Page 15 of The Governess and the Rogue (Somerset Stories #6)

Chapter Thirteen

Later that night . . .

J ack grimaced as Maberly massaged salve into Jack’s injured leg.

It was all part of the treatment the surgeon in Cairo had prescribed—medicated salve, massage, and applications of ice and heat, to be administered first thing in the morning and before retiring at night.

Maberly had learned the basics of it before Jack had been discharged from the hospital in Cairo. Still…

“Must you be so bloody rough?” Jack asked crossly. “You’re not tenderizing a piece of mutton for the table.”

Maberly made no reply, but his fingers kneaded Jack’s spasmed muscles with a fraction less pressure. A lantern hung behind him, illuminating the periphery of the cabin, but leaving the rest in shadows.

It was nearly eleven o’clock. Almost time for Jack to meet Bea above deck for their promised rendezvous in the moonlight.

But practical matters must inevitably come first.

Jack leaned back in his berth, closing his eyes rather than witness his batman’s medical ministrations. All things considered, he preferred not to look at his leg. Whenever he did, it never failed to lower his spirits. And he wanted his spirits up tonight when he met Bea on the deck.

“You’re awfully silent this evening,” he remarked to Maberly. “Am I meant to take it as censure?”

Maberly didn’t answer.

Which was answer enough in itself.

“It’s been three days,” Jack said. “I’d have thought that ample time to smooth your ruffled feathers where Miss Layton’s concerned.”

Maberly made a chuffing noise, somewhere between a scoff and a grunt.

Jack cracked an eye open to glare at his batman.

They’d been through too much together over the years not to speak plainly.

“If you’ve something to say, then say it and be done,” he commanded.

“I won’t have you glowering all over the ship, telegraphing your displeasure to all and sundry.

This engagement is meant to solve problems, not create new ones. ”

“ Your problems?” Maberly inquired darkly.

“And hers,” Jack said. “It was the only way I could help her.”

“Don’t know why it’s up to you to help a governess you met on a ruddy ship,” Maberly grumbled. “Not your business, I’d have said.”

“Is it her you disapprove of?” Jack asked. Both of his eyes were open now. “Or merely the haste of the announcement?”

Maberly straightened. He wiped his hands on a towel. “I disapprove of the entire scheme.”

“A scheme,” Jack repeated. “That’s what you call it?”

Maberly frowned. “Isn’t it?”

Jack felt a flinch of conscience. He sat up from his berth. “If it is, it’s not the sort that will hurt anyone.”

The batman uttered another disbelieving grunt. As he helped Jack dress, his dour expression left no doubt as to how he felt about Jack’s engagement to Bea. “Chill night tonight,” he said, assisting Jack into his coat. “Better you should spend it resting your leg than traipsing about.”

“Probably.” But Jack had already told Bea he’d be meeting her. A little cold wasn’t going to stop him. Speaking of which…

“Where are those gifts I bought in Cairo?” Jack asked.

Maberly’s forehead scrunched. “Them packages for her ladyship and your sisters?”

“Those are the ones.” Jack had bought an excess of presents for his mother and Kate, and for his sisters-in-law, Hannah and Meg. Not to mention the countless trifles he’d purchased for his nieces and nephews.

Maberly grudgingly removed one of Jack’s leather cases from a short stack of luggage on the opposite wall. He sat it on a chair and opened it. “They’re here, sir.”

Jack came to stand in front of the open case. His weight resting on his cane, he rummaged through the paper-and-twine-wrapped parcels within. There were several of them that were soft and relatively flat. He picked one up. “This is one of Kate’s, I believe,” he said. “She won’t miss it.”

Maberly’s face darkened with unspoken censure.

Jack paid him no heed. Tucking the parcel in his coat, he exited his cabin in search of Bea.

The sea air was indeed chill tonight, stinging his face as he ascended to the upper deck. He didn’t like to think of Bea, standing at the rail in her thin gown and threadbare shawl.

Yet, it was precisely where he found her. There, in the moonlight, hands at the rail as she stared out at the stars.

“You’ve anticipated me,” he said.

She cast him a glance over her shoulder. “You said you’d be joining me. I took you at your word.”

He limped up to the rail. “Have you been here long?”

“Not long, no.” Her mouth curved in a fleeting smile. “I’ve been pondering the mystery of the stars.”

He inwardly winced to hear the sardonic words he’d uttered in the gaming saloon volleyed back at him. “Ah.”

“Is that what you do when you look at the night sky?” she asked. “Consider its mystery?”

“I don’t know that I’ve ever spent much time looking upward,” Jack admitted. “There’s too much to keep my attention here on the ground.”

“Indeed,” Bea said. “It’s only dreamers who have cause to stare at the stars.”

“You presume I’m not a dreamer?”

Her slim shoulder lifted in a faint shrug. “If you already have everything you want, you have no need to dream.”

A flicker of irritation took Jack unaware. “What makes you think I already have everything I want?”

“Don’t you?” she asked.

Jack didn’t answer.

He couldn’t answer.

