Chapter Fourteen
WHAT IN BLAZES did Miss Ellerby have to say to him now that she could not have said earlier when he’d confronted her in the lane?
Rupert’s daughters and guests were already seated when Bessie relayed the message.
It was on the tip of his tongue to reply that whatever Miss Ellerby wanted could wait until the Cadmores left. He had no intention of delaying their dinner so she could flog a dead horse with more pleas that he abandon his plan to wed his comely neighbor. Did she not realize his daughters were becoming resigned to the idea? Once they saw that he had not saddled them with a wicked stepmother from out of a fairy tale, they would accept his marriage and all would be well.
But what if the governess meant to go further by threatening to resign her post if he proposed to Mrs. Cadmore? Though Rupert had no intention of allowing her to coerce him, he thought it worth hearing what Miss Ellerby wanted at least.
“If you will pardon me for a moment.” He cast Mrs. Cadmore an apologetic smile. “There is a matter I must attend to then we can begin.”
“Is it that urgent?” The lady made no effort to conceal her impatience. “Surely it can wait until after dinner.”
“I’m not certain it can,” said Rupert, even though he knew Mrs. Cadmore was probably right. “It will be a very brief postponement, I assure you.”
As he strode to the door he refused to admit that part of him welcomed this delay, fleeting though it would be.
“What is it you wish to tell me, Miss Ellerby?” he muttered as he closed the door behind him. His impatience was less with her than with his divided inclinations. “I hope you will keep it brie—”
Then he turned and his gaze swept upward from her familiar dull-green dress to the startlingly attractive woman wearing it. “Good heavens!”
It couldn’t be plain Miss Ellerby—yet it was. Rupert would never have credited a cap and spectacles with making such a striking difference in a person’s appearance. How beautiful she might look in a pretty gown, he could only imagine.
To his further shock Rupert realized he could imagine it all too easily.
“Good heavens,” he gasped again. “You!”
The woman before him was Grace Ellerby—he could tell that, just barely. But she was also the mysterious beauty from the masquerade. Now he understood why she’d seemed so familiar. No wonder he had not been able to place her. He had plundered his memory for every beautiful woman he’d ever met, but his daughters’ mousy governess had not numbered among them.
“You do know who I am, then?” She looked ready to shrink from a blow that might fall at any moment.
He gave a stiff nod. “Now that I see you without your disguise. Without either of your disguises.”
To think he had congratulated himself on hiring a governess who would never abandon his family to elope. What a blind dupe he’d been!
The realization that he had been so thoroughly hoodwinked did not improve his temper. “You owe me an explanation, Miss Ellerby, if that is indeed your name.”
She flinched as if that were the blow she’d been expecting. “It is. I may not have told you the entire truth about myself but I tried to tell you as much as I could. As for my explanation—you will get it, I promise. But there is not nearly enough time now.”
Her words reminded Rupert of the party in the dining room awaiting his return. The sight of her had driven every thought of them from his mind. “What do you want with me then?”
“Just to beg you not to propose to Mrs. Cadmore until I have had the opportunity to explain my situation. I have reason to know you are not done with love as you claim. It would be a grave misfortune indeed if you undertook a marriage of convenience only to later meet a lady you could care for.”
He had been beguiled into fancying he cared for her.
“Is that why you stole in to the masquerade?” he demanded. “To seek me out and make up to me so I would abandon my marriage plans?”
The emotions that had possessed his heart in the moonlit garden last night had not entirely released him. But they did have to battle equally potent feelings of betrayal and abandonment.
“I did not steal in.” Grace shook her head so hard her golden hair billowed around her face. “My friend Lady Benedict secured me an invitation. It was she and her husband in the carriage you saw earlier. Viscount Benedict wanted to pay his respects to you but I was afraid it might raise awkward questions and you would discover what I’d done.”
Lady Benedict? Rupert had heard about the viscount’s recent marriage as well as some wild rumor about him proposing to the lady in front of a great crowd at Bath. But that did not mean Grace Ellerby was telling him the truth.
