Seducing the Governess (5 page)

No doubt Miss Franklin found favor with the man’s unblemished visage. “I take it your little foray up to the nursery went satisfactorily?” Nash asked, unable to check his caustic tone.

Lowell gave a nod. “Aye. Miss Franklin seems to have matters well in hand.”

“Which matters would that be?” He felt unaccountably irritated that Lowell had taken the opportunity to dally with Emmaline’s governess. The woman was to manage his niece, and nothing more. Certainly not to flirt with Lowell, the youngest son of a Gloucestershire baron.

Nash did not know why Lowell had stayed at Ashby after Hoyt’s death. Surely Arthur had been a difficult, off-putting master, and the estate had declined under his inept management. Nash could easily imagine his middle brother taking control of all his accounts and giving the steward little more than a few schoolboy assignments. But Lowell’s assistance in deciphering Ashby’s account books had been invaluable to Nash during the past month.

Lowell was not much of a sheep man, however. Hoyt had had a head shepherd who’d resigned on Arthur’s accession, and of course Arthur had deemed such a man unnecessary. According to Lowell, Arthur felt that since he’d grown up in sheep country, he knew how to manage the herd.

He could not have been more wrong, as was blatantly evidenced by his ledgers and account books.

Nash hoped that with an infusion of capital and the right advice on rebuilding and managing the sheep herd, the Ashby estate could very well become a thriving estate again in a few years.

“What did you think of the report Mr. Wardlow showed you, my lord?” Lowell asked.

Nash had looked over the official accounts of his brothers’ deaths, the interviews with possible witnesses and servants who had knowledge of the events. Nash rubbed the mounting ache at his temple. “Which?”

“The, er . . . shooting incident.”

“Hardly sufficient. There was not even a list of the guests who went out hunting with Hoyt that day,” Nash said, frowning. “You were not here even for part of the day, Lowell?”

“No, my lord. I was down in Grasmere that day. But I believe your brother’s usual guests would have been present for the hunt.”

No doubt. But Nash had been away for years, in active military service. He knew only a few of the most prestigious men of the district these days, and next to nothing about running an estate.

Nash thought of the hundreds of entries he’d read in his brothers’ journals and wondered if he would ever be able to make sense of them. He’d seen ample evidence of Arthur’s pigheadedness in his receipts and ledgers, and it seemed he’d become even more arrogant after his marriage to Georgia.

“Wardlow mentioned some of the men who’d been at the hunt—and they, no doubt, can identify the others.”

“Will you send them queries?” Lowell asked.

“Perhaps,” Nash said, although another idea had come to him just before his fall on the road. Before he’d encountered the ever-so-distracting Miss Franklin with her lush curves and impertinent mouth. “I’ve not entertained since my return to the Hall. Perhaps I should host a house party.”

He really couldn’t afford it, but he was going to need to establish connections in the district. As Earl of Ashby, Nash was the highest-ranking nobleman in the vicinity—though perhaps the poorest.

But social gatherings were generally rife with gossip and information. A casual party with all the notables of the district could very well afford Nash the opportunity to find answers to the questions he had about Hoyt’s death. If he used his existing funds carefully, he could manage it.

First on his list of guests would be Sir William Metcalf and his wife, old friends of the Farris family. Their son, Jacob, had been a constant companion of Nash and his brothers, but he’d been killed a few years back, during the Peninsular Campaign.

Nash realized he’d put off his visit to Metcalf Farm far too long. Sir Will might even know something useful about Hoyt’s death. Something that would put Nash’s mind at ease.

“You’ll need servants in order to entertain, my lord,” Lowell said. “Proper servants, and not just old Grainger and your men.”

Nash nodded, and the ache in his left temple responded with a sharp burst. He shut his eyes for a moment and it subsided, freeing him to consider the matter at hand.

He’d inherited a modest sum from his father, which had grown somewhat over the years. It was certainly not enough to correct all of Ashby’s failings, but he’d heard an old adage that one needed to spend money to make money.

