The Duke's Governess Bride

Richard said nothing, choosing instead to stare out at the water and let the rascal draw whatever unsavoury conclusions he pleased. His dear wife Anne had been not only his duchess, but his best friend and his dearest love, and when she had died, he’d sworn no other woman could possibly replace her in his life. That had been fifteen long years ago, and the pain lingered still.

‘I can tell you the house of the best courtesans in the city, your Grace,’ the captain was saying. ‘I know what you English lords like, eh? A woman who will bring you to such joy, such passion, such—’

‘Enough,’ Richard said curtly, the voice he always used with recalcitrant servants, dogs and children. Why did everyone on the Continent believe English peers were in constant rut, panting after low women in every port? ‘Leave me.’

The captain hesitated only a moment before bowing and backing away, and, with a grumbling sigh, Richard turned back towards the horizon. The sloop was drawing closer to the harbour now, the outlines of the city’s skyline sharpening in the fading light of day. Richard could make out the famous pointed bell tower of San Marco’s, looking precisely the way it did in the engravings in the books in his library at Aston Hall. There was much else beginning to appear from the misty dusk, of course, places Richard supposed he should have recognised as well, but his mind was too occupied with the coming reunion to concentrate on anything else.

He remained on the deck against the urging of his manservant to come below to ready himself for shore, and he ignored the same suggestion from the captain as the crew finally dropped their anchor. Soon he’d be hearing the merry laughter that meant the world to him, and feel the soft girlish arms flung around his shoulders in the embrace he’d missed so sorely these last months.

As the sloop entered the harbour proper, a flurry of small boats came through the mist towards them, odd long skiffs that reminded Richard more of the punts at Oxford than the usual longboats, with the oarsman standing high in the stern-sheets—or what would be the stern-sheets in an English boat. Foreigners had a different name for everything.

‘What are those skiffs, Potter?’ he asked his secretary as the man joined him at the rail.

‘Gondolas, your Grace,’ said Potter, supplying the proper word in his usual helpful manner. Like some small, bustling, black-clad badger, the secretary had ducked from the path of the sailors to join Richard, while the rest of the English party, Richard’s manservant and two footmen, saw to his belongings below. ‘Gondolas are the common means of travel throughout Venice, rather like hackneys in London.’

‘Then pray hail one for us directly,’ Richard said. ‘The sooner we’re off this infernal sloop and on dry land again, the better.’

At once Potter nodded, bowing over his clasped hands. ‘I am sorry, your Grace, but before we can venture into the city, we must clear customs.’

‘Customs?’ Blast, he’d forgotten that every last city and village in Italy considered itself its own little country, complete with a flock of fawning satraps who expected to have their palms greased. ‘Customs.’

‘I fear so, your Grace,’ Potter said. ‘That building on the promontory is the Dognana di Mare, the Customs House of Venice, your Grace, where we must go—’

‘Where you must go, Potter,’ Richard said. ‘You see to whatever needs seeing to, and pay whatever fees the thieving devils demand. I’ll proceed directly to the ladies.’

Potter’s expression grew pinched. ‘Forgive me, your Grace, but surely you must realise that the customs officers will expect you—’

‘They can expect whatever they please,’ Richard said, ‘I’ve more important business this night than to bow and scrape to their wishes. They may call on me tomorrow, at a civil hour, at the—the, ah, what the devil is the place called?’

‘The Ca’ Battista, your Grace,’ Potter said. ‘But if you please, your Grace, we—’

‘Ca’ Battista,’ Richard repeated the house’s name to make sure he’d recall it, and nodded with satisfaction. Though he’d no notion what the words meant, they had a fine, righteous sound to them. ‘Tell the drones in the Customs House to come to me there.’

