Seducing the Governess (13 page)

She raised her chin and faced him head-on. Emmaline needed a nurse, someone with more experience than Mercy. Someone who would stay here and be a companion to Emmy once Mercy left. “My lord . . . is there someone . . . Has Mr. Lowell employed someone—as he did me—to come and function as Emmaline’s nurse?”

In spite of his daunting posture, Mercy intended to make it clear that someone needed to see to Emmaline’s wardrobe and do her laundry. She needed an experienced nurse to make sure she was eating properly, and to care for her if she became ill. Because Mercy was barely qualified to perform her own duties.

“Miss Franklin, my brother died last summer on the very day I was getting half my face blown off at Waterloo.” His voice rumbled through her this time, like quiet thunder before a storm. “I was unable to travel for some time. And now that I have returned to Ashby Hall, I find the estate in . . . shall we say . . . less than ideal circumstances.”

Waterloo?
She had thought of that possibility, of course, but her lungs seemed to deflate as she imagined the horrors, not to mention the pain, he must have endured that day. Mercy considered the fact that he must have come close to losing his own life in a battle so far from her home that she’d only heard about it weeks later as her father read aloud the accounts of Napoleon’s defeat.

By then, Lord Ashby might very well have been struggling for his life. The thought gave her pause, and she found herself softening toward him.

“For now, Miss Franklin, you will be the only one who looks after my niece. You have free rein.” His gaze dropped to her shoulder, and Mercy realized that a wisp of hair had escaped her mended chignon. She attempted to push it back surreptitiously, but Lord Ashby’s eyes followed her every move with a purely carnal scrutiny. His gaze dropped to her throat and then lower, brazenly assessing her feminine attributes.

Mercy was mortified to feel the tips of her breasts puckering, certain he could not help but notice.

“I-I can accept that, my lord.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “But your men . . . Some of them are not what I would call pleased to take direction from me . . . when it pertains to your niece, of course.”

The strand of hair must have fallen down again, because Lord Ashby reached for it. He rubbed it between two fingers, the gesture causing an onslaught of radiant heat that coursed from her shoulders to her hands, and especially across her breasts. It was as though a flash of hot sunlight had pierced through her, leaving her singed and raw.

She trembled with sensation.

His touch was thoroughly improper, but Mercy could not summon the wherewithal to step away. She closed her eyes as the permeating heat suffused her, suddenly centering and pooling in her lungs and deep between her thighs. His hand was hot on her shoulder, and when he slid it down her back, Mercy felt herself leaning into his touch. Her heart jolted, its rhythm racing frantically as the pressure of his touch increased.

He eased her gently toward him, and Mercy sensed a ravenous hunger emanating from him.

Her breath caught in her throat when she realized he shared her hunger. He was going to kiss her.

Chapter 15

M
ercy longed for that brush of his lips upon hers. An intimacy unlike any she’d shared before.

Abruptly, he withdrew his hand and returned to his desk. He picked up a document and studied it, studiously dismissing her, dismissing the rush of longing that had so possessed them both.

Mercy would have believed the intense moment was naught to him, but for the way he raked his fingers across his scalp, disturbing his layers of glossy black hair.

“I will see that the men understand you are in charge of all matters regarding my niece and the nursery.” It was as though he was speaking to the paper in his hand.

Mercy stared at his back. The conversation had not gone at all the way she thought it might, but her mouth had gone dry and her brain seemed incapable of forming the ideas she needed to resume their discussion. She had not been able to put together a single coherent thought since he’d touched her. Since his head had descended toward hers, with the promise of his kiss.

“That will be all, Miss Franklin.” He turned slightly toward her, giving her a view of his injured side. It seemed he was intentionally trying to put her off.

Mercy’s face burned with mortification at her lapse of decorum, and at his sudden indifference. She didn’t notice the odd thickness to his voice, but gave a nod that she was sure he could not possibly see, and quit the room.

Nash had to get outside. Outside and far away from temptation, for Miss Franklin was seduction personified. He derived a perverse pleasure from her brash comments, and had been so distracted by the promise of those plush lips against his that he’d nearly pulled her against his chest and ravaged them.

Once again she had not even seemed to notice his scars.

“Lowell!” he shouted as he strode purposefully from the library. He headed for the door that led to the stable, expecting the steward to hear him and follow.

Nash had waged a savage little battle to gain the strength of will to turn away from Mercy Franklin, even though his heart was thumping uncontrollably in his chest and his groin hardening with unrelenting force. She’d borne the now-familiar fragrance of lilies again, so enticing in its simplicity, so completely opposite to the lady herself. Nash didn’t think he’d ever be able to encounter the scent again without becoming aroused.

Roarke joined him in the stable yard.

“Mr. Lowell went into Keswick, sir.”

“What the hell for?”

Roarke shrugged. “He didn’t say.”

Nash swallowed his annoyance. He’d wanted the company of the one man who’d seen the magistrate’s report, the one man who’d been present at Ashby on the day Arthur had died. “Get our horses saddled, Roarke. You’re coming with me.”

