Mary Balogh - The Ungrateful Governness

The Earl of Rutherford was aware as soon as he opened the library door that someone was there before him. He could see the faint glow of a single candle set somewhere behind the door. He frowned and was glad that he had approached the room and turned the handle with some stealth. He had not wanted to wake any of the sleepers of the house. It was past midnight. He held his own candle at arm's length away from the door opening so that it would not be seen from inside the room unless the occupant were looking exactly in his direction, and began to close the door as quietly as he could. He certainly did not relish the thought of another dull encounter with his host.

Before the door was quite shut, however, there was the thud of a falling book from inside the room and the sound of a mild exclamation. In a distinctly female voice. Rutherford could not resist the temptation to ease the door open again and peer cautiously around it. A moment later he had stepped quietly into the room and was closing the door slowly behind him.

What good luck! The little gray governess.

But she was looking neither very gray nor very uninteresting at the moment. Quite the contrary, in fact. She was wearing only a white nightgown. The blue shawl she must have worn downstairs had been flung onto a table beside her. She was stretching up to replace a book on a high shelf and revealing to his delight two small bare feet and one very trim ankle. Her hair-that light brown mass that was usually scraped back from her face and confined ruthlessly into a large bun at the back of her head-was hanging loose. It reached to her waist and even lower, tilted back as her head was. It was shiny, thick, and wavy.

He had suspected for the past week that she was not the gray creature that one tended to take her for at a superficial glance. The rather loose, shapeless dresses she wore, unadorned gray and covering every inch of her except her hands and head, did a good job of conveying an impression of sexlessness. Indeed, they helped her almost disappear into the background entirely. And her hairstyle, demurely lowered eyelashes, and unsmiling face suggested no femininity whatsoever. But he had suspected.

The Earl of Rutherford considered himself something of an expert on female servants. The obviously pretty, brash ones, the ones who spilled out of their dresses, eyed one boldly, and made their availability patently obvious, were almost always a disappointment. They were as unsubtle in bed as they were out of it. The best one could hope for was a few minutes of energetic animal pleasure. Frequently one had to endure vulgar flattery and shrill giggles while one was taking one's pleasure. It was the other kind of servant that generally interested him far more. Miss Moore's kind.

They tended to glide around unobtrusively so that a man of less discernment and experience than himself might not even notice that they were there. And those men thereby would quite unwittingly deny themselves great pleasure. Such creatures, Rutherford had discovered from his not inconsiderable experience, almost invariably were intensely passionate. It was as if they repressed all their sexuality in the normal course of their lives and released it unstintingly for the satisfaction of the man who had seen it hidden there.

Governesses frequently made delightful bedfellows. They generally considered themselves a cut above the ordinary servant and usually were. They would not open their treasures readily to anyone else of the servant class. And yet they could not mix freely with the gentry. They were usually very ripe indeed for a bedding when a gentlemen came along who saw beyond the gray disguise. They almost always wore gray, and it was almost always meant to conceal. Any governess who did not boast personal attractions would probably not be uniformed in gray. Why conceal one's governess if there was no danger of her attracting the roving eye of one's husband or one's sons?

Miss Moore was kept in a particularly heavy disguise: the loose dresses, the severe hairstyle. She must be an unusually attractive girl. So he had concluded when he had first cast assessing eyes on her the week before. And it seemed his host did not avail himself of her personal services. At least, Rutherford had been able to intercept none of those knowing glances that usually told him if a man's wife was being cheated in her very own house. The chances were that Miss Moore had passion just waiting to explode at the first invitation.

It was true that he had been unable to come any closer to her than half a room away during the past week. True too that he hardly knew the sound of her voice. And he did not know the color of her eyes. But then it was very understandable that Lady Barrie would not allow him any chance encounter with her daughter's governess when the daughter looked as she did. Who could blame a mother?

The door was finally shut behind him, and the book was finally on its shelf.

"Do you suffer from insomnia too, Miss Moore?" the Earl of Rutherford asked conversationally, moving a few steps into the room.

The governess whirled around, her eyes wide and startled. She grabbed for her shawl and fumbled with its folds before throwing it, bunched untidily, around her shoulders.

Dark eyes, Rutherford thought, though he was not close enough to know their color. He observed the blush that flooded into her face. And he noted with some interest that her breasts, unconfined beneath the linen of the nightgown, were firm and high. What on earth did she do with them beneath the gray dresses? Bind them?

He felt a distinct stirring of desire.

"Oh," she said. "My lord. I did not realize that anyone else was still awake."

Low and soft, he thought. A seductive voice. Naturally so, he suspected. She did not seem intent on seducing at the moment. She was clearly agitated. She was still wrestling with her shawl.

He walked closer to her. "It is twisted at the back," he said. "I fear you are fighting a losing battle. Allow me."

And he took the shawl from her suddenly nerveless fingers and straightened out its folds. He stood directly in front of her, his arms reaching over her shoulders, and finally set the shawl down on them. He had not touched her at all. He looked down into her eyes as he held the ends of the shawl for her to take from his hands. Blue. Her eyes were blue, a darker shade than his own.

