Page 46 of The Governess and the Brooding Duke
He did, she had seen it in his eyes last night when she had...
Perhaps her mother had been right about her. What other reason, other than her own propensity towards harlotry, could make her feel as she did about the Duke?
The way she’d felt, kneeling before him...
She knew about men. She did not know about pleasure. But there was something about him that made her want to know more about pleasure.
Even now, she thought of it.
Even now, she wasn’t safe from it.
‘I don’t know,’ Mary said finally.
Elizabeth frowned. ‘How do you not know?’
‘I left home eight years ago. And I have not returned.’
‘You’ve never even asked after your mother?’ Michael asked, suddenly very interested in her.
She thought of the last time she’d seen her mother.
‘What a trick you pulled off, Mary. Did you spread your legs for the Laird too? Is that why he took the bairn as his own?’
She had been sore then, still bleeding at times, and the very idea of letting a man touch her made her ill.
But her mother had blamed her. No matter that Mary said a man had forced himself on her.
‘They only do that when ye make yourself available. They know a whore.’
‘No. I have not. My mother was cruel.’ She adjusted her hold on the babe. ‘Perhaps only because life was cruel to her. When I escaped, that is what I considered it. An escape.’
‘Where’s your home?’ Elizabeth asked this with keen interest.
The Duke already knew. They already knew that she wasn’t from here, so why not tell the children?
They thought that she would be run out by this. By their overt hostility to the babe, and to her. She would prove to both of them that she was far sturdier than they gave her credit for.
‘I’m from Scotland. The Highlands. A very small village, with a large castle at the centre.’
As she spoke she could feel her accent beginning to change. She could feel her words beginning to take the shape of her homeland.
‘It’s beautiful there. But life was terribly hard. We had no food often.’ The children were watching her with rapt focus now. ‘The house we lived in was smaller than this very room. I have twelve brothers and sisters.’
‘Where are they?’
Her throat went tight. ‘I don’t know. I was in the middle of them. Some grown by the time I left. A couple still in leading strings. But I had to leave.’ It was simple. It almost sounded like she had decided one day to go on an adventure. It was how she tried to think of it. How she tried to remember it. ‘I wanted to see England. And I wished to go to school. I did not know how to read or write. And when I went to school it was based on the goodwill of my laird. My clan leader.’
‘Are they those fierce men that wear dresses?’ Elizabeth asked.
‘Great kilts. You would not be calling them dresses, not to our men. They are mighty warriors.’ Lachlan certainly was. He had sought justice for her, and he had sent her to England. He was a better man than most, and yet knowing a man such as him existed had been like balm on a wound.
‘Did you love Scotland?’ Michael asked.
‘I loved pieces of it.’ She thought of the mountains, craggy and green. Of the sky, so big and vast. But also of the desperation. The poverty. She had not tasted such hunger or pain since leaving. ‘I longed for something more. When I learned to speak French, and to read and to write, it was as if a magical world opened up to me that I did not think I would ever see. When I teach you, I am trying to teach you that same magic that was taught to me.’
‘It doesn’t feel like magic. It feels like work.’
‘You have always known that you would learn it. Elizabeth, how fortunate you are to be a girl whose father thinks she ought to read.’
