The Duke's Governess Bride (10 page)

Chapter Ten

M
agic.

When Jane thought back to that first dinner alone with the duke, she couldn’t recall exactly what Signora della Battista’s excellent cook sent up to their table, or how much of it she actually ate. She couldn’t have said if the
signora
herself stood by to explain the various dishes, as had been her habit on other nights, or whether she’d left them alone to discover the delicacies on their own.

What Jane did remember was entering the dining room with the table long enough to have seated a score of elegant Venetians. Tall gilded candelabras stood along the length, lighting the early dusk of the winter evening with long tapers in each dolphin-shaped branch. Fine linen, embroidered with gold and scarlet on the hems, dressed the table, and the silver and crystal gleamed by the candles’ glow. The duke’s place was laid at one end, and Jane’s far down beyond the candelabras at the other, as was proper.

But the duke would have none of it.

‘Here now, ma’am, this isn’t what I ordered,’ he said before they’d even entered the room. ‘I don’t want Miss Wood banished off to China like that. Put her chair next to mine, so we can be sociable, and dowse that blaze of candles. The ones before us are more than enough.’

In an instant the
signora’
s servants had done as the duke had bid, and Jane found herself being seated on the corner of the table at the duke’s elbow as a long-faced footman guided her chair.

‘That’s more to my liking.’ The duke sighed with contentment as he settled in the tall-backed armchair. ‘Now some wine, and we’ll be happy as sheep in clover.’

At once another footman appeared to fill Jane’s glass, or he would have, if she hadn’t put her palm flat over the top of her glass to stop him.

‘What is this, Miss Wood?’ asked the duke, making a great show of his incredulity. ‘You will not drink with me?’

‘I’d shame myself for certain if I tried to keep pace with you, your Grace,’ Jane said, still keeping her hand firmly in place. ‘I’ve no gift for tippling.’

‘No?’ He worked his dark brows dramatically. ‘Be truthful, now. I know I give leave for drinking in the servants’ hall. I’ve seen the accounting.’

‘Beer and ale, your Grace,’ she said primly. ‘None of the women drank it.’

‘Then what of this long journey with my girls? Surely somewhere in all that wandering about France you acquired a taste for the grape?’

‘What I acquired, your Grace, is an unshakeable knowledge of my own weakness where drink is concerned,’ she said. ‘I am a small woman. One glass is my limit, and no more.’

‘Well, then, one glass it shall be.’ Cheerfully he waved away her hand, and the dark red wine flowed into her glass. ‘I’ve no wish to see you in your cups, Miss Wood, but it would seem that if we’ve this splendid vintage, then we should drink it.’

She smiled at him over the rim of the glass, recognising the challenge in his words. ‘I vow I’ll make this last until we rise from the table.’

He chuckled. ‘I don’t doubt that you will. Regardless of your size, you are a formidable woman, not to be crossed.’

That made her grin. ‘Your daughters would agree.’

‘Oh, I’m certain they would, just as I’m certain they tested you more times than we could count, the little devils.’ He raised his own glass, holding it out towards hers. ‘A toast. To Venice, and friendship.’

‘To friends,’ she echoed softly, and sipped from her glass. She wasn’t sure what she’d expected when she’d agreed to dine with him, but so far the experience was most pleasant indeed.

‘That’s a good wine,’ the duke said appreciatively. ‘No wonder you’ve enjoyed yourself here, Miss Wood, with the
signora’
s cellar for company each night.’

‘The wine here is well regarded, your Grace,’ Jane said promptly, always ready to supply such information. ‘Not exactly from Venice itself, to be sure, but from the region around us, called the Veneto. I believe we are drinking a Valpolicella ripasso, “robust and vigorous”, as they say, and the Caesars—’

‘Hush, hush, no more lectures,’ the duke said. ‘Not tonight, eh?’

‘Oh, your Grace, forgive me,’ she said ruefully. ‘It’s so much my habit, I can’t help myself.’

‘You should,’ he said gently, his gaze so intent on her that she felt her cheeks warm. ‘I’d much rather hear of you than a thousand dry old Caesars.’

