Page 68 of The Governess and the Rogue

“In terms of money. You paid for my passage and my stateroom. Not to mention my rail fare in a first-class compartment, and all my meals⁠—”

“Bea, will you stop talking rot?”

“It isn’t rot.” She stood over him, the shawl he’d given her drooping from her shoulders. A stray lock of hair curled around her cheek. “It’s a debt. And one I mean to repay.”

Jack stared at her. “Good God. You’re serious.”

“I like it no better than you,” she said. “I obviously don’t fit here, and I⁠—”

“If I say you fit, you fit,” Jack interrupted with sudden fierceness. “And who the devil would know better than I?”

“Your oldest brother,” she replied promptly. “Your parents. The rest of your siblings.”

Jack gripped his cane, using it to get to his feet. His knee twinged sharply, sending a spike of pain up his leg. He gritted his teeth against it. “Don’t judge them by St. Clare’s ridiculous standards. Wait until you meet Ivo and Kate. You’ll see that I’m speaking the truth.”

Bea took a step back as he came to stand in front of her. Her blush returned, but she didn’t shy away from his gaze. She met his eyes boldly. “It little matters to our plan. Our fake engagement will only continue for a few days longer.”

Jack marked the subtle alteration in her color and the slight unevenness in her breath. His body responded to every change, his blood warming and his heart losing its rhythm.

“And you’re not to think any of this is an effort to trap you,” Bea added. “No matter what foolish thought I may have given voice to on the docks.”

“What foolish thought?” he asked her.

“The one I mentioned in the moments just before you caught sight of your brother,” she said. “But perhaps you didn’t hear me? You were that alarmed once you saw him.”

Jack smiled slowly. He had been alarmed to see James. But he hadn’t lost all his faculties. “I heard you.”

Her cheeks blazed. “Did you?”

“I did,” he said. “And I didn’t think it foolish.”

She briefly dropped her gaze, flustered. “It was a hypothetical, merely. Governesses pose them all the time when making arguments. I didn’t mean⁠—”

“Bea—”

“I was simply making a point,” she said. “I shouldn’t like it to cause any misapprehensions about our agreement.”

Jack felt a disconcerting rush of tenderness for her. “I have no misapprehensions about you. On that you may rest assured.”

“Good.” Her eyes tentatively lifted back to his. “Not that it would matter one jot, when the end result will be the same.”

“An amicable breakup?”

“Exactly,” she said.

Jack reached to adjust her shawl, pulling the drooping cashmere back over her shoulder. He was no longer sure about end results. About her, or about himself. All he knew was that, whatever this was, he wanted it to last a while longer.

“If you’re certain that’s what you desire,” he said.

Bea’s throat bobbed on a delicate swallow. She managed a small nod. “It is.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

“Would you like to come to our tea party, Miss Layton?”

Bea stopped at the top of the stairs, her footsteps arrested by the tiny voice behind her. Turning, she came face to face with Lord and Lady St. Clare’s youngest daughter, Charlotte.

The little girl stood outside the closed door of one of the rooms along the hall, dressed in a frilly white frock, with an overlarge matron’s cap haphazardly perched atop her auburn curls.