Nash believed it would be well spent on an Ashby party, not only because it would provide a setting for idle talk and reminiscences about past events here, but because it would afford an opportunity for him to meet his neighbors and see if any of them would be interested in investing in Ashby.

Nash had spent the past few weeks with Lowell, assessing what improvements the Ashby estate needed and estimating what it would all cost. Like Sir Will and most of the other landowners in the district, Ashby had always depended upon sheep’s wool and good mutton for its wealth. But it was clear even to Nash that the herd needed to be restored and they needed a competent head shepherd to manage it. In less than two years since Hoyt’s death, it seemed to have dwindled to naught.

In addition, Arthur had allowed the arable fields to lie fallow for his entire tenure. The orchards were overgrown and there was flooding in the south fields. The roof of the Hall leaked in spots, and most of the rooms were musty and neglected. Worst of all were the risky investments Arthur had made that had plunged Ashby deeply into debt.

He looked over at Lowell and caught him scowling. “Aye, it’ll cost me, but a house party will give me an opportunity to become acquainted with as many local landowners as I can,” Nash said. “And I’ll need those connections for the long term.”

Lowell’s expression lightened somewhat. “Church, too, my lord.”

“Church?”

“You might consider attending—it’s a good place to meet people. To talk to other farm owners in the district.”

It had been a very long time since Nash had gone to church. He’d deemed it a pointless endeavor ever since Waterloo. He’d seen action in many a battle, but the carnage at Hougoumont Farm . . .

He turned his face toward the fire but the movement hurt his head. He rubbed his aching temple again. “You did well enough in finding a governess for Emmaline, Lowell. Perhaps you can ask if they’ve heard of an available sheep manager when you attend church Sunday morning.”

“I’ll ask Reverend Swan. He and his wife know everyone in the parish . . . maybe in all of Cumbria.”

Nash had some connections, too—wealthy officers he’d known in the army. He had already written to a few of his closest friends, asking for modest loans, but it would take time to receive answers from them.

“You approve of Miss Franklin, my lord?”

He glanced up at Lowell’s sudden change of subject. Nash had had absolutely no idea what to do with Emmaline. After thirteen years in the army, and most of those years at war with France, he was accustomed to dealing with men—especially of the rough and ready sort—like those he’d brought to Ashby Hall with him. What a mess. He was lucky the walls were not crumbling around him.

But wait—they were.

“She’ll do.”

A light tap at the door interrupted his train of thought, and Lowell opened it to admit Miss Franklin, alone. Her posture was just as stiff as it had been during their initial interview, but this time, Nash noted a gleam of pique in her eyes.

“May I have a word with you, my lord?”

“Leave us, Lowell,” he said, enjoying the disconcerted expression Miss Franklin quickly tried to hide.

“But my lord—”

“That’s an order, Lowell.” Not that the man wouldn’t seek out Mercy Franklin at a more convenient time. The steward exited the room, but left the door open.

“Close it, Lowell.”

The man did as he was told.

“Abandoned your charge already, Miss Franklin?” Nash asked. For some perverse reason, he enjoyed goading her.

“On the contrary, Lord Ashby,” she said, her feathers most amusingly ruffled. “She is with Mr. Blue at the moment. I wanted to speak to you outside her presence.”

He gestured to the comfortable chair opposite him. She sat on its edge, her back fiercely unbent in her proper, dark blue gown, though her features were anything but prim. He could not recall any other woman with eyes so sharp a green, or skin that looked so enticingly soft. Miss Franklin might try to remain completely aloof, but her demeanor was sabotaged by the most sensual mouth Nash had ever seen.

Dark buttons marched from the high waist of her gown to the collar at her throat, and he found himself shifting in his seat as he imagined her unfastening each one when she made herself ready for bed. No doubt her underthings appeared plain and white and just as stiff as her demeanor, but they would slide ever so softly from her shoulders before catching on the tips of her breasts.

Nash allowed his eyes to return to her face, where he noted the most delectable flush of color on her cheeks. He had a feeling he was going to enjoy this encounter far more than he ought.