“Where do we go, my lord?”

“To the high road where my brother’s carriage went over.”

Roarke said naught, but Nash noticed a slight lifting of the man’s brow.

Nash gave no explanation. There was enough time before dark to ride to the place where Arthur’s accident had occurred. And a trip to the high road would surely help him to conquer his preoccupation with Emmaline’s governess.

They saddled their horses and started for the road to Braithwaite where Arthur’s carriage had dropped off the road.

“Mr. Lowell said it was raining for days when your brother started out,” said Roarke.

Nash made a low sound of agreement. There’d been heavy rains and terrible road conditions. It was just like Arthur to go ahead, in spite of the dangers, for there was to be a very prestigious crowd gathered for the weekend party at Baron Landry’s house.

Georgia had accompanied Arthur, of course, but Nash was exceedingly thankful his brother had not taken Emmaline along.

It took nearly an hour to reach the fatal spot at the highest point of the fell. Nash knew he’d found the correct location, for he could still see fragments of wood and metal and glass littering the rocks over the edge of the cliff.

Nash dismounted at the site, and Roarke followed suit.

“This must be it,” the corporal said. He pulled off his cap and scratched his head, frowning.

“The road is unnaturally narrow here. A carriage could barely get past.” Nash turned to look back the way they’d come and shook his head. “They would have been walking up to this point.”

“In the rain, sir?”

He nodded. “It’s too steep for a team to pull a carriage with occupants. Our custom up here is for passengers to step out of the carriage on steep inclines, whether up or down.”

“What could have happened, then?” Roarke began to retrace the steps Arthur and Georgia would have walked, and Nash turned away as his grief threatened to spill out. “Did they walk in front of the carriage, or behind?”

He managed to choke out a reply. “Likely in front.”

“Are you sure they would have been walking here? Begging your pardon, sir, if the weather was so bad, wouldn’t your brother’s wife have refused to get out and walk in the rain and mud?”

“I didn’t know her well enough to say,” Nash said. But on the few occasions they had met, Georgia had been far more pompous than Arthur, and prickly, too. Nash supposed it was possible Georgia had refused to walk, especially since she would want to be at her best when they arrived at Landry House.

He tried to re-create Georgia’s thought process. “I don’t suppose she’d have wanted soaked and muddy clothes when they arrived at their destination.”

But as socially conscious as Georgia was, she was no fool. He could not imagine that she’d stay inside the carriage when the driver had gotten down to lead the horses, as he must have done. Surely Arthur would have gotten out, though he might have told Georgia to remain inside.

Nash turned and watched as Roarke paced the crumbled stretch near the edge and tried to visualize what might have happened that fateful day.

“I don’t know, sir . . .”

“What are you thinking, Corporal?”

He shook his head as if to clear it. “If they were inside the carriage and a wheel went off the edge . . .”

“The whole carriage would have gone over,” Nash remarked, wincing as he pictured the screaming horses and the crash of the carriage. Worse, he could almost see his brother’s broken body tumbling down the side of the fell, where it had not been found for two days.

A roiling wave of nausea caught him off guard.

“But even if they were all walking, the mud would have been slippery, wouldn’t it?” Roarke said, moving away from the precarious edge. “And this road is far too narrow.”

Nash shook his head. “You think someone tampered with it? Narrowed it intentionally?”

Roarke put his hands on his hips and looked down the cliff. “Well, sir, I did a lot of trench digging in the army. And I . . . well, I wouldn’t overlook the possibility.”

Nash came to stand beside Roarke near the edge of the road and looked down. It would take a very determined man to do what Roarke seemed to be suggesting. Who would have done such a thing? And why? It all came back to the question of who would gain from the Farris brothers’ deaths.

And there was no one—other than the British government itself.

“They had an experienced driver,” Nash said evenly, “a man who was born and raised here in the lakes. He knew the dangers, he knew what precautions to take. He’d have seen the narrowing. And yet he allowed his carriage to go down, and him with it. It doesn’t make sense.”

Or perhaps Nash was wrong about the Ashby curse.

In the bright morning light streaming through the nursery windows, Mercy felt a tight ripple of awareness slide through her as Lord Ashby stopped inside the doorway. He stood watching for a moment as she brushed Emmaline’s hair and braided it into a neat plait.

Mercy had not seen him since the night before, but in the hours since their encounter in the library, she had not been able to stop thinking of his touch, or the cravings he’d roused in her. She could still feel the tingling in her breasts and the heated stirrings between her thighs. He’d intended to kiss her.

And she had been more than ready to respond to his touch.

In a quick glance, Mercy noted that his clothes were the ones he usually favored, fawn breeches and a dark green coat with a black waistcoat and white shirt underneath. His neck was bare, and Mercy found herself wondering how that bit of skin would taste. Like his shaving soap? Like the man himself?

Appalled at the direction of her thoughts, she concentrated on tying a ribbon at the end of Emmaline’s plait.

And making her face a mask of indifference.

“Miss Franklin . . .” His voice echoed through her.

