The Mysterious Governess (Daughters of Sin Book 3) (25 page)

Tenderly he looked down into her face. “Yes, but we may not be married for a couple of months.”

She thought she’d misheard him but when she studied his face she saw his regret. A deafening roar sounded in her head as she repeated, uncertainly, “A couple of months?”

He nodded. “You see, dear heart, there is something very important I must do first.” He took her hands and began to explain, speaking gently, smiling, as if it were only natural she would understand the reason for the delay.

Araminta stared while the silent screams of protest grew more deafening. He seemed not to notice for he went on in the same measured tone, “I had a dear friend once, a long time ago. Five years ago, in fact. Mother mentioned her to you—”

“You are in love with another?” Shocked, she pulled away but he captured her in his arms with a gentle, reassuring laugh, and rested his cheek against hers. “I was, but not anymore, for I love you only, dearest. However, listen to me, and then you’ll understand.”

Araminta was quite convinced that even if he were about to rescue his baby sister from Bluebeard himself, she’d not understand. She had no choice, however, but to hear him out.

“It’s been five years since my old friend, Bella, disappeared, and since then, I’ve felt I’ve existed in a desert. I truly believed I would never again experience feeling in this old heart of mine.” Lord Ludbridge touched his chest. She could hear the smile in his voice, which did nothing to soften her own heart. “Then you came into my life. With your beauty and spirit and passion, I realized I could love again, at last.”

“But you are going away to be...with this old love? Teddy, I don’t understand it!” She tried not to cry.

“Not to be with her, but to save her. You see, I made a vow to protect her, and although I no longer love her, I owe her this. Only two nights ago, I received an unexpected message after all these years. Her situation is not at all as I’d come to believe. It is very terrible in fact, but I have the means to extricate her from her dreadful life. And so that is what I must do. Ah, Araminta, please do not cry.”

“But you cannot leave me. You cannot ask me to be your wife and then leave me for two months!”

Tenderly he kissed away her tears. “My precious love, I have to live with my conscience, and though my heart is here with you, I am honor-bound to make this journey.”

“Journey? Where?”

“Across the Aegean. I know it all sounds unbelievable and wild but the truth is, I’ve discovered my old friend is being held a prisoner and about to be forced into marriage against her will. Only now has she finally got a message out that reached me. She needs my help.”

“But can’t someone else help her?”

Lord Ludbridge looked censorious for a split-second, before his expression softened. “I know this is difficult for you to understand, especially in the wake of my marriage offer. But Bella is my childhood friend. I am the one person she is able to trust. Please allow me the time I need to salvage my conscience. After that, you will be my entire focus in life. When I return, we will make arrangements for our wedding to take place in just the three weeks required for calling the banns, though you are at liberty to announce to whomever you choose that I have vowed to wed you on my return. I will write to you every day. I promise.”

Araminta couldn’t believe it.

He rose, though she’d snaked her hand up his arm to try to elicit another bout of passion. It seemed, though, that he had made up his mind to put aside all possibility of carnal delights.

Her brain was in a desperate whirl. She had to make him change his mind. At least before he left. “When are you going?”

“I leave on the dawn crossing tomorrow.”

“So soon!”

“The sooner I leave, the sooner I’ll be back.” He smiled as if this would please her, drawing her toward the door, toward the destruction of her dreams, her best-laid plans. “Bella is in terrible trouble. I may not in fact be in time to avert the disaster that threatens to destroy her life. I know this sounds very dramatic, but please be assured that all my loyalties lie with you, Araminta...my only true love.”

At the door, he drew her up against him, and rested her head against his chest. “I have to behave as honor dictates.” Softly, he stroked her hair. “I have found you. It seems incredible to me, but you have saved me. Now we can look forward to a long and wonderful life together. You have made me the happiest man, and I thank you for that.” His voice was thick with emotion. “But first I must do what is right. This other long-distant part of my life will not interfere with our happiness but the only way I can live with my conscience is if I set to rights what I have been asked to do. And what it is in my power to do.”

