Page 3 of The Viscount Needs a Wife (All for Love #2)

M iss Annis Pringle sat up, jerked out of her dream, her skin bathed in a cold sweat, her heart thudding.

The tendrils of terror still clung to her like spiders’ webs, sending tremors through her slender frame.

The images were fading quickly, like will-o-the-wisps, as hard to grasp as water running through her fingers.

She took a deep, shuddering breath. Why was she having the nightmares again? She hadn’t had them for years now, and suddenly, in the last few months, they were back. It all started when she began having this notion someone was watching her...

Annis shoved back the bedclothes. It was a warm night.

The moonlight coming through the window lit up part of her room, sending the rest into shadow.

She shivered, her skin clammy. Her nightgown was damp and clung to her.

She rose and went to the jug of cold water on her dresser, poured some into the bowl.

Loosening her nightgown, she gave herself a quick sponge down and dried off with the towel.

It was the middle of the night—she ought to return to bed, yet the notion sat ill with her.

Instead, she lit a candle and curled up in the chair by the empty fireplace with her book until her head was nodding, only then returning to her bed to sleep until dawn. It was becoming a pattern.

Several hours later, rising with a slightly heavy head due to interrupted sleep, Annis was glad of the coffee brought by the maid with her breakfast of toast and eggs.

With the house full of guests, the majority of whom were small fry, the responsibility for entertaining them had fallen once more on Annis’s shoulders.

She ought to complain. She was a governess, not a nanny.

Yet she couldn’t resist the opportunity to devise educational experiences for them that would also be fun.

She had planned a visit to the medieval ruins in the grounds for the afternoon.

It would be a good opportunity to combine an outing with a history and literature lesson for all the children.

This morning, the younger ones were in the nursery, amusing themselves with the Layne toy collection, which was considerable, overseen by Miss Mary Watson, the eldest of them.

Annis’s primary charges were the duke’s youngest sisters, Lady Heather, who was sixteen, and Lady Ingrid, thirteen.

Lady Ava, the eldest Layne daughter, was out now and no longer under her purview.

Though that didn’t stop her dropping by the schoolroom to see her former governess, which was gratifying.

Sailing into the schoolroom, Ava wore an elegant and very becoming gown of jonquil muslin dotted with embroidered green leaves, and her hair was very fashionably dressed.

The difference one season had made was clear to see.

Ava had always been a lively young lady, almost a romp, leading her younger sisters into all manner of cheerful scrapes.

She was now poised and elegant. But her eyes still glittered with mischief as she entered the room and embraced her sisters, who left their lessons immediately to pelt her with a dozen questions.

Ava and their mother had arrived late last night from London after the girls had gone to bed.

“Ava, tell us about your beaux!” said Ingrid pertly. “Is it true you have had six proposals?”

“Ingrid!” said gentle Heather. “Where did you hear that?”

“Robert told Sarah over breakfast the other morning, I heard him.”

“Yes, it’s perfectly true,” said Ava. “In fact, I have received eight all told. And refused them all!”

“Are they old and ugly?” asked Ingrid frowning.

“No, not all of them, but I haven’t met one gentleman I wish to marry yet. Mama is most put out with me. She favors Lord Tavistock, for he is young and handsome and an earl to boot. But I think he has shifty eyes, and I do not trust him.”

“Then you should not marry him,” said Heather firmly.

“I don’t plan to. Robert will not compel me.

He says I may have my pick—within reason of course.

Though I think he would have his say if my choice fell upon someone wholly ineligible.

But I don’t mean to disoblige him or Mama.

There is no hurry, however. I am only eighteen after all, and I am having by far too much fun.

” Ava grinned as she smoothed her skirts, and she perched in one of the schoolroom chairs.

Her attitude gave the impression, Annis reflected, that she could at any moment dart up and fly about the room like a fairy.

“Have you danced the waltz?” asked Heather.

“Dozens of times! You cannot imagine how wonderful it is to be taken in a man’s arms and move gracefully across a ballroom as one.”

Annis cleared her throat in warning and Ava colored faintly, but a little smile curved her lips and she said lightly, “Then again, when one’s partner is portly and spins you about upon his waistcoat, it is not at all pleasant. So, one must take the good with the bad.”