“I did not ‘make up’ to you to ruin your marriage plans,” she continued with vehement sincerity. “You came to my rescue, remember? I did not even know who you were at first.”
“At first?” Rupert seized on those words to distract himself from the memory of trailing after her like a calf-eyed schoolboy, eager to protect her from the unwelcome attentions of other men. “When did you realize who I was? And why did you keep on pretending we were strangers?”
A wave of shame seemed to quench her spirit. “Because I feared you would suspect the worst of me... as you do. The truth is I accepted my friend’s invitation so I could keep watch on you in case you tried to propose to Mrs. Cadmore.”
“What would you have done then? Thrown yourself into my arms? Pretended you had a prior claim upon me?” In spite of his outrage, Rupert could not suppress a traitorous wish that she had done those things.
“No!” Grace Ellerby’s forceful denial felt like a rejection of the feelings she’d stirred in him. “That is... I don’t know because that is not what happened. Instead you came to my assistance then we walked in the garden and talked. You told me—”
“I am not responsible for anything I said under the influence of that romantic atmosphere!” Rupert lashed out against the sting of her rejection. “Today I woke up to the practical necessities of life.”
She flinched from the intensity of his anger but refused to back down altogether. “Nonetheless, what happened last night convinced me you will never be happy married to a woman you do not love.”
Her quiet certainty shook him to the core and threatened to rally his own doubts against him. “There is much more at stake than my happiness!”
“But if you are not happy, your daughters will not be either.” If only she would respond with anger, it would have been easier to dismiss her claims. Her heartfelt pleas were much harder to disregard. “I know you are trying to do what is best for them but this is not it! I do not believe your wife would have wanted that for any of you.”
Rupert’s temper flared. “Do not presume to tell me what my wife would have wanted! I will be the judge of what is best for my children, Miss Ellerby. Now, I must get back to my guests. But I will expect a full explanation later for why you entered my employ under false pretenses, which you have continued to this day.”
Fearing she might say something more to detain him, he turned and fled back into the dining room, shutting the door firmly behind him.
“Is there some difficulty, Lord Steadwell?” Mrs. Cadmore inquired in a tone of concern. “We heard raised voices.”
Rupert shook his head and made a determined effort to regain his composure. “A minor issue with the staff, though the timing was altogether inconvenient.”
Despite his best efforts to prevent it, Grace Ellerby’s face rose in his mind. Incidents from the past few months flitted through his memory, featuring his daughters’ governess in her true attractive appearance.
As he strode back to his chair and tried to carry on as if nothing had happened, Rupert caught his daughters exchanging furtive looks. Had they put their governess up to attending the masquerade to spy on him? Suddenly he realized why her pink Stuart-era gown had looked so familiar. How long had his children known about the secret beauty hiding in their nursery?
Besides the feeling of betrayal that his daughters had conspired to deceive him, it also made Rupert realize how desperately opposed they still must be to his marriage plans.
There. She had done it at last—the thing she should have done from the very beginning if only she’d known what kind of man her new employer would turn out to be.
As Grace watched the dining room door swing shut behind him, her conscience protested. It had not taken her long to discover that Rupert Kendrick was a trustworthy, honorable gentleman who would never have tried to prey upon her like so many other men she’d known. From that moment there had been no excuse to repay his decency with deception—except her lack of courage.
Rebecca would never have behaved as she had. Heaving a sigh of regret Grace turned and headed back to the nursery with slow, weary steps. Her friend would have confessed the truth at once and accepted the consequences with fortitude. Perhaps that was why Rebecca had been rewarded with security and happiness while she was about to be cast out from the safety and serenity of Nethercross—the first place that had felt like home to her in many years.
Clearly her stepmother and teachers had been right. Her fair looks were a superficial mask to hide a flawed character. She had been pulled far too easily into the sticky web of deceit. But now she was free. No longer would she have to devise new lies to cover up old ones. No longer would she have to be less than truthful with the man she admired and cared for.
Perhaps those blessings alone would be worth the punishment she must suffer for her transgressions.
