Rebellious Rake, Innocent Governess

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‘I’m a governess, not a chaperon, Mr Shaw,’ she informed him sternly.

‘What’s the difference?’ he asked with an interested expression that had her clenching her gloved hands at her sides.

‘I should think that quite plain,’ she said repressively.

‘Then pray consider me just a stupid male and explain it to me,’ he replied with spurious meekness.

She shot him a furious look, but in front of Coppice she couldn’t give way to a strong urge to inform him what she truly thought of him.

‘A governess is an educator of young ladies, and sometimes of even younger gentlemen, Mr Shaw. A chaperon is a lady who has the entrеe into the ton that will help secure her charge a marriage suitable to one of her lofty station in life,’ she said blandly, hoping it was very clear to both of them that she was the former and not the latter.

‘Are you telling me that you weren’t born a lady, Miss Wells?’ the wretch replied with a mock deference that made her long to slap him.

‘Let us say I possess no turn for matchmaking,’ she informed him with what she hoped was a superior smile.

All the same, she felt profoundly uncomfortable discussing such a role under the interested gaze of Coppice, who seemed secretly amused by their discussion for some reason. Ben Shaw was either unaware of the butler’s feelings or indifferent to them, for he continued to look at her as if she was some odd curiosity he currently found fascinating.

‘Surely that makes you uniquely qualified for the position?’ he said and, when she haughtily raised her brows in question of that statement, added, ‘Being a cynic of the worst sort, you would see through the fortune hunters and shady characters and find your charge a paragon among men.’

‘I’m far too stern a critic to manage that, I’m afraid,’ she explained shortly and treated both men to one of her best icy looks before turning to make a fighting retreat. ‘If I might suggest someone writes to the Countess’s godmama and offers Lady Rhys the role? From all I have seen of her, she would be highly entertained by the notion of chaperoning Kate in polite society, and might prove a shrewder matchmaker than any doting mama. I know she offered to take up the task weeks ago, but her ladyship was so eager to present her sister to the ton that I suspect she overestimated her own strength under the present circumstances.’

In front of Coppice she couldn’t refer directly to Miranda’s pregnancy and Charlotte felt distinctly impatient with the ridiculous conventions of a society that refused to refer to the very natural process of pregnancy and birth openly in mixed company.

‘Yes, it took Kit weeks to persuade her ladyship she wouldn’t blight her sisters’ prospects with unfounded gossip about her own past if she did bring them out, but I dare say he’s wishing he hadn’t made such a good job of it now. Nevertheless, that’s an excellent notion of yours and I’ll suggest it to him in the morning,’ Mr Shaw informed her rather pompously and she spared a little impatience from her general supply of it.

‘How do you know that he’ll consult you about any of this?’ she weakened enough to ask, as she stood with one hand suggestively on the doorknob, but couldn’t quite turn it and escape his infuriating presence.

‘And how could you think he wouldn’t, ma’am, especially as he doesn’t share your low opinion of my abilities, or lack thereof?’

‘I really couldn’t say,’ she replied snippily and opened the door and went through it with a frigid goodnight, before she said something she might truly regret.

Chapter Three

‘Kindly pay attention, Miss Wells,’ Miss Isabella Alstone ordered her governess the following morning.

‘I should probably make you stand in the corner for that piece of impudence,’ Charlotte returned placidly.

‘Well, you might as well actually be in the Americas for all the attention you’re paying to your lesson about them,’ Isabella replied with the warm smile that would have the young gentlemen of the ton lining up in fervent hope of winning another in a few years’ time.

‘I certainly seem to have failed dismally in my task of turning you and your sister into well-behaved young ladies, so perhaps I might just as well go there,’ Charlotte admitted ruefully.

‘Who wants to be a milk-and-water miss? I certainly don’t and I doubt Miranda and Kit would thank you if I suddenly became one. There are far too many of them about already, at least if the girls at Kate’s waltzing parties are any indication of things.’

