Seducing the Governess (6 page)

The little girl nodded, observing Mercy carefully, as though she didn’t quite know what to make of her new teacher.

She did not say much, but Mercy talked enough to make up for Emmaline’s reserve, telling the child about the life she’d left at Underdale. She avoided speaking of her own recent losses, only mentioning her friends and the gardens she’d kept both at home and at her father’s church.

Mercy still did not know what to think of the couple she’d known as her parents, or of the mother who’d abandoned her. A number of the ill-fitting pieces of her life at Underdale began to make some kind of sense with Susanna’s revelation, though Mercy did not think she would ever fully understand why the harsh Reverend Franklin had ever agreed to take her in. He’d never enjoyed the affections of his adopted daughter. Why hadn’t he just handed her over to the parish?

Mercy mused that maybe it was because Reverend Franklin believed Susanna should have the companionship of a daughter. Not that Susanna had ever been a warm, maternal type of woman. She’d always been stingy with her affections, perhaps because Mercy was not her own.

Mercy wondered about the woman who had given her life. Who was she? What had made her abandon her little daughter? Had it been easy or heart-wrenching for her?

Mercy supposed the answers to those questions might very well reside within the pages of Susanna’s journal. Now that she was temporarily settled at Ashby Hall, she was determined to summon the courage to read through her mother’s memoir. Likely she would find nothing more than what Susanna had already told her, though her mother’s memory might have been at least partially impaired by illness at the time she’d revealed her twenty-year-old secret. She had not been able to answer any of Mercy’s questions, but whispered apologies to her dead husband for divulging their secret.

Apparently, no one was to know Mercy was not their natural child.

Though Mercy might learn more from her mother’s journal, the thought of reading Susanna’s innermost thoughts caused an uncomfortable constriction in her chest. She’d had two mothers, one who’d held little—or perhaps no—affection for her, and the other who had abandoned her.

She put aside her disquieting thoughts and chatted as she made the bed. “Perhaps when the weather changes, your uncle will allow us to plant a small garden.” Plants and the peace of a garden were what she knew, what comforted her, and the tightness in her chest eased, just thinking about fresh shoots taking root in the grounds outside her window.

She hoped Lord Ashby would allow them to plant. The Hall might begin to feel more like home to Mercy if she could grow her own flowers and plants. And she thought it possible that an interest in botany might help to bring Emmaline out of her introversion.

“My papa liked to grow things,” Emmaline said quietly.

“Did he have a garden?”

Emmy nodded. “A big one. With pots and trees.”

“Perhaps you’ll show me.”

The little girl lowered her eyes. “It’s all dead.”

Mercy sat down beside her. “We’ll get some seedlings and make it grow again. In honor of your father. How does that sound?”

Emmaline brightened, and looked directly at Mercy, something she had not yet done. “Very good.”

Mercy touched Emmaline then, running one hand lightly across her shoulder and down her arm. It was not much comfort, but when Emmaline let out a tremulous breath, Mercy wondered if it was not the beginning of a bond between them.

There was one last task before the bedchamber would be usable. In spite of the overwhelming fatigue Mercy felt after her long day, she pulled a chair over to the window. Lifting her skirts out of the way, she stepped onto the chair and reached for the top of the draperies. “These musty old things must be beaten before I will allow them to remain in here,” she said to Emmy, stretching precariously to reach the rod. She did not mind sleeping with these windows bare since they overlooked the vast, empty fells that surrounded the Hall.

“In my home, we used to take out all the draperies and carpets every spring and autumn, and beat them in the yard with sticks,” she said, remembering the unusually relaxed atmosphere of the household during those times. Reverend Franklin always hired additional help for the big cleaning days, and with everyone working so hard to make the house ready for winter or to clear away the winter stuffiness, Mercy’s parents were more relaxed and lenient than at other times of the year. “My father was a very meticulous man who liked—”

She leaned a little bit too far, and lost her balance. Sure that she was going to fall, she grasped the air for purchase on something—anything that would break her fall. She heard Emmaline’s squeal and a man’s harsh oath.