She might as well begin packing, Grace decided when she reached the empty nursery. Lord Steadwell might be kind enough not to send her away this very night, but she could not deny the anger with which he’d reacted to her revelations. He would not want someone who had demonstrated such a lack of integrity to continue raising his beloved daughters. And she could not blame him.
If their places had been reversed, she would have done the same. However, she hoped she might find a drop of pity in her heart for the person who had acted out of fear and desperation rather than malice.
The time dragged by as Grace gathered her meager belongings and stowed them away in her trunk. Between inquisitions of her conscience, she wondered what was happening down in the dining room. Had Lord Steadwell proposed to Mrs. Cadmore in front of their children? If he must do it, Grace hoped he would wait until after his daughters had left at least. She feared that Sophie, in particular, would not be able to hide her dismay.
If the child burst into tears or referred to wicked stepmothers from her fairy tales, it might provoke her father’s anger and Mrs. Cadmore’s resentment. Any small chance of future happiness for their family would be poisoned. Would that be her fault too? Grace could not deny the possibility.
Perhaps if she hadn’t allowed old wounds from childhood to fester within her, she would not have encouraged Charlotte, Phoebe and Sophie in their resistance to their father’s remarriage. Then he and Mrs. Cadmore might have stood some hope of blending their families into a reasonably happy one. Though Grace still had her doubts, she could not deny her fault in making a bad situation worse.
At last she heard the approach of footsteps. Swallowing her bitter brew of fears and regrets she composed her features and went to meet the girls. Her first priority now must be to make the changes that were coming as easy as possible for them to bear.
They rushed in, all trying to squeeze through the door at once and all speaking at the same time.
“Girls, please!” Nursery discipline reasserted itself. “I cannot understand a word you’re saying. One at a time, then we must get you to bed. Sophie first, for she looks as if she’s about to explode.”
Charlotte and Phoebe did not look pleased with that, but they allowed their little sister to speak. “What did you say to Papa, Miss Ella? We heard you talking quite loudly outside the dining room. Anyway, it must have worked because he didn’t ask Mrs. Cadmore to marry him.”
That unexpected good news made Grace’s heart leap. If she had succeeded in keeping Lord Steadwell from making a terrible mistake her exile from Nethercross, no matter how painful, would not be in vain.
Now that Sophie had spoken, Phoebe seemed to feel it should be her turn next. “Why have you not got your cap and spectacles on, Miss Ella? Did you let Papa see you looking pretty? Did you think it might make him want to marry you instead of Mrs. Cadmore?”
“Nothing like that!” Grace cried. She could tell by the girls’ expressions that such a notion shocked them. They had no desire to trade one stepmother for another. She could not blame them for feeling that way. After all she had encouraged them to resist the prospect of having a stepmother regardless of whether it might be someone capable of loving their father and them.
“I wanted him to know he had spoken to me at the masquerade. Some of the things he said there made me certain it would be a mistake for him to wed Mrs. Cadmore. Besides, your Papa has treated me with kindness and respect ever since I arrived at Nethercross. I repaid him poorly, by not being truthful with him. I thought I had good reasons for keeping secrets but now I am not sure any excuse would be good enough. I only hope you girls will learn from my mistakes and not follow my example.”
“Is that why Papa was angry?” demanded Charlotte, her face suddenly pale. “When I first saw you looking pretty you said Papa would dismiss you if he found out.”
Before Grace could reply Phoebe spoke up. “Papa said we must tell you to come down to his study once we were in bed. Is he going to send you away, Miss Ella?”
“No!” Sophie cried, flinging her arms around Grace’s waist. “He mustn’t!”
Touched as she was by their dismay at the prospect of losing her, Grace was sorry to be responsible for causing them any unhappiness.
“Hush now.” Grace ran her hand over the child’s head in a reassuring caress and manufactured a smile for Sophie’s sisters. “Let’s not borrow trouble—it will only spoil your sleep. Your father told me he wanted an explanation for my actions—that must be why he wants to see me.”