‘I agree that they can seem a little giddy, but I dare say it’s all the excitement,’ Charlotte managed to defend those silly young ladies half-heartedly in the face of her own doubts about their common sense.

‘In a watering place full of senile octogenarians they would still contrive to be the most foolish creatures imaginable, but when are you going to tell me what happened last night, dear Miss Wells?’

‘Since you avow contempt of the fashionable throng, I really can’t imagine why you’re interested in their sayings and doings,’ Charlotte observed slyly, ‘and in any case there are the Americas to consider.’

‘Yes, and you obviously need to do so, as you can’t seem to concentrate on either their geography or history this morning.’

‘I have the excuse of having been from home and out of my bed until the early hours of the morning and you do not, miss.’

‘Then why not tell me everything that went on at the Wintergreen ball instead and get it over with? After that I would have no excuse not to take a proper interest in geography, now would I?’

‘I’m quite sure there’s something wrong with the grammar of that sentence as well as its intent, Isabella.’

‘I dare say, now cut line and tell all, Miss Wells, before one of us falls asleep.’

‘You really are a shocking minx, Isabella Alstone,’ Mr Shaw’s distinctive deep voice informed her from the doorway.

‘Ben!’ Isabella screamed in a manner that had Charlotte shuddering to the depths of her govern-essly soul.

‘Hoyden,’ he greeted her, laughing as his youngest adopted sister jumped into his mighty arms and he swung her round as easily and unselfconsciously as if she had been five instead of fifteen.

Charlotte was forced to admit that, while there were any number of gentlemen she wouldn’t trust with a young girl’s open adoration, Ben Shaw was not one of them. When it came to her charges, or any other female he considered himself bound to by ties far stronger than blood, there was an absolute integrity about him. She’d seen enough of the relationship between Lord Carnwood and his oldest friend to know they were more like brothers than most men born in the same bed. What was more, that kinship extended to his lordship’s true sisters, who were as easy with Mr Shaw as their brother was. It was those outside that magic circle who needed to be wary of him, and Charlotte was conscious she was excluded and should be very cautious of letting her thoughts linger on his very large person and subtle mind.

Now where on earth had that odd idea come from? And why did her exclusion suddenly seem so chilling? She must be more tired than she realised, she decided with an impatient sigh, and did her best to dismiss such ridiculous thoughts. She hadn’t the least desire for Ben Shaw to act like a brother towards her and refused to countenance the shocking fantasy of any attentions he might pay her instead. Since last night a stupid fantasy of being gowned and groomed as finely as the beauties of the ton, and dancing the night away in the arms of a man ideally suited to enchant a very tall lady, had troubled her as never before. Charlotte wondered if tiredness and terror of being recognised had relaxed her usual iron grip on her traitorous emotions and reminded herself who and what she was. A governess, she informed herself flatly, a woman unfortunate enough to be forced to make her own way in the world and relying on an unblemished reputation to secure every post that came her way.

‘Miss Wells won’t tell me what happened at the ball last night and Kate was still asleep last time I looked, so what was it like, Ben? Did she dance every dance and slay a legion of suitors with just one blink of her beautiful blue eyes?’

‘Something like that, minx, and isn’t it bloodthirsty to wish so many youthful hearts trampled on?’

‘Not in the least, they’ll recover soon enough,’ Isabella replied cynically and Charlotte felt herself frown even as she ordered the crease from between her brows and did her best to banish all expression from her face as she became conscious of Mr Shaw’s acute gaze.

Did he think she was responsible for such cynical observations from one so young? She sincerely hoped not. While anything other than a distant acquaintance was clearly impossible between them, somehow she didn’t want him to think she’d foist her own views of the world Isabella must move in sooner or later on her pupil. She suspected he would need to look closer to home for that, to Celia Braxton and her stony-hearted mama, who seemed to have had too free a hand in the education, or lack of it, provided to the younger Miss Alstones before their grandfather finally realised it and sent them both to school. When Charlotte first met them there, she had been shocked by both girls’ ignorance of so much that seemed essential to a well-adjusted young lady, especially considering the acute minds concealed by their often careless behaviour. Four years on she was fairly confident they’d realised more of their potential, and would make fine wives and mothers as their destiny surely dictated. She sincerely hoped, however, that they would wait to feel something more than the bare tolerance that seemed to Charlotte to constitute most society marriages.