Chapter 7

G
avin Briggs made the obligatory visit to his father’s estate near Durham, but relations between them were not improved. Lord Hargrove still resented the fact that Gavin could not tell him about his work during the war.

And Gavin despised his father for turning out his sister when she’d become pregnant.

Gavin had been away at the time, of course, for he’d been employed by the foreign office, engaging in clandestine activities, of which many were still ongoing in France and Russia. He would not risk the identities and lives of his peers, just to placate his arrogant viscount father who had no real need to know what information the Foreign Office was obtaining about England’s newest potential enemies. The information his father wanted about Gavin’s work would be reduced to gossip, puerile and trivial.

And Gavin would have none of it.

Of course Viscount Hargrove had shown his anger by pulling in the purse strings, which made it imperative that Gavin find the granddaughters of the Duke of Windermere and win the substantial reward promised by the duke, and quickly. There was a fine property Gavin wanted to purchase down in Hampshire, where he could bring his sister and her child, and give them a home. But the gentleman who owned it would not wait forever. Gavin needed to come up with some funds to show old Mr. Wickford he was in earnest. He intended to retire to the country as a gentleman farmer, a good many miles away from his spoiled family.

His disgust was not limited to his father. He despised old Windermere for disowning his daughter. The aging duke should be horsewhipped for what he’d done to his granddaughters twenty years back. But that would only hasten the old gaffer’s death. Gavin wanted to see Lily and Christina Hayes spit in His Grace’s rheumy old eye.

Just as Gavin wished he could see his sister spit in their own sire’s. Not that it would change anything. His family lived an insular life west of Durham, without any real knowledge of the war and the circumstances that made lesser people desperate.

At least Gavin had the opportunity to win a significant treasure if he found the children—young women now. He had the skill and the wherewithal to track them down. This particular puzzle was going to be a challenge, however, since the steward who’d handled matters was long dead, and Sarah and her barrister husband had drowned in the Thames nearly twenty years before. Gavin had to go back to their roots, to the place where they’d spent their married years, and see if there was anyone in London who remembered them.

More important, he needed to find someone who recalled what had happened to their children.

It was a difficult task, but not impossible.

Nash closed his eyes and took a deep breath, chiding himself for lusting after the tidy little governess. He’d bedded some of the most sophisticated women of Paris and London, and yet he found himself bewitched by this sassy, black-haired wench who didn’t know when to keep silent.

“Lord Ashby, are you unwell? Should I call some—”

“Not at all,” he said, annoyed that she would think of him as infirm. He was in possession of as much strength and stamina—if not the good looks—as he’d always had. If he could just see an end of these headaches . . . He lowered his hand from his aching temple. “You had something to tell me about my niece?”

“Not exactly, my lord. I’d hoped to ask you about Lady Emmaline’s past.”

Nash’s brows came together. “Her past? She is a child. How much past could she possibly have?”

A charming little crease appeared between her brows, and she bit her lip the way she’d done earlier, eliciting the very same reaction he’d experienced before. Instant arousal. “ ’Tis likely that many things have happened to her, my lord. The loss of her parents, for example.”

Nash repositioned himself in his chair. “Is that what’s made her so quiet?”

“Possibly.”

He had not really considered whether Emmaline still grieved for Joanna and Hoyt. She’d been little more than an infant when her mother died, and Hoyt had been killed more than two years later. But Miss Franklin’s words caused him to understand there could be more to his niece’s reticence than he’d assumed. And giving Miss Franklin a brief history of past events might assist her in Emmaline’s education and care. An added benefit was that talking would give him something else to think of, other than that row of buttons nestled so sweetly between her breasts.

“Emmaline’s father was my eldest brother, Hoyt, who became earl after my father died. His wife, Emmaline’s mother, died bearing a son, five or six years ago.” Nash had been involved in some very heavy fighting in Portugal during that time, and the dates were unclear in his memory.

He noted a pained expression crossing Mercy Franklin’s fine features. “Emmaline would have been about two years old, then?”

