Chapter Six

A dam heard the inappropriateness of his words and wished he could recall them to his mouth. He could not for an instant imagine his father or any of his own friends inviting a governess out, any more than a shopgirl or a maid.

Mrs. Malcolm turned to face him full on. Her expression was a mixture of doubt and regret, as well as something he thought looked like reproach. Again, he knew he ought not to have asked her.

“I cannot keep company with you and keep my post as a governess,” she reminded him. “That is simply the way of it. And if you are courting Lady Susanne, then you shouldn’t be asking me, anyway.”

“I know,” Adam agreed at once. “It was wrong of me to overstep the boundaries of what is possible.” But blast it all, he wanted to go with her and witness again her pleasure while she listened to music.

“Lord Diamond,” she said, her tone softer, “I sincerely thank you for the offer, no matter how ill-conceived. I assume by your good reputation with Lord and Lady Beasley that you asked me from a place of kindness. I will tell Lady Susanne you are interested in attending.”

With that, she hurried inside, through the servant’s door at the back entrance.

The devil take him! He had cocked that up. Although, he believed were circumstances different, she would wish to keep company with him. She hadn’t rebuffed him as a predator, nor dismissed him out of hand.

As he strolled around to the front of the residence, Adam realized she had not satisfied his curiosity about the death of her husband. The bastard! Her fiery declaration of the man’s nature had surprised him.

She seemed like a level-headed young woman. How had she ankle-shackled herself to the wrong fellow, and what had become of him?

At the front of the house, he knocked and was instantly admitted and met by Lady Beasley.

“Is Lady Susanne well after her ordeal?”

“My daughter is fine, a little shaken. Thank you for bringing back her horse. Is it injured?”

“No, my lady. Stung by a bee, but with Mrs. Malcolm’s assistance, I removed the stinger.”

“Truly?” Her ladyship frowned. “She is a woman of many talents. Surprisingly so at times.”

“Where did she come from?” he blurted.

“Our governess? Why, London, I believe. Mrs. Malcolm was newly widowed and left the city, which was a trove of unpleasant memories from what I understand.”

“And how did you find her?”

“She answered an advertisement. That is how one usually finds a governess. Why do you ask, my lord?”

“As you said, she is surprising for a governess.”

When Lady Beasley narrowed her eyes, he added, “Both my older sisters have young children, boys and girls. She seems precisely the type of tutor they would appreciate, what with the musical talent and all.”

Lady Beasley’s face relaxed. “I see. You hope to steal my employee away from me.” She chuckled. “You would be unsuccessful. Mrs. Malcolm has expressed an absolute disinclination for returning to London.”

Since they were chatting openly now, he thought he would try one last prying question.

“How did her husband die?”

Again, Lady Beasley’s forehead furrowed. “Do you know something? I don’t believe she has ever told me.” Then she shrugged. “I suppose it doesn’t matter now. In any case, in a few years, my girls will have completed any course of instruction she can offer and will be too old for a governess. Then you may have her.”

Adam swallowed the distaste of discussing the interesting, intelligent woman as if she were an object that could be easily transferred from one household to another.

“Thank you,” he managed. “Although if she is disinclined to live in London, then perhaps not, for both my sisters have homes there.”

Lady Beasley had finished discussing her employee.

“Shall I send my daughter into the drawing room to visit with you?”

“No,” he said, perhaps too quickly. Yet he’d had enough of Lady Susanne’s company for the day. He hoped to grow fonder of and be able to tolerate her rather vapid nature for longer than a morning’s ride. For she was, in fact, a good contender to be a wife. Even the long-lasting attractiveness of her mother spoke well on her behalf.

He didn’t doubt Mrs. Malcolm would age particularly well, too, what with her cheekbones, then realized he shouldn’t be thinking of her at all.

“I think Lady Susanne should rest today,” he added, “but my advice is she get back upon that horse as soon as possible to avoid a festering fear, one which might prevent her from riding in the future.”

