Page 11 of The Governess and the Brooding Duke
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what his name is. I seem to have forgotten.’
‘He doesn’t have one,’ said Michael, not looking up.
‘Oh,’ said Miss Smith. ‘I...’ She looked up at him. Asking a question with her eyes.
‘He doesn’t have a name,’ said Elizabeth. ‘Because he killed our mother.’
This, he decided, would be the thing that drove her out of the room if she was easily frightened. Because these were the sorts of things his children said. Sometimes after turning over tables and tearing apart toys. This time it seemed they had done it as a prelude to chaos.
These were the sorts of thingshefelt. And fought. And if he were eight and eleven he might very well have turned over some tables himself.
‘What do you call him, then?’ she asked, her voice even.
‘I don’t speak about him,’ said Elizabeth deliberately.
‘And you, Michael? Do you speak about him?’
He shook his head. Then bent down and grabbed the dismembered animal and began to pick stuffing out of one of the exposed holes. ‘No.’
‘I have work to do,’ West said. ‘I trust that I can leave you to sort out the rest of their day.’
Miss Smith was suddenly brisk, and all business. ‘Yes. Of course. Everything is in hand.’
She was not bright, or overly cheerful, which was good; their last governess had been far too bright, a couple of years younger than Miss Smith seemed to be, and exceedingly irritating.
There was a no-nonsense aspect to her tone, and he found that he appreciated that. Along with her lack of reaction to this entire situation.
It remained to be seen if she would last even through the day.
If she did not leave of her own accord, then this evening when he called her to account in his study would be when his decision was made.
He had not had a room readied for her, and it had not been by accident.
He did nothing by accident.
She had been neutral upon meeting the children, her lovely face schooled into a blank slate.
He had a feeling her lack of response was practised. She had been free with her speech in his study. But he refused to accept criticism from a country spinster who had no idea what sorts of responsibilities were required of a man in his position. Who had no idea of the intricacies one navigated in a marriage and, most of all, when it came to children. It was not for her to comment. She would be useful for as long as she was useful, and when she was no longer useful she would be gone.
No matter how pretty or compelling she might be.
The problem, as far as West could see, with compelling things was that they often had nothing to do with duty. And there was no place to put that fascination.
If he had no place for something, it simply didn’t belong. And he did not hesitate to excise it from his life.
Chapter Three
Michael looked up at Mary with angry blue eyes, from where he sat at the table with a pen clutched tightly in his fist.
She had known the moment she had walked into the nursery that she was doing battle with worthy opponents. But she was a no-nonsense governess, and in the end the children came to love her for it. Violet and Charlotte, her previous two charges, had been flighty girls who had not seen the merit in doing school work when they were only going to be married one day. But she had managed to get them to take their facts and figures seriously.
She could wrangle difficult children.
When she had sent Violet and Charlotte away from the classroom and into the ballroom, they had been flawlessly accomplished in manner, and in their minds. She would do the same with Elizabeth and Michael.
She understood that they were going through a difficult time, and what they needed was structure. Security. They had been through four governesses in the months since they had lost their mother. And even if they might have been part of pushing those women away, it was also keeping them in a state of instability, whether they understood it or not. She did.
Mary was an immovable object.
