A Bewitching Governess Read online

  Simon was pretty certain it had been a pointed jab at his absence.

  “It has my name on it,” Cat cried, waving one of the Christmas crackers he’d bought for her in Edinburgh. “How do I open it?”

  Simon showed her and Clare how to tug the ends of the crackers. The explosive bang sent them reeling, then giggling, as hard candy and a tiny doll fell out. Enoch eagerly hunted his own cracker and popped it himself, spilling out a whistle he immediately blew.

  Simon hadn’t brought one for Evie, but she didn’t seem to mind. She climbed into a rocking chair and hummed and rocked and smiled at the festivities.

  Lady Hargreaves placed a floppy package in her adopted daughter’s chubby hands, then took a seat on a bench to watch as his children tore into their gifts.

  Enoch solemnly presented Simon with a messy but colorfully wrapped box.

  “I’ll wait until you’ve all opened your gifts, shall I?” he asked, watching the twins squirm with anticipation as they found their names on more packages.

  The children nodded hasty agreement and tore into their presents.

  The governess had obviously made the cloth dolls and dresses the girls cuddled. Simon looked over his son’s shoulder as he unwrapped a handmade book with pictures cut from various children’s magazines. The words printed below the illustrations were simple and direct enough for a seven-year-old to read on his own. And apparently, the topics of astronomy, trains, horses, and dogs were the sort that pleased Enoch, for he immediately settled on a bench and began to read.

  There was no package for the governess. Simon frowned uneasily as he juggled the gifts the children placed in his hands. She’d seen that they remembered the importance of giving and that they thought of him, but no one had thought of her.

  His packages contained a crudely painted mug, a painting of what appeared to be the home they hadn’t seen in a year, and a badly sewn handkerchief. The governess clearly had no hand in sewing it, judging by the neatness of the stitches in the clothing of the dolls she’d given the children.

  He crowed over his loot as if it were worth all the gold in China, but he felt rotten that the governess had nothing.

  So he was blind-sided when the quiet, unassuming lady stood and asked, “What time must we be at the train station? I believe the Edinburgh train leaves at two, does it not? I can have the carriage brought around at half-past one.”

  We? Since when had there been any we in the equation?

  Three

  Olivia had not grown up with a drunken traveling gambler of a father without learning a few valuable lessons.

  She’d had all their trunks packed and ready last night. After breakfast, she had footmen haul them down before Mr. Blair even considered the necessity.

  When Daisy arrived with their Christmas luncheon, Olivia slipped away to pack up the gifts and toys the children would need on the train. She may not have been trained to be a teacher, but she knew how to travel.

  She’d been mildly impressed with Mr. Blair’s performance over the gift unwrapping, but she still did not trust him to know how to deal with the children through the exigencies of a long journey. Perhaps, if she decided he wasn’t a total reprobate, she might allow him to leave her in Edinburgh while he took the children and Daisy home. She wasn’t yet certain where that home was. If it was all the way up in the Highlands, he’d have to hire more help to go with them.

  After lunch, the twins were ready for naps, but that couldn’t be helped. She dressed the children in their coats and hats, donned her own pelisse, and was ready when Mr. Blair arrived with his portmanteau to take them downstairs. In daylight, with his grubby beard shaved—although his hair unfortunately still brushed his collar and dark sideburns—he was presentable. His coat and boots were new, and his top hat suited his height. Had he arrived like that last night, she might not have been so concerned.

  She refused to give herself a headache by reading his aura when his expression was plain to see. The journey would be long enough as it was.

  “You should enjoy the duke’s hospitality a little longer,” he said, bullishly. “I’ve been given to understand that you are welcome here.”

  “You would not last two minutes with the children on your own. Daisy, if you’ll take the carpet bag, Enoch can lead the way to the carriage. Clare, Cat, take each other’s hands and follow Enoch, please. We’ll be right behind you.” She knew how to do this. Mr. Blair could bluster and protest all he liked, but Olivia was reasonably certain he would not bodily heave her over the banister in front of the children.

