Page 9 of Lady Diana's Lost Lord

She would forget this miserable little cottage, forget the feral child she’d been temporarily saddled with, and forgethim. Diana turned her face into the pillow as the storm tossed sheets and sheets of rain upon the roof, breathed in the earthy scent of pine and grass that lingered on the pillow, and managed, somehow, to sleep.

∞∞∞

“Papa,” Hannah said, turning her fork over in her eggs until she had created a little pile of them there at the corner of her plate. “Who was that lady?”

Ben slathered a thin layer of butter upon a slice of bread as he sat down at the worn table. “Her name is Diana,” he said. “I knew her when I was quite small. About your age, in fact.” And he’d thought her a bit of a brat even then. Always glaring at him as if his very presence had offended her. He’d been intimidated by her, even though he’d had two years and as many inches over her at the time. But then, he’d been a timid child, always mindful of saying or doing the wrong thing.Be a gentleman, his father had told him in a harsh whisper upon their first meeting.You will marry this girl someday.

He hadn’t known, then, that he’d basically been sold to her. But he’d discovered it eventually.

Hannah wrinkled her nose. “I don’t like her.”

“You don’t have to like her. Youdohave to be polite to her,” he said. “Besides, she won’t be staying.” Like as not, she’d leave in a hurry the very moment her coachman returned for her. Only God could know what had possessed her to comehere—or how she’d even found him. He’d taken great pains to stay anonymous, or as near enough to it as he could get. They moved about frequently, he and Hannah. They had never stayed in one place longenough to put down roots, nor too close to any place where he might be recognized. It was safer simply to be Mr. Gillingham and his daughter. To risk being recognized for who he had once been would place Hannah in jeopardy.

The world was so unbearably cruel to illegitimate children. Counting the sins of the parents against an innocent child—it was more than he could tolerate. Better to be provincial nobodies, of little note and even less consequence.

Hannah crammed a forkful of eggs into her mouth and chewed with wild abandon, her mouth hanging open. “What’s a governess?” she asked, tilting her head until one of her plaits spilled over her shoulder. The end dropped onto her plate, straight into the pile of eggs.

So she had been listening from upstairs, evening last, when he’d had that brief row with Diana. “A governess is a woman who teaches children.”

“Teaches them what?”

This was one of the travails of children, the endless,endlessquestions. Hannah had a particular talent for posing one after another until they had become so abstract, so mind-bogglingly complicated, that he could hardly tell up from down, much less find the wherewithal to explain whatever it was she had asked. “All sorts of things,” he replied. “Mathematics. Literature. Deportment.” Inwardly, he winced. Waited.

“What’s deportment?”

“Manners,” he said, nodding to where Hannah’s plait had become covered in bits of egg. “Like not getting your hair in your eggs.” Or eggs in one’s hair.

Hannah gave a sniff that would have been the envy of any dowager. “I don’t need manners,” she said disdainfully. “And I know all the numbers already.”

“Oh?” He took a sip of his tea, pursing his lips against a smile. “Which ones?”

“All of them.” She squinted. “Five,” she said. “Nine. Eleven.”

“There’s more numbers than that.”

“Fourteen,” she said, with a determined nod. “That’s enough of them, I think.”

Good God. She reallydidneed a governess. Once, they had lived in a village just large enough to have a proper charity school, but it had operated just one day a week—Sunday, after the church service—and had been open only to boys, besides. There was only so much he was capable of teaching her in the limited hours when he was not working his hands bloody to provide aliving for them.

And he would far rather spend those precious hours being a father instead of a schoolmaster. It was true enough that most of the people in the places they had lived could read just a little and cipher well enough to make change at market. But he had always wanted a better life for Hannah than one stunted by ignorance, and as it was she would struggle for want of a proper education.

She was eight years old already. How many years would he have left to ensure she ventured out into the world with the skills she would need to survive it? How many years to scrape together what funds he could to ensure she never went wanting?

He couldn’t even afford the wages a governess would command.Blast.

Pushing back his chair, he strode to the rickety little cabinet and rooted around within thew drawer for a scrap of paper and a pencil—one of the Lake District’s finest. “Here,” he said, dropping them beside her plate and dragging his chair closer to sit beside her. “Show me how your write your name.” He was reasonably certain she knew that much; he’d taught her her letters ages ago.

As if he had laid down a challenge before her, Hannah fisted the pencil in her left hand and began to write in large, capital letters,HANA.

Ben winced. “Not quite, sweetheart.” He collected the pencil from her hand and slid the paper closer to himself to write outHannah Grace Gillingham.

Hannah frowned down at the paper, at her name written there upon it, as if it were a mystery she could not quite unravel. “That’s too many letters,” she said. “I like mine better.”

Ben snorted, a sound which provoked a gleeful grin from his daughter. “I’ll just bet you do,” he said. He swiped one hand over his mouth, stifling the sigh that wanted to escape. It seemed that knowing one’s letters did not give one an intrinsic understanding of spelling. Nor did knowing one’s numbers confer the ability to cipher.

He’d failed her. He’d failed her, and he’dkeepfailing her, because he could not afford a bloody governess.

Casually—toocasually—Hannah returned her attention to her eggs and asked, “Is Miss Wright coming to mind me today, Papa?”