“Well said,” Lady Beasley agreed.

He nearly departed before remembering the concert. While he could not possibly ask her ladyship for permission to take the governess on an outing, he could invite Lady Susanne and her chaperone.

“May I have the honor of escorting Lady Susanne to the Hanover musicians’ concert in Sydney Gardens tomorrow night?”

“I am sure she would be most delighted.”

“Perhaps you would allow Mrs. Malcolm to be the chaperone again, only because the experience at the last concert was greatly enhanced for both your daughter and for myself by the governess’s knowledge of the music.”

Although Lady Beasley raised an eyebrow, upon consideration, she seemed to think it a good idea.

“Yes, I do not see why not.”

When Susanne rushed into the sunny salon, she interrupted Alice instructing the two younger Beasleys as they translated a Latin passage of Homer’s Odyssey. The eldest sister stopped in her tracks and listened a moment before bursting out in laughter.

“I am so thoroughly relieved that I missed out on all your lessons,” she declared, then gave her sisters a pitying look.

“I think it’s interesting,” Pauline said.

“I like the story, but I would rather read it in English,” Leila admitted.

“Do you need something?” Alice asked, not appreciating the interruption, especially if it was merely to breed dissatisfaction amongst her pupils.

“I came only to say we are going out again with Lord Diamond. To another concert. I know you will love it, and I enjoy being with him, so everyone will be happy.”

Without waiting for a reply, merely assuming Alice would agree, Susanne departed.

“How splendid for you,” Leila said.

Was it, though? Alice wondered. For she didn’t think Lord Diamond was being sincere in his pursuit of Susanne. The girl might become overly attached and get her heart broken.

Alice was of half a mind to make him show his hand, so to speak. It would be easier on Susanne if she became a little hurt now when the relationship was new, rather than deeply wounded later.

This was not a ball, so Alice could wear one of her ordinary dresses without worry. Despite that, Susanne was trussed up as if she were going to meet the Queen herself. Recalling her own youthful days when she gladly took any excuse to wear her finery, Alice could only smile until she saw the dancing slippers.

“At least wear proper shoes,” Alice advised while they were donning lightweight shawls for the summer evening.

“But these match my gown and gloves beautifully.” Both were a turquoise color, the gown of satin, the gloves of silk, and each making Alice feel downright drab in her pale green cotton dress with plain white gloves.

“Mother,” Susanne called out. Mrs. Beasley appeared at the top of the stairs.

“Please don’t yell like that,” her mother admonished. “What is it?”

“Must I wear proper walking shoes when my slippers match so well?” She lifted her hem to show her.

Lady Beasley sighed. “They shall probably be ruined, but the perfection of your ensemble makes them absolutely imperative.”

Susanne clapped her hands. Alice turned away with a shrug. She probably would have done the same thing. But now, with her new circumstances, the wastefulness of butter-soft kid leather slippers being worn outside and the impracticality of hurt toes reigned supreme over fashion. Her charge was already peering out the front window.

“He’s here,” Susanne yelled to her mother who was still standing on the landing.

“I told you to stop yelling. Go on, then. His lordship needn’t come inside. We can relax our decorum a little now that first, second, and even third impressions have been made.”

With that, Alice found herself on the other side of the door, looking once more into the handsome face of Lord Diamond. An evening stretched before them in which she hoped to tamp down the stirrings she felt for him while trying to decide if he was playing false with Susanne.

The first inkling came when he managed to sit between them at the Gothic Hall, then proceeded to turn his head and ask her questions. Naturally, Susanne was also looking at her, but since she was on the far side of Lord Diamond, her charge took it upon herself to make moon eyes at the man’s left ear.

Susanne also sniffed him surreptitiously, something Alice wished to do, too, for the man must be wearing the most expensive and manly cologne ever to come out of a London perfumery.