She wondered what Mr Shaw would expect from marriage and felt herself blush, as the combination of his speculative gaze and her improper fantasies blossomed into something downright outrageous. Still, a cat could look at a queen, or a king. Some instinct told her he would be a magnificent lover and she tried to meet his gaze with an indignant question in her own, even as her mind skittered over the mental picture she suddenly had of Ben Shaw naked and superb and very masculine indeed. Building a picture of what he might look like under that finely cut coat and all that pristine linen ought to be far harder for a respectable spinster lady than it actually was. She could imagine hard muscle rippling under a sweat slicked, satin supple skin, and really those breeches and his very highly polished boots left far too little to her fertile imagination!

Shaking her head sadly at her own folly, she looked up again and encountered laughter and what looked suspiciously like a reflection of her own state of unwilling arousal in his eyes, which she did her level best to return with her best governess look. Perverse creature that he was, her formidable frown seemed to encourage rather than reproach him and his firm mouth actually had the cheek to tip into an open grin as she fought off her ludicrous state of confusion, made even worse by that inviting, too-understanding smile.

‘What think you, Miss Wells?’ he asked mockingly and she had to fight hard to keep her own expression serene as he openly challenged her.

‘That hearts aren’t quite so easily broken, and that Isabella needs to learn some compassion toward vulnerable young gentlemen before she makes her own come-out,’ she managed to say calmly enough; at least formulating a reply gave her something to do other than speculating about Mr Shaw’s masculine at tributes.

‘How very well done of you, Miss Wells,’ he returned softly and still she could read secrets in his eyes no governess could afford to look for and stay sternly respectable, and therefore in employment.

‘It seems to me that young ladies require protection against the gentlemen rather than the other way about,’ Isabella put in and Charlotte finally managed to give more of her attention to her pupil than their visitor, and saw there was more than just youthful scepticism behind her attitude toward Kate’s suitors.

‘That is always a consideration, of course,’ she replied carefully, ‘but your sister is a beautiful young woman with plenty of native wit and a great deal of family influence at her back. It would be a very reckless, or downright foolish, man who would risk bringing all that to bear against him.’

‘Why? It didn’t stop that worm of a Braxton creature Cousin Celia married from deceiving Miranda into eloping with him and then treating her abominably, and I don’t want to lose Kate from my life for five years as I did my other sister, thank you very much.’

As Isabella stuck out her chin and looked determinedly defiant after making that pronouncement, Charlotte knew they had finally got to the crux of her pupil’s restless moods and uncharacteristic irritability of late. She had thought it came from taking her lessons alone and being bound to the schoolroom while Kate shopped, danced and was driven round the park, and, yes, slayed gangling young gentlemen through the heart with just one limpid look from her famous dark-blue Alstone eyes. Really she should have known there was more to it than that, and it wasn’t Mr Shaw’s fault she had failed to look deeper, so why she was scowling at him instead of thanking him for bringing the whole matter into the open, even she could not have said.

‘Ah, but Braxton didn’t have Kit Alstone to deal with now, did he?’ Mr Shaw asked with apparently academic interest. ‘And can you honestly see Kate falling for some plausible rogue with such an example before her? I’d say she’s got too much common sense to do anything of the sort, but if you think otherwise I suppose I must bow to your superior knowledge.’

Isabella looked thoughtful and Charlotte could see her testing his words against her experience of both her sisters and some of the tension went out of her young shoulders and a smile began to dawn. ‘Miranda always was a dreamer,’ she finally admitted ruefully. ‘Kate is much more practical.’

