Rebellious Rake, Innocent Governess. Elizabeth Beacon

      ‘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.