“It will be mostly Handel tonight, I assume. And I hope we shall be treated to his Funeral Anthem for Queen Caroline .”

“A funeral anthem,” Susanne exclaimed. “How dreadful!”

“It’s a complex and passionate piece,” Alice told her. “It made many believe he and the queen were more than friends.”

“An entirely forbidden romance,” Lord Diamond remarked, his gaze flickering across her face.

“Yes,” she agreed, trying to calm her rapidly beating heart. “The piece was first heard in Westminster Abbey. The acoustics must have made it seem as though Heaven itself was mourning.”

“The acoustics?” Susanne asked, but neither did Lord Diamond’s head turn toward her, nor did Alice respond. She couldn’t take her eyes from his. “I doubt we shall hear the vocals tonight, but no matter, the music speaks for itself, written miraculously over the period of a single week.”

Shivers danced down her spine, and she leaned closer to him. “A week, can you imagine?”

“I cannot,” he whispered.

She could see her own twin images in his eyes and sat back. What had gotten into her?

“What are acoustics ?” came Susanne’s question interrupting — thankfully — the mesmerizing moment.

As expected, the anthem was the third piece played. Not all the ode, of course, although Alice would have gladly sat through the entire length of it. As it was, she closed her eyes and let the music wash over her and seep through her, startled when tears pricked her eyes.

As a few rolled down her cheeks, she felt his lordship pat her gloved hand. And then Susanne said, too loudly, “It is rather dour. I think I prefer a tidy, sentimental song like ‘The Troubadour Was a Gallant Youth,’ or ‘Mary Anne.’”

Alice shook her head, but the young lady’s words had certainly pulled her from the somber melancholy. She snickered at Handel being compared to tediously simple, drawing-room music, sung so softly by young ladies one couldn’t hear it while seated a few yards away. And then she heard Lord Diamond chuckle.

Unable to help herself, Alice started to laugh. It erupted out of her before she could clamp her hand over her mouth, drawing the attention of those around her.

Embarrassed but unable to stop, she rose and ran down the makeshift aisle on either side of which chairs had been set up in the venue.

Bursting through the doors, Alice ran across the Sydney Gardens’ main path toward the bowling green, where she leaned against an oak and tried to collect herself. However, after the uncontrollable laughter, she reverted to warm, salty tears and worse, to deep wracking sobs.

“Stop it!” she scolded herself, frightened by the wildly swinging depth of her emotions. “Alice, be still.” It was something her mother used to say when she was an active child.

“Alice?” came Lord Diamond’s voice. “Are you speaking to that tree by name?”

“No,” she said, slightly affronted and realizing he was close. “What are you doing here?”

“Gathering myself. I couldn’t stop laughing, so I followed you.”

“And Lady Susanne?” she asked.

“I told her to stay put.” He fell silent, and she was glad that in the dim light he couldn’t see her face, which was probably blotchy.

She knew she should insist they return at once to the Gothic Hall, but she needed a moment. Alone .

“Will you leave me, please?”

“Is your given name Alice?”

She sighed loudly, so he could hear her vexation with him. “Yes.”

“Mine is Adam.”

Since she hadn’t asked, she had no comment. But it was a good name — solid, masculine, friendly.

“My sister has a maid named Alice,” he said.

She frowned at him. “That is of no import. A name doesn’t signify one’s station.”

“I didn’t say that it did,” he pointed out.

They stared at one another. Then she recalled another Adam.

“My father had a groom named Adam.” Tit-for-tat, she thought. Yet Lord Diamond didn’t appear the least set down.

“When I think of you as Alice, you seem entirely different from who you are as Mrs. Malcolm, the governess.” He took a step closer.

“Do I?” she asked. That night, standing in the darkness with a handsome man, she felt very different from Mrs. Malcolm, the governess. She was her old self, Lady Alice . A flighty, shallow ninny. She hoped not but feared it might be true.

