Page 12 of The Lady’s Deception

She did not think he meant to inquire after a reference. “The gentleman in question is a person with a great deal of power, sir. I cannot—”

She broke off when Mr. Burke’s fingers drummed on the stack of papers beneath them. “The ‘gentleman’ in question is no gentleman.” A pause. “What of his wife? Would she not intervene?”

“She is dead.”

He rose and stood before the window at the rear of the room, his hands crossed behind his back. When he spoke again, his voice was gentler. “So you walked away. Quite literally. And after traveling some distance, I gather you found your way to Mrs. Fitzhugh, who sent you to us.”

It was not a question, so she felt safe in making no answer. He had mentioned Mrs. Fitzhugh the night before. The woman must run some sort of employment agency. One word from her and Rosamund’s story would unravel.

He turned back to the desk, opened a drawer, and withdrew a cash box, of the sort from which household expenses were generally paid. Rummaging beneath the blotter, he found a small key and fitted it to the lock on the box. “Under the circumstances, I suppose we ought not to expect your previous employer to forward your trunk,” he said, a wry twist to his lips that might have been either grimace or smile. “And you cannot go on rummaging for castoffs in my sisters’ wardrobe. An advance on your salary is in order, I believe.” Twisting the key with one hand, he opened the lid of the box with the other, then reached inside without looking. “Will that do?” he asked as he set a stack of coins in front of her. Five pounds, at least.

“You are very generous.” She did not reach to take the money until he had moved his hand away, not wanting to reveal how desperate she was. “Thank you, Mr. Burke.”

When he sat down again, both his expression and his posture had softened. No less a performance to produce the answers he wanted, however. He leaned toward her. “Are you certain you’re fully recovered from yesterday’s ordeal, Miss Gorse?”

“Quite.” She blinked away the tears that had sprung to her eyes and folded her hands in her lap, the money carefully contained within one palm. “Did you—did you wish to discuss your sisters’ program of study, Mr. Burke?” Dangerous, no doubt, to invite further questions. But his quiet concern for her, the scrutiny of his dark eyes, was more dangerous still.

She nearly heaved a sigh of relief when he settled back into his chair. “Was it Daphne’s suggestion to make use of the attic, I wonder? Or Bell’s?” His gaze left her face to travel to the far end of the room. “I suppose I haven’t made this place too welcoming of late,” he said, not waiting for her answer.

“Children learn better in an environment free of distractions.” She had no notion if it were true, but it seemed a sensible, governess-like position to take.

One corner of his mouth lifted. Still not a smile. In profile, his features were hard, angular. His eyes remained focused on some distant point. “Perhaps that explains why I was such a poor student.”

A contradiction sprang to her lips, and she pressed them tightly together to contain it. He had never been a poor student. Of that she was certain.

Her mouth was still in that same thin, disapproving line when he suddenly turned his head and looked back at her. He laughed. Rather wryly, to be sure, but nonetheless, a few of the harshest lines disappeared from his face, and his eyes twinkled. “Oh, very good, Miss Gorse. I confess I had my doubts about you. But another such frown and you’ll have me conjugating Latin verbs.”

She dared an answering smile, and his expression shifted again. A fire lit in the depth of his eyes and its warmth spread across his face. She found herself suddenly aware again of his shadowed jaw and the scandalously loose knot of his cravat. “Venisti, vidisti, vicisti,” he murmured, the smile still playing around his mouth.

She came, she saw, she conquered.

Rosamund straightened in her chair—when had she leaned toward him?—and said, “I’m afraid my own accomplishments run in a somewhat narrower vein, Mr. Burke. If you require instruction in Latin, I cannot satisfy you. Instruction for your sisters, I mean,” she added hastily.

He too sat more upright, although the warmth still lingered in his eyes. “French?”

“I—er, yes, of course. As well as the rudiments of both Italian and German.”

Surprise lifted his brow and slid as quickly away. “History? Geography? Mathematics?”

When Rosamund’s mother had died, Charles had hired the granite-faced and silent Mrs. Sloane to be her companion. That woman’s sole redeeming virtue had been her lack of curiosity; no reader herself, she had not thought to forbid Tavisham Manor’s modest library. Rosamund’s chin lifted with a surge of fledgling defiance. “You may examine me if you like.”

He dipped his head, but not before she caught a flare of something in his eyes. “That won’t be necessary.” With restless motions, he began sifting through the papers on his desk. “You may return to your pupils, Miss Gorse. Make of them what you will.” He sounded relieved to be free of the responsibility.

She rose. He did not.

The lack of acknowledgment stung her pride—her foolish, foolish pride. Charles had not eradicated it as thoroughly as he had intended, it would seem. Instead of accepting her dismissal, as a servant would, she laid the fingers of her free hand on the very edge of the desk. “It’s an important case, then?” She nodded toward his papers. “Whatever you’re working on.”

Too important for him to be persuaded to put it aside in favor of her own?

He reached for the book he had closed earlier and began to thumb through it, giving her no opportunity to read his expression. “It was.” The words were edged with bitterness.

When he dipped his pen and said nothing more, she turned and walked to the door. But on the threshold, his voice gave her pause. “You will dine with me. And my sisters,” he added, but not before her pulse had begun to rattle in her veins. Although he was doubtless too absorbed in his work to see her reply, she nodded her agreement. What choice did she have?

Mr. Burke’s changeable nature did not bode well. It was one of the flaws in the Irish national character her brother had warned her about. She recalled the girls’ description of their brother as angry. Over the course of their brief acquaintance, she’d watched him shift from morose to mordant and back again in a flash. He seemed to take no particular pleasure in her company. Why then was he insisting on it?

The answer came before she had taken another step.

“I should be just as happy if you ate with your charges in the schoolroom. But Molly would resent having to carry the trays.” She heard paper rustle, the click of the pen against the ink bottle. “No doubt such matters are ordered differently in other families,” he said. “But you shall have to accustom yourself to our strange Irish ways.”