Gift-Wrapped Governesses: Christmas at Blackhaven Castle / Governess to Christmas Bride / Duchess by Christmas. Marguerite Kaye
18th Light Dragoons, sir.’ Lord, pray that the duke was not a soldier within those ranks as well or her ruse would be up.
When he shrugged his shoulders and leant back against the chair, she relaxed. In another life she might have asked what regiment he marched with and what the conditions had been like on the Peninsula at that particular time, just to give herself a better idea of the place where her beloved brother had fallen. But that life was long lost to her and a servant who had come to care for children would have no place in the asking of it. So instead she stayed silent. She was aware that he was observing her most closely.
‘Have we met before? You look … somewhat familiar.’
She reddened again, the curse of her fair skin and blonde hair. She remembered him, of course, for she had seen him once a good seven years ago, before he was injured and when his wife Catherine had conquered the ton with her beauty. Seraphina had been thirteen and gauche when he had stopped her wayward mount from bolting across a newly laid garden off the Row in Hyde Park. She had thought then that he was like the princes in her storybooks, handsome, kind, brave and wonderful.
He would not remember. It was her mother he would have some recall of. Elizabeth Moreton. A rival of his wife. An Original. Every man who had ever laid his eyes upon her was entranced by her beauty and kindness, except for her husband, Seth Moreton.
But she wouldn’t think of this now, here in a room full of books and music and the smell of spice, here in a castle far from London and the dangerous jealousies of men. Swallowing, she took a drink of lemonade.
‘There are probably many others who look like me, sir.’
She had the feeling he wanted to say something else, but did not. The clock at one end of the room ticked loudly into the silence and farther away in the house there was the sound of a crying child. She saw how he tilted his head to listen until the noise stopped.
A watchful father. In this light the scar on his cheek was wide and reddened—the mark of fire, perhaps, or a wound that had festered and been left untended. She did not dare to ask him of it.
‘Did the agency tell you that you are number six in a long line of governesses?’
‘They did, sir.’
‘And did they tell you of the reason many left without notice?’
‘No.’ Seraphina shook her head. The woman at the agency had cited unresolved differences when she had asked and made it clear that she would divulge nothing further.
‘The Castle is haunted, it seems. The science of such a possibility belies any rational thought, but belief is injudicious and once an idea is seeded …’ She saw resignation on his face, a man who spoke of the supernatural with no true belief in any of it, but she could not leave it just at that.
‘I have always been interested in the metaphysical, my lord, and there is much in life that cannot be simply explained away.’
‘Such as?’
‘Six governesses, perhaps?’
His brows rose alarmingly and she fancied the dent of a dimple in his chin. ‘Your dog, of course, is named after the Phantom Lady of the de Lusignan family.’
‘I am surprised you should know of this, sir, without having the need to revert to a book. Usually I have to explain the connection.’
‘Melusine, one of three sisters cursed with an undisclosed flaw.’ He shifted on the seat and looked directly at her. ‘I think I comprehend the secret nature of your dog already, Miss Moorland.’
‘And what is that, my lord?’
His answer was quick and firm. ‘Chaos.’
Her laughter was like music, soft and real, as joy lit her face. Where had he seen her? How had he known her? Trey’s mind sifted back through the years, but he could make no placement whatsoever. Moorland? The name was without memory. He would ask around, of course, though he had no wish to return to the crush of the city.
Catherine had dragged him down to London a number of times and it had always been the same. She had loved it and he had loathed it. He wondered how he had ever been foolish enough to ask such a woman to be his wife. Granted, she had given him heirs to inherit the Blackhaven fortune and titles, but little else in joy or comfort—a woman whose looks belied a nature that was selfish and cold.
He had vowed to stay well away from beautiful women ever since and yet here was one now laughing in his library, her dirtied white gown many sizes too big and an honest, self-confessed belief in the truth of ghosts.
Sarah Moorland had worn rings on her fingers until quite recently, the sun-touched skin on the first joints of her third and little digits showing white. Both hands now pulled at the fabric in her skirt. Nerves, he supposed. Every fingernail was bitten to the quick.
It was the small details that gave a person away, he ruminated, the experience he had gained during his time with Wellesley as an intelligence officer brought into play. Sometimes he wished it was not there, this innate distrust of human nature that kept him isolated from the sort of discourse that others favoured.
‘You seem well schooled in the classics, Miss Moorland. What brought you into the profession of governess?’
‘Necessity, sir.’ The truth of such an answer was written all over her face.
‘Where was it your brother lived?’
There was a slight hesitation before she offered up the name of Oxford.
‘My sister is from those parts. Once I knew the area well.’
Worry filled blue eyes and the same wash of redness that he had come to expect when she gave him any personal information whatsoever made her face flame.
Another thought chased the first one as memory clicked into recognition: Lady Elizabeth Moreton!
That was the woman she reminded him of; her colour of hair and eyes were exactly the same. But it was more in the way she looked at him, chin tilted upwards with regard. Almost regal.
Sarah Moorland’s mother? Moreton and Moorland. Anderley Moreton, a young man shot through the head under the push forwards by General Stewart at Rueda, when the 18th Light Dragoons had surrounded the village after dark. Her brother? Andrew? Lord, it all fitted save for one thing.
Why was this Moreton daughter here posing as a governess of no means and little substance when clearly she was a lady of the very first water?
Necessity, she had said and looked as if she meant it. Tipping up his glass, he swallowed the remains of his fine brandy as his housekeeper came into the room and announced that the new governess’s sleeping quarters were ready and that she was there to show the way.
The chamber Seraphina was led into was beautiful, large and airy with tall windows looking out onto the hills, the view reminding her a little of Moreton Manor, the Moreton country seat.
The housekeeper continued to fuss about, plumping cushions and picking up non-existent lint from the scrupulously clean waxed floorboards. When the woman turned towards her there was curiosity in her dark brown eyes.
‘If there is anything else you might wish for, you just need ask, Miss Moorland.’
‘Thank you, Mrs Thomas, I shall.’ This seemed to calm the servant, though as she gained the door she stopped, a look of resolution on her face.
‘The boys have imaginations, miss, vibrant imaginations that set all the other governesses to odds with them because they could not understand enchantment. But I’d be thinking you can see things bright in the air around you that others tend to miss. At least I hope you do.’
With that she disappeared and Seraphina stared after her. The whole day had been awash with emotion and this small part of it was as confusing as the rest.
She had slept in the corner of a building on her last night in London, tucked under the overhang of an eave and frightened out of her