Page 3 of The Governess and the Rogue (Somerset Stories #6)

Chapter Three

J ack watched Miss Layton cross the deck to the ship’s rail as he finished rereading his most recent letter from home.

Unlike last evening, when the silver-soft moonlight had been all there was to light Miss Layton’s path, tonight her pensive face and quiet figure were illuminated by the glow of the hanging lamps one of the ship’s stewards had lit at sunset.

As for the moon itself, it was half-hidden behind an incipient scatter of clouds.

Jack remained hidden too as Miss Layton surveyed the evening sky. It was only after giving her a moment alone that he folded his letter into the front pocket of his waistcoat and emerged from the shadows.

This time, Miss Layton didn’t seem surprised by his approach.

“A fine evening,” Jack said, coming to join her.

“Overcast,” she replied without looking at him. “I can scarcely see the stars.”

Jack followed her gaze heavenward. “Do you need to? For navigation or some such?” He wouldn’t put it past her. She was, after all, a governess. Astronomy might well be one of her subjects.

“I have no great purpose,” she said. “I simply enjoy beauty. Many people do.”

Jack’s attention returned to her face. A drab little sparrow, he’d thought her in the moonlight.

One with unusually pretty eyes. But the lamplight revealed other allurements.

Those eyes were framed by elegantly winged dark brows.

And what he’d yesterday mistaken in her complexion for paleness, was in fact a clear, creaminess of countenance, accentuated by high cheekbones, a well-sculpted nose, and a firmly tilted chin.

She wasn’t conventionally beautiful. She was too starchy and solemn for that. But?—

The devil.

She was attractive.

Jack’s blood simmered with a disconcerting warmth. He brutally suppressed the reaction. It was easy enough to do for a man of his experience. He hadn’t reached the advanced age of four and thirty without learning something about how to command his emotions.

“The sky will clear again,” he said, a trifle gruffly. “It always does.”

Miss Layton folded her arms, twining her meager knitted shawl about her. “But not tonight.”

“No,” he acknowledged. “Probably not.”

She lapsed into silence, still staring out at the sky.

Jack regarded her for a long moment. “Let me guess,” he said. “You had a frightful row with your employer about the violent conduct of your young charges, and now you find yourself in fear for your position?”

“I wouldn’t call it a row,” she said. “That would imply that there was an argument with two opposing sides.”

“But you did speak to the children’s mother?”

“She did most of the speaking.” Miss Layton readjusted the ends of her shawl with uncharacteristically anxious fingers. “Or rather, the shouting.”

Jack’s brows sank with displeasure. “Don’t say that she blamed you for her child’s misconduct?”

“She blamed me for upsetting her peace.”

“In other words?—”

“In other words, there was no satisfactory resolution. The best I received was an admonishment to speak to her husband. Which is what I intend to do if I’m ever successful in running the man to ground.

I’ve not seen him since we departed Alexandria.

I’m told he spends most of his time in the gaming saloon with the other Pukka sahibs . ”

Jack gave a humorless laugh at the ironic emphasis she put on the phrase.

He was no great believer in pedigree himself (his own lineage notwithstanding), but even he had to admit that the majority of his fellow countrymen who had settled in India fell short of the Hindustani expression for excellence.

Instead of drawing the very best gentlemen, India had, in recent decades, become the preferred destination for grasping men and women who had failed to make their mark in British society.

Middle-class autocrats, eager to ape that very society in a foreign land, and to lord their privileged positions over that place’s native inhabitants.

It was one of the many dark aspects to the expansion of Empire. One Jack had witnessed all-too-often during his years in service to the Crown. For that reason alone, he was glad to be returning home.

“What?” Miss Layton asked, hearing his dry chuckle.

“Nothing,” Jack said. “Only that I don’t disagree with your assessment.”

“I made no assessment. I wouldn’t dream of doing so.”

“Your implied assessment, then.” He resettled his fingers on the handle of his cane. There was a chill in the air tonight that hadn’t been present last evening. Jack could feel it in the bones of his injured leg—a deep, pitiless ache. He did his level best to ignore it.

“How will you run Mr. Dimsdale to ground?” he asked.

“I sent a message to him through his valet this morning,” Miss Layton said.

“And?”

She gave Jack a suspicious look. “Do you always take such an interest in solving other people’s problems?”

Jack offered a vaguely apologetic smile in reply. “One of the hazards of being in charge of a brigade of men. I was often obliged to make their business my business.”

