Page 8 of The Lady’s Deception

Another grating rumble—from above his head, not inside it, and accompanied this time by Molly’s tuneless whistle as she swept into the room—drove away the lingering possibility of losing himself in sleep.

“Och, Mr. Paris, ’tis a fearsome racket they’re makin’. I do believe they’re after wreckin’ the house.”

The girls. He might’ve known. But what could they possibly want in the attic—short of tearing up a few floorboards, if the noise was any indication?

He sat up in bed, scrubbed his hand over the rough growth of a day’s beard, and considered his options, the least appealing of which was confronting his sisters over their latest escapade. A year ago, he would’ve been safely ensconced in his rooms near King’s Inns, none the wiser to their mischief. Now, however, the best he could hope was that the ruckus would be muted if he retreated to his father’s study, a floor below.

Having deposited a can of steaming water near the washstand, Molly moved to hang freshly pressed linen in the wardrobe dividing his bed from Galen’s now empty one. Paris found himself longing for the days when he could have ordered his younger sibling to intervene before the girls brought the ceiling caving in upon them. But Galen had chosen Oxford over Trinity, eager to get away from Dublin—and his only brother.

Crash!

Turning, Molly set her hands to her hips and fixed him with the sort of glare that might have earned her a reprimand in a more rigidly-run household. “A schoolroom, she wanted,” the young woman muttered. “An’ how’s anyone to learn with the likes o’ that, I’d like to know?”

Paris tried and failed to shape meaning from the housemaid’s words. “Who wanted a schoolroom?”

“The new governess.”

His hand slid absently from his jaw. Governess? But he hadn’t…

Oh, Lord. The dream. The woman. With golden hair and summer blue eyes and a voice like—

Molly possessed a selection of fine Irish sayings for any occasion, some of which he and his siblings had been known to borrow. But the only words that rose to Paris’s lips now were a string of English curses. Fitting, he supposed. Since he’d evidently hired a damn English governess.

Just how much had he drunk last night?

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Molly exclaimed when another thump rattled the ceiling and sent down a shower of plaster dust.

“I’ll take care of it,” Paris declared, rising. Forgetting he had crawled into bed wearing nothing but his drawers.

Ever practical, Molly looked him up and down, lifted one brow, then reached into the wardrobe to hand out his dressing gown. “You’ll be wantin’ this, then.” She winked. “Unless you were hopin’ to persuade her to stay.”

Chapter 4

A quarter of an hour later—washed, dressed, and grumpy—Paris marched to the upper regions of the house to confront Miss Gorse. Over that brief span of time, however, the din from above had subsided. At the foot of the narrow attic staircase, he paused. If the worst was over, perhaps he could safely ignore it. Except, of course, for the matter of the pretty young stranger he’d met on the quay, brought into his family home, carried to bed, and… Oh, yes. Hired to be his sisters’ new governess.

He took the steps two at a time.

There was no landing to speak of, and he stepped through the open door into what once had been used as servants’ quarters but almost a decade ago had been repurposed for a nursery. The furnishings were sparse: two beds, a washstand, and a lidless box containing dolls’ clothes and other playthings, tucked beneath a small square window. Across one corner of the room, a curtain had been hung to form a dressing area, as the ceiling slanted at a sharp angle, altogether too low to accommodate a wardrobe. He had to duck his head unless he stood in the very center of the room.

Perhaps he ought to have insisted that Daphne and Bell move into Cami and Erica’s old bedchamber, beside his. But they had responded to his suggestion with open reluctance, and as his gaze traveled around the room, he thought he understood why. He tried to see it as his littlest sisters must. Dust motes twirled and sparkled magically in a shaft of morning light. All was otherwise neatly arranged, but not, so far as he could judge, by Molly’s hand. It was not the sort of space that invited intrusion, even of the servant variety.

Good God, was he actually jealous of his little sisters’ hideaway?

A low murmur of voices drew his attention to the partition that divided the top floor of the house into bedroom and attic storage. The door in that thin wall stood ajar, and he moved noiselessly to peer through the opening.

He couldn’t remember when he’d last looked into the attic. Hadn’t it been crowded and rather disorganized? Less crowded now, since five members of the household had put their trunks and traveling paraphernalia to their intended uses. What remained had been dragged to the perimeter of the room and tucked under the eaves; he could see the tracks in the dust on the floor. The broken pieces of a discarded lamp had been swept into a neat pile near the door. Beneath the peak of the roof stood two makeshift desks, side by side. To the right sat Daphne in a Windsor-back chair missing two spokes, her toes tucked into a groove in the floor to keep them from swinging. On his left, Bell perched on an upturned box, her humble seat padded by a shawl he remembered his mother wearing years ago, now darned and wrinkled almost beyond recognition. Books had been stacked at each girl’s place, but neither of his sisters was reading. They were looking up expectantly at their teacher.

Miss Gorse stood before them, her back to the room’s only window, a mirror of the one in the girls’ bedroom: small, square, but west-facing and therefore comparatively dim. No motes twinkled here, though the air was thick with dust stirred up by the trio’s morning work. Paris could feel it in his nose and the back of his throat. Still, what light there was caught in her golden hair, setting aglow a few wisps that had worked free from the simple knot at the back of her head. Even across the room, he could make out the brilliant blue of her eyes.

Because, he realized belatedly, she was staring right at him.

Pairing the slight lift of her chin with an arrow-straight spine, she betrayed little trace of the fainting flower he remembered from last night. “Did we disturb you, Mr. Burke? My apologies.” Her voice was cool, her accent crisp. Aristocratic, he should call it, if he didn’t know better.

Bell spun on her seat, bunching the shawl beneath her. Her face was bright, despite a smudge of dirt across one cheek. “Oh, Paris. Isn’t it marvelous?”

“Miss Gorse said we needed a proper schoolroom,” Daphne explained.

“And this,” he said, with a quick and deliberately dismissive glance around the cramped, dirty room, “is your notion of proper, Miss Gorse?”