Breaking the Governess’s Rules (20 page)

She began to gather up her things from where they had tumbled to the floor. She tightened the ribbons of her bonnet and tried not to think how it would be ruined if the rain began to pelt down. Luckily she had worn her stout boots rather than the kid slippers she’d had on earlier and they had to be about halfway back to Chesterholm. If she walked quickly, it might not take her longer than a half-hour, forty-five minutes at most.

Practical things rather than thinking about being out here alone with Jonathon where anything could happen.

‘Where are you going?’ He grabbed her arm as her hand jerked the door open.

She stared at him in surprise. Surely he didn’t think they could stay here in this intimate darkness, waiting for another carriage.

‘We are going to have to walk. That’s all that there is to it.’ She glanced down at her boots.

‘It is pelting down, Louisa.’ He spoke as if she was no more than a child. ‘We are a long way from Chesterholm. Three or four miles.’

‘I will get wet. I often used to go walking in the rain in Sorrento.’ Louisa kept her voice even. She went walking in the rain when there was no risk of thunder showers. ‘Miss Mattie proclaimed it was good for her blood and she wanted a companion for the walks. One of her doctors recommended it.’

‘It is a wonder she lived as long as she did,’ Jonathon remarked drily.

‘A constitutional in all weathers was her motto.’

‘The rain in Northumberland is different from that in Sorrento. You will be chilled to the bone in that dress. I have no wish to have you develop lung fever.’

He moved the brim of her bonnet so it set more squarely on her head. ‘Allow me to look after you, Louisa. I want to.’

‘Why?’ She blinked up at him as her entire being trembled. She was poised at a crossroads and she had to make an irrevocable decision. ‘The time has long gone since I looked to you or anyone else for assistance. I gave up being a clinging vine years ago.’

‘Who called you that?’

Louisa clamped her mouth and refused to let Clarissa’s name escape. ‘It does not matter.’

‘You are a guest in my house. You get my protection whether you want it or not.’

‘I deserve a choice.’

‘Not this time.’

Louisa peered out of the small window at the rain. What had begun as a gentle drizzle was now falling as a curtain of silver. Mentally she said goodbye to her straw bonnet, but it could not be helped. It wasn’t so bad—not as if it were a thunderstorm. And Jonathon could stop worrying about her. She was not some clinging vine. She was capable of standing on her feet. ‘Even if I wish to make my own way?’

‘It is for your own good, Louisa. Do you really want to risk lung fever? Who would look after Miss Daphne then? Who would look after you?’

Louisa collapsed against the carriage seat. ‘What do you propose?’

‘Another carriage will be sent. We wait here in the
dry. If nothing else, it will save your bonnet. Wait here.’

Jonathon went out and spoke to the driver. The voices rose and fell. He came back. His face was stern and unyielding.

‘You will have to get out. There is a shepherding hut a few hundred yards from here. You can rest there.’

‘Why?’ Louisa asked. ‘What is wrong with the carriage?’

A hut? Alone with Jonathon?

Her mind raced ahead to the scene. It would be far too easy to see what he planned on next—a prolonged seduction and then sex. And she would be powerless to resist temptation. She was not even certain that she wanted to resist it now.

The thought of their joining sent a warm curl around her insides. Did his skin taste like summer rain still? Were his muscles as well defined?

Louisa wrenched her thoughts away from that destructive path. She was not going to go down it. She refused to take the risk.

‘I thought I could wait here. In the carriage.’

‘We are going to move the carriage off the road. It’s market day and this track is fairly busy. The last thing we want is an accident.’

An accident? There was something in his voice that made her blood chill. He had never spoken of the accident. She should have demanded the details, rather than letting it be unremarked on in the past. Sometimes her rules were wrong.

‘Your curricle hit another vehicle, a vehicle that some-one
had abandoned to a mud pool,’ she said with sudden certainty. ‘Is that why the accident was so bad?’

‘Someone had abandoned a farm wagon half-on and half-off the road. The reason was never clear.’ He closed his eyes, pained.

‘Can you remember much?’

‘Barely anything. The Newtons’ steward explained… weeks later.’ His brow furrowed. ‘I took the corner far too fast for the conditions and careened in the wagon. You were right to chastise me for my driving earlier that day. Arrogance always pays a price.’

‘But it wasn’t your fault that the wagon was there,’ Louisa said quietly. What Venetia Ponsby-Smythe had done was unforgivable, twisting his memory and then piling the guilt on to ensure he would marry Clarissa.

‘If I had been going slower, I would have had time. I was distracted…’ He gave a bitter laugh. ‘I wanted my life to start.’

‘Simply because it happened then…’ At his look, Louisa’s voice trailed away.

‘Are you always this arrogant? Do you know what the future holds, Louisa?’

‘Not being wrapped in cotton wool for one thing.’

‘It is for your own good. Think about how I would feel if anything happened to you as you waited here.’

It was unfair of her to protest; Louisa knew that, but he was being overly protective. Knowing about how that accident had happened, how could she be so cruel as to put him through the agony of what could happen? Louisa closed her eyes and concentrated. ‘You worry far too much, Jonathon.’

‘It won’t take long,’ the coachman called out. ‘An hour, two at most. It is for the best, miss. You won’t be out in this. And that there hut is right snug. There will be wood for a fire.’

Jonathon held out his hand and his expression had once again become smooth. The distress of earlier vanished as if it had never been. But Louisa knew somewhere deep inside him, Jonathon hurt. ‘Be sensible, Louisa. Nobody planned on the carriage hitting the rut. Things like this just happen. Dexter knows the short cuts. He will be back before we know it.’

Sensible. She had spent the last four years being sensible. Sensible would be to walk over the fields and arrive back at Chesterholm full of self-righteousness and impeccable virtue. Sensible would be to spend as little time in Jonathon’s company as possible.

