’

The clock on the mantel ticked loudly as he waited, the caution in his eyes illuminated by the windows. Because he did not press her as he was justly entitled to, she found some of the truth to give him. ‘Moreton Manor, the Banbury country seat, was lost by my father on a single game of cards, so he tried to retrieve it by offering another inducement to the man with the winning hand.’

She saw the exact moment he worked it out.

‘You.’

When she nodded he swore.

‘Lord Ralph Bonnington was not one with any sense or honour, you understand.’

‘Did he hurt you?’

‘I left before he could.’

‘So you would hide for the rest of your life because of the poor judgement of your parent and the disgraceful behaviour of a card sharp?’

Some plane of guilt shifted inside Seraphina at his interpretation of the whole conundrum. She was penniless and homeless, but her father’s demise had been of his own making and not of hers. Still, there were parts of her explanation that were missing and she had hit Bonnington hard.

‘No, my lord, but I would like a job that allowed me the time to consider my options.’ She felt stronger already, more in charge, her more-familiar hopefulness reasserting itself at his calm and measured sense.