Meredith Thorn watched from the entry hall as the Duke of Wey and Jane made their way up the graceful curving stairs at the center of the house. Her hand stroked the cat draped along her other arm.

“You like him, it seems,” she murmured. “Despite his father.”

Fortune rubbed her head against Meredith’s wrist.

“Yes, well, you always were a better judge of character. Though I still don’t understand why you chose me of all people. There must have been others more suitable on Bond Street the day you followed me back to that wretched little room I lived in while we waited for the will to be settled.”

Fortune twisted to regard her with her warm eyes.

“Do not look at me like that. I’ve been given a number of reasons to doubt my own worth over the years, and coming back here hasn’t helped.”

Fortune lay her head down with a sigh.

“I’m sure I’m a sad trial to you,” Meredith commiserated. “But then, that is what Lady Winhaven always claimed. Sometimes I feel wicked for being glad she’s gone. She gave me a place to live when I had none, but it was never home. I want something better for Jane.”

The butler was returning. She swirled and focused her attention on the porcelain figurine of a shepherd with his sheep, resting on the half-moon table against the tapestry-hung wall. The peaceful scene hadn’t been there the last time she’d visited, but then neither had the butler. Perhaps things had changed at the castle in the last dozen years. Certainly no one had recognized her yet.

“Would you care to wait in the sitting room, madam?” the butler asked.

Such condescension. It was one thing to have spent half her life as a companion to an elderly lady. She had still been considered a poor relation, a duty, an obligation. She was painfully aware that she had gone into trade now, and, by doing so, forfeited any right to the courtesies due a lady. But then, those rights had been stripped from her ages ago.

“The entry hall is sufficient, thank you,” she said. At least that way, she could escape out the door if anyone in the household remembered her and questioned her reasons for returning now.

