Page 7 of The Governess and the Brooding Duke
West could not say why he was taking the trouble to show the new governess to the nursery himself. He could have transferred the task to Mrs Brown, and he should have.
The governess was far too pretty for his liking.
What should disturb him most was her lies. The Scottish accent beneath her English vowels. The deliberate attempt to obscure her origins.
But that was not what filled him with disquiet.
She wore a gown that was not quite the fashion, the waistline a bit too high. She had a fichu in place to cover the swell of her bosom, and yet somehow it had only served to highlight the lushness of her body.
She was pale, with striking red hair. The sort of beauty that would stop a man on the street.
She had not been speaking with vanity when she had claimed she could make more money as a mistress than a governess.
She had spoken only the truth.
He had reacted to that truth, to the image it painted. Physically. And he did not take any joy in that.
But she was such a strange, plainspoken woman.
He could hear the hint of a brogue beneath her words, though it was very carefully concealed.
It didn’t surprise him that most people that she spoke to did not hear it. Most people believed what was being presented to them. He did not. He never had.
He was a man who looked beneath the surface.
A man with his power and his tastes, in life and in the bedroom, had to be discerning.
As if there was any point or benefit thinking about the bedroom now.
He had not been with a woman in some time.
And he certainly should not be thinking of such things around his newest employee.
He was a man of propriety and practicality.
He had very clear lines drawn in his life.
He kept appropriate distance between himself and his staff. He knew many men who saw their own household as their personal hunting grounds.
It was, to his mind, deeply distasteful. And he was never distasteful.
West was appropriate in all things.
And in all ways.
For all the good it had done these last months. His children were coming undone, and the babe...
He could not bring himself to touch the infant.
The child who did not have a name.
He was not christened...
It was true he was failing in this regard, and yet...
The child was responsible for the death of Jane. It was that simple.
And you don’t think that you bear any responsibility for it...?