‘You can’t be too practical when your future happiness is at stake,’ Charlotte said impulsively, then immediately regretted it when Mr Shaw’s attention centred on her once more. What a fool she was to give him so much to speculate on, she condemned herself, and risk revealing painful decisions she had made when no older than Kate.

‘I suspect there’s a happy medium between being a dreamer and Miss Practical,’ Mr Shaw drawled with a sidelong glance at Charlotte that she was quite sure was intended to provoke her. ‘Perhaps we can rely on you to find it one day, minx,’ he challenged her pupil on just the right note of affection and speculation to set Isabella a task she would find irresistibly challenging.

With an internal groan as she dreaded Isabella practising it on every susceptible young gentleman in Derbyshire, Charlotte cast Mr Shaw an impatient look, but at least he’d diverted Isabella from Kate’s future.

‘Whichever you plan to be, Isabella, a sound education is going to stand you in good stead, so perhaps it’s time I got on with providing it?’ she suggested and won a moan of protest from Isabella and another of those speculative, sensual looks from Mr Shaw.

‘Trying to get rid of me, Miss Wells?’ he asked inexcusably and perched himself on the corner of a map table she was certain would bow under the pressure, but even that piece of inanimate oak failed her and remained as stout as ever.

‘Not with notable success,’ she managed to say coolly, as his wicked grey eyes met hers with an open invitation to look her fill, as he had so obligingly put himself on her eye level.

Well, she wouldn’t! That way lay the ruin of many a good governess’s future and one she would have thought him all too conscious of. Shooting him a hostile look, she pulled the book she’d found on the lives and customs of the Native American tribes toward her and tried hard to focus on it, only to find it might as well be written in one of their languages.

‘Please stay, Ben,’ Isabella urged him traitorously and Charlotte found herself quite unable to insist he went away and left them in peace in the face of his innocent look and Isabella’s pleading one.

‘Then you may take over the lesson, Mr Shaw. After all your voyages, doubtless you know the customs and habits of our American cousins much better than I do, or the author of this book,’ she informed him briskly and met his eyes with a certain triumph in her own.

Unfortunately he confounded her by returning her gaze with one that answered her challenge and returned it with utterly wicked intent. Part of her was fascinated by the prospect of being teased and maybe even seduced by a master, but another was horrified. She retired to a usually comfortable corner of the room and delved in her bag for her spectacles, fully intending to pick up her embroidery and pretend she wasn’t here and neither was he. He soon put paid to that idea by coming far too close, so that her heart beat so loudly she barely took in his words.

‘Put those ridiculous things away, Miss Wells,’ he warned with the hint of a driven growl in his gruff whisper, ‘you don’t need them any more than I do, and every time you put them on in my presence from now I shall claim a forfeit.’

‘I’ll do as I like,’ she sparked back, but Charlotte knew he could almost see the shiver of delighted apprehension sliding languorously down her spine at the very thought of what such defiance might cost her.

‘Oh, I guarantee that you will like, Miss Wells, but I’m not at all sure it would be proper for such a correct governess as you are to like it so much.’

‘Which is one very good reason why you should leave me alone,’ she pointed out rather breathlessly and cast a warning look at him, then at Isabella, who was eagerly paying attention to all she could catch of this highly improper conversation.

‘For now,’ he half-threatened and half-promised and Charlotte sat back in her chair with what must be relief as he finally swung away from her and her world could expand again.

Ben did his best to consider the book Miss Wells had set on her neat schoolmistress’s desk and finally decided she had completely shot his concentration, and that she was right and it wasn’t a very good book to start with. Sweeping it aside, he perched on her usual desk instead and tried to muster a description of his first meeting with the inhabitants of that young country, both native and more recently arrived. He must have succeeded, for Isabella hung on his every word and even Miss Wells stayed silent in her corner and didn’t interrupt once. The very thought of her there, quiet and sceptical and far more of a woman than she had ever let the world see, was in danger of distracting him, but luckily Isabella had a keen interest in the world and kept him busy with questions and challenges.

