Page 210 of Desires of a Duke Collection

Calli swallowed hard. Governess? Surely he must be joking. She had agreed, for she had no idea how else to explain her presence in his study, but she had immediately regretted doing so.

She looked down at the two children in front of her, whose smiles had somehow become wicked gleams at the words from their—father?

Panic rose in her breast as she tried to remember what Arie had said, to assume an air of self-assurance. She tried to focus on the man — the duke’s — actual words.

He assumed her to be a late-arriving governess. Which meant… that she now had an opportunity. An opportunity to study the painting in question in detail. An opportunity to, if she was able to find the time and the right place, paint it to her liking and check it against the original. An opportunity to make her family proud.

She forced a smile onto her face, looking up at the man who wore his handsomeness with an arrogance she found rather off-putting. But she supposed that’s what came with being a duke.

“My apologies for my lateness, Your Grace,” she said, attempting sincerity. “I had… travel trouble. And then when I arrived to see the house party, I was unsure of whether to enter and meet with you, so I was awaiting you here when the children found me.”

It sounded like a perfectly plausible explanation… didn’t it?

“I would suggest that the best place to tell the children a bedtime story would be in their nursery.”

“Uncle, it’s not a nursery,” the boy said, the edge of a whine in his voice. “That is for children, and we are not children anymore.”

“What would you have me call it, then, Matthew?”

“The schoolroom and our bedroom,” he said with a nod of his head that was so confident it made Calli smile. Uncle, he had called this duke. Whatever had happened to these children’s parents?

“Very well. Up you go. In the absence of Mrs. Blonsky, wherever she may be, would you please show Miss Donahue up to her own room?”

“Of course, Uncle,” the little girl said, a gleam in her eye that Calli wasn’t entirely sure of. The truth was, she had very little experience with children, as she and her siblings were all rather close to the same age. They couldn’t be particularly difficult to deal with, though… could they?

“To her actual room, Mary,” the duke said sternly, and Calli began to suspect that the children were not always as well-behaved as it might first seem. She bit her lip as she stared at the two of them, wondering if she had gotten herself into something she might not be able to handle.

“I must first go retrieve my bag, Your Grace,” she said with what must have been the clumsiest of curtsies. She had never been able to completely get it right.

“Where would your bag be, Miss Donahue?” he asked dryly.

“Tucked away near the front entrance,” she said. “I shall be but a moment.”

“What of the children?” he asked, one of his dark eyebrows raised.

Calli smoothed her hands down her skirts nervously. “What of them?”

“Who will watch them while you go retrieve your bag?”

“Umm…” Couldn’t he do it? It somehow didn’t seem entirely appropriate to ask, however. “I shall go later, then?”

“Very good,” he said, seemingly relieved. “Please meet me here in my study at one o’clock tomorrow afternoon, and we will review all of the particulars.”

She nodded, unable to keep herself from noticing the vivid blue of his eyes that seemed to bore right into her, seeing altogether too much.

“Yes, Your Grace.”

“I best return to my party,” he said, but despite his words he made no actual move to the door, instead his gaze lingering on her, from the top of her head down to the borrowed slippers that were poking out from beneath her dress. “Welcome, Miss Donahue.”

“Thank you,” she practically whispered, so thrown was she by his perusal. She wanted to rage against his arrogance, that he could view her as some doxy to be so entirely objectified, but he was a duke — and now, her employer. Of a sort.

And then there was the fact that his stare left not just annoyance but also… a tingling that she didn’t know, nor didn’t want, to give name to. A tingling that wanted to know more of who he was and what he might think of her.

Which was ridiculous, she told herself, as she hurried the children out of the room, studiously avoiding this man’s gaze. They were down the hall and up the stairs before the children turned to her and began to talk, spinning what she already knew were tall tales.

“You sleep in the attic,” Mary said primly. “By yourself. Except for the ghost, of course.”

“Of course,” Calli murmured, doing her best to keep her twitching lips from curling up into a smile. “And is that where your bedrooms are as well?”

“No,” Matthew said, with a shake of his head. “Ours are on the second floor.”

“Do you sleep alone, then?” she asked, raising her eyebrows at them in mock horror. “Who is to protect you?”

“We don’t need protection,” Mary said, crossing her arms over her chest.

“You don’t?” Calli said, placing one hand on a hip, the other over her mouth as though she was properly horrified. “But what if the baddies come in the night?”

“The baddies?” Both children said in unison.

“Yes — the monsters that form from the dust under your beds and come to take revenge on the boys and girls who have created them!”

The children — who Calli considered must be twins — exchanged a glance at that.

“You are making up a story,” Matthew said, his bottom lip pouting out as he seemed entirely displeased.

“You are right,” Calli said, relenting. “I am.”

“Why would you do that?” Mary asked, her anger now overcoming the fear she had been trying to hide.