Lord Ashby.

She did not know how he happened to be there at just the right moment, but he caught her against his chest—his powerful arms around her derriere, the very backside he’d so inappropriately admired while she was assisting him in the road. His face was level with her bosom.

Right then, Mercy was certain it would have been better to fall. Her nipples tightened against her chemise, and she was very glad the dark muslin of her gown prevented him from being able to note the change. It would not do at all for him to realize she was reacting to his touch in such an indecent manner.

She could not help but notice that he smelled of shaving soap and leather. And when his hot breath warmed her chest, her heart seemed to stop. A prickling sensation skated up her back, along with a heated awareness of his strong arms around her. He held her tightly, saying naught for a moment as he looked into her eyes.

It felt as though time stopped and all the air suddenly drained from the room.

A glossy, black tuft of his hair fell across his forehead, and Mercy resisted the urge to blow a light puff of air across it. She sucked her lower lip through her teeth and released it slowly, unable to take her eyes from his remarkable face.

A muscle in his jaw flexed once, the sight of which jolted Mercy to the present. Embarrassed by her unseemly, foolishly potent reaction to this man, she looked away while he loosened his grasp and allowed her to skim slowly down the length of his body. She felt every inch of his hard, male form as she slid down his length, and when she touched the floor, her legs wobbled unsteadily.

He did not immediately take his hands away, and Mercy forced herself to take a step back, ignoring the heat that suffused her face. She’d never experienced such a close encounter with a man, not even with Andrew Vale, whose wife she’d had every intention of becoming.

She wondered if she’d have reacted to Mr. Vale in such a wanton manner. She pressed one hand to her breast as though she could contain the highly inappropriate awakening of those wayward sensations.

“You must ask one of my men for assistance with such chores, Miss Franklin. Henry Blue is nearly always about.”

“I will, my lord.” Her voice came out as a strange croak.

Lord Ashby tipped his head slightly at the sound and sat down on the chair from which Mercy had fallen, and leaned over to rub his ankle. In the past few moments, she had completely forgotten his injury.

“Oh! Your ankle, my lord. Are you—is it—all right?”

“Ah, I believe it may be somewhat the worse for wear.” Grimacing, he looked up at the curtains. “Lowell should have realized your room would need attention and taken care of it.”

Mercy looked at Emmaline and saw that her eyes had grown as wide as the blue ocean at Underdale, probably mirroring her own. She guessed that in Emmaline’s case, it was because she’d never seen her uncle in such a strange situation. For herself, it had more to do with the burning sensations that still prickled the tips of her breasts and some madly sensitive place deep inside that had never been touched before.

Perhaps Lord Ashby was slightly more shaken than he wanted to let on, for Mercy had not expected to hear any form of contrition from Lord Ashby’s lips. Mr. Lowell, indeed.

“Sh-shall I go and find someone to assist you?” Mercy asked. “Mr. Blue, perhaps?”

“No. I managed to walk up here on my own, and I will proceed as before.”

He stood abruptly and made his way to the door, limping significantly. Mercy realized he must have reinjured his ankle in his rush to prevent her from falling. “My lord, you are obviously in pain,” she said, quickly going to his side. “Please allow me to assist you.”

She’d done it before, on the road, when he was a complete stranger, touching him in a way no proper lady would ever consider doing. She moved close to him and, even though he was a great deal taller than she, took his arm and draped it over her shoulders.

He expelled a long breath when he leaned upon her, his hand over her shoulder, dangling precariously close to some highly sensitive territory.

“Where are we going?”

“To my bedchamber.”

Chapter 8

M
iss Franklin’s steps faltered nearly as much as Nash’s, although he knew her misstep was not from pain. She was truly the innocent vicar’s daughter—the very mention of a man’s bedroom disconcerted her.

