Page 22

Dear Mrs Harris,

I have a bone to pick with you, for you never came to visit as you promised faithfully to do.

I know we were never close, but I wish you would consider me a friend and allow me to help you if you are still in difficulties?

I have recently married Mr Larkin Weston, and must confess to being so preoccupied with my own joy I did not think to contact you again until yesterday.

I discovered then that you had returned to Monmouthshire.

Please know that you can trust me to hold my tongue if you need a confidant and write to me at any time. I have returned to the Manor, which has been restored to me thanks to my wonderful husband.

I cannot tell you how happy I am, and wish only to help you secure such a state for yourself in any way I can.

Yours sincerely, your friend.

―Excerpt of a letter from Mrs Magdelina Weston to Mrs Regina Harris.

23 rd November 1850, Goshen Court, Monmouthshire.

To Pip’s annoyance, his steward reminded him of an appointment he must keep with one of his new tenant farmers early the next morning.

It had been a meeting he’d been looking forward to, for it was wonderful to see the estate coming back to life, and people returning to work the land which had been so long neglected.

The work he had done to restore the properties and improve the land was reaping rewards and the progress delighted him.

Mr Evans was a young, fit man with some modern ideas about farming that Pip was keen to exploit.

On waking that morning, however, he’d been reluctant to leave the house so early, and without first sharing breakfast with Tilly and Mrs Harris.

He felt certain he simply wished to ensure she was once more in good spirits, which was only natural after having put his foot in it so horrendously last night, but discovered within himself a disturbing and urgent need to reassure himself of her happiness.

That he had roused unpleasant memories, and that she had perhaps cried herself to sleep, made his guts tighten into a knot.

His need to see her at once and confirm he had done no lasting damage was appalling.

He would see her at dinner that evening, which was quite soon enough. She had been widowed long before she came to work for him and whatever had upset her was in the past, he reminded himself, and he forced his belligerent brain to concentrate on the matter at hand.

Much later that day, Pip returned home, frozen and weary, but well satisfied with Mr Evans.

The young man had been full of enthusiasm and his wife, who was due to deliver their first child in the spring, had cried with happiness when she had seen her new home for the first time.

To his surprise, Pip had felt a little emotional too, warmed by pride.

His father had instilled in him the importance of having good relationships with his tenants and treating them fairly, and Montagu’s reputation for fairness and generous wages had gone a long way towards encouraging tenants to return to a property which had been so long neglected.

His aunt had been quite a different kettle of fish, and had treated her tenants with scorn and revulsion, but then Aunt Marguerite had been a wicked old termagant.

To his relief, no one had yet held that against him.

Upon hearing the dinner gong, Pip hurried to his rooms to wash and change and presented himself at the dinner table a bare second before the soup course arrived.

“Evening, little bird. What—” he began cheerfully, intending to ask his daughter about her day, when he spied the empty chair beside her. “Where is Mrs Harris?”

“She has a headache,” Tilly said glumly. “Though I don’t think she really has.”

“What makes you say so?” Pip asked, anxiety gnawing at his guts. Was this his fault? Had he upset her so she could not bear to face him?

“Well, she’s been fine all day,” Tilly said reasonably. “And she never gets sick. I’ve never known her to suffer headaches, and now she has another one. I’m afraid she might just want to have a bit of peace. I did chatter rather relentlessly today,” she added sadly.

Pip’s heart clenched. “I cannot believe for a moment it was anything you did—providing you were not wicked and have not yet confessed to it?” he added quickly, for he was not so na?ve as to believe his daughter incapable of inducing a debilitating megrim, never mind just a headache.

“Oh, I wasn’t, I promise,” Tilly replied. “I did all my French and got all the maths equations right, and then we went for a walk, and after lunch we did some painting. Harry said my drawing of you was quite marvellous. Would you like to see it?”

Pip agreed he would like to, after dinner, and felt a little less apprehensive at her words.