She cleared her throat. “There. All finished,” she said to Emmaline, avoiding looking up at the earl.

“I have need of some . . . housekeeping advice.”

Mercy’s eyes darted up to his, in spite of herself. It was the last thing she expected him to say. “Housekeeping? That, my lord, is what housekeepers are for.”

“Yes, well, need I remind you that we have no housekeeper here at Ashby Hall?”

“No need to remind me, my lord. The evidence is clear, everywhere I look.”

“Which is why I am asking for your opinion. Counsel, as it were.”

Silently, Emmaline went into the schoolroom, leaving Mercy alone with Lord Ashby, who came all the way into the nursery. He stood close to her, but at a proper distance. A far cry from his position the previous day when she’d approached him in his library.

“I would appreciate your assistance, Miss Franklin. I intend to hold a house party soon, but the house . . . The house needs work. Thanks to old Grainger, the Ashby silver is presentable, but nothing else is.”

“My lord, I—”

“I realize this is beyond the scope of your employment at Ashby Hall. And I assure you, it will only be a matter of consultation.” He clasped his hands behind his back and turned to the window, and Mercy wondered if he even remembered their exchange in the library the previous afternoon. “I have the labor to accomplish whatever tasks you assign. My men know about sweeping and mopping and what-have-you. But clearly, there is more that needs to be done. The hall must be made ready.”

“I haven’t any experience. A house party?” A little flutter of panic rose in her breast. “With overnight guests?”

It was one thing to take little Emmaline under her wing and teach her to read, write, and cipher. But Ashby’s reputation would surely rise or fall upon the quality of the party the earl intended to hold.

“Yes, I . . . I suppose so.” A crease appeared between his brows, and Mercy suspected he wasn’t quite sure what a house party entailed.

Well, neither was she.

“Several, I imagine,” he replied.

“Good Lord, it will be a monumental task.”

The earl turned back to face her, and Mercy felt an agonizing, all-consuming, wholly inappropriate craving for the rasp of his calloused hands on her skin. She closed her eyes and spun away from him.

“My lord, I would have no idea where to start. My father’s house was one tenth the size of Ashby Hall, and we rarely entertained. Only an occasional clergyman visited, sometimes with a wife in tow. Surely that is not the kind of guests you intend to entertain here.”

“Indeed not. But I have every confidence that you are up to the task.” He tipped his head toward the schoolroom. “Look at my niece. In a few short days, you’ve improved her appearance immeasurably.”

Mercy threw up her hands in exasperation. “A child is nothing like a house, Lord Ashby!”

“Of course not,” he said, and Mercy chose to ignore his small smile of amusement. “I merely refer to your competence with regard to her care. Besides her appearance, there is a subtle but distinct change in her bearing since you came.”

“You will badger me until I agree, won’t you, my lord?”

He nodded. “Until I get my way, yes.”

The sight of Mercy Franklin was a respite for Nash after the hellish night he’d spent. He did not think he’d slept more than a couple of hours.

His usual nightmares of the Hougoumont explosion got mixed up with Arthur’s carriage accident, and all through the night, Nash had felt as though he were falling off a cliff. Or under a burning beam. Or watching Arthur and John Trent meet their deaths. It was sheer hell.

Miss Franklin had finally agreed to his request, and she’d come down to the great hall with a plan that she’d imparted to his men. It was a systematic approach to making the Hall ready for guests—starting with a thorough cleaning of the place. The men had begun to follow her orders, and as she spoke, Nash could not help but remember their all too brief moments in the library the day before, when he’d come so close to taking her in his arms and kissing her. He was certain she’d have allowed the kiss, for she’d been just as aroused as he.

Nash imagined how she’d taste—not too sweet like an overripe peach, but spicy and unique like some untried delicacy. Her body would fit nicely against his, and Nash considered how the weight of her breasts would feel in his hands, the taste of her nipples on his tongue. He could almost hear her moan of pleasure as he—

“My lord, you are standing in the way,” Mercy said sharply, drawing him out of his reverie.

He moved aside as a hint of her lily scent wafted toward him, and Harper and Blue rolled up the carpet upon which he’d been standing.

“The library is next, my lord,” she said. “If there is anything you want to remove from that room so that you can work elsewhere without disruption, please do so this afternoon.”

“Perhaps I’ll have you work around me, Miss Franklin. How would that suit you?”

“It does not suit me at all, my lord.” She turned to speak to Roarke. “Take this bucket and start on the windows, Mr. Roarke. There are some clean rags on the mantel.”

“Miss Franklin, I had not guessed you would be as fierce as Field Marshal von Blücher.”

“Yes, you did, my lord, else you would not have assigned me this impossible task.”

Nash started a retort, but when she bent to pick up a cushion that had fallen from a chair, presenting far more bewitching curves than he had ever seen, he was rendered mute. Over her dress, she wore a plain white neckerchief that crossed over the shapely swell of her breasts and tucked into the apron that was cinched tightly at her waist. The neat knot at the nape of her neck had come loose, and his fingers tingled when he thought of its silky softness.