Page 11 of The Governess and the Rogue (Somerset Stories #6)

Chapter Nine

I t was all Bea could do not to gawp at Jack like a beached mackerel.

So, this is what all the fuss was over. The reason he had been hounded across continents, pursued like some mythical golden hind.

He wasn’t only handsome.

He was, as Pearl had stated, outrageously handsome.

Far too handsome to be troubling himself over Bea’s problems. And yet, he was doing just that.

Her chest tightened on an unnerving swell of gratitude.

Until this moment, she had been resigned to forging ahead on her own.

And doing a rather good job of it, she thought, despite the certain knowledge that she was burning her bridges behind her.

But to have Jack appear in all his splendor, and for him to ally himself with her, was akin to having a crushing weight lifted from her shoulders.

For the first time in Bea’s life, she wasn’t facing the firing squad alone.

Mrs. Dimsdale’s thin brows elevated all the way to her hairline. “Do you mean to say that you know my children’s governess, Colonel Beresford?”

“I have that honor,” Jack replied.

Mrs. Dimsdale looked between the two of them with swift displeasure. There was only one reason an impoverished governess would be acquainted with an unmarried gentleman who was not of her class and it had nothing to do with honor.

“So,” she said, turning on Bea. “Your crimes have managed to outpace even the ones for which you stand accused. Not content with defiance and deception, you’ve seen fit to add harlotry to your list.”

Bea’s cheeks burned with mortification. In all her many trips before various firing squads over the years, she’d never yet been accused of that . Impertinence, yes. Even insubordination. But never a lapse of morality.

Jack’s expression was transformed by a thunderous scowl. “Now see here, madam?—”

“You misunderstand,” Bea said at the same time. “Colonel Beresford and I are?—”

“Are what?” Mrs. Dimsdale demanded.

Bea’s gaze found Jack’s. They’re eyes met for a weighted moment. Something seemed to pass between them. Bea felt it as surely as if he’d taken her hand just as he had last night, his voice deep and his manner reassuring, promising her that his plan “would solve everything.”

This time, Bea believed it.

The words emerged from her lips before she could stop them. “We are engaged to be married.”

Mrs. Dimsdale’s face drained of color. “You’re what? ”

“Miss Layton and I are engaged,” Jack confirmed without missing a beat.

The next thing Bea knew, he was at her side. She had no memory of him walking there, or of anything else for that matter. She feared she may have fallen into some manner of self-induced shock.

“Naturally she can no longer remain in your employ,” Jack said.

“She’s under my protection now. As to the accusations you’ve levied—” He took a step toward Mrs. Dimsdale, sufficient to make her draw back.

“I’ll thank you not to repeat them. You will find me woefully absent a sense of humor when it comes to gossip about the lady who is soon-to-be my wife. ”

“But Colonel,” Mrs. Dimsdale sputtered. “How can you?—How can she —It isn’t at all?—”

“If you have any other issues, you may bring them to me,” Jack said. “Miss Layton is not to be bothered by you. Or by your husband.”

Mrs. Dimsdale blanched. “I don’t know what you’re implying, but?—”

“Now, if you will excuse us?” Jack offered Bea his arm. “Shall we go into breakfast, my dear?”

Bea took it numbly. My dear , he’d called her. She moistened her lips. Her mouth was suddenly dry. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I seem to have lost my appetite.”

Jack didn’t bat an eye. “A breath of fresh air, then.”

Bea nodded. She held tight to Jack’s arm as he led her from the saloon, leaving Mrs. Dimsdale behind them.

And what have I done? Bea thought.

Good lord above, what on earth have I done?

* * *

Jack withdrew a small silver flask from the interior pocket of his coat. He unscrewed the cap before passing it to Bea. She was at the rail of the ship, her face to the sea. The breeze over the water played in the loose tendrils of dark hair that framed her pale countenance.

“Here,” he said. “Have a swig of this.”

She did as he bid her, grimacing mightily at the taste of it. “What was that? ”

“Whiskey,” he said. “For shock.”

She thrust the flask back at him in disgust. “I’m not in shock.”

Jack made no reply as he screwed the cap back on. During his many years in the army, he’d become a keen observer of men. He knew when they were lying to him, when they were foxed, and when they were frightened. And he knew when one of them had succumbed to shock.

It was the latter that had come over Bea. Jack had seen it happen the instant she’d announced that the two of them were engaged. Her face had gone waxen, and her gaze had become fixed. He’d been amazed she hadn’t swooned.

