Page 14 of The Governess and the Brooding Duke
It was a terrible thing.
And she should not judge them so.
She made her way to the door of his study and opened it slowly, stepping inside. He was sitting at his desk, just as he had been this morning, a quill in his hand and his eyes downcast on a paper before him. When he looked at her, the only thing that shifted was those eyes. Blue and piercing.
‘Miss Smith.’ There was something about his voice. She did not simply hear him speak her name, she felt it.
‘Your Grace.’
‘I wish to hear an account of the day. Which lessons did the children complete? And how do you find their proficiency?’
‘Is that all you wish to know?’
‘There is nothing else that matters.’
‘They did French, mathematics and Latin. Elizabeth worked a bit on needlepoint. Tomorrow I should like to take them outside to get some fresh air. I should like to have them do some exercises.’
‘Do whatever you see fit.’
‘I shall want to have a rope ladder erected in the back garden.’
‘Pardon me?’
‘For exercise. It is good for strength, balance and the lungs.’
He lifted a brow. ‘Do you...climb rope ladders?’
‘I certainly do not ask the children to engage in activities I find impossible to complete.’
‘Fair of you.’
‘I strive for fairness at all times, Your Grace.’
His eyes went sharp. They might as well have been daggers. ‘Even when lying to gain an employment position?’
She straightened. ‘I did not lie to gain the position. I presented only the information that matters to the position.’
‘Scotland does not matter?’
‘Not to me.’
‘And yet it must, or why keep it a secret?’
She sniffed. ‘I told you, an accent would be a barrier to my finding work, unless that accent was French. I acclimatised to my surroundings, and is that not what we all do?’
‘No. I was born to this.’
‘You were not born standing upright and wearing a black suit. Your Grace.’
The corner of his mouth curved upward, and she had the terrible sense that he felt he’d won some sort of victory.
She imagined herself standing in very soft mud. Imagined her heels digging in completely.
‘All of us play a role,’ she said. ‘I play the role which most benefits myself and my charges.’
He thumbed through a stack of papers on his desk, very deliberately putting his attention there, until his eyes went sharply to hers. ‘I am Westmere. There is no becoming. No playing. I was born to it. For it. Everything I have, everything I have inherited, has bent itself around me.’
‘And how nice for you,’ she said. ‘But the world has not been so accommodating to me. So I must bend. I have. I will continue to do so in order to keep this position, but I will not be made to feel ashamed of myself for doing what was necessary.’
