‘That discrepancy is between me and my employer.’
‘And he doesn’t sound the most patient or tolerant of them. In your shoes I’d be careful how I conducted myself, now you’re here at last.’
‘Is that a threat?’ he asked, with what his half-sisters said was his most annoying sneer. Annoying or not, it was wasted on this woman. She was peering at what looked like a tall hutch in the twilight as if he didn’t exist.
‘An observation,’ she said absently. He felt like a fly so trivial it wasn’t even worth slapping him. ‘Don’t get too close,’ she warned and he instantly wanted to.
He was beginning to sympathise with his absent ward’s need to escape her governess’s authority. Then he got too close and an angry buzz shot past his ear. He stepped back hastily as the persistent little creatures took exception to him but, annoyingly, left the governess alone as if she belonged here and he didn’t.
‘I did warn you,’ she said with I told you so in her voice.
‘What is this place?’ he asked gruffly.
‘A bee house, of course,’ she said and followed him away as if nothing about this place troubled her, which it didn’t, he supposed—she wasn’t the one in danger of being royally stung.
‘Oh, of course, and what an ideal place for a runaway schoolgirl to hide.’
‘Lavinia is a fanciful creature and local lore insists the bees be told whatever happens in a household if they are to be part of it.’
‘And they really want to know when a girl is out of sorts with her governess?’
‘It was a possibility. Now maybe you’ll go back to the house and ask for your dinner so I can get on,’ she said as if tired of indulging him.
‘While you wander about in the dark and risk life and limb? Even I’m not that much of a yahoo, Miss... Who are you anyway?’ he demanded irritably, glad now he hadn’t remembered her name and given himself away.
‘Miss Court and I’m not in any danger since, as you pointed out just now, we are in his lordship’s private grounds. And I’ll get on a lot faster if you leave me be.’
‘No, if the wench has done something to herself in the dark you can’t carry her, great girl of fifteen or sixteen as she must be.’
‘How do you know the age of my eldest charge?’
Curse the woman, but now she sounded suspicious. Fergus searched his memory for lies he’d already told her. Even the son of a country squire would know enough to guess how old the Earl of Barberry’s wards must be now.
‘Everyone knows Barberry was left with a stable of female cousins when he inherited,’ he said and even managed to sound plausibly impatient. ‘The old lord’s quest for another male heir is hardly a secret and if those girls were old enough to be presented they wouldn’t need a governess, so even the eldest cannot be out yet.’
‘Clever,’ she said flatly and why didn’t he think it a compliment?
They reached the end of the orchards and the interfering female found a wicket gate out into the park as if by instinct, or perhaps she came here rather too often in the dark, a jealous impulse prompted Fergus. The notion she was so familiar with his grounds because she came here to meet a lover and flit through the moonlit park at the idiot’s side for a stolen idyll goaded him to the edge of fury for some odd reason. He hadn’t even seen her properly yet, but she sounded just the sort of woman to order some poor besotted idiot to dance attendance on her in the dusk so they wouldn’t be caught courting and risk dismissal. He employed the woman to look after his cousins, he told himself uncomfortably. She should be keeping a close eye on his little cousins, not planning to run off with a local curate or farmer’s son even her family might consider a misalliance.
‘Where are we going now?’ he demanded rudely, but he’d ridden all the way from Holyhead and felt as if he was entitled to be a little out of temper.
Miss Court might have a lover lurking nearby and she was being rude to the very person she ought to impress if she wanted to keep her post. Was he more impressed by his title than he thought, then? No, he didn’t want to be an earl today any more than he had ten years ago. Miss Court made him feel like a grubby schoolboy who hadn’t washed behind his ears even as his inner demons tempted him to kiss the wretched female and find out if she was as headlong and determined a lover as she was as a rescuer of wild girls in the semi-darkness. And it would be nice to find a way to make her stand back and take notice. Not that she’d waited for him to fight his inner demons back where they belonged. She was almost beyond reach by the time he realised he didn’t want to be left here like the last lame nag in a stable. He speeded up and almost fell over a tree root in the shadows.
‘Devil take it, woman, will you slow down?’
‘No. You didn’t want to come in the first place, so I don’t understand why you won’t go away. I should never have made you come, you’re no help at all.’
‘If the girl doesn’t want to go home, you won’t be able to drag her back,’ he pointed out rather sharply.
Had she paled at the idea of having to force her errant charge to obey her? Hard to tell in the gloom and why should he care if she endured the role of governess or loved it? Catching himself out thinking like the spoilt aristocrat he’d sworn not to be, he wondered if his half-brother was right and he was as arrogant as any Selford in his own way.
‘Hush,’ she whispered. ‘Do you hear something over there, on our right?’
‘No,’ he said in a normal voice, telling himself he was bored with looking for unruly schoolgirls who didn’t want to be found.
‘I wish I hadn’t bothered to find out who was lazing about in the stables when the lads were supposed to be looking for Lavinia,’ she informed him crossly and strode into the night yet again.
‘The wages of curiosity,’ he called, then scurried after her like a tardy footman before she could disappear. ‘Where are we going?’ he asked when he almost ran into her standing still under a tree as if she could hear her way to what she wanted if she tried hard enough. She was warm and rather delightfully curved and he felt passion thunder through his senses until he reminded himself the woman was his cousins’ governess and he was her employer.
‘Will you go away?’ she demanded as if she was oblivious to him and his unruly masculine urges, then she started off again without giving any indication where she was heading.
‘No,’ he said, grabbing the back of her cloak and holding on when she did her best to snatch it away. ‘Tell me, or I’ll shout a warning we’re on our way.’
‘Can’t you hear the poor girl, you blundering great idiot? She isn’t going to run in that state,’ she whispered furiously as she towed him forward by his hold on her cloak.
He wondered how he’d managed to miss it as well now; self-preservation, he decided ruefully. Noisy sobs and the odd pathetic little moan carried on the cooling air as the girl fought for breath against all that sorrow. Fergus wished he’d left the governess to cope with a soggy storm of tears and almost melted into the darkness as Miss Court ordered. On the one hand, he would be obliging a lady, on the other he’d be a coward. He let go of Miss Court’s cloak and meekly followed in her footsteps.
‘It’s me, Lavinia,’ Miss Court said so gently he wondered if he’d been wrong to class her as an irritable she-wolf in petticoats when she’d first loomed out of the darkness. ‘You must be hungry and cold, and you sound as if you need a shoulder to cry on.’
Fergus could make out a Grecian-style temple. As they emerged from the trees he saw the first stars