‘I beg your pardon, your Grace,’ Potter persisted, ‘but Venice has a very poor reputation in its treatment of English visitors. Venice is a republic, and their officials have little respect for foreign persons of rank, such as yourself. It can be a place full of danger, your Grace. This city is not London, and—’

‘But I am not a foreigner,’ Richard said. ‘I am an English peer. Now a boat, Potter, one of your gondolas, at once. At once!’

Soon after Richard was, in fact, in a gondola, seated on a low bench against leather cushions, his long legs bent at an ungainly angle before him. Yet he couldn’t deny the swift efficiency of this peculiar vessel as it glided into one of the channels, or canals, that divided the city and served as a type of watery streets. On this evening, the canal seemed muffled in mist and fog and the endless lapping of the wavelets against the buildings, with the striped poles used for mooring like so many drunken demons lurching through the waters.

Without a city’s usual bustle and clatter from horses, carriages and wagons, the canals seemed oddly quiet, so quiet that to Richard the loudest sound must surely be the racing of his own heart. His long journey, and his waiting, was nearly done.

‘Ca’ Battista, signori,’ the oarsman announced as the gondola slowed before one of the grandest of the houses: a tall square front of white stone, punctuated with balconies and pointed windows frosted with elaborate carvings, which sat so low on the dark water that it seemed to float upon it. The gondolier guided the boat in place before the house’s landing, bumping lightly against the dock. Roused by the noise, a sleepy-eyed porter opened the house’s door and held up a lantern to peer down from the stone steps.

‘Stop gaping, man,’ Potter shouted as Richard clambered from the gondola. ‘Go to your mistress and tell her that the Duke of Aston is here.’

Still the servant hesitated, his face full of bewilderment. With an oath of impatience, Richard swept past him and through the open door, his long cloak swinging from his shoulders. The entry hall was a hexagon, supported by more of the tall columns and pointed arches. A pair of gilded cherubs crowned the newels at the base of the staircase, the steep steps rising up into the murky gloom. The floor was tiled, the walls painted with faded pictures, with everything dismally half-lit by a single hanging lantern. There were no other servants to be seen besides the single hapless porter; in fact, Richard had no company at all except his own echoing footsteps.

He swore to himself with furious disappointment. He was angry and tired and cold, but most of all, if he were truthful, he was wounded to the quick. This was hardly the welcome he’d expected. Where were the kisses and tears of joy? Hadn’t the landlady received his letters? Why the devil weren’t they prepared for him? Blast the infernal Italian post! He knew he’d gambled by coming all this way on impulse, but damnation, he’d paid for the lease of this wretched, echoing house. Wasn’t that enough to earn him at least a show of affection in return?

‘The English lady, most excellent one?’ the porter asked breathlessly as he finally trotted up behind Richard. ‘You wish to see her?’

‘Who the devil else would it be?’ At least the man had worked out that much. In fact, Richard was here to see two English ladies, not just one, but he’d credit the mistake to the porter’s general confusion. ‘Go, tell her I’m—’

‘A thousand pardons, but she waits for you.’ He pointed behind Richard. ‘There.’

Richard whipped around, gazing to where the man was pointing. At the top of the stairs stood a woman, indeed, an Englishwoman, but neither of the ones he’d so longed to see. She was small and pale, her eyes enormous with shock in her round little face. Her hair was drawn back severely from her face and hidden beneath a linen cap, relieved only by a narrow brown ribbon that matched the colour of her equally plain brown gown. She clutched at the rail, clearly needing its support as she struggled to regain her composure after the shock of seeing Richard.

‘Your—your Grace,’ she said, and belatedly curtsied. ‘Good evening, your Grace. You—you took me by surprise.’

‘Evidently,’ he said, his voice rough with urgency. ‘I’m tired, Miss Wood, and eager to see my girls. Please take me to them directly.’

‘Lady Mary, Your Grace?’ she asked with a hesitation that did not please him, not from the woman he’d trusted as his daughters’ governess. ‘And Lady Diana?’

