Seducing the Governess (22 page)

12 September, 1795. The child is already three years old, but barely speaks. And yet she wails all the time, calling for her mama and for “Teeny.” And when she is not wailing, she sucks her thumb raw while she looks at us as though she cannot understand a word we say. Robert believes she might be addled. We pray for her nightly.

Mercy felt a striking mixture of sorrow and anger. She was
not
addled, but clearly just a helpless child who desperately missed her mother and someone with the unlikely name of Teeny.

Holding her temper in check, she read on until she came to the following entry.

30 September, 1795. We’ve moved so very far from St. Edward’s and all our friends, just to keep the secret. It is altogether too dishonest and so unlike my dear, forthright husband. But the £5,000 given us by Robert’s friend, Mr. Newcomb, went far to convince him of the value of the move. I, however, can hardly reconcile myself to it.

Five thousand pounds! Mercy clutched her chest. The Franklins had been utter mercenaries. The money was a veritable fortune, obviously given to the Franklins for Mercy’s keep. They could not possibly have spent it all.

And yet Susanna had possessed next to nothing after her husband’s death. Mercy could not imagine what had happened to all that money. More importantly, she realized that she had come from a family of some means. For who else would have handed over such an exorbitant sum of money for the care of an orphan?

9 October, 1795. Every time she calls me mama I want to tell her the truth, but Robert has forbidden it. He promised never to tell another soul—including the child—that she is not truly ours.

So much deceit from the two most righteous people Mercy had ever known. They’d lived a lie every day throughout the twenty years Mercy had lived with them. She found herself softly weeping as she turned the pages, the book a strange and perverse window on her life in Underdale and the parents who were not parents at all, but mere caretakers of a child they did not believe in.

She wiped tears from her eyes and read yet another page.

7 April, 1803. We must guard against any sign of wantonness in the girl. Fortunately, she has a knack for gardening, which Robert said we should encourage. He says it will keep her busy and likely prevent her embarrassing us someday.

Mercy’s world trembled on its mooring. Her mother had been a cold woman, but this was so much worse than anything she could have imagined. She opened to the last few pages, hoping her mother would have developed at least some fondness for her toward the end. But alas.

3 May, 1815. Reverend Vale should not have spoken to Mercy before asking Robert for her hand. Her enthusiasm for the match indicates an unhealthy passion for the young man. A marriage between them would only encourage an ungodly wantonness in Mercy. We have always worried she would make the same mistakes her mother must have done.

Mercy closed the book and leaned back in her chair, trembling. There was nothing more to learn, and a great deal more pain that could be avoided. She rose from her chair and tossed the book onto the bed. She had read enough.

Feeling hollow and empty, she took her heavy woolen cloak from its hook and pulled it on, then walked out of her room and down the steps.

Nash was unsure what more to do about Lowell. He didn’t trust the man, but he had no real evidence against him, other than a few inconvenient absences and the decline of the estate. Nash was beginning to suspect that was not all Arthur’s fault.

He wanted a few moments alone with Mercy to help clarify his thoughts. It seemed like an eternity since he’d last seen her, and even longer since he’d held her in his arms.

He went up to the nursery, assuming he would find her there. Dipping his head into the room, he quickly saw that Mercy was not present. His niece and her new nurse seemed to be completely engrossed in collecting Emmaline’s measurements.

The change in his niece was remarkable. She was still a quiet child, but she’d begun to look directly at him when speaking to him, and was nowhere near as nervous around him these past couple of days. Her governess’s influence, of course.

Nash went across to Mercy’s bedroom and saw that it was empty. A book lay discarded on the bed, with a few folded notes or letters protruding from the pages. A damp handkerchief lay beside it.

He picked up the book and opened it, and saw the name of Susanna Franklin inscribed on the inside cover page. Mercy’s mother?

He read the first few puzzling entries and tried to imagine Mercy reading them, seeing that her deceased parents were not her parents at all, but just two people who’d been paid to take her in.