She seemed to realize suddenly that he intended her to take the shawl from him. She grasped it clumsily, brushing her hands against his own as she did so. She took a step back so that she almost touched the bookshelves.

"I came to choose a book," she said. "I did not have a chance earlier today. I have been busy. If you will excuse me, my lord, I will not disturb you any longer."

"But you still do not have a book," he said. She was no longer looking at him. Her eyes were resting on the top button of his shirt-at least, the top button that was done up. The top two were open.

"I shall choose one tomorrow," she said. "It is too late to read tonight anyway."

"I could not agree with you more," he said. "Un-fortunately, when one is unable to sleep, reading seems the best way to induce slumber. If one is alone, that is. Of course, if one has company of suitable gender, there is another, more pleasant way of doing it."

She looked up at him a full second before comprehension brought the color flooding back into her cheeks. He reached out and took a lock of her hair between his thumb and forefinger. She bit her lip.

"It seems we have a choice, Miss Moore," he said. "And I can tell without even having a closer look that Barrie has no book of any interest on his shelves."

She stared mutely back at him. Her hands fidgeted with the fringe on her shawl.

"Shall we put each other to sleep, Miss Moore?" he asked softly. His eyes were on her lips, which were parted with what he thought was probably unconscious provocation. "After suitably pleasurable exercise, of course."

He sensed a change in her suddenly, though she did not move and her hands continued busy.

"I think you are under a misapprehension, my lord," she said, her voice low and steady. "I am not available for dalliance."

He smiled and raised his eyes to hers again. She was looking full at him, her gaze startlingly direct. "Why do you hide your beauty?" he asked, though he knew the answer full well. "Why the daytime disguise?"

"I am a governess," she said. "I dress in a manner suited to my calling."

"With some encouragement from your employer, I would guess," he said.

She did not reply.

"It must be a very dull life," he said.

"Life is what one makes it, my lord," she said. "I do not complain. I do not seek the kind of diversion that you suggest."

"You wish to be persuaded," he said. "I believe I have some skill, Miss Moore. And I am not the sort of man who considers only his own gratification. I believe that a woman is as entitled as a man to be thoroughly pleasured in a bed where she has chosen to give herself. Come, let me give you a foretaste of what you may expect."

His hand moved around and twined itself into the thick silkiness of her hair. He had to make a concerted effort to give her time to respond. He wanted to drag her against him without more ado. He suspected that those firm breasts were not the only delight hidden from view beneath the loose nightgown.

She raised her chin an inch. "I will not be ravished, my lord," she said. "If you do not release me immediately and let me pass, I shall scream very loudly. I shall of course be dismissed from my employment without a character for having had the audacity to have tempted the Earl of Rutherford to seduce me. But I shall do it nonetheless."

He took a rueful half-step backward. There were, of course, always those few gray creatures who were so from choice, whose virtue was unassailable. A great shame in Miss Moore's case as she was a rare beauty even clad in the unbecoming and virginal nightgown. She would have been far more satisfying in his bed than any of the books ranged behind her. And a far more effective sleeping potion. He moved his hand forward until it held only the one lock of hair again.

"You need put neither your lungs nor your employment in jeopardy," he said. "I have never been driven to rape any female, Miss Moore. I see no reason to begin on you. I foresaw an hour's mutual pleasure, that is all. You are quite free to step around me and leave, your virtue intact. My apologies if I have wounded your dignity."

He grinned down at her and let his hand rest on her shoulder for a moment. He was about to step back and sweep her a mocking bow. He anticipated the only pleasure that was to be granted him that night, it seemed: that of watching her cross the room with her indignation and her bare feet, knowing herself watched.

The next person to enter the room was clearly less intent than he had been on not disturbing the house. And the sight of two candles within did not set the new arrival to withdrawing quietly as he had begun to do earlier. When the door opened, it did so quite abruptly and noisily, and its sound was succeeded by the immediate entry of Lord Barrie, a whole branch of candles in his hand.

Lord Rutherford turned toward him, one eyebrow raised. "Three of us suffering from insomnia, Barrie?" he said. "I only hope that you have enough good books to satisfy us all. What would you recommend?"

And he was not even to be granted the pleasure of watching the governess withdraw, he thought with an inward sigh, as she muttered something indistinct and disappeared from the room while he surveyed the shelves languidly and hoped that his host was not about to be his usual garrulous self. Not at an hour well past midnight. And not at a moment when he was still smarting from a strong dose of sexual frustration.

Jessica Moore took one last look around the room that had been hers for the past two years. She knew there was nothing left inside drawers or wardrobes; she had just double-checked those. There was nothing lying on surfaces either. She had everything, then, stuffed inside one small trunk and a valise. One did not accumulate much as a governess. She had arrived two years before with scarcely less than she had now.

There was not much in the room to make her wish to linger. It was a small box of a room on the floor above the family bedchambers, next to the schoolroom. It was too cold in winter, too hot in summer. Facing north as it did, it was never brightened by the direct rays of the sun. Its curtains and bed hangings were an uninteresting shade of pale brown. There was almost no hint left of the floral design that had brightened them in the long ago days when they had hung in a more important bedchamber.