“So you leave...in the morning?”

“Yes. But my love, I have sent a letter to your father, requesting that I might visit him upon my return. I’ve also brought my journey forward by several days in order to reduce the time I will be away. I felt that was preferable.”

“Oh no, I’d have rather have had another couple of days together. I...can’t bear it, Teddy. I’ll die without you!”

He chuckled and hugged her closer against him, shaking his head at her attempts to claw him into another passionate kiss. “Too dangerous, my precious,” he whispered. “And we have been away long enough. Come, let us return to the merry throng, where we can announce our news.”

“Perhaps my father should give his consent first.” She felt dead inside, her words wooden, yet her brain was in a whirl as to how she could manage this death knell to her hopes and dreams. So he would leave in the morning? She couldn’t let him just go like this without...

He took her hand and drew her outside. “Of course, you are right. My goodness, look at those fireworks. I shall always remember this as the happiest night of my life. The night you consented to be my wife.”

Araminta nodded, tears threatening at the back of her eyes, her throat nearly closed up with the bitter taste of impending doom.

As a shower of sparks lit up the sky, she felt as if she too were about to burst into a million tiny fragments.

O
nce again, Lissa rattled the doorknob of her attic bedchamber and called for help. Through the grubby glass, she could see the attic rooms of many of the four-square houses about her but no frightened faces pressed to any of them. No faces at all.

The servants could hear her, she was certain. The attic was only one floor up from the nursery and two floors up from the family’s bedchambers. Perhaps the children had been removed so they’d not remark upon her surely audible cries. Perhaps the servants had been cautioned not to make contact.

Perhaps she’d be imprisoned here forever.

She heard the clock chime 9 p.m. Then ten.

Cosmo had left her three hours since, triumphantly bearing the sketch she’d tried to hide from him. A lie. An evil lie and if only she could get a message to Ralph, those in high places would know it too. Cosmo had laughed when he’d come upon her portfolio of work, a sketchbook filled with likenesses of various personages.

“Oh my, just look at those feathers drooping down to tickle that turkey neck. It’s Lady Smythe to a tee,” he’d remarked, becoming conversational when he’d discovered this resource that gave him such an edge. “You never told me about these.”

Lissa just sat hunched on a chair by the window. “They were for practice only,” she muttered. “I never intended that anyone should see them.”

“Indeed, you could hardly have induced Her Ladyship to pay for something that so cruelly exposed her dubious claims to beauty. Such clever caricatures, I will give you that.” He’d continued to turn the pages, shaking his head and frowning as he’d assessed each sketch. It was only when he turned to the final page and beheld the sketch she’d done of Sir Aubrey in company with Lord Smythe that he nodded approvingly.

“You appear to have caught them in earnest conversation. Or perhaps in the midst of plotting the government’s downfall, they look so serious.” Without asking, he neatly tore the page from the sketchbook. “Thank you, Miss Hazlett. I think this will please Lord Debenham. At least it’ll get me off the hook.”

“And what about me?”

He looked pained at this. “I really don’t know what to do about you, Miss Hazlett. Wicked governesses are not within my realms of experience or expertise. I think I shall have to ask Lord Debenham when I hand him this.”

So here she was, alone and vulnerable. Seemingly friendless. Cosmo was taking the sketch of Sir Aubrey to Lord Debenham himself, and then what would happen? If Lord Smythe were indeed a traitor, perhaps his close ties to Sir Aubrey, as evidenced by her drawing, would be enough to convict them both in the court of public opinion, failing more substantive evidence. If only Araminta had not burned the letter that revealed the truth.

It was long since the dinner hour but no one had brought her refreshment, other than a jug of water, which had been left on a chest of drawers at the time of her incarceration.

She was desperately hungry, yet terrified when several taps sounded at the door.

“Miss Hazlett, I have a message for you.” Without waiting for a response before she left, the maid passed her a plate with a single slice of pie, beside which was a folded note. Lissa recognized Cosmo’s hand-writing. Her legs were shaking so much she had to sit down to read it.