He shrugged, unwilling to revisit the grief he felt at the loss of his brothers, even the pretentious Arthur. They’d been close in age, and Nash’s mother used to call them her three little lambs, running together all over the grounds as though their childhood would never end.

Nash looked toward the fire and found himself rubbing the side of his head against the unremitting ache there. “I have it on good authority that my niece is eight years old.”

“How long has it been since her father passed away?” Miss Franklin asked quietly.

“Two years ago this fall.”

“Which would have made Emmaline six years old at the time.”

“You have a way with numbers, Miss Franklin. A very laudable talent for a governess.”

“Has she had any schooling at all?” she asked, ignoring his sarcasm.

“I haven’t any idea.”

“But you—”

“Arrived here just over a month ago,” he replied.

If only he had met this woman on the dance floor at Lady Richmond’s ball a year ago, before Waterloo . . . Paying court to a beautiful young woman was the best possible diversion for an army officer anticipating battle.

Or for a damaged man, seeking to forget.

“I have little knowledge of Emmaline’s history,” he said abruptly. “And since I cannot help you any further . . .”

“I don’t understand.”

“Of course you don’t. It’s all very complicated.”

And so was his attraction to the wench. His life would never be the same. With a good bit of his face burned off and his brothers and closest friends dead, he did not care to forge any more alliances than necessary.

Mercy saw a restlessness in Lord Ashby that went beyond his bruised ankle. She sensed that he would be up and prowling the room if he could, if not for the injury to his limb. She ignored his implied dismissal.

“My lord, if I am to be an effective teacher, I will need to know somewhat more about my pupil.”

“If you think to scold me, Miss Franklin, then you must think again.” He stood, in spite of the obvious discomfort in his ankle, and took the few steps necessary to reach the fireplace, limping slightly. He rested one hand against the mantel and eased his weight off his hurt ankle, then rotated his foot as if to test it. “I am a soldier, not a nursemaid. You will have to ask Emmaline what education she has experienced before my arrival here.”

“My lord, she is so very reticent—”

“She is shy, Miss Franklin.”

“Abnormally so. And she has no nurse, no one to take care of her.” Mercy stood and approached Lord Ashby, refusing to be intimidated by this tall, arrogant man whose features were so hard and sharp they seemed to have been carved from stone.

“Which is why Lowell summoned you.”

“My lord, your niece is surrounded by soldiers—or former soldiers, I suppose. Are there no . . . In a house this size, is there no housekeeper? Are there no maids?”

“My men are managing adequately.”

Mercy wondered how the man could be so dense. “My lord . . . who was responsible for Emmaline after her father’s death?”

“That would have been my next brother, Arthur, and his wife.”

It took less than a moment for Mercy to realize that this brother must also have died, else the present Lord Ashby would not be earl. “You mean to say . . .”

He clenched his jaw tightly before he responded. “Yes, Miss Franklin. My two elder brothers both met with untimely deaths, leaving Emmaline in my admittedly inadequate care.”

Mercy could not imagine the grief and uncertainty the child must have felt upon losing her parents and then her uncle. Emmy must feel far more adrift than Mercy did.

“And her aunt . . . ?”

“Georgia died in the same carriage accident last year that killed my brother.”

Mercy swallowed. So much tragedy in Emmaline’s short life. She kept her eyes trained upon Lord Ashby’s and spoke quietly. “Have you spoken with her, my lord?”

“Spoken? About what?”

“About . . . well, anything, I suppose.”

He rubbed the side of his head the way her father used to do when it pained him, which was often. “She does not speak much, does she?”

“No,” Mercy replied quietly. Lord Ashby was obviously out of his element with Emmaline, and likely grieving for his brothers as well.

It was becoming clear that he intended for Mercy to function as governess, nurse, and companion to Emmaline. And since she had nowhere else to go at the moment, she supposed the situation would have to do. For the moment, at least, until she decided whether to write Andrew Vale. “My lord, I’ve examined the nursery and schoolroom, and there are a few supplies that will be needed.”