The contact of her body against his had been her first shock. She’d stiffened at first, but then Nash had felt her soften in his arms. And his body had reacted in a manner he’d sorely missed since his injuries.

The urge to take her into his bedroom and have one small taste of her was absurdly intense. He’d always had better control of his cravings than this. But he found Miss Franklin surprisingly engaging. None of the ladies he’d met on the continent or in London had managed to interest him as she did, with her blunt reprimands and her apparent indifference to his unsightly scars.

“Where is your b-bedchamber, my lord?”

“Only a few doors down.” Hoyt’s wife had relocated the nursery rooms after Emmaline’s birth, wanting her child to be closer to her.

He knew that Hoyt and Joanna had shared a bedroom, too, something not even their parents had done. Hoyt and his wife been close—far closer than any husband and wife Nash had ever heard of, and in the years after Joanna’s death, Hoyt had never considered taking another wife. Nash doubted he’d taken another woman to his bed, either.

There was a time when Nash thought he’d understood Hoyt’s devotion. Now, it seemed pure foolishness. Why would a man make himself so vulnerable? Life was far too fragile to form such an attachment.

Nash’s ankle was really much better after Parker had bound it, so he did not need to lean too heavily upon Emmaline’s governess as he hobbled down the corridor. He’d managed to get all the way up the stairs and into the master wing without assistance, but he did not want to relinquish his contact with Mercy Franklin. Not yet. She smelled like dust and cleaning materials, but she also bore an underlying floral scent that was wholly female and utterly delicious.

“You are aware that I do not hold you responsible for my sprain,” he said.

She made a delicate snuffling noise. “That’s very generous of you, my lord, since your fall was not my fault.”

“No? You lunged into the road just as my horse rounded the curve. Startled him.”

“I hardly lunged. Not with a heavy traveling case in each hand.”

“Came out of nowhere, then.”

“Not quite,” she replied. “Your men nearly trampled me when they rode past. I was trying to gather my possessions and get back onto the road when you appeared.”

“My men?”

“I had barely half a second to get off the road when they barreled through.”

His men had been pent up for weeks doing chores in the moldy old house, and Nash had allowed them to ride into Keswick with him that afternoon. He knew they could be unruly at times, especially when confined to barracks for extended periods of time. Even with their frequent foot races and fencing bouts, they had been edgy and impatient with one another.

Miss Franklin was correct—they’d been going far too fast on that stretch of road.

“My men are not reckless,” he lied, but their banter was far too enjoyable to surrender the point.

Her shoulders stiffened beneath his arm. “I beg to differ, my lord. Any one of them might have run me over. Or any other unsuspecting traveler.”

“We don’t have very many travelers this far out of Keswick. But I daresay the mail coach races past at far greater speed than any of my men.” They reached the door of his bedchamber, but he was loath to release her.

“I was on that coach, my lord, and I can assure you that we never galloped at the same speed your soldiers did.”

“Former soldiers, Miss Franklin.”

“Whatever they are.”

“You will find they’re a harmless bunch.”

“But they are not proper servants, are they?”

“Of course not. Each man—with the exception of Lowell—fought under my command during various campaigns over the past decade.”

“Their loyalty is commendable,” she said, and Nash caught more than a hint of mockery in her tone. He did not explain that they’d come to Ashby only because they had nowhere else to go, no form of employment to keep them. With Napoleon defeated and so many soldiers returning to England during the past year, they were extraneous, their skills on the battlefield now useless. A young vicar’s daughter from Underdale could not possibly understand the difficulties these men faced.

Or could she? She’d come all the way to Ashby Hall to find work. He didn’t understand why her father would have refused two suitors—both of whom sounded perfectly acceptable for a woman of her station. And now her father was dead and she had no means of support besides that which she could achieve for herself.

“Is this it, my lord?” she asked when they reached his room with its door standing ajar. It was obviously the only other inhabited room in this wing, and he fought a tremendous desire to draw her inside, to test the softness of her skin and the warmth of her lips.