“Change into travelling clothes. Lord Debenham will fetch you.”

She swallowed but it did not help the dryness at the back of her throat. At the same time her palms felt clammy and the back of her neck prickled with fear.

So she was to be kidnapped and discredited. Or would she be disposed of in some more permanent manner? After all, if Lord Debenham thought she’d seen what was in the letter, who knew what he might do?

In an attempt to keep her terror at bay, she began to pace until finally she collapsed upon her bed, pulling the thin gray coverlet up around her shoulders. Travelling clothes? As if she had a wardrobe that encompassed a variety of changes. The drab cotton gown she wore would have to do service for whatever was in store.

Lissa had known deprivation. The small home in the village by the bridge, which she’d shared with her mother and sister and brother before she’d been sent away to become a governess, had not been commodious or luxurious. Yet it was where her father chose to spend most of his time, cocooned with her mother, the two of them living in a world of their own, which took little account of their growing brood of illegitimate children.

She’d never been close to her mother, or her father; home had not been a place of warmth, but, oh, how she longed to feel the warmth that only Ralph had ever made her feel.

She exhaled on a sob, then straightened at the sound of raindrops.

She hoped it poured, and that Master Cosmo and his sketch were drenched. He was a cruel, spoilt boy, and his sister was no better. Miss Maria had marched up the stairs, shrieking at her through the door that Lissa obviously planned to ruin Maria’s chances of a good match. Of course, the girl’s encounter with Lord Debenham had terrified her but if she hadn’t purloined the green dress that was meant for Lissa she wouldn’t have found herself in such a frightening situation. It was a sad reflection on Miss Maria’s character that she insisted that evil machinations on Lissa’s part were behind the unfortunate encounters both she and her brother had had with His Lordship.

The rain appeared to have subsided, though another smattering of raindrops sounded an odd note. Lissa stood up and peered through the window, but her view was limited to mostly rooftops. By standing on the bed, however, and looking down she could just manage to see onto the street.

After a minute or so she heard a single “ping” against the window. Picking up the candlestick that flickered on the chest of drawers, she held it to her face. Somebody, she suspected, was down in the street.

Her body quivered with hope and excitement.

That somebody might just be Ralph.

In a growing fever of hopeful anticipation, she waited.

She was expecting the sound of footsteps in the passage. After all, the only way to gain entry to her room was via an internal staircase. So it was to her horror, after a noisy flutter of wings and squawking drew her to the window, that she saw illuminated in the faint gaslight cast from a nearby attic window her ever-faithful and trusty Ralph Tunley climbing the drainpipe two stories down.

With a cry of fear, she banged on the window, shaking her head furiously as if that might do any good when he was already more up than down.

He raised his head and grinned at her horrified fury, kissing his fingertips and blowing his appreciation toward her. He was probably too far away for her to hear him but he clearly did not wish to make any noise, for he indicated his intended movements by pointing toward what she could only assume was a window he could enter. Her window was too tiny and besides, her room was locked.

But there were people in the house. Servants and the Lamont family themselves. Lissa quaked at the potential for discovery. The Lamonts had no mercy. They’d claim he was a burglar and throw him down the stairs. He might break his neck or end up in Newgate Prison. Lord Debenham was not likely to vouch for him.

No, Ralph had gone out on a limb in all senses of the word, and he’d done it for her. Lissa. No one had ever striven to such an extent on her behalf. No one had ever really taken much notice of her, ever, but it was not the fact Ralph was the only man who could melt her heart that made him so special. No, Ralph was truly a remarkable young man in his own right.

Her thoughts were still travelling along these lines when she heard the key turn slowly in the lock. Suddenly the door was thrust open and there stood Ralph, grinning as if he was presenting her with a box of chocolates and a bouquet of flowers, rather than offering her freedom.

She flew into his arms and kissed him roundly on the lips, drew back to grin right at him, then kissed him again. All without a sound.

He looked remarkably pleased by the attention and then, without a word, he took her hand, put his finger to his lips, and quietly led her down the stairs.