‘My daughters,’ he said, taking another step towards her. His daughters, his girls, his cherubs, the darlings of his heart—who else could have made him come so far? Solemn, dark-haired Mary, the older at nineteen, and Diana, laughing and golden, a year younger. Could any father have missed his children more than he?

A second woman came to join the governess, dark and elegant, a lady dressed in widow’s black. Most likely this was the house’s owner, he guessed, their landlady Signora della Battista.

‘My journey has been a long one, Miss Wood,’ he said, ‘and you are making it longer still.’

‘Your daughters,’ the governess repeated with undeniable sadness, even regret. The older woman spoke gently to her in Italian, resting her hand on her arm, but Miss Wood only shook her head, her gaze still turned towards Richard. ‘You did not receive my letters, your Grace, or theirs? You do not know what has happened?’

‘What is there to know?’ he demanded. ‘I’ve been at sea, coming here. The last letters I had from you were from Paris, weeks ago, and nothing since. Damnation, if you don’t bring my girls to me—’

‘If it were in my power, your Grace, I would, with all my heart.’ With her hand once again on the rail, she slowly sank until she was sitting on the top step, so overwhelmed that she seemed unable to stand any longer. ‘But they—the young ladies—they are not here. Oh, if only you’d been able to read the letters!’

A score of possibilities filled Richard’s heart with sickening dread: an accident in a coach, a shipboard mishap, an attack by footpads or highwaymen, a fever, a quinsy, a poison in the blood. Long ago he’d lost his wife, and grief had nearly killed him. He could not bear to lose his daughters as well.

‘Tell me, Miss Wood,’ he asked hoarsely. ‘Dear God, if anything has happened to them—’

‘They are married, your Grace,’ the governess said, and bowed her head. ‘Both of them. They are married.’

Chapter Two

‘Married?’ roared the Duke of Aston. ‘My daughters? Married?’

‘Yes, your Grace.’ Jane Wood took a deep breath, and told herself that the worst must now be over. Surely it must be, for as long and as well as she’d known the duke, she could not imagine him becoming any more incensed than he was at this moment. Nor, truly, could she fault him for it. ‘Both have wed, and to most excellent gentleman.’

‘Most excellent rascals is more likely!’ His handsome face was as dark as an August thunderstorm, and she realised to her surprise that his expression was filled with as much disappointment as anger. ‘Why did you not put a stop to these crimes, Miss Wood? Why did you permit it?’

‘Why, your Grace?’ She forced herself to stand, to compose herself to give her answer. In his present state, the duke would see any kind of confusion as weakness and incompetence. Rather, further incompetence. His Grace never expected to be crossed, and his temper was legendary. After nearly ten years in his service, Jane knew that much of him, just as she knew that the surest way to calm him was to present the facts in a quiet and rational manner. That had always proved successful with him before, and there was no reason to believe it wouldn’t again.

She took another breath and lightly clasped her hands at her waist, the way she always did. She shouldn’t have let herself be so shocked. She wasn’t some callow girl, but a capable woman of nearly thirty. A calm demeanour was what was required now, she told herself firmly, a rational argument. Yes, yes—rationality and reason. Not a defence, for she believed she’d done nothing wrong, but the even, well-reasoned explanation of the events of the last few weeks that she’d been rehearsing ever since she’d come to Venice from Rome.

But she’d always expected to be delivering that explanation in the duke’s sunny library at Aston Hall, in Kent, once she herself was safely returned to England, and long after he would have read his daughters’ letters. She never imagined he would have come charging clear across the Mediterranean like a mad bull to corner her here on the staircase of the Ca’Battista.

‘Permit me to summon the watch, Miss Wood,’ said Signora Battista in indignant Italian, standing beside her. ‘Or at least let me call the footmen from the kitchen to send this man away. There is no need for you to tolerate the ravings of this lunatic!’

‘But there is, signora,’ Jane murmured swiftly, also in Italian, ‘because he is my master. I am employed in his household, and rely upon him for my livelihood.’