“Yes,” he said. “You are a different woman entirely.”

She wanted to ask him what difference he saw in her when, to her amazement, he leaned in close and claimed her lips in a heated yet tender kiss.

Just as she hadn’t been able to help the strong current of sorrow that swept through her from the music, now she couldn’t beat back the wave of desire that pulsed in her veins, bringing her body back to vibrant life.

At once yearning for intimacy and craving his touch .

When his tongue touched her lips, he drew back. “Your cheek and lips are salty wet. Were you crying?”

He didn’t move away. Instead, he wrapped his arms around the back of her, and she leaned her head on his chest.

“I confess I was. That piece by Handel got the better of me.” No need to tell him it felt as though her whole disaster of a life had been represented by the funeral anthem.

“I thought it extraordinarily beautiful,” Adam admitted.

“Soulful,” she agreed.

“Sublime,” he said.

Then they remained quiet a second until she looked up at him. When their gazes met again, he groaned. Their mouths fused hungrily together once more. Alice wanted to strip off her inexpensive gloves and dive her fingers into his dark hair. She wanted to strip off his clothing and do more than that. It had been a long time, and it had never felt like this.

Up until the moment Adam had kissed her in a strip of land behind the assembly rooms, her body had remained obediently dormant. Three and a half years earlier, after a painful deflowering and a disappointingly brief first time with Richard, she’d then experienced a series of her husband’s hurried, selfish, oft-inebriated, and sometimes painful joinings in the marital bed.

Nothing had been remotely satisfying, but she had felt a feathering of need awaken. She hoped there was something more to experience. The few times she’d tried to make Richard slow down or touch her a certain way, he’d brushed aside her request, caring nothing for her feelings.

Luckily for her, he’d moved on to mistresses and deep bottles of gin.

Now beside the oak, flames of raw desire engulfed her, dampening the place between her legs. At the same time, her senses were assaulted by Adam’s sensuous kiss and his damnably delightful scent and the way he gently kneaded the flesh at her hip before his hands slid lower to cradle her rear end.

He tilted her hips against him, and her knees wobbled.

Shamelessly, she held on to him, both her hands clasping the front of his jacket. Reveling in the moments of pure pleasure, Alice moaned when he bit her lower lip, rasping it between his teeth before sucking it into his mouth.

She’d never been kissed like this before. It was a revelation, intoxicating, heady — she could barely recall her own name.

“Mrs. Malcolm!” It was yelled out loudly by Lady Susanne, who was a mere few yards away.

Struggling to free herself, it took far too long before Alice stood apart from Lord Diamond. And when she looked at the young lady, she simply didn’t know what to say.

What could she possibly tell her to make it any better?

“How could you?” Susanne asked, sounding wounded and confused. “With my suitor? It’s indecent.”

“I am sorry,” Alice said, her voice coming out barely louder than a whisper. Her mouth felt strange. But when she raised her hand to her lips, only to find it shaking, she lowered it again.

She hadn’t changed at all, hadn’t learned anything from her wreck of a life.

“Mrs. Malcolm has nothing to be sorry for,” Lord Diamond said firmly. “I found her overcome with emotion from the music and sought to comfort her. I then took liberties with her person.”

“You did!” Susanne agreed. “Grave liberties. I saw you. But...” She looked from one to the other. “But Mrs. Malcolm appeared to be allowing the liberties and taking some of her own.”

“Nonsense,” Lord Diamond said.

All Alice could do was stare at his profile as he tried to save her reputation, something no one had ever done for her before.

“I am taller and stronger,” he insisted. “I wanted to kiss her, and I did. There was little she could do to stop me.”

How chivalrous of him! Normally, she would gainsay him and take her share of the responsibility, but not for this. She couldn’t. She was as low as she could go, and the thought of seeking employment again, perhaps landing somewhere far less acceptable left her frozen with fear.

Thus, she let him heap the blame upon himself and hoped he understood.