Had she only just seen this? Bile rose in his throat when he thought of Mercy reading this rubbish, of learning she’d been foisted off on a couple who’d not only lied to her for her entire life, but somehow lost the money they’d been paid to take her in. Mercy would not have sought employment as a governess if she’d inherited any of that money. And yet he could not imagine how the Franklins could have spent five thousand pounds on one young woman in twenty years. They’d squandered it.

Even worse was the cold manner in which Mercy must have been treated for all those years
. His heart clenched when he read of her crying for her own mother. He knew little about children, but could only imagine how he would have felt being taken from his own parents.

He knew how Emmaline had reacted to losing hers.

Mercy had not told him much about her past. He knew her father had refused her suitors. Nash recalled that she’d hesitated speaking of the second swain, a clergyman like her father.

Hearing of Reverend Franklin’s refusal of the man had confused Nash. Wouldn’t her father have thought another vicar would suit her?

Her mother gave a feeble explanation for it in her little diary, but the reason noted had been mean and nonsensical. Mercy was intelligent and kind, and conscientious to a fault. She worked hard, shepherding Emmaline out of her desperate isolation, to the point that his niece had not only begun interacting with him, but was allowing the nursemaid to measure her for new clothes. Mercy had stood up to his men—Childers and Bassett, anyway—and gotten them to follow her instructions for getting the Hall into shape according to Nash’s request.

He gritted his teeth at the thought that the Franklins would consider their lovemaking depraved when it had been more honest and pure than anything Nash had ever done.

He left the book on the bed and went downstairs. Mrs. Jones had not yet arrived from Metcalf Farm, but Henry Blue was washing windows in the entry hall. “Blue, have you seen Miss Franklin?”

“Yes, sir, my lord. I saw her leave the house not a half hour ago.”

“Where did she go?”

“I’m not sure, sir, but she was headed in the direction of the pavilion.”

Nash went after her.

The pavilion was a good, long walk from the house, and if Mercy had just been reading Susanna Franklin’s words, she was probably upset. He supposed she might welcome a strenuous walk after reading those entries.

Nash had a fair idea how they had made her feel.

He started on the path to the pavilion as a few sprinkles of rain started to fall. He hardly noticed them in his hurry to get to Mercy. He wanted to give her the reassurance she deserved. The Franklins had not deserved her. Far from it. Had they been alive, Nash might well have gotten on his horse and ridden to Underdale to give them a dressing-down more severe than any he’d delivered in the army.

When the rain began, Mercy realized it had been foolish to walk so far, ignoring the looming storm. But her mood had been bleak and she had barely noticed her surroundings. She pulled up her hood against the first fat drops of rain and hurried toward a structure in the distance—the pavilion she’d visited once before with Emmaline . . . and Nash.

She quickly made it to its covered colonnade and moved in close to the wall, just narrowly avoiding getting drenched. Mercy stood still, catching her breath as the rain came down in waves, soaking the hilly lands all around.

Her head bowed, she shivered with the cold, and let her tears fall. She should be grateful, she knew, that she had not been abandoned to the parish poorhouse, or some terrible orphanage. Her life with the Franklins had been reasonably comfortable, in spite of the fact that they had thought so little of her.

She had tried so very hard to please them.

The wind changed and suddenly, the rain started coming down in sheets. Mercy hardly noticed. Her emotions were profoundly raw. She dropped down to her knees and wept, never having felt so alone. She’d spent her life trying to please her parents, always hoping she would soon win their approval. But she’d been hard-pressed to measure up to their high standards, and she knew she’d failed more often than not.

She doubted she would ever measure up.

Her tears of despair flowed as savagely as the rain all around her, and Mercy wished she could just crawl inside the pavilion and stay there forever.

But she would go to Andrew Vale if he would have her, and live her life as his wife. He was a decent man, but Mercy knew she would live out her years feeling empty and aching for the one man who’d touched her soul. The one man who could not offer for her.