“Why did you make up a story for me?”

“Because… because we wanted to play a trick on you!” Mary responded.

“I know. And how did it feel to be on the other side of that?”

“I—” Mary began, exchanging a look with Matthew, but neither of them seemed to have an answer for her. “We’ll show you to your room,” she said, pouting as she began down the second floor corridor. Calli smiled in satisfaction. Perhaps she had this handled after all.

Mercifully, the children fell asleep rather quickly, and Calli was soon creeping back downstairs, looking up and down each corridor to make sure that no one saw her sneaking about the house. The staff would soon recognize her as the governess, and she had to make sure that she wasn’t tied to a guest at the event. She thanked the heavens when she saw Diana outside of the ballroom, her face screwed up in concern as she was apparently looking for Calli.

“Diana!” Calli hissed from around the corner. “Diana!”

Diana’s head turned at her name, and she hurried toward Calli, grabbing her hand and rushing them into one of the small rooms, which seemed to be a parlor.

“Where have you been?” Diana exclaimed.

“Well, I found the painting,” Calli said, as hurriedly as she could. “But I found something else as well. As soon as I found it in the study, the door opened and two children came in.”

“Children?”

“Yes, children. It seems they are the niece and nephew of the duke. They began to question me about who I was and what I was doing there, but I was able to evade their inquisition and turned it around on them. Soon enough, I was telling them a story — one that Arie always told us when we were younger — and then the next thing I knew, the duke walked in!”

Diana gasped. “He didn’t.”

“He did.” Calli nodded grimly. “And he took me to be the new governess.”

“Oh, Calli,” Diana groaned. “You weren’t supposed to get yourself noticed.”

“Well, too late for that,” Calli said with a shrug. “I decided, however, that it might actually be of benefit. It will give me time to study this painting, to complete my own version to my liking. By the time I am finished, we can switch them out and no one will be the wiser.”

“Are you sure about this?” Diana asked, her worry evident. “We all have our skills, you know. Yours is your painting, we all know that. But as to your level of deception…”

“I’ll be fine,” Calli said with a wave of her hand. They were always doubting her, and she was sick of it. She was going to prove that she could handle this — all of this — and for once, be the hero of the family. “But I do need your help.”

“Of course.”

“I need you to retrieve a bag for me — quickly, as I said it was here, in the house. I’ll need some dresses, ones that are passable as a governess but nothing that is particularly pretentious. All the essentials as well as my oil paints — the ones that Xander mixed for me. You know what to bring. Meet me at the servant’s entrance in two hours’ time.”

Diana nodded. “Very well. And what shall I tell Arie?”

“The truth.”

***

And so, two hours later, Calli was crouched down outside of the servants’ entrance, shivering as she waited for her sister to arrive, hoping once more that she would attract no notice.

It was dark back here, a few hedgerows separating the mews from the front green.

A figure approached in the dark, but as it neared, Calli soon realized that it wasn’t her sister after all, but rather one of her brothers. Despite knowing she should stay in the shadows, she couldn’t help herself from jumping up and running to Xander — the only one of her siblings who was so by blood and not by the assumed family they had formed.

“Xander!” she said, wrapping her arms around him, relieved at the opportunity to be able to talk to him. “What are you doing here?”

“Arie sent me instead of Diana,” he said in a hushed voice, pulling Calli back into the shadows. “He didn’t think she should be out again alone.”

“It is my fault she had to return alone in the first place,” Calli muttered, wondering if this entire scheme was ridiculous.

“She told us what happened. I think it was rather quick of you to go along with everything.”

“Thank you,” Calli said, lighting up a bit inside at the praise. “What did Arie say?”

The head of their family was one of their toughest critics, though he also loved them all more than anyone else ever would.

Xander hesitated. “At first, he was upset.”

“I knew he would be.”

“Only because he was worried about you,” Xander added. “Then he began to see the merits of the idea.”

“Good,” Calli said, letting out the breath she didn’t even know she had been holding. “And what do you think?”

“I think that it would be rather interesting to stay and watch you in the role of a governess,” Xander said with a laugh, and even though it was dark, Calli could picture the twinkle in his eye. “However, my job is to watch you from a distance, make sure you are all right. How long do you think this painting will take you?”

Calli frowned. “It is more detailed than I thought, and while I do have a private room, it connects to the children’s, which will make finding time difficult. I shall have to do it at night, once everyone is asleep. It could take a few weeks.”

Weeks away from her family, in a strange house, with children who she had a feeling were not going to make life easy for her.

“You can do it,” Xander said encouragingly, and she was suddenly most worried about what it was going to like to be away from her brother. “If you need anything, just look for me. I’ll be close.”

Calli took the bag from his outstretched hand, then reached in to give him one last embrace.

“Thank you, Xander.”

“I have faith in you, Calli.”