“Need I point out that I’m not one of your men?”

“You may believe, ma’am,” he replied gallantly, “that I could never mistake you for one.”

A hint of color rose in Miss Layton’s cheeks, so faint as to be practically indetectable.

Jack’s mutinous blood gave a resurgent simmer in response to it.

And he wondered…

If the barest allusion to a compliment could inspire such a reaction, what result might an outright compliment have?

He was quite tempted to find out.

But no.

Jack had come too far avoiding entanglements to risk one now.

Besides, Miss Layton wasn’t of his class. She didn’t know how to play the game. To flirt or to tease, with no thought for the consequences. To her, all was seriousness. And doubtless it should be for one in her position.

Jack had no intention of abusing his own position for a moment’s amusement at her expense, no matter how great the temptation to see the full range of her blushes.

He cleared his throat. “As to your employer?—”

“With any luck, I’ll hear from him sometime tomorrow,” she said.

“What will you do until then?”

“What can I do, other than keep on managing the children?” She paused, adding, “And hoping that the threat of their father will be sufficient to keep them in check.”

“It never worked for me,” Jack said.

She looked at him again, this time with something like curiosity. “Your father was similar to Mr. Dimsdale?”

Jack refrained from replying that his father was similar to no other man in this world.

A formidable fellow—fierce, proud, occasionally ruthless.

The kind of gentlemen that Jack and his two older brothers had looked on as something like a God when they were children.

A loving God, at that. There was nothing Jack’s father wouldn’t do for his family.

“I’ve not yet met Mr. Dimsdale,” Jack said.

“Or anyone else, I presume,” Miss Layton replied. “Since you’re traveling incognito.” Her voice held a hint of reproof.

Jack shrugged. “I observe people.”

“From the shadows?”

“An eye-opening experience. It’s how I first spied you.”

Her gaze narrowed with feminine censure. “I don’t care to be spied upon, sir.”

He looked back at her steadily, registering her ramrod straight spine, her stiff jaw, and the resolute set to her thin shoulders. Any other gentlemen would have offered his apologies and withdrawn. But Jack was too well-acquainted with prickly females to let a few harmless barbs pierce his skin.

“It wasn’t my intention,” he said. “You simply crossed my path when I was taking the air. The first several nights after we left port, I thought it better to leave you alone. It was only last night that I dared approach. You appeared in some distress?—”

“Indeed, I was not.”

“And I— Well.” His mouth quirked. “I was desperate for human contact, wasn’t I?”

She gave him a reproving glare. “Ridiculous,” she said. “You’re not unsuitable for company, you know. Not as far as I can see.”

“Thank you.”

“I meant that you needn’t spend your days hiding in your cabin. Your injuries don’t appear terribly offensive.”

He affected an eloquent wince. “Not terribly offensive? Talk about damning with faint praise.”

Miss Layton didn’t rise to the bait. Her countenance remained as serious as a scholar. “How did you hurt your leg?” she asked. “Was it in battle somewhere?”

Jack’s smile faded. “My horse fell on me during a skirmish,” he answered bluntly. “A too-green field surgeon exacerbated the damage. I was obliged to have a second surgery to repair his work. Once it heals, I’m assured I shall be as good as new.”

That’s what the surgeon in Cairo had said anyway.

Jack wanted to believe him, but after so many weeks of pain, doubt had begun to set in. And not only about his future mobility.

More and more Jack was realizing just how little of himself remained after the ordeal he’d been through. The agonies of multiple surgeries. The loss of his men, and his own sense of purpose.

Even the old reckless impulses had gone.

Those long-ago urges that had compelled Jack to engage in all sorts of ill-advised stunts and schemes.

His time in the army had blunted the lure of such temptations, but it wasn’t until after he’d woken up in the field hospital that day outside of Mohammerah that they’d gone completely.

Jack didn’t know quite who he was without them.

“And I’m not hiding,” he added for the second time in as many days. “I’m merely avoiding unpleasant company.”

Miss Layton’s brows lifted. “You know someone on the ship?”

“Several someones. They would inevitably make the remainder of my voyage a misery.” His fingers curled tighter around the handle of his cane. “It doesn’t signify. I’m quite content taking my meals in my quarters.”

Miss Layton’s gaze betrayed a flicker of sympathy. “It must be dreadfully dull.”

It was.

Oh, but it was.