She tried to convince herself that it was not so bad a fate. The Franklins had raised her to become a vicar’s wife, even though they’d refused a perfectly proper, acceptable offer from Mr. Vale. And her already shaken spirit reeled at the thought that they would have refused every man of character. They’d believed her unworthy.

“Mercy!”

She recognized Nash’s voice, but did not want to look up, did not want him to see her in her present state.

Mercy rose to her feet and stumbled away, hoping to go to the other side of the circular colonnade, even though she knew it was a fruitless endeavor. But she was not feeling quite logical at the moment.

“Mercy.” She felt his hands at her back, taking hold of her shoulders and turning her around. He took one look at her face and pulled her to him, holding her tightly as she wept. “Hush, sweetheart. I saw the diary. I know what she wrote, but it’s not true. None of it.”

She’d left the journal on her bed—anyone could have read it, and obviously, Nash had, at least some of it. She could have disputed his words—that it wasn’t the contents of Susanna’s journal that mattered—just the sentiments. But she had not the wherewithal to speak, not when her throat burned and her tears flowed so freely. She kept her face buried in his chest and drew on the strength of his arms around her.

“Come inside,” he said. “It’ll be warmer there. And dry.”

She heard the click of a latch, and a section of the exterior wall suddenly swung open, and then they were inside. He closed the door behind him, and with the few small windows in the dome overhead, Mercy got a sense of the interior of the pavilion, a circular room with covered furniture inside. In other circumstances, it would be a lovely summerhouse. But Mercy had little appreciation for such things now.

Nash pulled a dusty Holland cover from a cushioned chaise, and when he came back to her, he kissed her tearstained face, and then gave her mouth a gentle brush with his lips. He led her to the chair and sat down in it, pulling her onto his lap.

He loosened her cloak and drew it over them both, leaning back in the reclining chair as he cocooned them in its warmth.

“You should have left me to my misery,” she said, though she did not mean it. His embrace touched her heart deeply, giving her comfort where there’d been emptiness only a few moments ago.

“Not after I found that diary on your bed. I couldn’t leave you alone.” He rubbed her back, creating a soothing warmth. She blinked away her tears and wiped her cheeks with the handkerchief he handed her. “Feel better now?”

She swallowed. How could she possibly feel better? Her world had shifted beneath her feet in every possible way. She barely knew who she was. The only thing certain was how much she cared for this man who held her close.

All Nash wanted was to hold Mercy in his arms and give her some solace. That diary was brutal. No one should have to read such revolting drivel. She was trembling, but at least her tears had abated.

“You’d never read the diary before?”

“No,” she whispered. “I found it after my mother died, but I . . . I didn’t want to look inside.”

“You didn’t know?”

She didn’t speak for a moment, and Nash just held her trembling body. “Just before she died, my mother . . . told me I was not really her daughter. She didn’t explain.”

“Callous of her.”

“She was very ill . . . barely capable of speech.”

“You are far too generous, sweetheart. She had years to tell you.”

“She had a vow to keep.”

“And a great deal of money, it would seem.”

“Yes. I . . . It must be gone now. We had little enough to live on after my father died, and there was nothing left of that after Susanna . . .”

He gathered her close. “Don’t think of it now.”

She pressed her cheek to his chest and he felt an unfamiliar tenderness invade his heart. The thought of five thousand pounds should have stirred him, but it held far less importance than Mercy’s sorrow. He kissed the top of her head and held her close.

“I know I should not,” she said, looking up at him. “It doesn’t matter who my true parents are. Or who I am.”

He shifted them so that they lay on their sides, facing each other. Her eyes were in shadows, their pale green much darker now, but full of her bright intelligence and utterly appealing. “You know who you are, Mercy, sweet.”

He cupped her face in his hand and leaned in to touch her soft lips with his. He’d meant it to be a comforting gesture, but his pulse began a mad clatter as soon as their lips met, seeking an end to this unending craving he felt for her. He loved the feeling of her full mouth pressed against his, and the scent of her skin. But he withdrew, feeling like an unscrupulous rogue for wanting her so desperately now, when she was so vulnerable.