  “I can handle my own weans,” he whispered irritably from behind her as they descended the stairs. “They’re just bairns.”

  “Which shows how much you know. Watch more closely. Enoch is apparently very much like you, hardheaded and recalcitrant. He looks like a dark angel, but he has a clever mind all his own. They have grown since the babes you last tended.”

  She knew his wife had died a year ago, that he’d immediately given the children to his cousin in the city while he drunkenly raged around the countryside, hunting for a killer. He’d seen them sporadically since then, when they would have been on their best behavior. But children were untamed beasts, no matter how polished their manners.

  And she wouldn’t let him stifle their natural exuberance.

  Which, admittedly, was none of her business, so she shut up.

  The man behind her fell silent. It had been a long time since a gentleman had stood this close to her. Owen had not been tall, and they’d both been young when they married. Mr. Blair was a physically mature man of more than thirty. She rather resented his intimidating strength.

  “Daisy’s valise is not normal,” he decided. “It does not hang but rather. . .”

  “Floats,” she finished for him. “We are teaching Enoch to use his gift discreetly to help others. Left to himself, the chandeliers would be swinging and the portraits up and down the corridor would be pitching like a drunken ship.”

  She regarded Mr. Blair’s silence with smugness.

  Smugness did not last long under the pressures of traveling with four small children. The carriage ride to the train station was relatively uneventful. Confined in tight quarters, the twins bounced from lap to lap while Enoch strained to watch the horses. Even Evie babbled excitedly and clapped her hands.

  Mr. Blair had wisely insisted on borrowing one of the duke’s horses for the journey into town.

  Once at the station, he arranged for a compartment, but train seats didn’t provide sufficient room for putting the twins down for a nap.

  Half an hour out of the station, Cat whined with weary irritability, “Clare’s turning gray on purpose. Make her stop.”

  Olivia hastily produced the pail she had brought for this reason. Clare cast up her accounts into the receptacle, driving Enoch to join Mr. Blair in the narrow corridor. That provided sufficient room for Olivia and Daisy to put all the girls down for a nap.

  But it was only one small rail car, and there was little entertainment to be found in the closed doors of first class. Mr. Blair soon returned. He had Enoch take a seat on the floor between their feet, while he loomed over them by leaning against the frame of the open door. The belching smoke, rackety wheels, and rough swaying, combined with her employer’s towering presence, left even Olivia unsettled.

  Enoch read through his books, played with his soldiers, and was denied use of his new whistle. Olivia would have suggested mathematical games with the cards, but Mr. Blair seemed opposed to innocent pieces of cardboard. She rummaged for paper and a pencil and set the boy to doing written problems. He sighed, shot his father a resentful glare, and practiced—unsuccessfully—writing without using his fingers.

  Olivia worked on mending she’d brought for the journey. Unprepared for empty hours, Mr. Blair bounced and swayed with the train, looking as if he could use a good drink. She gave him credit for refraining.

  She gave him extra credit for not disturbing the girls and claiming a seat. He hadn
’t earned enough credits yet to counterbalance his drunken arrival on Christmas Eve. Even after all these years, she had vivid memories of traveling with a father whose occasional nips at the flask turned into a constant need for alcoholic fortification. It had not ended well.

  Eventually, the girls stirred. Olivia set a sleepy Evie on her lap. The twins cuddled next to Daisy, and Mr. Blair finally sat down—next to Olivia, with his long legs out the open door. She clenched her molars at his solid presence and dug into her basket of food.

  The hours seemed to stretch into eternity. They had nothing to say to each other that wouldn’t sound snappish. Olivia just let him stew while she entertained his children, and Daisy kept them wiped down and cleaned up and in some modicum of control. Mr. Blair did not condescend to clean up Clare’s bouts of sickness, but he did answer their eager questions as best as he was able.

  “Mama says I should have salt crackers,” Clare declared at one point.

  Mr. Blair shifted uncomfortably at this talk of the ghost of his late wife.

