Page 14 of The Governess and the Rogue (Somerset Stories #6)

Chapter Twelve

J ack leaned back in his chair as he examined the cards in his hand.

Bea was seated across from him at a small, felt-topped table in the ship’s gaming saloon, his half-hearted opponent in a rubber of picquet.

He told himself that he didn’t mind her lack of enthusiasm.

Her presence had saved him from being pressed into a foursome with the Farradays and Mrs. Rawson.

That alone was enough to earn Bea his endless gratitude.

“This engagement isn’t half bad,” he remarked.

Bea glanced up at him from over her own hand of cards. “Naturally you would say that now .”

“I would.” His mouth quirked. “I do.”

She arranged her cards. “It’s been but a few days.”

Three days, more precisely, since their engagement had been announced.

Jack and Bea had been in company with each other for nearly every waking moment of them. Every day. Every hour. At mealtimes, during leisurely airings above deck, and smoke-filled evenings spent over cards in the gaming saloon.

They were never alone. The Rawsons, Dimsdales, Farradays, and other first-class passengers were forever circling them like sharks.

Yet, through it all, Bea remained steadfast in her position.

She sat primly beside Jack while he read, scribbling in her journal or attending to her sewing.

She was his silent companion while he talked with any ladies and gentlemen who approached.

And she was his protector, her very presence as his fiancée acting as a deterrent to those would otherwise have attempted to wheedle their way into his company, his affections, his life.

“Your point?” he asked.

“You’ll feel differently by the time we’re through.”

“I might,” he allowed. “But I doubt it.”

They had but five days remaining until they arrived in England. Jack couldn’t imagine growing dissatisfied with their arrangement in so short a time.

Bea didn’t appear convinced. “If I were you, I’d be pining for time to myself.”

“I never pine.” Jack laid down a card. A troublesome thought occurred to him. “Are you?”

“Am I what?”

“Pining for time to yourself?”

She perused her hand, only half listening to him. “I take time for myself.”

“In your stateroom?” he asked.

“Above deck,” she said absently. “After dark. Just as I always have.”

Jack’s gaze jerked to hers with a startled frown. “You’re still wandering the deck of the ship at night?”

“I don’t wander.”

That meant yes.

His frown turned into a scowl. “What the devil for?”

“Fresh air,” she said as if it were the most reasonable answer in the world.

To Jack, it was anything but. “You get plenty of air. We both do. We’re above deck half the day.”

“Moonlight, then.”

He scoffed. “Vastly overrated.”

She laid down a card. “And starlight.”

“For cosmic beauty, is that it?” he asked. “To ponder the mystery of the stars? Is that what I’m to believe?”

“I’ve told you as much,” she said. “But I suppose you find it hard to believe that a mere drudge would appreciate such refined things.”

Jack’s brows snapped together. “That’s not what I said.”

“It’s what you meant.”

“You presume to tell me what I mean when—” He broke off, belatedly registering the interested looks of some of the other guests in the gaming saloon.

Miss Farraday and her mother were both staring in Jack’s and Bea’s direction from across the carpeted room. So were Mrs. Rawson and Mrs. Dimsdale. Jack even caught a furtive glance from Mr. Dimsdale who was seated round a low table, nursing his drink, with two similarly occupied gentlemen.

Jack banished the scowl from his brow. He forced himself to smile, as though the two of them were engaged in congenial conversation. “It isn’t what I meant, termagant,” he said quietly. “And we have an audience.”

Bea’s gaze flicked straight to the Farradays’ table.

“Don’t look,” Jack advised under his breath.

Bea returned her attention to her cards. A flush of heightened color briefly darkened her cheeks. “Did I raise my voice?”

“We both did.”

“Something we have in common,” she observed. “We’re both over passionate.”

Jack suspected she was right. He hadn’t realized it when he’d proposed the false engagement to her.

He’d known she was starchy, of course, but he’d seen precious little of her spirit.

That singular blaze that came into her face and her eyes when she was arguing against an injustice or coming to the aid of a friend.

It was really quite magnificent.

He didn’t like to acknowledge just how magnificent.

“And I wasn’t implying that you were a drudge,” he added gruffly.

“What were you implying?” she asked.

“That a man has already tried to impose on you once during your wanderings. If I hadn’t been there?—”

“Well,” she interrupted, “fortunately for me, you were.”

“But not anymore.” Jack no longer went above deck after dark. He had no need to. Thanks to Bea, he could now move about freely during the daylight hours and leave his nights for sleeping. “What do you plan to do if such an outrage should happen again?”

“I don’t imagine it will,” she said. “Not now I’m engaged to you.”

“A drunkard who comes upon you in the moonlight won’t care who you’re engaged to.”

“As to that?—”

“Besides which,” Jack continued, with fresh irritation, “I thought you only emerged at night as a respite from the children?”

“From my work, yes.”

Jack had to make an effort not to scowl again. “Which you still require, apparently.” He rearranged his remaining cards with unusually brusque movements. “Tell me, do you put me in the same class as those savages?”

Her mouth tipped in the barest suggestion of a smile. “Indeed, I do not.”

Jack was unmollified.

It occurred to him that, in becoming engaged to Bea, all he’d done was hire himself a vexing and rather attractive nurse. Perhaps that was how she saw their arrangement too, less as his fake fiancée and more as a paid companion to a demanding invalid.

Judging by her desire to venture above deck alone after dark, it wasn’t a position she was enjoying overmuch. Though honestly, Jack reflected bitterly, he would have thought it preferable to the alternative.

“Why did you choose to become a governess?” he asked.

The question seemed to take her aback. “What?”

“Do you like children?”

She resumed perusing her cards. “I don’t dis like them.”

Under other circumstances, Jack would have laughed. But not this evening. “Then the position wasn’t your heart’s desire?”

“To be a governess?” She flashed him an incredulous glance. “Are you in jest?”

“I’m in earnest.”

She huffed. “You must never have known any governesses.”

It was a fair point.

Jack hadn’t known any. Not intimately.

“My little sister had a governess. Miss Cray, her name was. A nervous little woman. She drank, I believe. But,” he added, “that was my sister’s doing.”

Bea’s hand froze midway to laying down a card. “Your sister induced her to drink?”

“My sister’s behavior induced her to drink.” Jack’s mouth curled at the memory of all the shocking scrapes Kate had embroiled herself in over the years. “Kate was a hellion. She’d try the patience of a saint. My parents were at pains to constrain her behavior.”

Bea played her card. “Did they succeed?”

“Lord no. Thankfully, Kate found someone she wished to marry. She’s his problem now.”

“And what of Miss Cray?”

“Pensioned off to a cottage on one of our estates,” Jack said.

A strange expression crossed Bea’s face. “That was extraordinarily kind of your family.”

Jack shrugged, returning his attention to his cards. What could he say? That his father had once been something of a servant himself? An alleged bastard, raised as a stable boy on Jack’s mother’s childhood estate?

It was a family scandal, rumors of which had still been plaguing the Beresfords at the time Jack joined the army. Not at all the sort of thing a chap should be sharing with a stranger. Even if that stranger was his fake fiancée.

“We Beresfords aren’t typically top lofty sorts,” he said instead. “Not unless we have to be.”

“Does anyone have to be?” Bea wondered.

“Arrogance has its uses. One never knows when one might have to deliver an edict.” Jack paused. “By the by, I’ll be joining you on your midnight rambles this evening.”

Bea cast him another glance over the top of her cards. There was a look in her eyes that was difficult to read.

Jack’s stomach tensed. “I trust you don’t object?”

“On the contrary,” she said at last. “I should be glad of your company.”