 

~~~

 

His Grace, the Duke of Wey, strolled along beside Jane, face as pleasant as the butler’s had been shocked when the duke had agreed to Miss Thorn’s outrageous demands. Reporting only to the duke? Developing a curriculum? The closest she’d come had been helping her father lay out a course for study for Bible lessons at the little village church where he’d served as vicar. But then again, her time with the regiment had taught her that the key to survival was initiative and improvisation. She had never lacked for either.

Though she was no doubt expected to be silent and submissive in the duke’s presence, she was far less skilled at either of those traits. Might as well do a bit of reconnaissance.

“Miss Thorn said your daughters are ten, eight, and five,” Jane said.

He inclined his head. “I believe that is correct.”

He believed? Didn’t he know?

“And what are their favorite courses of study?” she asked as he led them up to the landing. On the wide gallery, his ancestors stared balefully from their gilt-edged picture frames as if not a little dismayed to find her here. Well, she felt the same way.

The duke clasped his hands behind his back. One of the colonels Jimmy had served under had done that. Biding his time, Jimmy had said, until he could figure out an answer. Military strategy ought to take a little thought. But his daughter’s preferences?

“Lady Larissa, the oldest,” he said at last, “is following the typical course of study for a young lady making her debut.”

At ten? That seemed a bit young, but Jane nodded to encourage him as he turned the corner onto another corridor, this one with walls paneled in yellow silk. Already she wasn’t sure north from south. It seemed the house was as much a maze as the library.

“Lady Calantha has demonstrated some proficiency for oration, I have been told,” he continued.

Did that mean she liked to talk? “Commendable,” Jane managed.

“And Lady Abelona is just learning her letters, if memory serves.”

Once more she bit her lip to keep from speaking her first thoughts aloud. Larissa, Calantha, and Abelona? Who’d saddled the girls with such appellations? Little Abelona would likely have to learn the entire alphabet just to spell her full name.

He paused before a paneled door, hand on the gilded latch. “I have been told my daughters require gentle handling since the death of their mother. I have observed a certain reticence on their parts. I would council patience, Mrs. Kimball.”

Jane raised her brows, but he swung open the door and motioned for her to proceed him through it.

This could not be the schoolroom. Sky-blue walls held alcoves with Chinese vases and crystal decanters. Curved-leg side tables displayed porcelain figurines and tiny chinoiseries boxes. The three little girls in their high-waisted muslin gowns—white of all things!—looked like waxen dolls seated on a sofa patterned with blue and yellow irises.

“Mother,” the duke said to the silver-haired woman seated opposite them in regal splendor on a tall-backed chair of cerulean blue. “Girls. This is Mrs. Kimball, the new governess.”

My, but he sounded confident, even though he had said she must win over his mother. Perhaps it was all show, that noble bearing, that distant smile. Inside, was he quaking as much as she was?

For a moment, no one spoke, and she dared glance around at them. His daughters must have taken after their mother, for all had varying shades of blond hair. The biggest, very likely Lady Larissa, had the darkest blond hair and eyes somewhere between brown and green. The ringlets on either side of her long face were already losing their spring. She inclined her head just as slightly as her grandmother did to acknowledge Jane’s presence.

The next biggest, Calantha, had far paler hair, thin enough that any curl had faded. She blinked big blue eyes and fidgeted. A look from Her Grace brought her eyes forward and her spine ramrod straight. Jimmy would have been impressed, if she’d been a cavalry officer.

The littlest, with golden hair curling all on its own and eyes the jade of her father’s, stared at Jane, full lower lip starting to tremble.

Her Grace’s lips weren’t trembling. They were set in an unforgiving line as she eyed Jane.

“I’ll leave you to it,” His Grace said with a bow to no one in particular as he backed toward the door.

Coward.

Jane put on her best smile. “Your Grace, ladies, did you have some questions before I settle in?”

It was by far the bravest thing she could have said. But if the duke could brazen it out for a moment, so could she. Only Calantha looked impressed.

Her Grace curled her fingers to beckon. “Come here, where I can see you better.”

Jane moved around the side of the chair, half expecting to spot rheuminess in the woman’s gaze. But no, by the way the duchess’s head came up, she saw all too well. She raised a gold-edged quizzing glass to her right eye, squinting at Jane through it. Her look moved from Jane’s feet to her head, as if studying every inch of her.

“Shall I turn in a circle?” Jane asked. “Or would you like to count my teeth?”

The duchess dropped the eyepiece. “Impertinent girl! Is that how you address your betters?”

“It’s how I address anyone who behaves rudely, Your Grace,” Jane told her. “I assumed you’d want me to serve as a model for your granddaughters. No one should look them over as if they were an overripe cabbage.”

“Certainly not,” the duchess agreed. Then she frowned. “Where was I?”

“About to ask my qualifications for the post,” Jane assured her. “I worked for Colonel Travers, the hero of the Siege of Ciudad Rodrigo, looking after his only daughter. I was raised a vicar’s daughter with the usual studies in Scripture, history, Latin, and Greek. I speak French and Portuguese as well.”

By the way Her Grace’s face worked, she was trying not to look impressed. “And you are a widow.”

“Yes, Your Grace. My husband was an officer in the Twelfth Dragoons. He was killed on duty thirteen months ago.”

At last her look softened. “I am sorry for your loss. My husband has been gone nearly eight years now, and I still miss him terribly.”

Jane’s throat tightened. “My condolences as well, Your Grace.”

The woman rallied. “These are my granddaughters,” she said with a sweeping wave that took in the three statues on the sofa, legs not reaching the carpet. “Lady Larissa.”

Larissa inclined her head again. “Mrs. Kimball.” She had a pleasant voice at odds with her narrow look.

“She will need work in deportment and dance,” her grandmother said as if the girl was deficient in those areas.

“Reading, arithmetic, science, and history as well,” Jane said. “After all, she’ll have to lead a great house one day.”

Larissa frowned. So did her grandmother, but she nodded to the girl’s sister. “And this is Lady Calantha.”

The towhead continued to stare.

“Sometimes I fear she hasn’t an original thought or much else in her head,” the duchess confided. “You’ll need to work on that.”

By the color climbing in the girl’s cheeks, she knew exactly what was happening and had her own opinion on the matter. Jane offered her a commiserating smile.

“Then there’s Lady Abelona,” Her Grace continued.

The little beauty raised her chin. “I want a unicorn.”

Jane blinked.

Her Grace sighed. “I expect you to quell those fancies.” She aimed her frown at her youngest grandchild. “Ladies don’t ride unicorns, Abelona. There’s no such thing.”

The girl’s lip was trembling again. “There is! I’ve seen them.”

Larissa snorted, then covered her mouth with her hand as if she had merely coughed.

“That is quite enough,” the duchess said, glancing at the three of them. “What will Mrs. Kimball think of you?”

Calantha finally spoke up. “The last governess said we were willful and spoiled. The one before that called us monsters.”

Her Grace drew herself up, but Jane had heard enough. She took a step forward, met their gazes in turn. “I don’t hold with name calling. My father always said you know a person by their deeds. You decide what those deeds should be, not anyone else.”

“By your fruit you shall be known,” the duchess mused. “Well said, Mrs. Kimball. Larissa, show your new governess the schoolroom and her quarters.”

Larissa slid dutifully from the sofa, but Jane’s heart soared. It seemed she’d won her place in the duke’s household. She could hardly wait to tell him.

She pulled in a breath and knew it wasn’t relief that fueled it. Jimmy was the one she’d shared confidences with. She shouldn’t expect things to be that way with the duke. She was a governess, nothing more. She needed to remember that.

 

