She lifted the lid of the tureen that Billy had placed beside her plate and helped herself to a portion of peas.
‘And your children? I take it, they are all boys?’
‘I have no children.’
No children? No children!
She replaced the lid of the tureen carefully and reached for the dish of cauliflower. She was not going to fly into a panic. Just because he had no wife. Or children.
And because she was the only female in the household. The only female who had ever been in this household.
But her will, it seemed, had no control over her heart, which began to stutter uncomfortably in her chest.
‘You need not worry about my men, Miss Peters,’ said the Captain, who was clearly aware how nervous she felt, despite her attempts to conceal it.
‘Not one of them will lay so much as a finger on you. They would not dare.’ His face darkened.
‘I would not have taken a single one of them in if they were not completely loyal to me.’ He gestured with the carving knife to emphasise his next point. ‘Every man jack of them has served under my command at some time or another, and knows I don’t hesitate to flog a man who transgresses.’
When her eyes flew wide, he added, ‘They also know I won’t do so without good reason.’ Abruptly, he tossed the knife aside, sat down and picked up his knife and fork. ‘Not that I need to flog a single one of them to ensure their good behaviour.’ He began to saw away at the meat on his plate. ‘Any infringement of the rules here—’ he impaled a piece of duck on his fork ‘—and they would be back on the streets where I found them. Each of ‘em damn lucky I took him on. No, you need have no worry about being a lone female in a household of men. Besides, it won’t be for long.’ He raised the fork to his mouth and began to chew his meat.
‘Oh?’ She ladled a generous helping of béchamel sauce over the cauliflower on her plate, noting with a detached sense of pride that her hands were scarcely shaking at all.
Though all his talk of flogging was hardly comforting. And what had he meant, it would not be for long?
Unless …
‘Are you intending, perhaps, to marry again?’
He looked up from his plate, a strange smile playing about his lips.
‘You are very perceptive.’
Though it did not fully explain why he had hired a governess … unless his new bride already had children from a former marriage.
Yes, that must be it! She gave a sigh of relief, gripped her knife and fork tightly and forced herself to cut up her vegetables as though she saw nothing bizarre about the whole situation.
There must be a perfectly logical reason for the Captain to have had her brought here. She was being extremely foolish to assign nefarious motives to everything every man did. She had already jumped to far too many wrong conclusions today.
‘We did not get off to a very good start,’ he commented. ‘But I was pleased to see the way you weathered that storm.’
‘Thank you,’ she said, accepting a slice of tongue from the plate the Captain nudged in her direction, along with the compliment.
‘You find me somewhat rough around the edges, I dare say,’ he observed.
‘Not at all,’ she murmured mechanically. It was not her place to comment on her employer’s manners, or lack thereof. Besides, working for somebody who was ‘rough around the edges', as he put it, would be a great improvement on habitually dealing with men who were rotten to the core.
‘Hmmph,’ he grunted, clearly unconvinced by her reply, then went on, in a conversational tone, ‘I have spent most of my life at sea, in the company of men such as Billy and Jago. Not used to females at all.’
She could not help raising just one eyebrow as she lifted another forkful of food to her mouth. With the kind of rugged good looks he still possessed, in spite of the scarring round his empty eye socket, she was sure he must have had his flings. She knew what sailors were like when they got shore leave. Particularly the young officers, who got more liberty when a ship was in dock than did the ratings. Besides, he had been married!
‘At least, not society females,’ he amended, confirming her opinion that a man as brim full of vitality as him would have had plenty of experience with women.
‘Not that I ever really understood my wife, either, and she was merely a chandler’s daughter. She did not mind … did not seem to mind my ways. I thought she saw marrying a lieutenant as a step up the social ladder.’ He frowned. ‘I know better now. Once bitten, twice shy. Besides which, my needs now are nothing like the expectations I had when I was a callow youth. And I’ve a sight too much self-respect, at my age, to try to play the suitor to a succession of society beauties in Almack’s or some such place. I have neither the time, nor the inclination, to go down that route.’
Though Aimée was somewhat baffled by the turn the conversation was taking, she smiled politely, and took a sip of her wine.
‘But Mr Jago said you would suit me down to the ground. You have lived much harder than most gently born ladies, have you not?’
Her eyes flickered back to him uncertainly. When she had been a little girl, her mother had shielded her from knowing about their constant financial hardships. Living within the orbit of Lady Aurora Vickery was like being on a grand adventure. She had even managed to make fleeing lodgings where the rent was overdue, at the dead of night, into a game. A game of hide-and-seek, she smiled sadly, that had been played out over an entire continent, from an ever-increasing army of creditors. It was only once she had died that reality had set in with a vengeance. Her father had always been a little too fond of drinking and gambling, but without her mother’s restraining influence, he shed any veneer of decency. Then the man she had called father had progressively crumbled away, until even Aimée had been forced to admit there was nothing left of the man who had inspired her mother to elope with him.
So it was pointless to quibble about how she regarded her past. She just nodded her head, murmuring, ‘Yes.’
‘Then it is about time we came to terms,’ he said.
‘T-terms?’
He shifted position, as though his chair had suddenly become very uncomfortable. ‘Yes, terms. I was not planning to lay my cards on the table quite this soon, but you have already guessed that I got you here under false pretences, have you not? I knew, of course, that a woman applying for a job as a governess would have a certain level of education, but you really do have a quick mind, Miss Peters. I admire that about you.’
He looked her over, in a way that made her very aware of her body.
‘As well as being every bit as pretty as Mr Jago told me. I could not find,’ he said, with evident satisfaction, ‘a woman more suitable for my purposes if I were to trawl society ballrooms for a month.’
She bent her head over her plate, carrying on eating as though nothing troubled her. Thank heavens she had already reminded herself of what her mother would have expected of her, and buckled her manners in place like armour!
She had begun to suspect the Captain was up to something when she had discovered he had no wife or children here. Really, she ought to have been put on the alert by the fact he had been so coy about revealing his identity until after she was already committed to travelling up here. No wonder the interview had been so cursory. Captain Corcoran did not need a governess for his fictitious children!
No, now he was freely admitting that he had lured her to this isolated spot under false