If Lord Steadwell did want her gone from Nethercross, tomorrow would be soon enough to talk it over with the girls and make them understand it would be for the best. They would be better able to accept the news after a good night’s sleep.
“Come now, let’s get you ready for bed.” Grace strove to sound untroubled so the children would not worry. “I do not want to keep your father waiting.”
“What about our bedtime story?” Sophie asked as Grace pulled her nightgown over her head.
“It is too late tonight, I’m afraid. Perhaps tomorrow you can get ready for bed a little earlier and have two stories then.” Grace tried to sound as if she had no doubt she would be there tomorrow night to read those stories.
The two younger ones seemed to accept her reassurance, but she sensed Charlotte did not. At least the girl had the kindness not to burden her sisters with her worries. As soon as all three were in bed, Grace took a moment to sit with each of them before she headed off to meet with their father.
When she reached Lord Steadwell’s study and tapped on the door he called her to enter. She found him standing beside his writing table with his back to the window and his arms held stiffly behind him. His crisp features were set in a stern frown and his dark brows were drawn together.
For all his well-composed severity, he gave a start when she appeared—as if he had still not managed to reconcile his image of his daughters’ plain governess with her true appearance.
“Now, Miss Ellerby, you promised me an explanation for why you have deceived me from the moment we met.” It was clear from his harsh tone and stiff stance that none of the excuses she had given herself for her behavior would satisfy him.
He had already made up his mind to dismiss her. Nothing she could say would salvage the respect he’d once had for her. It was equally doubtful that anything she said could make him despise her more. That left her with nothing to lose and no reason to conceal a shred of the truth.
When Grace Ellerby entered his study, Rupert strove to conceal the shock and unease her presence still inspired in him. Ever since she had ambushed him with the revelation of her true appearance, part of his mind had struggled to grasp that his daughters’ mousy governess was the mysterious beauty from the masquerade. What troubled him most was that some deeply buried intuition seemed to have grasped this baffling contraction already. Could it be the same part of him that wanted to invite Miss Ellerby for a walk in the garden to discuss the matter? Reason warned that would be the worst of bad ideas.
Of course, reason was still vexed that it had not succeeded in getting him to propose to Mrs. Cadmore this evening. In spite of its urging and the lady’s pointed hints, he had remained stubbornly silent on the subject. He could hardly blame the poor woman for wanting to be certain of his intentions after he had shown her such particular interest. Yet Rupert knew he dared not take such an irrevocable step until he had sorted out his complicated feelings for Grace Ellerby.
Even as she gathered her composure to offer an explanation, he wondered how he could have been so blind to the beauty hidden only by an ugly cap and a pair of spectacles. Vexed as he was with her for making such a fool of him, he found it impossible to forget the slow-blossoming admiration and immediate fascination her two very different personas had inspired in him.
Which of them was the real Grace Ellerby? Or was that a woman he would not recognize at all—a cool, calculated deceiver with motives he could not begin to fathom?
“The truth is,” she began, “I disguised my appearance at first because I was not sure if I could trust you.”
“Trust me?” The words erupted from Rupert’s lips edged with bitter irony.
Grace Ellerby flinched—but whether it was from his angry outburst or from the pain of her conscience, he could not tell for certain. “I realize now that you are a gentleman of honor but I had no way of knowing it at first. I have been acquainted with too many of the other kind.”
“What do you mean?” Rupert muttered, though he could guess her answer after what he had witnessed between her and that sultan brute at the ball.
Her hands were clasped in front of her. Now they began to fidget. Her delicate features reflected the struggle within her—not wanting to speak of painful events from the past but knowing she had no choice.
“It began during my very first position when I was only nineteen—fresh out of school and hopelessly naive. The brother of my mistress paid me a great deal of attention, flattered me, claimed he loved me and persuaded me to fancy I was in love with him. I assumed he meant to marry me, only to discover that gentlemen like him do not want a penniless, orphaned governess as a wife. When he offered to buy me a house and set me up as his mistress, I ran away.”