~~~

 

Alaric strode down the corridor for the stairs, feeling as if a band of French cuirassiers rode screaming behind him, cutlasses drawn. He could stand before his peers in Parliament, make his case for or against a bill. He had seen to the release of men from debtors’ prison. He had rescued tenants from the rising floodwaters of the Thames. He’d assisted friends serving under Lord Hastings to identify and stop aristocrats spying for France. He had helped nurse Evangeline through several illnesses. Why was it one moment with his daughters, and he wanted to bolt?

Miss Thorn met him as he came down the stairs. Her cat regarded Alaric from her arm. Those copper eyes seemed to see inside him. The twitch of her tail said she was disappointed in him. The look in Parsons’ eyes as he excused himself said the same.

As if she had noticed, Miss Thorn offered him a smile. “If you need additional assistance with staff, I’d be delighted to help.”

The footman standing by the door raised his chin defiantly. Most of the staff he’d inherited from his father. He’d known them since he was a boy. Parsons was one of the more recent additions. Evangeline had hired him when Alaric had ascended to the title, claiming they needed someone more sophisticated and polished, as their butler. Only the nursery footman, Simmons, was truly new, having been introduced to the castle in the last year.

“Thank you,” he told Miss Thorn, “but we’re well staffed at present. Most of our people have served for years, even to multiple generations.”

“That is a credit to your house.” She gathered the cat closer. “I’ll take my leave for the moment, then.”

Alaric frowned. “Don’t you wish to be certain Her Grace approves of Mrs. Kimball?”

She adjusted the cat against her chest. “Her Grace will approve. Like knows like.”

The cat smiled as if to prove it. For some reason, he found it difficult to doubt either of them. It seemed he had a new governess, for now.

“I will, of course, return in a few days to ensure that everything is satisfactory,” she said.

“A wise precaution,” Alaric acknowledged. “Not every governess is suited to the role.”

Her smile resembled the cat’s. “It is not your satisfaction that concerns me, Your Grace, but Jane’s. I expect a full report on my return. Good day.”

She sailed for the door, cat peering around her elbow at him. The footman hurried to open the door and ran down the stairs to help her into the coach as well. She might have been the queen of England for the deference shown her.

Curious woman. What did his mother know about the redoubtable Miss Thorn that had made her reach out to a new agency? Or had the agency that had provided the previous governesses run out of suitable staff, and patience?

He retreated to the library and stayed there for the next while, waiting. The crowded space ever seemed cozy to him. The library had been a source of escape when he was a lad. Whenever his father was in London, he’d crawl into a corner and read—history, philosophy, even adventure novels, his father’s only weakness. Now he used the room to oversee his holdings, a place to plan, to concentrate.

Not today. There would be an interruption any moment; he was sure of it.

But no stiff-backed duchess came sweeping down the stairs demanding a footman to throw the interloper out, and no dark-haired governess with speaking eyes went fleeing out the door in horror. Perhaps Miss Thorn was right, and Mrs. Kimball would last. Unfortunately, the previous three governesses had survived a week before giving up.

He rose and headed to the windows, which looked out onto the island. Beyond the buff-colored walls of the castle, fifty acres of Dryden land stretched out to the grey waters of the Thames. Across the bridge, several more hundred acres lay waiting for the spring planting. More than two hundred people depended on that land for income, sustenance. For most of his life, they had been threatened with spring floods, some years worse than others. Many of the worst years had been since he’d taken over the title from his father. If the new solution he’d fixed upon didn’t work properly, he very much feared this year would see tragedy.

He knew what some of his tenants whispered. The House of Wey was cursed. Floods every spring, famines in the winter, fires ravaging the island last summer, his wife dying too young.

And no heir.

He glanced at the sky, but he couldn’t doubt a merciful God. He had three bright, beautiful daughters. He was solvent; his tenants were getting by. He should not feel as if something was lacking.

