Strathmere's Bride. Jacqueline Navin
exasperating woman meant to sneak them in through the kitchens and avoid detection. Anger moved him before any conscious thought registered in his brain. Storming out of the library, he strode with long, purposeful steps through the dining room, startling Cook as he burst into the largest of the kitchens—a long, cheery room where a huge fire blazed in the cooking hearth and aromas, spicy and delectable, assaulted him.
Cook looked up, her thick arms poised over a mound of dough. She stood behind the scrubbed oaken table that was sprinkled liberally with flour, and she wore some of it herself. “Your grace?”
He opened his mouth, but another sound preceded him. Giggles.
The door to the outside was located in a short hallway where the smaller kitchen rooms and assorted pantries were housed. It was from this direction the commotion was heard.
“Oh, you are a wet mouse, aren’t you?” a gay voice exclaimed. He had no trouble identifying Miss Pesserat from the definitive accent. “Come, come. To the fire.”
“Have Cook fix up some chocolate to drink!” Rebeccah cried.
They came into view, the three of them stumbling under the weight of their soaked dresses and sodden cloaks. They were still laughing, talking over one another, excited and unruly.
“Bonne idée, chérie!” Chloe exclaimed. “And some pastries, bien sûr. I am starving!”
She stopped in midstride, frozen in an awkward position, her face going suddenly immobile. Rebeccah saw Jareth at the same time as her governess and made an immediate retreat behind Chloe’s skirts. Only Sarah regarded him with a mild expression, as if he were merely a personage of passing interest.
The words, when he spoke them, were like an epithet. “Miss Pesserat.”
Cook cut in, bustling up to the children and waving her arms. “Come along, then, mes amours, come to the fire in the little dining room.”
Jareth looked at the woman askance, suspicious for a moment until he recalled her nationality was the same as Miss Pesserat’s. For a space, he had almost thought the governess had infected the household so that they were all talking like her. The accent was, he had to admit, one of her more charming attributes. The only one he could think of.
Mostly, she seemed to have a knack for driving him straight to madness. Take this very moment, for example. She was standing there, still stuck in that ridiculous stance. Her hair was soaked, plastered to her head like a cap, and a very unflattering one at that. He took exactly four steps forward. Four slow, calculated steps. Up close, he could see the way her lashes were starred from the rain, making those steel-blue eyes more brilliant.
“What,” he managed to utter through his clenched jaw, “did you imagine you were doing with my nieces in the midst of this storm?”
It was as if the words released her. She straightened.
“If you please,” she began carefully, “we were out for a walk. I admit I mistook the weather. I am terribly inept at such things, I confess it, but the sky in England is so often gloomy, we would be closeted in the house forever if we didn’t take a risk now and then.”
It would have been ridiculously easy to anger, for her words had the ring of sauciness in them, except her look was so sincere. Fat rivulets skittered from her drenched hair down her nose and she didn’t even bother to wipe them away.
“Miss Pesserat,” he said at last. “I fail to comprehend what is so woefully mysterious about a sky filled with clouds. If your judgment is so profoundly impaired, perhaps I had best reassess your capabilities.”
“Capabilities?”
“Yes, you know the word. Your vocabulary is quite accomplished when you are speaking, I noticed, yet when you wish to defer a comment you do not like, you plead ignorance of a word. Charmingly demure, and effective, I must imagine, on the more unsuspecting.”
She pulled herself up in a stance that was nearly military. Absurd, utterly, and it should have annoyed him—that and the defiant way her pointy little chin jutted out at him. Strangely, though, he found himself wrestling with the most insistent urge to smile, of all things.
“Yes, I understand your English very well, but there are a few words that confuse me from time to time. You must allow for that at least, your grace. In this instance, it was not that I did not know the word, but was taking exception to your questioning my capabilities.”
“What would you have me do?” he demanded hotly. “You run the children about in the most unseemly and unmannerly ways—”
“I most certainly do not!”
“Miss Pesserat—”
“I cannot see why you are so disturbed. It is merely water. It will not melt us, like sugar candy.”
With each breath, his temper seemed to expand “That is not the point—”
“You would think a little thing like rainfall were a foreign phenomenon in England. Yet, I have never seen such a place as this, miserable always from wretched weather.”
“A very entertaining opinion—”
“Really, it is quite—”
“Do not interrupt me again, young miss!” This he thundered, his fist raised with his index finger pointing to the ceiling. In the silence afterward, he was aware of two sensations stealing over his person. One was mortification—damn this imp to tempt him into a most disreputable show of temper—and the other, inexplicably, was a deep sense of…pleasure. It had felt good to shout for once. So much for moderation.
He looked at his erect finger, astonished. His father had always performed the gesture when scolding one of his sons. When had he developed such a like habit? It was an impossible question to answer, for never, never, had he been as incensed as he was at this moment.
“I am sorry,” she said.
He heard the sound of the door behind him opening, then a murmured, “Oh, dear,” before the door shut again, leaving them once again alone. One of the servants.
“I do not mean to disrespect you,” Chloe continued.
He forced himself to relax his stance. “And yet you do. You do it constantly, Miss Pesserat, and without much effort, it seems.”
She issued the most forlorn sigh he had ever heard. “It does seems inevitable.”
“You need only make more of an effort to conform.”
Her eyes flashed. “Can you not make a similar effort?”
“I,” he answered simply, “am the duke.”
Unimpressed, she countered, “That does not make you infallible.”
Oh, Lord, she was at it again! “It does make me lord and master here and I will be obeyed—and without question, if you please.”
He immediately regretted adding the last, since it gave her a clear opening for one of her clever little quips: no, it does not please. But she surprised him. Instead, she tipped her head to the side and asked, “Why did you leave the nursery so abruptly the other day?”
He blinked in surprise. “Pardon me?”
“In the nursery, when you were angry. You suddenly seemed to lose your anger and you left so abruptly.”
“What the devil…?” He pushed his hand through his hair while letting out a long breath. “Why do you wish to know that at a time like this?”
“Because, you see, it seemed as if you regretted getting angry when you saw how upset the children became. In fact, you seemed rather surprised to find yourself in such a state. The look on your face led me to believe that, anyway. And I thought you might be feeling the same way now. I don’t wish you to regret what the heat of your anger makes you say.”
“It