She’d never had any man smile at her like that. She was most definitely flustered, yet it wasn’t an unpleasant kind of fluster. She felt heated, and a little off balance, as if she might topple if she tried to stand. But what was strangest of all was how, when the duke looked at her, she almost felt…pretty.

‘But gentlemen love the Caesars, your Grace,’ she said, her voice sounding curiously breathy. ‘Conquests, chariots, centurions! It’s all a great deal more exciting than I am, your Grace.’

‘Not to me.’ The way he said it made her believe him, too. ‘Tell me more of yourself.’

‘But there’s not much more to tell, your Grace,’ she protested. ‘Truly, there isn’t.’

‘Oh, come, come, come,’ he said, coaxing her. He linked his fingers together on the table and leaned closer to her, lowering his voice as if they were conspirators. ‘You’ve had your swallow of wine. Hasn’t that loosened your tongue sufficiently?’

She smiled, and shrugged from embarrassment. ‘I assure you, your Grace, I’ve nothing to tell. My life has been most ordinary, or rather, it was until I came to Aston Hall.’

‘Hah, now that’s a fair start.’ Impatiently he sat back in his chair to let the footman place a plate before him. With no regard for the cook’s labours, he took up his fork and began to eat. ‘Tell me all. What made you accept the place? What were your first impressions of us wicked old Farrens?’

‘Not so wicked, your Grace, not by half,’ she said. ‘At least not the young ladies. They were a bit unruly when first I arrived, but that was soon corrected. They were the reason I took the post, too. Two small motherless girls! How could I have resisted?’

‘I’d wager that their having a duke for a father didn’t dissuade you,’ he said, cutting the roasted pheasant on his plate with hearty enthusiasm. ‘When I made it known it was time for the girls to shift from a nursemaid to a governess, why, I’d hoards of grim-faced women thumping at the gates.’

‘Yet you chose me.’ She smiled. ‘I’d always wondered at that. I’d only had one other place in my references, and I was so young myself—’

‘You’re not exactly doddering now.’

‘I’m twenty-nine,’ she said evenly, not flinching from the horrible truth. Besides, he knew it already, so there wasn’t much point in dissembling now. ‘Which
is
doddering for a spinster governess.’

‘Oh, bah.’ He swept his hand through the air, dismissing every one of her twenty-eight years. ‘Look at me. I’m—well, let us say that I am sufficiently advanced to have two wedded daughters, with a grandchild breeding. A grandchild, Miss Wood! Lord preserve me, if that doesn’t make me a greybeard, fit only for a stool in the chimney corner, I don’t know what does.’

‘A greybeard!’ scoffed Jane, chuckling at such a preposterous notion. To see the duke here before her, more robustly virile than any man half his years—who would ever dare call him a greybeard grandfather? ‘Oh, your Grace, you wrong yourself!’

‘Then I’ve made my point, my dear Miss Wood,’ he said, pausing to wave for more wine. ‘If you cannot consider me old, than I can scarce feel the same of you, who are much younger than I. At least you are wise beyond your years, while I am foolishly beneath mine, and don’t try to counter me on that, either.’

‘Hush, your Grace, please!’ she said, shocked by his familiarity, but also laughing so that she pressed her napkin to her cheek. She’d never imagined the stern Duke of Aston could speak so amusingly of himself, or that she would laugh with him, as if they were the oldest of friends.

‘You laugh, Miss Wood,’ he said, brandishing his fork for emphasis. ‘But I did a wise thing in choosing you to guide my girls, perhaps the wisest I’ve ever done. I gambled, aye, but I won.’

‘But why did you choose me from those hoards you claim were at your gate, your Grace?’ she asked, for once giving in to curiosity. ‘Why me, from so many others?’

‘Because you’d written your letter of application in a neat, tidy hand,’ he said evenly, sitting back as the footmen changed courses. ‘Because I thought your name, “Jane Wood”, sounded proper, as a good governess should.’

‘Truly, your Grace?’ She tried to keep the disappointment from her voice. ‘My name?’

‘Exactly.’ He paused, looking down at the plate before him with scowling disappointment. ‘Fish again!’

