Rules for a Proper Governess

She heard Sinclair say, “Bertie,” in a tone of terror, anger, and certainty that he was seeing the last of her.

Bertie gripped her handholds tightly and prodded with her boot until she had very firm rock under her foot. Then she leaned out, bracing with her hand- and footholds, and hooked her fingers around the back of the doll’s dress.

She plucked the doll from the ledge, much as Sinclair pulled Andrew back by his coat even now, the doll’s little gown filthy with mud. Bertie levered herself upright, and thrust the doll inside her coat.

Now to make her ascent. Bertie felt for handholds going up, testing each one before trusting her weight to it. Climbing up was always easier for her than down, mostly because she didn’t have to look at the empty space beneath her feet. She went slowly, though, knowing that any misstep could mean her death.

Halfway up, she found chunks of the doll’s broken face strewn about the gorse. The poor thing’s smile was split in two, but both eyes remained in one piece, gazing at Bertie in cheerful encouragement. Bertie gathered up the bits, dropped them into her pocket, and continued.

She was almost to the top when a pair of strong hands gripped her under the arms and hauled her to solid ground. Bertie landed against Sinclair’s large body, and his arms went around her, holding her tight, tight. He crushed her to him with arms as hard as steel, lips in her hair. “Bertie. Damn and blast you . . .”

Behind them, Cat continued to cry, her wailing breaking into hoarse breaths. Bertie pushed away from Sinclair, but he didn’t let go of her hand as they made their way back to Cat.

Andrew was kneeling next to his sister, stroking her hair, his small face troubled. “Don’t cry, Cat. Bertie’s here. She saved your dolly. See?”

Sinclair gently lifted Cat and drew her into his arms. “Shh. Sweetheart.”

“It’s all right—I nabbed her,” Bertie said breathlessly. “She’s a bit worse for wear, but I think we can make her better. Nothing a little glue and needle and thread won’t fix. And maybe a good scrubbing.”

Cat peeked out at the smashed doll, her eyes red and flowing. “Ma . . . ma.” The word came in gasps, Cat sounding more like a tiny child than an eleven-year-old girl.

Bertie smoothed Cat’s hair, which was tangled now with thorny twigs and dead leaves. “I know, sweetheart. I know.”

Cat pushed herself away from her father to reach for Bertie. Bertie opened her arms and gathered Cat in. Over her head, she met Sinclair’s gaze, his gray eyes red-rimmed.

“Is she going to be all right?” Andrew asked in a small voice.

Sinclair took his hand. “I think so, lad. Don’t you worry, now.”

He squeezed Andrew’s hand, but the look he shared again with Bertie was uncertain, and she had to nod back in the same uncertainty.

Sinclair took Bertie and his children not to the shared nursery at the top of the house, but to the suite of rooms he’d been given in Lord Cameron’s wing. Sinclair didn’t want to have to explain the incident to the contingent of nannies or even to Ainsley and his well-meaning sisters-in-law. Not until Cat was better.

Cat was covered in grime, her face streaked with tears and mucus. Bertie didn’t look much better—her gloves in shreds, her gray wool gown torn, her face covered in dirt and little cuts. For once, Andrew was the cleanest of the lot.

Sinclair and Andrew waited rather forlornly in the little sitting room while Bertie ordered up a bath for Cat in the bedroom and bathed the girl herself. When she opened the door later to admit Sinclair, Bertie was damp and flushed, her face scrubbed clean, her bodice unbuttoned at her throat. Bertie told him in a quiet voice she’d take Andrew on up to the nursery, and left Sinclair alone with his daughter.

Cat lay in Sinclair’s bed, tucked up in her nightie that a maid had fetched from the nursery. The doll, stripped of the gown it had worn for seven or so years now, was propped next to the washbasin like a war casualty. Bertie had carefully set the pieces of its broken porcelain head beside the tattered body.

Sinclair smoothed the blankets over Cat. “Are you all right now, love?”

Cat nodded. The mad light had gone from her eyes, and she looked sad, ashamed, and a little discomfited. “I’m sorry, Papa.”

“Nothing to be sorry about,” Sinclair said. “I know she’s special to you. Bertie’s right—we’ll fix her up again.”

“She’s just a doll,” Cat said, her voice listless.

He sat down next to the bed and stroked Cat’s hair. She looked so like Daisy, with her dark hair and Irish blue eyes and dark lashes—as the saying went, eyes put in with a smutty finger. Cat had shared her mother’s liveliness until that terrible day Daisy went away.

Sinclair took her hand, his heart beating too hard. He wished he could reach that liveliness, bring it to the surface, but he didn’t know how. It killed him that he didn’t know how.

He could have lost her today, and Bertie—when he’d seen Bertie go over the cliff his entire world had stopped. He might be even now sitting here, wondering that he was still alive without Bertie.

Sinclair cleared his throat and squeezed Cat’s hand. “I know she’s not just a doll, sweet. Your mother gave her to you, and I know you treasure it.”

“Mama’s gone.”

The dull words struck Sinclair’s heart. “I know. And I miss her every day. It’s all right to miss her, love.”

Fresh tears flowed from Caitriona’s eyes, but they were quiet tears, not the crazed sobs of her hysterics. “I don’t want Bertie to go. Even if I go to Miss Pringle’s Academy, I want Bertie to stay.”