Louisa knew she was not sensible. She did not want to think about what being alone in a hut with Jonathon would do to her already heightened senses. But there was merit in his suggestion—the hut was somewhere to wait. And she could resist her impulses. A supreme test of her resolve. It would demonstrate how much she had changed.

She reached out her hand and curled her fingers about his. ‘I bow to your wisdom.’

The tension went out of his shoulders. ‘Much safer, the hut is the most practical place under the circumstances.’

Louisa ignored the sudden trembling of her stomach. She was no longer a green girl who was head over heels in love. She knew the consequences. ‘I would be a fool to ignore my security.’

He smiled a smile that sent pulses of warmth coursing straight down to the tips of her toes. As if he knew
precisely what she was agreeing to and it entailed more than waiting patiently. ‘I knew you would see sense.’

‘Are you going with the coachman?’ she asked, knowing her cheeks flamed. ‘To get the carriage, I mean. There is no need for you to stay if you have something else to do.’

‘Do you want me to?’

In the distance the clap of thunder sounded. Louisa stiffened. So much for a pleasant rain shower—this one threatened to be a violent storm, the sort she dreaded. She had never liked thunder and lightning, not since her parents’ deaths.

Miss Mattie had used to throw the shutters open and watch the lightning forking down over the Bay of Naples, but Louisa had always pretended a deep interest in her book when in reality her entire body had trembled with each thunderclap. The likelihood was that this storm would never get near them.

Louisa took a deep breath, preparing to send him away, but the rain pelted down a bit faster and he stood there, bare headed with his hair beginning to curl at the ends. A single raindrop travelled down his cheek, tempting her.

Where had being sensible ever got her? Had being sensible ever helped her weather the storms?

She tightened her grip on his hand.

‘Stay. Stay with me.’

His eyes became deep pools of blue-green. ‘Only if you are certain.’

Sometimes, life had to be more than it might have been.

‘I know what I want, Jonathon, and I want you with me. I do not want to be alone in this storm.’

T
he hard stinging drops of rain splattered Louisa’s bonnet, with one landing on her nose as she walked purposefully up the muddy track towards the shepherding hut.

True to the coachman’s word, the hut was a few hundred yards from the road. Its slate roof and stone walls seemed solid and long lasting. As much as she hated to admit it, Jonathon was right. It would be a far pleasanter place to wait out the storm than in that little carriage.

As she reached the wooden door the thunder sounded again, closer this time. She flung the door open and launched herself inside. Her heart pounded in her ears. She was on her own in a thunderstorm. Jonathon had stayed behind for a few minutes to help move the carriage and she had to think that he would be fine. He would come to the hut when he was done. She would not be alone for ever.

When he arrived, what next? Louisa pressed her hands against her skirt.

Wait out the storm together. Alone. Without another soul to comment or remark.

Louisa licked her parched lips. Surely the coachman would be with him. The storm was far too fierce for him to go out in. With the coachman standing guard, the temptation to be with Jonathon would vanish.

It would solve the problem … for a little while. And after the storm, there would be no reason for her to stay in the hut. They could all walk together to Chesterholm when all around her the world would glisten and sparkle as the rain would wash everything clean.

Her breathing eased. If she thought clearly, there was always a solution. She simply worried far too much, saw too many possibilities.

The hut was small and barren. A straw bed lay in one corner and there was the bare minimum of supplies: a rough table, a chair and the remains of half a candle. The barest hint of daylight trickled through a badly fitted shutter. She took off her bonnet and gloves, placing them on the rough-hewn table next to her reticule. The simple act went some way towards restoring her sense of well being.

Logically, nothing could harm her here.

She was safe within these four walls. She had been wrong to panic earlier. Her rules had kept her safe this far and Jonathon was a known quantity, even if the coachman stayed with the horses. Nothing would happen to her that she did not desire. Desire. Her pulse raced faster and her breasts grew heavy as she remembered that once Jonathon had fuelled another sort of desire.

The rain pelted down against the shutter and the
distant rumble of thunder sounded again. The hut might be safe but she worried about Jonathon being caught out in the storm. Her mind kept inventing reasons why he was delayed. She watched the door as one of Jonathon’s sheep dogs might watch a stick, waiting for the movement, the signal that she was far from being alone.

‘I see you found it easily enough,’ Jonathon’s voice called out. ‘Snug and dry as I promised.’

‘I have a good sense of direction, particularly when following a straight road,’ Louisa called back, the tension rolling off her back. Straight and narrow—she had followed that road metaphorically for a long time now. It had kept her safe. She was familiar with its landmarks and signposts, but hearing Jonathon’s voice, she knew she had reached a crossroads.

‘We use it in lambing season,’ Jonathon said, ducking his head as he entered, at once filling the room.

He had removed his coat, stock and hat to help move the carriage. The rain had turned his hair dark and his shirt translucent. It clung to his body, revealing the sculptured definition of his muscles, firm and hard, the muscles of an active man, not one who spent days lifting cards in club rooms. Louisa sucked in her breath as the memory of how his skin had felt under her fingertips flooded through her.

He lit the candle using a lucifer match. The yellow light made strange shadows on the roughly plastered walls and turned his rain-soaked skin to a gleaming golden. A single drop gathered in the hollow of his throat, begging to be tasted. Louisa pressed her fingertips together and concentrated on the flickering light. The memories of how she had taken off his shirt once
and revealed his smooth chest came flooding back. His skin then had been golden and warm beneath her fingers. Unable to resist the temptation, she had tasted, savouring the heady taste of sunlight and pure masculinity. She forced her shoulders to relax and her mind to focus on the single flickering candle.