But as the meal continued, a nagging voice in his head reminded him that Mrs Harris was a conscientious woman and would hardly inflict her moods on her pupil.

The effort of remaining cheerful all day for Tilly’s sake, could well have induced a headache.

Damn it.

He knew he would not sleep a wink unless he discovered the truth and resolved to seek her out.

This was not immediately possible, however, for he needed to admire Tilly’s artwork, which he honestly thought was quite marvellous and wondered if he ought to seek a professional teacher for her in anticipation of the moment she outgrew Mrs Harris’ skills.

That the day would come eventually made him suddenly melancholy, however, and it took all his meagre acting skills to get him through Tilly’s bedtime story when he was by then quite agitated.

Pip kissed his daughter goodnight, left her room and immediately went to the nursery, intent on begging Mrs Harris’ pardon once again if he needed to.

Perhaps if he tried hard enough, she would come and have a drink with him again, for until he’d put his foot in it, he had been enjoying the evening more than any he could think of recently.

She was clever and interesting, and he respected her opinions.

There had been several moments during the day when he had wondered what she might think about one thing or another, and had looked forward to discussing Mr Evans and his wife with her.

Arriving at the nursery, he gave an impatient knock and strode in, only to stop in his tracks as he discovered the room in complete darkness. She wasn’t here.

Hell.

If he had not spent the entire day feeling so entirely out of sorts, he might have stopped to think for a moment before immediately taking the narrow staircase that led to the rooms over the nursery.

These had once been the bedrooms allocated to nursery maids and the nanny, but which now housed only Mrs Harris.

The other staff rooms were on the other side of the house as Harris’ status was higher than a mere servant and so he had given her some measure of privacy.

He wondered now if it also increased her loneliness as he hurried up the stairs and along the gloomy, narrow corridor to her bedroom.

It was only as he got halfway along the corridor that he realised how inappropriate his behaviour was. Why, just yesterday he had hated himself as he wondered if she had slept with one eye open, fearing the sound of his footstep outside her door, and now he was outside her door.

About to turn around and retrace his steps as silently as he could, the noise of a slamming door downstairs startled him, as a sudden rush of cold air gusted past him.

Having no particular fear of ghosts, he did not immediately think the worst but realised there must be an unlatched window somewhere that had created a draft.

Even as he thought the words, however, a soft creaking reached his ears as the door before him opened a few inches.

The gust of wind must have disturbed the latch, he realised, holding his breath and praying Mrs Harris did not appear in the gap to find him lurking.

About to berate himself thoroughly for his lunacy and this intolerable situation, he froze as the scene visible through the door suddenly hit his astonished brain.

Turn around , he told himself. Close your eyes, turn around, and leave .

He couldn’t. It was impossible. He couldn’t breathe, never mind move, as his mind comprehended what he was seeing.

Mrs Harris, naked as she stepped out of a small tin bath.

He could only see her back, though only was a ridiculous word, for her long slender back was elegance itself and tapered down to her tiny waist and then on to a bottom that defied description, perfection being the only word remotely adequate for the task.

From there, his gaze fell upon shapely, lovely legs.

Oh, God . His intellect, already under a severe strain, turned to molten honey and slid from his brain as she turned slightly to reach for a towel.

If her back view had been a revelation, Mrs Harris in profile deserved an epic poem with a thousand cantos.

Damn, she deserved a thousand epic poems, for her breasts, oh, heaven have mercy, her breasts were full with rosy, pink nipples and—and he was going straight to hell.

Though he had ceased to be a reasoning, functioning human being several seconds ago, and it had only been a matter of seconds, though for him time seemed to have stopped, some scrap of decency reasserted itself and Pip forced himself to turn around, though the effort damn near killed him.

He ran back down the stairs as if the devil were at his heels, instead of lurking rather more intimately than that, but oh, how he wanted to open the door and go inside and take her in his arms and—

“Tilly,” he said out loud, once he was back on the nursery floor. “Tilly’s governess. She is Tilly’s governess. She is out of bounds.”