“The gall of the brazen whelp!” Rupert cried before he could restrain himself. “I’d have thrashed any brother-in-law of mine who dared to conduct himself in such an infamous manner under my roof!”
It was more than righteous indignation that roused his anger. He envied the young fool who had won Grace Ellerby’s heart when it was soft and trusting.
She raised her gaze to meet his, clearly determined to make a full confession. “It was as much my fault as his. I was completely unguarded. I encouraged his attentions.”
Hard as he tried, Rupert could not let that go unchallenged. “But you said yourself, you were scarcely more than a child! How were you to know his intentions were so thoroughly dishonorable?”
“I was employed in his sister’s home,” she insisted. “I should not have permitted any familiarity between us. The experience taught me a painful lesson but a useful one I never intended to forget. At my next post, I tried to be more careful. I concentrated on my duties and went out of my way to discourage any attention from visiting gentlemen.
“That worked well enough for a while. But then a friend of the master’s took a fancy to me. For some reason, he seemed to consider my reserved manner a challenge. He set about to win my favors and the more I resisted the more determined he became.”
“Why did you not complain to your employers?” Rupert demanded in a sharp tone. His stomach seethed with indignant anger. He wished he had both the cads who had imposed upon Grace Ellerby in front of him so he could knock their vile heads together!
“I tried,” she insisted in a defensive tone as if she assumed his anger was directed at her. “I spoke to the mistress about my fears, but she refused to believe me even though the man had tried to flirt with me in her presence. She said it was not my place to criticize a guest in her home. I was left with no choice but to seek a position elsewhere.”
Rage rose in Rupert’s throat like thick black bile. The number of people he longed to confront and punish kept growing while Grace Ellerby fell lower and lower on the list. “I suppose it was the same at the next place?”
“Worse.” Her gaze faltered and her hands moved more restlessly than ever. “Not only did I cultivate a more guarded manner, I also dressed as modestly as possible and wore my hair in a severe style. That kept me safe until last fall when Mr. Hesketh’s uncle returned from the Indies to live with the family.”
She went on to describe how the lecher had pursued her and her increasingly desperate efforts to avoid him until the night he had entered her bedchamber and lain in wait. By the time she finished her account, Rupert’s throat was so constricted he could scarcely speak.
“I knew after that,” she concluded, “I could not afford to keep moving from one post to another or I would never be able to save for my old age. I decided I must employ more drastic measures to discourage gentlemen from taking an interest in me.”
“But I am not like those other men!” Rupert forced the words out of his constricted throat. “I would never behave toward any woman as they did!”
As strenuously as he insisted it, his conscience could not deny his immediate attraction to Grace at the masquerade. Nor his present urge to take her in his arms and vow to protect her from anyone who might do her harm.
Was he really any better than those other men? And did he frighten her as they had?
The way her gaze skittered from his made him suspect he might.
“I know that now. But how could I at first? Especially when I learned...”
“That I was widowed,” Rupert finished her sentence. He recalled her intense reaction to that discovery and how it had puzzled him at the time. Now it became clear.
She nodded. “None of the men who pursued me were married. If I had known you were not, I would never have applied for the position. By the time I realized you were a gentleman of honor, I guessed you only hired me because you believed I was plain and unmarriageable. I feared if you discovered otherwise, you would send me away from Nethercross and I would never see your daughters again.”
Grace Ellerby was the picture of abject remorse, and Rupert found his vexation with her melting away like snow on a mild spring day. How could he blame her for doing whatever she must to remain at Nethercross with his girls? In her place, what might he have been willing to do? What rules of proper behavior might he bend? How far would he allow honor to lapse?
“I wanted to tell you the truth.” Her words trembled with that longing. “The more time passed, the more I wanted to, but the harder it became. I was certain you would not understand and now I know I was right.”
She wasn’t right at all, Rupert yearned to reassure her. There were parts of what she had done that he understood far too well. But other parts still bewildered him.
“My daughters knew, didn’t they?”
Their governess gave a brief guilty nod, as if that was one facet of her prolonged deception that troubled her most.