  Olivia could appreciate that. The presence of a spirit watching over her caused cold shivers if she thought too hard about it. She rummaged through her basket and produced the salty hardtack she’d had the cook make for the journey.

  She was reading to them from Oliver Twist when the train finally pulled into the Edinburgh station. The execrable lighting in the car made it almost impossible to see as the winter sun sank from sight. Olivia took a moment to close her eyes and sigh with relief as the train halted. If she weren’t so determined to see the children to safety, she’d almost willingly abandon their intimidating father and escape to the School of Malcolms where she’d be surrounded by friendly, familiar—female—faces.

  Mr. Blair had telegraphed ahead, so his cousin Andrew, and his wife, Olivia’s cousin Phoebe, waited for them at the station—along with Olivia’s aunts, the owners of the school. Olivia’s heart dropped nervously to her stomach at the sight of the two somewhat prescient matrons. The ladies did not often stir from the home they’d turned into a seminary.

  She did not know Phoebe well. The Malcolm family tree was large. They were distant cousins and had only seen each other occasionally in passing. But Phoebe and Andrew had cared for Mr. Blair’s children in the months before they’d been sent to Castle Yates.

  Evie clung to Olivia’s hand as they climbed down, but upon seeing Phoebe, she cried, “Feeb, Feeb!” until Lady Phoebe scooped her up and hugged her. They’d been neighbors once and Phoebe had rescued the child—twice—before Olivia adopted her.

  “She knows your name,” Olivia said, smiling wearily.

  “I am grateful she does not call me Feeble,” Lady Phoebe said wryly.

  Tired, the Blair children were bundled into a waiting carriage with Daisy. Again, their father refused to ride inside, choosing to sit beside the driver.

  Phoebe and Olivia’s aunts ominously took seats in a separate vehicle. Trying to look unconcerned, Olivia climbed in with them and set Evie on her lap. She nervously straightened her skirt and petticoat and leaped into the fray. She knew these women and saw no reason to intimidate herself by reading their auras.

  “I do not trust Mr. Blair to care properly for his children,” Olivia stated as steadily as she was able.

  “They are not your children,” Aunt Gertrude said sternly. The older and larger of the two ladies, she sat stiffly straight and regarded Olivia through her pince-nez. “You are in danger of becoming too involved with them.”

  “I am too involved with them,” Phoebe said cheerfully, attempting to adjust her frilly hat on top of her masses of chestnut hair. “They are wonderful brats. I’d love to have them again, but the university is claiming much of my attention, and Drew is spending way too much time playing in his new workshop. Children need more care than we can provide.”

  “Mr. Blair could hire a proper governess and more nursemaids,” Lady Gertrude said disapprovingly.

  “He won’t, though,” Lady Agnes countered. Short, rotund, with her graying hair piled in loops and ribbons, she was the more even-tempered and pleasant of the two. “We have talked about this, Gertie, and you know perfectly well that there are other forces at work.”

  Olivia couldn’t discern her aunt’s expression in the dim light, but she heard the resignation in Lady Gertrude’s voice.

  “I wish you would not provide these vague predictions on which it is impossible to act logically.”

  “But you wrote to Letitia’s family. You know what they said. Mr. Blair will not ask for help. It is not in his nature. And our Olivia has unfinished business there. It’s written in the stars,” Lady Agnes replied in an unusually firm voice.

  “Unfinished business?” Olivia asked warily. “Where?”

  “Greybridge, of course,” Phoebe answered for her aunts. “That is where Mr. Blair lives. I believe you are familiar with it?”

  Greybridge—where she and Owen had been so happy for so little time. Why Greybridge?

  “She what?” Simon roared, holding the whisky glass his cousin had just provided.

  With the children safely settled in Andrew’s nursery, and Lady Hargreaves on her way back where she belonged, Simon had been feeling more mellow.

  The rail journey had been as tedious and difficult as the damned woman had predicted. He loved his bairns, but Letitia had had the care of them. He could see that he’d have to hire a younger nursemaid. Daisy was getting on in years, and so was his housekeeper. They weren’t up to the task.