“I’m sure you’ll find everything you need somewhere about the house, Miss Franklin.”

“Do I have your permission to take what I need for Emmaline’s lessons?”

“Of course. Feel free to scour the place for all the slates and chalk we possess.”

Nash’s ankle improved significantly by keeping off it for the rest of the evening, but he had Sergeant Parker bind it for him, just to give it some additional needed support. Unfortunately, Parker could do naught about the lascivious thoughts of Miss Franklin that continued to plague him in spite of all the reading he still needed to do.

It had been some time since he’d shared intimacies with a woman, and nearly a year since any female had looked at him without disdain—or worse, pity. Yet Miss Franklin hardly seemed to notice the dull gray of his injured eye or the scars that surrounded it. She must be so intent upon her new profession that his disfigurement escaped her.

His eyes felt strained as he read through the last of the ledgers kept by Hoyt’s estate manager. Ashby had been solvent at the time of Hoyt’s death, but not as profitable as it had been in prior years. Improvements to the arable land had drained some profits from the estate, but Hoyt and his tenants had stood to reap a better return in future years.

Unfortunately, Arthur’s training had not prepared him to manage an estate, and Lowell indicated he’d refused the steward’s help. Arthur was a university-educated clergyman, and had been insufferably pompous after receiving his divinity degree. The mulish nature he’d exhibited in boyhood had only been made worse by the achievement.

For all that they were brothers, Nash didn’t know how Arthur’s parishioners had tolerated him. ’Twas likely they’d been delighted with his accession to the earldom, for it meant he and his lofty wife would move on, away from his church in Thursby.

And now Nash was stuck with the estate Arthur had ruined.

He needed cash, and though some of his former fellow officers had promised to lend him money if need be, the greatest and easiest infusion of wealth would be through a rich wife.

Nash had never planned to marry, but he was the last of the Farrises. Now that he was earl, with an estate to bequeath to an heir, he understood he had a duty to improve Ashby and produce said heir so the title would not revert to the crown. For he had no other relations in his line.

Nash tried to think of a likely marital candidate. He’d spent nearly a year in London during and after his recovery, and met several belles of society. None had been of any interest to him, and he’d been naught but a curiosity to them, a scarred survivor of Waterloo with a bankrupt title.

He sighed and closed Hoyt’s ledger. It was still early in the year, the social season having just begun. Nash supposed he could return to London and see what young heiresses were available on the marriage mart—one whose father would not care that Ashby Hall was at least three hundred miles from London, and a dark and dismal wreck of a place.

But he dreaded the thought of it.

Mercy’s priority that evening was to make her bedchamber habitable. She could start on Emmaline’s lessons tomorrow, but she had to sleep in this room tonight. By the way her eyes watered and nose twitched when she’d opened the drapes to look outside, she knew sleep would be impossible until she eliminated a significant amount of dust from the room.

She’d learned precious little from Lord Ashby, but it was enough, perhaps, to understand how shaken Emmaline might have been with the loss of both her father and her uncle in such short order. Mercy didn’t know how close she’d been to either man, but Emmaline’s favorite book was the one her mother had made for her. Surely that said something, especially since Emmaline had been little more than an infant when her mother died.

In spite of her young age, Emmaline must have felt bereft at her mother’s loss. Just as Mercy must have done, though she could not remember anything about her life before being taken in by the Franklins. She did not want the same to happen to Emmaline.

Keeping Emmy with her and giving the girl little tasks to keep her occupied, Mercy swept and dusted her bedchamber. It was as medieval as the great hall, with stone walls and dark wood paneling around the fireplace that matched the heavy door. It was not a warm and welcoming room, but she determined to make it so, at least for the duration of her employment at Ashby Hall.

Mercy ventured down to the empty kitchen for a bucket of water, and returned to wash every surface of the room. With Emmaline’s help, she located the housekeeping cabinets and found some clean linens for the bed. By the time she’d made the room habitable, she was tired enough to crawl into the bed—but just as hungry. “Soon we’ll go and find some supper. How does that sound, Emmaline?”