This made the girls giggle, and the noise attracted the attention of Miss Mary Watson, who came to the interconnecting door between the schoolroom and the nursery and gushed, “Lady Ava! How wonderful to see you!”

This prompted a rush from the other children, who all crowded the door for a glimpse of glamorous, pretty Ava. Little Ewen perched on his eldest sister’s hip.

Annis allowed the ensuing cacophony for precisely five minutes before calling a halt with a brisk, “That is enough, children!” accompanied by a loud clap of her hands to make sure she was heard over the din.

“Morning tea will be served momentarily. Miss Watson, please see that all hands are washed prior to eating.”

“Yes, Miss Pringle,” said Mary, blushing with pleasure to be addressed as Miss Watson instead of Miss Mary.

Annis was fully alive to Mary’s desire to be treated like a young lady.

She was the same age as Heather, though somewhat lacking in social poise, due no doubt to her less sophisticated upbringing, as the Watson children were raised in a simple country vicarage.

The opulence of the Duke of Troubridge’s residence had rather gone to Mary’s romantic head.

Her older sisters, Ruth and Deborah, had not accompanied them on this trip, so Mary was gallantly assuming the position of leader of the Watson tribe.

Morning tea was served shortly and all eight of the visiting children, five Watsons and three Fitzgeralds, lined up to have their hands inspected by Miss Pringle before falling on the feast of buttered bread, cakes, cheese, and fruit, laid out for them by the servants.

Heather, Ingrid and Ava joined their ranks, none too proud to share in the treat. Annis even allowed herself one small slice of cake and a piece of fruit.

When there was nothing left but orange rinds and crumbs, the children filed back into the nursery, Ava went in search of more adult entertainments, and Annis resumed the morning lesson in mathematics.

The duke held liberal views on the education of women, and all his sisters were to receive a thorough grounding in the sciences as well as the arts.

“Do we have to?” whined Ingrid, slumping down in her seat, her blonde curls a wild tangle round her still-round face.

“Yes, we do,” said Annis calmly. “This is your list of problems to solve, Ingrid. I expect them done before luncheon,” she said, pointing to the list of equations on the righthand side of the chalk board.

“I hate mathematics!” muttered Ingrid. “What use is it anyway?”

“When you are required to manage a household, you will find it extremely useful. Would you wish unscrupulous persons to dupe you?”

Ingrid’s mouth gaped and she flushed. “I would not!”

“Well then, learn mathematics and you will always have the upper hand.”

Ingrid bent over her book with a sigh. Heather, who was quietly applying herself to her own list, glanced at Annis with a sympathetic smile.

If only all her charges were as sweet and biddable as Heather.

With the darkest hair of the three Layne sisters and less spectacular in looks than her elder sister, she had a tendency to fade into the background in company, her shy, retiring nature making her quite self-effacing.

Annis persevered until lunchtime when the midday meal was served in the schoolroom for all the children.

Plates were almost empty when the schoolroom door opened, and a shaggy head appeared round it.

Viscount Ashford. His eyes roamed the room and found Annis looking at him with a raised eyebrow.

He smiled which made his somewhat uneven features light up.

Coming into the room, he closed the door with a backward flick of the hand.

He was dressed with extreme casualness, possibly in deference to the heat, in shirtsleeves, an unbuttoned waistcoat, a pair of buff-colored breeches, and scuffed boots.

His hair was too long to be fashionable and looked like it needed a comb.

He had eschewed a neckcloth altogether, and his shirt was open at the neck.

And a fine neck it was, too! A solid column with just the hint of hair at the base.

Annis flushed faintly at this nakedness, an unexpected wave of awareness of his masculinity hitting her in the solar plexus.

His dress was bordering on improper, but he seemed blissfully unaware of it.

“Miss Pringle, I understand you have an outing planned for this afternoon?”

“I do, my lord,” she said, rising from her place at the trestle table and attempting to cover her momentary discomposure, slightly shocked at her own visceral reaction. “I am taking the children to see the ruins.”

“Then you will require an escort. Can’t send you out with a whole detachment of infantry and no accompanying officer,” he said with a grin.