  Drew had thoroughly disturbed his contented musing.

  “That piece of property you’ve been trying to buy belongs to land once owned by Lady Hargreaves’ late husband,” Drew explained a little more clearly this time.

  Simon still felt bewildered. “I never met the lady before yesterday. I know all the people in Greybridge, and I’d have remembered if I’d met her.”

  Remembered golden tresses, sky blue eyes that iced to gray, pink bow lips that tightened. . . Simon shut off that part of his brain before he reached the lady’s curvaceous figure. He’d had difficulty enough not watching her every movement all those hours on the train. She wasted no motion, and each action was a graceful ballet. His gut tightened simply recalling the way she glided from the train while everyone else stumbled and bumbled.

  “You own the mine, but you never lived in Greybridge until recently.” Sitting at the desk in his office, Drew sipped his whisky. “Her husband died over two years ago, and she left town shortly after. You may have even dealt with him when you were first buying up land. They weren’t married long. The viscount was young when he died.”

  Simon slumped in the leather chair and pondered those days when he’d been operating on guts and shoestrings. He’d put together his land from small holdings, avoiding the landed barons who viewed a self-made man like him with contempt. “Assuming you mean Viscount Hargreaves, I doubt that I met him. So, the teacher is a viscountess?” he asked in incredulity. No wonder she’d developed that icy air.

  “It seems so from what Phoebe has pieced together from her muddled aunts. There was some to-do about Lady Hargreaves’ marriage lines. The current viscount pitched her out, along with her small son, after her husband died.”

  “Son? She has an adopted daughter, not a son. Maybe it’s not the same person.” Simon couldn’t explain his relief, even to himself.

  “The son died. He was simple like the child she’s taken in. It’s the same woman, no doubt,” Drew assured him. “And she knows the people of Greybridge the way you do not. If anyone can help you buy that strip of land, I’m wagering Lady Hargreaves can.”

  Simon needed that strip for access to a new mine he wished to dig. And the current viscount did not answer his letters.

  A viscount who pitched out his sister-in-law did not sound like the kind of man he wished to have any dealings with, but the land would save him hundreds of pounds and earn him thousands, while the mine would provide employment for half the valley.

  “You want me to t
ake Lady Hargreaves home with me as a teacher?” he asked, hiding his incredulity—and his sense of doom.

  “Unless you want to make her your wife,” Drew said cheerfully.

  Simon spewed his fine whisky.

  Four

  In the first light of dawn, Olivia clenched the handle of her valise in a futile attempt not to fly apart as she watched her trunk heaved onto a train that would take her back to Greybridge. But after all her aunts had told her. . .

  She had seen Lawrence Hargreaves’s aura, knew that he hadn’t the backbone to be half the man his brother was. But after Owen’s death, the earl and the sheriff had made it clear that what happened to the estate was no longer any concern of hers. At the time, she had been too shocked and devastated to argue.

  But the village of Greybridge was the only true home she’d ever known. She’d been happy there those summers she’d visited her grandparents and those too-few years with Owen. And if there was any chance that she might win Owen’s home back. . .

  She had no choice, really. Her aunts had shown her the letters they’d received to their inquiries. The current viscount was a negligent landlord. In two years of neglect, Lawrence Hargreaves had undone all the good Owen had accomplished. Families she knew and cared about were suffering.

  Climbing from his cousin’s horse, Mr. Blair gave her a distant nod before helping his children from the carriage. They scattered across the train platform, running to Olivia, scampering up and down, not heeding Daisy’s admonitions.

  There was the best reason for accompanying the intimidating Mr. Blair—his children. That he’d actually agreed to let her go with them spoke of his recognition that he was out of his depth.

  She knew the people of Greybridge. She could see that he hired good ones to care for the children. In the process, she might earn a little more money for hiring a lawyer and nose around a bit. She knew Owen had left the estate to her. She didn’t know why his solicitor swore he hadn’t. She remembered lots of papers from her wedding day. Had they all been destroyed?