Before anything can be said or done, the handsome postman nods at you, shuts the carriage door, and climbs into the driver’s seat. You are rumbling off to your date with destiny without another moment’s hesitation.
You try to sleep, but your mind races with thoughts—thoughts that may belong to you or to the wild night, you are not sure. Just as you are wondering how a man could be so monstrous as to inspire such a repulsed, repressed curiosity throughout the ton, your carriage lurches to a stop. A beast in the distance keens into the violet, moonlit sky. Your heart thrums. When you took your meal at the Slaughtered Lamb, there was much talk about a barghest creature the locals swore haunted the moors around Hopesend Manor. Can this far-off call be the demon dog’s heartless cry, as it stalks the night for prey?
No! You steel yourself and shake all qualms from your heart. You’re not some silly chit who fills her head with the nonsense of gothic novels. The carriage door opens, and you take your valise—and, with it, the situation—firmly in hand.
In the weak morning light, you approach the great carved portal of Hopesend Manor clutching the letter from Lord Craven. The house sighs like a dying maiden as the door swings open, revealing a specter with the body of an old woman and a face like a stone gargoyle whose finer features have been worn away by the harsh elements of nature. This person is missing one arm, and its other boasts a clawlike hand. You lose your grip on your valise—and, with it, your composure—and scream for your life.
“There, there, love, let’s get you inside.” It is a more comforting tone than you have ever heard a hellbeast emit. “You must be who the master sent for.” She—for she must be a she—gathers your valise and letter into her one pleasantly plump arm.
Temporarily struck dumb, you nod slowly.
“Oh, my, are you simple, love?” Her voice is warm with patience and understanding.
“No! No, I—” You shake your head, at a loss for words. The woman hangs her head in a moment of apparent bashfulness.
“I have given you a fright. I see. Well, no offense taken, love! It isn’t the first time and surely won’t be the last that I give someone a scare!” Her voice is as kind as her visage is frightening. You take another curious look at your greeter: a woman of advanced years, whose face, remaining arm, and hand are roped with scars from long-ago burns. Your stomach drops at your coldhearted reaction to her appearance.
“I am so very sorry,” you say, desperate to make up for your horrifying faux pas.
“No mind, love. I’m Mrs. Butts, the housekeeper round here,” the creature assures you in an even kindlier manner than before. Still, you see her hand brush her scarred cheek ever so briefly. You sink under the weight of your own shame as she nudges you conspiratorially with her motherly shoulder. “Ready to meet the master?”
Your heart flutters in your nicely endowed chest. After Mrs. Butts leads you to your chambers, you quickly change into your one fine black dress and hope that the handsomeness of your figure distracts Lord Craven from the fact that the garment is at least an inch too tight and a touch too frayed to be considered fine anymore.
Thus attired, you smooth your hair, raise your chin, and descend the stairs to meet—
“Master Alexander!” Mrs. Butts cries, and you are confronted by a boy no older than eight years of age with murder in his eyes and a hoop and stick in his hands.
“The lady is here to play with ME!” cries young Master Alexander, and he sets about to smacking you with the stick element of his hoop and stick set.
So begins your career as governess to the most horrible child you have ever had the poor fortune to meet.
“Call me Master Craven! I command you!” Master Alexander now strikes you with his hoop as well as his stick. Oh no, you think, this will not do. You deftly intercept both hoop and stick during the wind-up to young Master Alexander’s next fusillade and use them to expertly box the boy’s ears.
Master Alexander is almost too shocked to cry. Almost. And then, quite masterfully, he wails.
“When you are done crying,” you say in your most character-improving governess voice, “I shall explain the folly of your actions. Then you will apologize for your impudence. And then, since you are clearly a man of action, we can learn a brief history of fencing before we take our morning constitutional.”
Master Alexander suddenly quiets, studying you through a mask of his own tears. “You know about fencing?”
“Of course I do, dear boy!” You laugh delightedly, half at the sweetness of the child’s inquiry, half at your own satisfaction of having read a good deal about the history of jeu d’escrime in your youth in order to one day use it to silence a self-satisfied gentleman. “I even know how to fence myself. I will love to teach you if—”
“SILENCE!”
Your private, self-congratulatory reverie of how grand a governess you are becoming is immediately cut short by the angry boom of a voice so deep you could drown in it.
You look up from Master Alexander’s small form, past the trembling Mrs. Butts, and into the eyes of a man you could swear was cut from stone if not for the fire burning in his sin-green eyes. Suddenly, you see what the hushed tones at the tavern were about when the locals were discussing Lord Craven. He is the epitome of manly strength, drawn with a fine hand and painted with a rage-red brush. He is as handsome as he is angry, and he is very angry.
“I hired you to keep the peace in my household, woman. Not,” the beastly man seethes through gritted teeth, “disturb it.”
You know you should show deference, but the lord is being more than a touch impossible with respect to his expectations, not to mention hopelessly rude.
“Pleased to meet you, sir. You must be Lord Craven. I do hate to be insulting, but I scarcely gathered that as governess I was hired solely to be a dampener of sound. I was merely attempting to improve the child—”
“There is no improving him,” Lord Craven roars. “There is no improving anyone. We are the way we are, and that is all!”
“Greeting a woman by hitting her about the body with hoops and sticks! One would think he was raised by wolves!” As soon as the words escape your mouth, you regret them. You are speaking too boldly, but being in this man’s presence awakens all your senseless passions.
“Wolves,” says Lord Craven, crossing the length of the chamber in two easy strides, “would likely be a better choice of governess than you.”
“Yet you didn’t hire a wolf, Lord Craven,” you say, astounded by your audacity. “You hired me.”
The man is so close that you find yourself nearly swooning at the woodsy, musky smell of him. Though you don’t know where you find the strength to do so, you return his burning gaze with fiery strength. He gives you a once-over so savage that you can’t repress the shudder it produces. You attempt a more tender tack.
“He is your son, my lord. Your son.”
And with those words, the life falls from Lord Craven’s face.
“He has his mother’s eyes,” he says, cold as a crypt. Then he turns on his heel and is gone.
A full minute passes before you are able to regain a sense of equilibrium. “What—” you start to ask Mrs. Butts, but she waves you off, not unkindly.
“The lord has his ways,” she says. “Never you mind. Give him his distance, follow his rule, and everything will be fine. Now, miss, to meet the staff!”
Feeling like you don’t have a choice? You chose to be a governess in a mad lord’s mansion flung far on the moors. Get used to it. Turn to .