“When did they find out?” It made him feel a greater fool than ever to have been blind to something his children had long since realized.
Was it their innocence, their lack of concern with appearance that had allowed his children to see through her dowdy disguise? He, however, had looked Grace Ellerby over only long enough to decide that she was unattractive and thus no threat to the stability of his household. After that, he had never bothered to observe her more closely.
“Several months ago.” She went on to tell him how Sophie had coaxed her to don the beautiful old gown and how she’d been discovered by Charlotte.
“They kept your secret all this time.” Rupert could not decide whether he felt betrayed by his daughters or admired the lengths to which they had gone to protect their governess.
“I should never have asked them to take part in my deception,” Grace murmured. “I am not proud of any of my actions, but that is the one I regret most.”
Determined to get to the bottom of this whole business, Rupert asked, “Whose idea was it for you to attend the masquerade?”
When Grace Ellerby hesitated to reply, it occurred to him that she was as determined to protect his daughters as they were her. Clearly she had not intended to engage his affections last night for her own sake, as part of him longed to believe. Instead, seeing how much he fancied her, she had led him on in an effort to prevent the marriage she feared would make his daughters miserable.
“The girls made you go, didn’t they?”
“They did not make me do anything,” she protested. “My friend, Lady Benedict, offered me an invitation. Your daughters only urged me to accept and provided me with a costume. I pretended to let them persuade me, but the truth is I wanted to go. What happened last night was not their fault.”
In spite of everything, he could not be angry or sorry she had gone, even if their moonlit encounter had brought him to the troublesome realization that his heart was not entirely ready to give up on love.
“I know you have no reason to believe me,” Grace’s gaze flitted from the floor to his face and back again. “I was going to tell you the truth last night. But at the last moment I lost my nerve and ran away. It’s what I have always done when things go wrong.”
She put Rupert in mind of a wild doe, ears alert for the slightest noise, nose sniffing the breeze for any whiff of danger, muscles coiled to sprint away at the first sign of peril. She needed a safe haven and a strong protector. She deserved them.
“You didn’t run this time,” he reminded her, aware how difficult that must have been. “You could just as easily have slipped away and left me a note explaining all this.”
“I almost wish I had,” she admitted with a rueful grimace. “But your daughters deserve better than that from me. So do you after what I’ve done. The result will be the same though, won’t it? I shall have to leave. I cannot blame you for not trusting me to raise your daughters after the lack of character I’ve shown.”
Leave? The prospect of losing her from his home jarred Rupert. He had not thought beyond this confrontation to its consequences. Reason warned him that dismissing her was the only prudent course. She had already gained too perilous a foothold in his affections. By her own admission, she was the sort of woman who posed his heart the greatest danger—one who was apt to take flight and abandon him.
But how could he do that to his daughters when it was clear how much they had come to care for their new governess?
“I cannot pretend I approve of your actions.” He could scarcely force the words out—so torn was he about what course of action to take. “But I understand why you felt compelled to hide your beauty in the beginning.”
His tongue tripped over the word beauty, for it reminded him anew how much her looks attracted him.
Rupert cleared his throat and continued. “I acknowledge the part I played in making you feel you must continue the ruse or lose your position. But I am gravely disappointed that once we became better acquainted you continued to doubt I would understand.”
For the first time that evening he thought he glimpsed the faint shimmer of tears in her eyes. “I’m sorry, sir.”
“I believe you are.” He resisted the intense urge to stride toward her and offer her the comfort of his embrace. She would assume he was no better than those other men who had tried to take advantage of her innocence and prey upon her beauty. Recalling how he had ignored his growing fondness for plain Miss Ellerby only to indulge his instant fancy for the masked lady, Rupert could not be altogether certain he was any better. “And I hope you will try to make it up to my family by staying on at Nethercross as my daughters’ governess.”
He held his breath as he waited for her answer. For his daughters’ sake he knew he could not dismiss her. But for himself he could not decide if he was more alarmed at the prospect of Grace leaving... or staying?