Especially as he feared the lack was within himself. Everything had seemed to run so much more smoothly when his father had been alive. When Father spoke, people jumped to do his bidding. His father’s fierce intellect and commanding presence had assured as much. He had never understood Alaric’s more quiet nature. And now Alaric had to fight against that nature every day so that his staff, his tenants, and England’s finest only saw the next formidable Duke of Wey.

And none of them would have guessed the formidable Duke of Wey held his breath much of the afternoon. He could only be relieved when his mother joined him in the dining room, looking rather pleased with herself.

“Tolerable,” she pronounced, and he knew she wasn’t talking about the veal set on the long table. “This one has promise.”

He wasn’t sure whether that meant Mrs. Kimball would make a good governess or merely that his mother felt she could control the woman. He began to get a glimmer of an answer when Mrs. Kimball came to give him her first report that evening.

He had retired to the library to review the latest bill the prime minister had sent him. Parliament had started sessions earlier this month, but Alaric had remained home to make sure everything was ready for the spring rains. He was frowning over the almost accusatory language of the bill, which sought to remedy the cost of corn for the poor, when Parsons announced her, nose up and decidedly out of joint. The butler had served in London too long to ever be completely happy with his position in the country, no matter that he served a duke in a castle. He had expectations, requirements. Mrs. Kimball’s access to the duke threatened the exalted position he strived to maintain.

If the new governess met Alaric’s mother’s and daughters’ needs, Parsons would have to adjust.

Mrs. Kimball approached the desk and stopped a few feet from it, head high and gaze direct, as if she were a soldier reporting to her commanding officer. He refused to salute. She’d taken off the bonnet to reveal hair the color and thickness of melted chocolate, pressed close to her round face and wound in a bun behind her. She looked a little pale, but perhaps it was the lamplight barely reaching beyond the first set of shelves.

“Yes?” he encouraged her.

“I have had an opportunity to interact with your daughters this afternoon,” she reported, gaze past him out to the night beyond the windows. “I expect their current curriculum to be acceptable except for four additions.” She paused as if expecting an argument.

“Oh?” he asked.

“Yes.” She took a step forward as if determined to make her case. He’d thought her eyes warm and sweet. Now they snapped fire.

“Exercise,” she said. “It seems they never leave the house. A daily constitutional is required for good health.”

He hadn’t realized his daughters were under such constraints. Small wonder Calantha in particular always looked so wan in his presence. “I concur.”

She drew a breath as if she’d fought her way through the first battle. “And I would like them to learn to ride, provided we can find a unicorn.”

He shook his head, sure he’d heard her incorrectly. “A what?”

“A unicorn. Lady Abelona insists she will ride nothing less.”

He leaned back in the chair. “Then perhaps Lady Abelona is too young to ride.”

She frowned. “When did your father put you in the saddle?”

“When I was five, but that’s hardly the same thing.”

“I see no difference. Both ladies and gentlemen are expected to ride well.”

That he could not argue. “Very well. Assuming you can find her a unicorn, you have my permission to teach her to ride. I believe Larissa and Calantha have had rudimentary lessons in the past. Speak to my master of horse, Mr. Quayle, about suitable mounts. What else?”

“Art,” she said. “They have no outlet for creativity. I thought we’d start with watercolors and move on to oils.”

A bit ambitious, but he could see the value. “I approve.”

She took another step closer, until her black skirts brushed the teak of the desk.

“Science and mathematics,” she said, voice ringing with conviction. “Her Grace doesn’t seem to see the value, but I assure you a lady who can tell the difference between nightshade and blueberries and can balance her household accounts is much more likely to find success in life.”

What an innovative thinker. He had never heard the case made so clearly. A voice inside insisted that Evangeline would have disapproved. Surely the daughters of a duke had no need to determine whether a dark-colored berry was nightshade or blueberry. But he closed off the thought. His position required that he evaluate the recommendations of others. Mrs. Kimball had had sound reasons for each suggestion.

Aside from the unicorn, of course.

“Your plan seems wise,” he said. “I will inform my mother that I approve.”

She cracked a grin. “Better you than me.”

Minx. He felt his own smile forming. “I’m glad you understand the workings of our household, Mrs. Kimball.”

“I’m a cavalry officer’s widow, Your Grace. I understand the value of scouting ahead, and currying favor with the general. I’ll let you know tomorrow night how the search for the unicorn goes.” With a nod to Parsons, she saw herself out.

For the first time in a long time, he found himself looking forward to tomorrow night.