She set her hands on the rail. “I didn’t expect that you?—” she broke off. “That is, I didn’t consider what must come next.”

“Which part?” Jack asked. They’d discussed all of it last night, hadn’t they? He believed he’d been thorough. He usually was, even with the most reckless of his brainstorms.

“What you said about my being under your protection,” she replied.

“We talked about that, didn’t we?” Jack returned his flask to his pocket. “Not that you require my protection. You seemed to be doing an excellent job of protecting yourself when I entered the saloon.” He smiled slightly. “What happened to throwing yourself on Mrs. Dimsdale’s mercy?”

Bea gave an eloquent grimace. “My wretched temper.”

Jack’s smile broadened with reluctant amusement. He leaned against the rail at her side. “I wasn’t aware you had one.”

“Didn’t I mention it last night when I was giving you a catalog of my failings?”

“Not that I recall.”

She’d enumerated countless flaws. Claimed she was bold, difficult, opinionated. Even that she was bad at geography. But she hadn’t said anything about having a temper.

“It creeps up on me,” she explained morosely.

“The smallest offenses accruing day-by-day until I can bear it no longer without speaking up. That’s what happened with Mrs. Dimsdale.

I was standing in front of her, fully prepared to beg her pardon for all my supposed crimes, when the injustice of the situation became too great to ignore. ”

“It would indeed have been an injustice had she sacked you for her husband’s offense,” Jack said.

“Exactly what I thought,” Bea said. “But being in the right is poor comfort, given what’s happened as a result. This situation—you and I—It’s… It’s an absolute catastrophe.”

Jack had never imagined that a woman— any woman—would describe being engaged to him as a catastrophe. Even if it was only a fake engagement. The fact that Bea had done so, and that she continued to look so glum, was equal parts amusing and insulting.

“Mrs. Dimsdale is probably telling everyone as we speak,” she said. “Her husband, Mrs. Rawson, the Farradays, the children. The captain and the crew. The stewards and the?—”

“Very likely.”

“I can’t imagine what they must be saying about me.”

“Who cares?” Jack asked. “It can’t touch you now.”

Bea’s fingers curled tighter on the rail. She stared out at the sea. “Poor Pearl.”

He frowned. “Who is Pearl?”

“Mrs. Rawson’s maid-companion. We’ve shared quarters since we left Bombay. She’s become my friend. And now… She must hate me.”

Jack feared he had lost the thread. “Why must she?”

Bea cast him a bleak glance. “It was she who Mrs. Dimsdale called upon to watch the children this morning. Mrs. Rawson must have lent her for the purpose. Otherwise, Mrs. Dimsdale wouldn’t have been so quick to dismiss me.”

“Ah.” Jack began to understand. “Poor Pearl, indeed.”

“So, you see,” Bea said, releasing the rail, “we haven’t considered everything.”

“We didn’t consider Pearl,” Jack allowed. He racked his brain as Bea paced away from him. It didn’t take him long to land upon a solution. “There’s a simple enough remedy for it.”

Bea didn’t stop. She didn’t appear to be listening, either. Arms folded, she walked toward the deck chairs beneath the awning.

Jack gripped his cane, following after her. “You’ll require a maid for the remainder of the voyage. If Mrs. Rawson can lend Pearl to the Dimsdales, she can just as easily hire her out to you instead.”

That got Bea’s attention.

She stopped in her tracks, turning to face him. “Are you out of your senses? Pearl can’t be my maid!”

“Why in blazes not?”

“She’s my friend!”

Jack cocked a brow. “Ah,” he said. “You have principles.”

“And you don’t?”

“Naturally I do. But if we’re going to pull this off, we’ll have to set them aside until we reach Southampton. In the meanwhile, all that matters is maintaining the fiction.”

“By hiring Pearl to wait on me like a servant?” Bea looked appalled.

“You’ll need a maid once you move into your stateroom. Better one that you’re on good terms with than another gossiping stranger.”

Bea stared at him. “ My stateroom? You don’t mean that?—”

“You can’t remain in servants’ accommodation. Not when you’re a Beresford bride to be.”

Her jaw stiffened. “I’m not?—”

“You are , as far as anyone else knows,” Jack said, with a trace of impatience. “That’s the whole point of this exercise. Which means that you must be treated as a lady, not as a governess, a washerwoman, or whatever else you’ve been accustomed to being.”

