Page 4 of The Governess and the Rogue

“No one on board knows who I am, save for the captain and a handful of the crew,” Jack said. “I intend to keep it that way. As for any woman catching me…” He inwardly recoiled at the thought. “I’ve successfully evaded a leg shackle for years. I’ll not fall at the final hurdle.”

“You will if you insist on chatting with unmarried women in the moonlight.”

“Not a woman, a governess,” Jack said. “And Miss Layton wasn’t trying to beguile me.” Though, he reflected, her tear-damp eyes had been an uncommonly pretty shade of porcelain blue. That had been beguiling in itself. “She’s come out on the deck every evening since we left port.”

“Just as you have,” Maberly said. “Happen you’ll meet her again.”

Jack lapsed into silence. He’d already spent too many hours in his small cabin, devoid of company and conversation, only emerging at night to take the air. The prospect of two more weeks of isolation sat heavily on his shoulders. Especially now, when fate had presented him with an unexpected alternative to his solitude.

Given his present circumstances, the idea of encountering Miss Layton again wasn’t entirely unappealing.

“Perchance I will,” he replied. “What harm could it do?”

Chapter Two

“Are you aware that there are anonymous soldiers traveling on the ship?” Bea inquired as she bent to remove her well-worn leather half boots.

Pearl turned over in her upper berth to peer blearily down at Bea in the lamplight. A petite Anglo-Indian girl with sleek black hair, she was employed as a maid-companion by Mrs. Rawson, a portly colonial dowager. Mrs. Rawson and her temperamental Maltese dog, Benjamin, had departed Bombay at the same time as Bea’s employers. As a consequence, Pearl and Bea had often been obliged to bunk together, first on the voyage to Suez, then overland to Alexandria, and now on the Pera.

They weren’t close in age (Pearl being several years younger than Bea), but over the past three weeks, proximity had inspired something like a friendship.

“The injured ones that came aboard in Alexandria?” Pearl asked in return. “What about them?”

“How was I unaware of their existence?”

“Because Mrs. Dimsdale keeps you on the trot from dawn until dusk,” Pearl answered.

Bea stripped off her wool bodice, hanging it on one of the clothing hooks that were affixed to the small cabin’s wall. Pearl wasn’t wrong. Since entering the Dimsdale’s employ, Bea had been run off her feet, acting as governess, nursery maid, and as occasional laundress. It was no wonder she’d failed to notice the presence of injured soldiers on board.

“Yes, but—” Bea stepped out of her skirts, petticoats, and crinoline. “Don’t you think it odd that we don’t see them?”

“Who would wish to?” Pearl asked. “Some of them are grievously injured. I heard Mrs. Farraday tell Mrs. Rawson that it’s a mercy we’ve been spared the sight of them.”

Bea winced. The widowed Mrs. Farraday was the most top-lofty lady on board, boasting both pedigree and enviable connections. She was, it was said, the daughter of a gentleman. And her own daughter—a very pretty, if somewhat insipid, girl of nineteen—was rumored to have come within a whisker of being engaged to the son of the Earl of Allendale.

Whoever that might be.

“What a dreadful thing to say,” Bea replied.

“But the truth,” Pearl pronounced.

“Her truth,” Bea said, hanging up her skirts. “Not mine.”

Pearl flopped over in her berth, snuggling back into her pillow. “That’s your trouble. Everything is a quarrel. You’d be better off agreeing with them. It’s what I do.”

Bea unpinned the tightly braided coil of her hair. “I’m practicing saying nothing.”

“That isn’t the same as being agreeable,” Pearl informed her. “Mrs. Rawson says unwarranted silence is tantamount to insolence.”

“That’s because they wish to regulate every aspect of our behavior, even our thoughts,” Bea retorted. Stripped down to her chemise and drawers, she went to the basin and hastily washed before dousing the lamp and climbing into her own cold berth.

There was no time to write in her journal this evening. Not that it mattered. Since leaving India, she’d had precious little to record save for the mounting indignities she’d been subjected to.

Her cheek was still stinging in grim reminder of the latest one—and of the task that awaited her in the morning. Like it or not, as soon as the sun was up, Bea was going to have to confront Mrs. Dimsdale about her children’s behavior.

It wouldn’t be the first time Bea had faced the proverbial firing squad.

During the course of her brief employment, she’d brought Mrs. Dimsdale countless complaints, all to no avail. Whatever harm her brood inflicted, the woman inevitably found a way to lay the blame on Bea’s shoulders. On the last occasion, she’d even gone so far as to threaten Bea with dismissal.