Page 18 of The Lady’s Deception

He had not noticed before how plump her lips were. How mobile. He wanted, suddenly, to make a project of discovering all their moods.

With a thump, he seated himself at the spinet and picked up the thread of his earlier tune. What was it he had told Molly about focusing on his work? Oh, he needed employment, all right. Some task. A goal. One in which his sisters’ governess’s lips played no part.

“I?” He took care to keep his tone as wry as her expression. “I have no employees.” He gestured around the room with one hand and continued to play with the other. “My father’s household. My father’s servants. My father’s children.” His second hand joined the first on the keys. “My authority, such as it is, merely borrowed and no doubt ill-fitting.”

When he came to the end of the piece—a fumbling stop, as he’d forgotten half of it—she spoke again. Had she been waiting impatiently to speak, or had the interval of his performance given her time to gather her thoughts?

“When my father died, my brother assumed his mantle.” One fingertip traced the edge of the book in her lap, and her eyes were watching its movement. “I wish—” With a little gasp of breath, she caught herself, and the wish remained unspoken. Though perhaps not entirely unspoken. “He did not choose to wear it as lightly as you have,” she said.

Those words could have meant many things…anything, really. Perhaps she disapproved of Paris’s negligence. Or perhaps little Rosamund had been a hellion once. Perhaps she’d fancied a stable hand and her brother had wisely dismissed the man. No cause to imagine her brother had acted inappropriately or unjustly. No reason to assume he had been the one who had tried to cow her with harsh words—or worse.

No matter how Paris longed for an excuse to go to her and comfort her through this interminable night.

“Is his mismanagement responsible for the necessity of your seeking employment?” Though his fingers still lay on the keys, Paris’s attention was focused squarely on her, waiting for her answer to a question he’d had no business asking.

“Mismanagement?” She bristled. “My brother has been an excellent steward and fulfilled his responsibilities admirably. He cannot be blamed for the difficulties he inherited.”

She defended him with conviction. So much so that Paris nearly persuaded himself he had imagined the rote quality of her speech. As if she were repeating something she’d often been told. By her brother, if he had to guess.

“Forgive me.” He dipped his head, less penitent than he ought to be. “I have had my doubts about whether you were raised with the expectation of becoming a governess. Perhaps I was mistaken.”

For a moment she said nothing, then gave a nod of reluctant acknowledgment. “You’re not entirely wrong. One might say I wouldn’t be here now if it weren’t for my brother.” At that confession, her lips twisted into something more like a grimace.

The expression did not make him want to kiss her any less.

From some dusty corner of his memory, he dredged up another song—a livelier tune, this time; why did those Irish airs always sound so melancholy?—and began to play. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught her tapping one finger against the cover of the book, keeping time with the melody.

“He is still comfortably at home, I suppose?”

At his question, the tapping stopped. “I do not know where he might be at the moment. I was never privy to his plans.”

Even that was no real cause to fault her brother. After all, he did not always trouble to acquaint Daphne and Bell with his comings and goings. And if Rosamund’s voice had been laced with annoyance at her brother’s inconsiderateness, or had prickled with displeasure at the forwardness of Paris’s question, he might have let her answer pass by. But what he heard when she spoke this time was an undercurrent of fear. This time, he was sure of it. She was afraid of her brother.

When he finished the song, he asked, “Where is home?” Partly because he was sorely tempted to hunt down her brother and see to it that no one had cause to fear him again. And partly because her answer would serve as a useful reminder that she was English and therefore the very last sort of woman any self-respecting Irish patriot should want.

Certain parts of him seemed to require such a reminder.

She hesitated. Only for a moment, but experience had made him suspicious of such pauses and the truthfulness of the answers that followed them. “I grew up in Berkshire. That house belongs to my brother now, of course. And as for home…” Another pause, though this one might better be characterized as a gasp. A gasp of realization. Of pain. “Why, I suppose I haven’t any, anymore.”

Before he could offer any reply at all, she twitched her shoulders and lifted her chin again. With that movement, her ordinary gorse-like demeanor returned. “Berkshire is in the southern portion of the country,” she explained in her governess voice, primed to deliver a geography lesson. “West of the capital.”

“Yes, I know.”

“I beg your pardon.” The stiffness of her voice undercut the words of apology. “I did not wish to presume any particular familiarity. Molly made clear your disdain for the sister island.”

His laugh, though humorless, propelled him to his feet and sent him a half-dozen steps closer to her. “Oh? Did she also make clear that my mother is English? As are the two unfortunate gentlemen who have saddled themselves with my sisters and whom I must therefore claim as brothers.”

Really, it should not have been possible for her spine to straighten further. “She, er…she might have mentioned it, yes.”

Ah, so the lady-governess did not like to be caught gossiping with servants? “If she was so forthcoming about our family history, then I daresay she cannot have failed to mention that I myself lived in London for some years?” He could tell by Rosamund’s wide eyes that Molly had said nothing of the sort. “Through a quirk of custom, even an Irish lawyer must serve his time at the Inns of Court before he can be called to the bar, you see. Time and travel gave me some knowledge of the southern portion of the ‘sister island,’ as you call it. Including the general proximity of the capital to such quaint country villages as may be found in Berkshire.”

He stood close enough now to watch her throat work. Perhaps swallowing one’s pride was not always a figurative act. “Well, then, you doubtless know your way better than I, for I have been to London only once,” she said. “When I was a very little girl, my father took me. We saw the menagerie at the Tower.” The soft fondness of her voice was paired with a shadow of memory in her eyes.

“I suppose you pitied the poor wild things trapped in cages.” Right now, he felt positively savage, though he refused to let himself think about why.

The slightest hesitation, and the shadow in her eyes deepened. “Not then, I didn’t.” She rose. “Forgive me, Mr. Burke. I find I’m more tired than I realized. I should return to my room.”

“An excellent idea, Miss Gorse,” he said with a bow of his head. “My sisters no doubt look forward to the resumption of their regular lessons in the morning.”