“I have been whatever I’ve had to be to survive,” she informed him stonily. “Governess, laundress, maid of all work. And now, apparently, your fake fiancée.”

By her tone, one might easily be persuaded that all the positions were similarly distasteful.

“Quite,” Jack said. “Which brings us to another matter.”

It was something else he hadn’t considered until this moment. But Bea didn’t need to know that. He’d rather she believed that he had all the elements of the plan well in hand than that he was making things up as he went along.

“What other matter?” she asked.

“When we arrive in Southampton, you’ll have to take rooms at a hotel. You’ll need somewhere to stay until I can arrange a position for you.”

Judging by the grim look that came into Bea’s eyes, she hadn’t thought of this part of their plan either. “A hotel,” she repeated flatly. “For how long?”

“A day or two at most. Just long enough for me to speak with my sister-in-law. I shall tell her?—”

“That we’re pretending to be engaged?”

“Lord no,” Jack said, appalled.

He couldn’t confide in Hannah about something like this.

If he did, she’d inevitably tell James. And James was the last person on earth who could hear of it.

He was too cold and implacable, lacking any trace of humor when it came to hare-brained schemes or breaches of gentlemanly conduct.

If he learned that Jack had participated in such a deception, Jack would never hear the end of it.

“Then what?” Bea asked.

“I’ll tell her the truth,” Jack said. “That you’re a hardworking, honorable, colonial governess, alone in the world, and anxious to find a position in a respectable British household.”

“How succinctly you put it,” Bea remarked dryly.

“Persuasively, I’d have said,” Jack replied. “Hannah’s got a good heart. She’ll write you a reference straightaway.”

“And I’m to rely on that possibility, am I? As I await this promised reference, alone in a strange hotel, with only a few shillings to my name?”

“You can rely on me .”

“So you claim. But?—”

“If this is to work?—”

“Oh, what’s the point?” Bea exclaimed in a burst of feeling. “I don’t know what possessed me to tell Mrs. Dimsdale that you and I are engaged. She didn’t believe it. The other passengers aren’t going to believe it either.”

“Not if you continue looking so dashed mournful, they won’t,” Jack snapped back, nettled. “If we were really engaged, you’d be smiling from ear to ear!”

Bea’s eyes widened. She was startled into a choked laugh. “My goodness. You do think a lot of yourself.”

Jack pushed his hand through his hair. The devil! He rarely permitted himself to be goaded into incivility. And he never boasted. Not to ladies, at any rate. And certainly not about himself.

At length, he managed a sheepish grimace. “Vanity, thy name is Beresford,” he muttered. “If it makes any difference, I’m the least conceited of all my brothers.”

“And the most pursued, I gather.”

“Not by any conceivable measure. That distinction belongs to my oldest brother, James. Next to him and my second oldest brother, Ivo, my charms are decidedly third rate.”

“I can scarcely credit that ,” she said.

Jack’s mouth twitched. “If I didn’t know you better, Miss Layton, I’d suspect that was a compliment.”

“You don’t know me at all, Colonel Beresford,” she returned in repressive tones.

Her starchiness only made Jack’s smile broaden. He was about to say something more when the unmistakable clatter of footsteps sounded from the stairs that led up from the deck below.

It seemed that Mrs. Dimsdale had wasted no time in informing the others of Jack’s presence on board— and of his scandalous engagement to her disgraced former governess.

All that remained now was to face them.

“That will be the welcoming party,” Jack said.

Bea’s gaze jolted toward the stairs where the tall plumes on a pair of fashionable ladies’ bonnets were just coming into view. The starch left her spine. Her face went a shade paler. “ Jack ?—”

“All will be well,” he assured her. “Granted, it’s going to be bloody awkward, but once the formalities are out of the way?—”

“I don’t know if I can?—”

“You can.” He abruptly took her hand, enfolding it in his.

Bea’s cheeks flushed pink, just as they had last night. But unlike last night, this time, she didn’t pull away from him. Instead, she curled her ice-cold fingers around his in return, holding his hand tight.

Jack felt a disconcerting swell of protectiveness for her.

And that wasn’t all.

There was something else there too. Some alarming quiver of heat that spiked his blood and made his heart lose its rhythm.

“I can’t think how I’m to behave,” she whispered as the other passengers began to appear.

“That’s easy enough,” he whispered back. “Just smile, Bea. And pretend you’re wildly in love with me.”