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,’