He had wealth and position, it was true. He had the love of his family. The admiration of the soldiers that served under his command. But was that everything?

Was it enough?

“I’d not have characterized you as a dreamer either,” he said instead.

“I’m not,” she replied matter-of-factly. “It was my mother who dreamed.” She drew her shawl tighter around herself. “She had a tradition. Every night, without fail, she would venture out into our garden and make a wish on the evening star.”

“A dreamer, indeed.”

“Not outwardly. She was a practical woman in every other respect, but at her heart, she held a belief in magic.” Bea cast him another glance. “Not real magic, of course. But the power that exists for good things to happen in the bleakest circumstances.”

“Were her circumstances bleak?” Jack asked.

“I didn’t think so. But… I suppose she wanted more.”

“Is that why you’re forever searching the night sky? Making wishes on stars in memory of your mother?”

“Not only for her,” Bea said. “I make them for myself too.”

Jack studied her face. When first they’d met, he had thought her younger than her six and twenty years.

And she was young in comparison to him. Yet there were already fine lines at the corners of her eyes and a certain world weariness at the back of her gaze.

She’d known hardship, loneliness. It was written there in her features if one troubled to look for it.

He hated that for her. That she’d ever experienced a moment of anguish or despair. It wasn’t right that she should have suffered on account of people like the Dimsdales, or for any other reason.

“Now that I find hard to believe,” he said.

“Why?” she asked. “Because I’m a cynic?”

“I’d have said sensible.”

“I hope I am sensible.”

“Yet you make wishes.”

She smiled slightly. There was a glimmer of ruefulness in the expression.

Bitterness too, so faint it might have been a trick of the moonlight.

“For all my cynicism, I suppose I want to believe what my mother believed. That something wonderful can happen if you only have the courage to ask for it. To wish for it.”

As she spoke, a delicate tremor went through her frame.

Jack regarded her with concern. “You’re shivering.”

Bea dismissed the observation as though it were of no account to her. “It is a little cold this evening,” she allowed. “But I shall be all right.”

“With that meager shawl?” Jack scoffed. “Here. You might like this better.” He withdrew the parcel from his coat and offered it to her.

She looked at the package with swift suspicion. “What is it?”

“Nothing outrageous. Just a trifle I picked up during my travels. I have a trunkful of them in my cabin.” He pressed it to her. “Take it. It’s a purely practical item, I assure.”

Bea reluctantly accepted the gift. Her fingers nimbly removed the twine and the paper wrappings, revealing the vibrantly colored shawl within. It was sky-blue, with a border of embroidered flowers and leaves.

Jack recalled encountering it at a bazaar during his first outing after his surgery. He’d thought it an uncommonly pretty pattern. One that didn’t entirely suit his mother, sister, or sisters-in-law. For some reason, he’d bought it anyway.

Bea’s gaze jolted to his. “I can’t accept this! It’s cashmere!”

“Nonsense,” Jack said. “I won’t allow my fiancée to catch a chill above deck.”

“But I’m not your fiancée, as you very well know. It’s all just playacting.”

Jack smiled, amused by her maidenish indignance. “In that case, you may consider this part of your costuming.”

She shook her head, even as she touched the shawl with her fingers. A vaguely wistful expression came into her eyes.

Looking at her in that moment, Jack could readily believe that she was a dreamer like her mother.

“Come,” he said. “Put it on before you catch your death.”

“I’m not likely to,” she said. “I have a very robust constitution.”

“Bea, must you always be so literal? And ungrateful too, I might add. Every time I attempt to be gallant?—”

“Oh, very well.” She grudgingly slipped her old shawl from her shoulders.

Jack took it from her. He thrust it into his pocket for safekeeping as Bea unfolded the new shawl and draped it around herself.

The rich colors of the cashmere transformed her in an instant, enlivening the whole of her person and making her eyes shine like twin jewels.

She glared at him. “There. Are you satisfied?”

Jack swallowed hard. “I’m exceedingly satisfied,” he managed.

“Who did you really buy it for?” she asked.

“No one,” he said. “I simply thought it beautiful. I figured it would do for one of the many females in my life. And it has.”

“Is that what I am now? A female in your life?”

“Does the thought repel you?”

“No, I…” Bea’s words trailed away as he reached to adjust a fold of her shawl. “That is…”

Jack’s knuckles quite unintentionally brushed over the wool-encased curve of her bosom.

His pulse quaked.

“What do you wish for?” he asked abruptly. “When you make your wishes on the evening star?”

“I can’t tell you that,” she replied. There was a husky catch in her voice that made his already simmering blood catch fire.

“Why not?”

“If I did, they wouldn’t come true.”

Jack bent his head to hers; closer, closer.

Heaven knew what he was thinking. Nothing, very likely.

He seemed to be operating purely on instinct.

Masculine instinct, driven by the moon and the stars, and how surprisingly lovely Bea was beneath them in the shawl that had so obviously been meant for her.

“Are they likely to come true, these wishes you make?” he asked.

Her lashes lowered. “One of them already has,” she confessed.

And he kissed her.