‘Sardines, your Grace,’ she said promptly. ‘You’ll find the sauce over them is very refined.’

‘I hate fish,’ he declared mournfully, still staring down at the neat row of sautéed sardines in their golden sauce on his plate. ‘You’d think these Italians would sprout fins and gills themselves, for all the wretched fish they eat. What I’d give for a thick slice of roast beef and trimmings!’

‘But you must grant it did appear a most delicious fish, your Grace,’ Jane said quickly, raising her voice for the
signora’
s benefit, ‘and the sauce was most cleverly wrought, unlike any to be found in all of London.’

‘There you are, Miss Wood, tidying up after me again.’ He winked, well aware of what she’d done. ‘But that’s the main reason I chose you for my girls. You wrote that you’d lost your own mother as a young lass, and you could understand their grief. I knew then you had a tender heart, full of kindness, and that was worth more than all the French lessons and other rubbish combined. A tender heart—aye, that was what I wished for, and you never did disappoint my daughters, or me.’

Startled tears sprung to Jane’s eyes. ‘Oh, your Grace, forgive me, pray, but that is most—most kind.’

He smiled warmly, and laid down his fork and knife. ‘It’s not empty kindness, my dear,’ he said, covering her hand with his own. ‘It’s the truth.’

Overcome with emotion, Jane could only shake her head in disbelief, and gaze down at his hand over hers. His fingers were strong and thick and capable, nicked and lightly scarred from innumerable small accidents over time, the hands of a countryman rather than a gentlemen and more than a little at odds with the elegant Holland linen of his shirt’s cuff. Her own smaller fingers were swallowed beneath, and yet she found his touch far from smothering.

She’d never realised he’d felt this way about her and how she’d taught and nurtured his daughters. She’d always thought she was beneath his notice, and here it seemed he’d been regarding her with approval before she’d arrived. She’d never known she’d been so appreciated. She’d never
guessed.

But what had he guessed of her in return? Did he somehow know how she’d been struck by his sheer physical presence and confidence from the very first time she’d stood in his presence? Had he caught her watching him whenever he’d paid his daily visit to the schoolroom, interrupting her lessons to laugh and play with his girls, his dogs jumping and barking gleefully along with him? Had he ever spied her high up at her window, watching him ride out on the huge bay gelding that only he could control?

He wasn’t perfect, of course. Not even a duke was that. He blustered and stomped about, and behaved like any other man accustomed to having his own way. There’d been times when he’d disagreed with Jane, when they’d both grown angry with the other over something one of his girls had said or done or wished to do. But in the end they’d usually come to some manner of understanding, and not just because he was the father, either. Instead there had always been an unspoken agreement between his Grace and Jane that everything was for the sake of the girls, an agreement that both of them had tacitly respected and honoured. The young women the girls had become was proof enough that they’d succeeded.

Yet it was unbelievably, achingly strange for Jane to realise that those days were over for good, and that as soon as the duke returned to England, she’d shift her belongings to another house and another family. Most likely after that she’d never see him again. Did he ever guess how often she’d dreamed of him, the golden duke so far above her? Yet not once did she ever dream this: that she would sit beside his Grace in the glow of his smile.

‘There, I didn’t mean to make you sad.’ He reached up with his thumb and swept away a single tear from her cheek. ‘Was your fish even more wretched than mine?’

She sniffed, and tried to smile through the after-effects of that single wayward tear.

He saw it for the miserable attempt that it was, and gently turned her hand over in his, threading his fingers into hers. ‘If you must be too shy to speak of yourself, then we’ll talk of something I know we’ve in common—the girls. Now I’ve read their letters as well as yours, but I’d rather hear the tale of your journey told by you. Play the part of a bard for me, Miss Wood, and spin me the story of the odyssey you three took across the Continent.’

She caught a tremulous breath. ‘Oh, your Grace, we’ve been travelling for months and months. I can’t conceive of how long the telling would take!’

‘I’ve time.’ His voice rumbled low and encouraging, enough to send a shiver of pleasure down her spine. ‘I want to learn everything, as if I’d gone with you. Begin at the beginning, on that gloomy day you sailed on the packet from England for Calais.’