His respect for governesses grew, although he suspected Miss Wells was far more learned and genuinely accomplished than most and he could see why Miranda valued her so highly. And nobody could accuse her of being encroaching with any justice, since she was so determined to efface herself in company that at first he used to quiz himself on whether she had actually been in a room while he was in it or not. But that blessed state of oblivion now felt as if it had happened years ago and he knew exactly where and when she was there now, however hard she pretended to be invisible. Just by the reaction of his rebellious body he was all too aware of every look and movement she made. He was sincerely glad she didn’t know it, or how infuriating he found his ridiculous susceptibility. Just thinking of her reaction if he gave in to his baser instincts and kissed her passionately, to prove she wasn’t the icily correct governess she wanted to believe, made him feel like grinning like an idiot and moaning like a soul in torment at the same time.

He was a damned fool to stir up a hornet’s nest that didn’t need stirring, he decided, and did his best to answer Isabella’s questions. No, more than that, the hornet might win and it only took the quiet, elusive scent of Miss Wells, the sight of her pretending to be obliviously stitching, to let him know he was in danger of being stirred up more than she would think at all proper. Last night he’d tossed and turned in his very comfortable bed in his comfortable house and told himself he had everything he needed in life. It had taken until the dawn was threatening for him to acknowledge that, no, he didn’t have one very significant thing and stood very little chance of ever securing it. That he should suddenly be afflicted with the desire to lie with Miss Vinegar and Propriety in his arms in that grand feather bed all night was anathema to him, and would certainly be to her if she ever found out! He’d come here, after assuring himself that Kit Alstone was as indestructible as ever, with the noble object of curing himself of Miss Wells with as large a dose of disapproval and uninterest as a man could physick himself with.

And she’d let him down! Even now he almost refused to believe it, but while Miss Charlotte Wells might hate him for it, she would kiss him right back if he were ever fool enough to risk it and why did that make him more confused, instead of re-armoured against her? Over in her isolation corner, he could tell she was as conscious of his every move and mood as he was, and he felt her sensitivity like a fever running over his skin. She would never admit it, of course; he could imagine her fighting the attraction between them with every fibre of her being and with a slightly bitter twist in his gut he couldn’t blame her. No doubt she’d been born a lady, and remained one despite her dependent situation. She might be impoverished, but his Miss Wells would never weaken and seek the primrose path to damnation by accepting a rich man’s protection and, as he hadn’t the slightest intention of getting married, now or ever, there could be nothing else between them. He should avoid her as if she had the plague and see as little as possible of his adoptive family until Kate was safely settled, and Izzie firmly closeted in her schoolroom and keeping her governess too busy to disturb him.

‘Really, Ben, you’re as bad as Miss Wells for wandering off into dreamland this morning,’ Isabella informed him disgustedly and watched him artlessly with those astounding Alstone eyes he wondered idly how Kit had missed. He needed to take care in the face of the sparkling intelligence he knew lay behind them, and gave Isabella a mock frown to try and distract her from considering the cause of such mutual distraction.

‘However much your sister pays Miss Wells, she needs a raise,’ he told her with a sternness that wasn’t entirely assumed. ‘You’d drive me to distraction in half a day.’

‘Miss Wells is made of sterner stuff, or we’d have parted company years ago,’ she informed him, unimpressed with his attempt to distract her and bringing him back to the subject of her personal dragon instead.

‘I am here, you know?’ she told them mildly, looking up for a moment from her infernal stitchery with a slight smile that jarred at something inside him and reminded him he was in no danger of forgetting.

‘My admiration for that fact is growing by the moment, ma’am,’ he informed her with a slightly mocking bow. ‘I’d have departed for the Americas myself rather than endure two weeks of trying to instruct this ungrateful urchin alone—two years of it must be considered heroic.’

‘Oh, it’s not so very bad when you get into the way of it,’ she told him mildly and he knew she was informing him that she was perfectly content with her lot and had no intention of seeking another—particularly not one that might end with her spending each and every night rendering his rest disturbed for a very different reason than she had last night.