“Aye.” He took his arm from her shoulder and limped into the room, turning to give her a slight bow. “Thank you for your assistance, Miss Franklin.”

“No, I must thank you for your timely appearance, Lord Ashby. I might have done myself some serious damage . . .” she said, her eyes quickly darting to the wide bed behind him. “. . . if not for your quick . . .” A deep blush colored her cheeks. “
Lord above
,” she whispered, and then spun away, marching quickly back to the nursery where Emmaline awaited.

And it was only then that Nash realized that his headache—his sole reason for coming up to his bedroom—was gone.

Mercy could not imagine what had gotten into her, arguing with Lord Ashby as though he were nothing more than an obstinate shopkeeper. Her face burned at the thought of their close contact, of the way he’d held her, his face level with the stays of her corset.

Worse was the way he’d practically embraced her as they walked to his bedchamber. No man had ever draped himself over her in such a way. If he’d dipped his hand just an inch, he’d have grazed her breast with his fingers.

A phantom sensation sizzled through her, and her knees went weak.
What if he had touched her there? How would it feel? Would she . . .

Mercy shook her head in disgust, stopping to compose herself for a moment before continuing on her path back to her bedchamber where Emmaline waited for her.

Clearly, she needed to distance herself from the man who seemed to have no compunction against drawing an innocent young woman into his bedchamber. Such behavior was not to be tolerated—not if she was to prove her father wrong about her. Mercy was not the wanton her mother had been. She was not so easily seduced. The sight of a bed with an obviously virile man beside it was not going to confound her.

Mercy spent the rest of the evening with Emmy, though thoughts of her charge’s intriguing uncle only two rooms down the hall were never far from her mind. She banished them as soon as they surfaced while she engaged Emmaline in helping her to unpack, stopping short when the little girl took a book from the bottom of Mercy’s traveling case and opened its pages.

It was her mother’s journal, an item Mercy had never seen before Susanna’s illness. Nor had Mercy possessed the heart to open it in the weeks since that day.

She would have liked to grab the book away from Emmaline, but the girl’s obvious fragility prevented her from acting precipitously. Common sense told her she needed to move carefully with this child, and try not to startle her or frighten her in any way.

Mercy turned away as Emmaline started to page through the book, and picked up the tied bundle of her father’s sermons and the few letters he’d kept over the years. Mercy already knew what the sermons contained, for she’d heard him preach similar lessons every Sunday of her life—or rather, every Sunday since her adoption. Twenty years. Susanna told her she’d been about three years old upon her arrival at the vicarage.

Mercy could not help but wonder about that day. Who had brought her to the Franklins? Had she wept at being taken from her mother? Had her mother given her up willingly? Had Mercy possessed a favorite toy or a book as Emmaline did? She would dearly like to know.

Mercy knew the answer to those questions might lie within the pages of Susanna’s journal. Deciding she would force herself to open the diary and read a few entries later, she heard Emmaline’s voice, reading from the first page. Her voice was clear and stronger than Mercy had yet heard it.

Susanna Franklin’s Journal

3 August, 1795. I do not understand how my dear husband can expect me to care for another woman’s child—a fallen woman, at that, if Mr. Newcomb is to be believed. Robert says it is our Christian duty, but I sincerely have my doubts.

Emmaline looked up at Mercy. “There are no pictures.”

“No. It was my mother’s journal,” Mercy said thickly, her heart going as cold as her hands with every perfectly enunciated word Emmaline spoke. “But she was not an artist like your mother.”

“Is she dead, too?”

“Yes.”

Emmaline nodded gravely, and Mercy could see her equating the journal with her own mother’s book of stories, gently running her hand over Susanna’s precise script. “Her name was Susanna?”

Mercy nodded, not sure whether to feel gratified that Emmaline was talking, or chagrined that the one thing that piqued the child’s interest was the journal that Mercy so dreaded reading.

And with good reason, it seemed. Mercy had been merely her mother’s “Christian duty.” No wonder there had never been a close bond between them, the kind of connection her friends shared with their own mothers. Susanna had taken care of her, feeding and clothing her, giving her guidance as she grew and matured. She’d been strict, but not unkind. Mercy had to give her that.

One day Mercy hoped to have her own children. She vowed that any innocent bairn she bore would feel her mother’s love every day of her life.

21 August, 1795. Robert has decided we will call the orphan child Mercy and pray that God will have mercy on her poor bastard soul.

Mercy cringed at the word
bastard
. Susanna had never spoken that awful word aloud in her life—at least, never in Mercy’s presence. She reached for the journal, but Emmaline continued reading before Mercy could take the book away.

He says it is our mission to ensure the girl does not follow in her mother’s sinful footsteps.

Emmaline closed the leather-bound book and placed it on the small table beside the bed, completely unaware of the turmoil taking place within Mercy’s breast.

No child should have to try so hard to attain the approval of her parents—even her adoptive ones.

“What is a bastard soul?” Emmaline asked.

Mercy felt speechless. Emmaline’s question struck her on so many different levels, it was difficult to answer. “I-I am not sure, Emmy. I think it means . . . unbaptized.”

“But are you baptized now?” Emmaline asked, her voice full of concern.

“Yes,” Mercy whispered, so unaccustomed to dissembling, and yet she could not begin to explain to an eight-year-old the true meaning of the word. “My . . . my father was a vicar, so I am sure he saw to it when I was very young.” Mercy could not imagine her father neglecting that essential duty.

She slipped the journal into the drawer of the table and closed it tightly. “Shall we go and read from your mother’s book?” Her hands were shaking and her stomach felt queasy. She’d been no more than a Christian duty to the couple who’d raised her.

She needed some distance from the hurtful words in Susanna’s journal. And she didn’t want to try to explain any more bleak passages to Emmaline.

She barely understood them herself.

“Yes, please,” Emmaline replied, though Mercy barely heard her.

The few short passages Emmy had read wounded Mercy deeply. Susanna had not been able to say much about Mercy’s arrival at the rectory, mentioning only that an old friend of Reverend Franklin had brought Mercy to them. The Franklins had agreed to raise her—and they’d taken what Susanna had called “an acceptable” sum of money for her keep—promising to keep her origins secret . . .

Like a small, nearly colorless wraith, Emmaline left the bedchamber and went across to the nursery. Mercy followed, feeling dazed, but relieved that Emmaline had a purpose in mind. For Mercy could not have given the child instruction on anything at the moment.

She had to pull herself together. She supposed she’d always known the Franklins possessed little affection for her and even less love. Mercy had striven to do her best, but had never understood why her best was not enough.

The journal would give Mercy some insight into her parents’ thoughts and feelings. But after her first taste of it, she wasn’t sure she actually wanted to know any more.

She sat down with Emmaline in a small, cushioned divan that was hardly larger than a chair, and opened the picture book. The little girl’s situation was not too far different from Mercy’s own—her true parents were gone, and the only one to care for her was an uncle who seemed to have very little connection with her.

As they paged through the book, Mercy could see that Emmaline was not actually reading her mother’s stories. She’d memorized them.

It didn’t matter. Judging by the way Emmy read Susanna’s journal, it seemed her reading skills were quite advanced for her age and would need more challenging fare than the primers on the bookshelf. Mercy did not allow herself to think about having to broach Lord Ashby’s library for appropriate reading materials, but concentrated on building rapport with Emmaline. The late Lady Ashby’s tales were a far better way to begin than reading Susanna’s disheartening words.

Even so, Mercy could not avoid the journal much longer. If she wanted to learn anything more about her origins, she would have to face up to the task. Perhaps she would read a little bit of it before she retired for the night.

* * *

“Easy, Parker,” Nash said through his gritted teeth. “That’s my hide you’re working on.”